Member - Dr. David Oliver

As a Research Fellow with the non-profit Imagination Lab (located in Lausanne, Switzerland), I am interested in how teams and organizations make sense, decide and act in complex environments. In particular, I conduct research in the areas of organizational identity and image, complex adaptive systems theory, and organizational decision-making processes.

My interest in aesthetics stems from my belief that in making claims about the nature of an organization's identity, organizational members often draw on a wide variety of non-textual, emotion-laden imagery and metaphor. Through using 3D materials such as LEGO pieces to build and dialogue around representations of their organizations, management teams may release some of these unarticulated understandings of their organizations, and thus improve their ability to engage in collective sensemaking.

I have a PhD in management from the University of Lausanne's HEC- Ecole des Haute Etudes Commerciales (Switzerland), with my dissertation focusing on the emergence of collective capacity in self-managed work teams. Prior to joining the Lab, I spent five years as a Research Associate at the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), Switzerland. I have published in Human Relations, Organization Studies, Revue Française de Gestion, the Financial Times, and System Practice and Action Research, and co-authored a book on the practical applications of complexity theory: Striking a Balance: Complexity and Knowledge Landscapes (McGraw-Hill, 2000). I have also written over a dozen IMD case studies--winning a European Case of the Year prize from the European Federation of Management Development in 1996. Canadian by origin, I have lived and worked in several countries including Sweden, New Zealand, and France. I hold an International MBA (Dean's List) from York University (Canada), and an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of Waterloo (Canada). My email is david@imagilab.org .