Håkan Håkansson

Håkan Håkansson (born 1947) is a Swedish organizational theorist, and Professor of International Management at the BI Norwegian Business School, known for his work on business networks.

Biography Håkansson attended the Technical High School in Örebro, where he graduated as engineer in 1967. He obtained his BS in Business Administration in 1970 at the Uppsala University, where in 1975 he also obtained his PhD in Business Administration with the thesis, entitled "Studies in Industrial Purchasing with special reference to Determinants of Communication Patterns."

In 1970 Håkansson started his academic career at the Department of Business Studies of the University of Uppsala as Lecturer, and got promoted associate professor in 1976. In 1983 he moved to the Stockholm School of Economics, where he taught for three years. He held a Special Research Position at the Social Science Research Council back in Uppsala from 1986 to 1993, and then was appointed Professor of Business Studies, especially Industrial Marketing at the University of Uppsala. In 2000 he moved to the BI Norwegian Business School in Oslo (BI Oslo), where he was Professor in Marketing for a year, and is Professor in International Management since 2001 at the Department of Innovation and Economic Organisation. In 1994 Håkansson is elected member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences,

Business networks The central concept in the theory of business networks is the network concept. Håkansson and Snehota (1995) defined this as follows:

A network has no clear boundaries, nor any centre or apex. It exists as an ‘organization’ in terms of a certain logic affecting the ordering of activities, resources and actors.

Business networks evolve over time, according to Håkansson and Ford (2002): The history of a business network is the process through which time and money have been devoted to build, adapt, develop, understand, relate and combine different human and physical resources together.

Selected publications Håkansson, Håkan, Studies in Industrial Purchasing with special reference to Determinants of Communication Patterns, Doctoral thesis. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Snehota, Ivan, IMP Group. International marketing and purchasing of industrial goods: An interaction approach. (1982). Håkansson, Håkan, ed. Industrial technological development: a network approach. London: Croom Helm, 1987. Snehota, Ivan, and Hakan Hakansson, eds. Developing relationships in business networks. Londres: Routledge, 1995. Ford, David, Lars-Erik Gadde, and Håkan Håkansson. Managing business relationships. (2003).

Articles, a selection Håkansson, Håkan, and Ivan Snehota. "No business is an island: the network concept of business strategy." Scandinavian Journal of Management 5.3 (1989): 187–200. Anderson, James C., Håkan Håkansson, and Jan Johanson. "Dyadic business relationships within a business network context." Journal of Marketing (1994): 1–15. Håkansson, Håkan, and David Ford. "How should companies interact in business networks?." Journal of Business Research 55.2 (2002): 133–139.