Aalbers’ research deals mainly with organisational restructuring, focusing on organisational resilience through innovation. At the intersection of strategic management and the behavioural sciences, Aalbers’ work focuses on both the successes and failures organizations face when intervening in difficult times. His analysis concentrates on both the intra- and interorganizational networks that organizations rely on to navigate corporate innovation and reorganization over time.
“My research lies at the intersection of academia and industry, with my preference being a multidisciplinary approach to stimulate fresh ideas,” Aalbers said. “This position gives me and my team the opportunity to create awareness among our students as the next generation of managers and employees, as well as inform policy makers and fellow strategy researchers about the mechanisms underlying innovation through the promise of reorganisation.”
About Rick Aalbers
Rick Aalbers (Zwolle, 1980) graduated cum laude in Business Economics at Erasmus University in Rotterdam in 2004. He also obtained a second Master’s degree, in Business Administration, from the same university. In 2012, he completed his PhD at the University of Groningen with a thesis entitled ‘Organizing intra-organizational networks for innovation’, for which he was awarded the SOM award for best PhD thesis.
Prior to his academic career, Rick worked as a manager at Deloitte Consulting where he advised on strategic change. In recent years, he worked as Associate Professor of Strategy and Innovation at Radboud University. He was a visiting researcher at the Imperial College London and the Tokyo Institute of Technology.
Aalbers has published repeatedly in leading international journals such as Research Policy, Long Range Planning, Journal of Product Innovation Management, MIT Sloan Management Review, and Harvard Business Review. Among other things, he won the award for best Dutch-language business administration article of the year from the Raad van Organisatie Adviseurs (Council of Management Consultancy Firms, ROA) in 2014. He previously received the MIT Richard Beckhard Memorial Award for the best MIT SMR article on planned change and organisational development. In 2022, Aalbers was nominated by one of the Academy of Management divisions for best article with practical implications. He has several national and international research grants to his name, including a Marie Curie ITN grant, a competitive research grant from the European Commission.