Jakob Laage-Thomsen

Jakob Laage-Thomsen is PhD fellow at the Department of Organization at Copenhagen Business School. He investigates public organizations’ access to and use of external expertise, by focusing on long and short term transformations of professional and advisory systems.

Research interests

Sociology of Professions and Expertise, Sociology of Public Administration, Economic Sociology, Political Economy, Social Data Science

Research projec pursued at the CEE

In his research, he investigates the transformations of policy advisory systems and public administrations in the Nordic countries. He focusses on the dynamics between the civil service as a producer and consumer of policy advice, and how these dynamics affect the demand for and influence of external advisors in public policy. During his time at the CEE he will focus on two empirical parts of his thesis. Firstly, a comparison of ad-hoc and institutionalized relations of advice-giving as they develop in response to crises, by mapping “Crisis Advisory Networks” in Denmark, Norway and Sweden during the Covid-19 pandemic and examining their importance for diverging crisis-responses. Secondly an investigation of how changes in bureaucratic expertise are related to changes in the use of external advisors through a quantitative study of career trajectories and external advisor contracting, in the Danish Civil Service in the past 30 years. Conceptually, his research advances a Sociology of Administration by drawing on the Sociology of Professions, Expertise, and research on Policy Advisory Systems.

To know more

• jala.ioa@cbs.dk
• Link to personal webpage