Publications

Koljonen, T., & Spencer, L. (2026). Towards a genre repertoire approach to research transparency. Organization Studies. Published online: https://doi.org/10.1177/01708406261459081

There is a broad consensus that transparency is increasingly important in management and organisational research. However, in the context of qualitative research, there are concerns about researchers applying inappropriate transparency criteria or templates in their work. In this article, we sought to understand how qualitative management researchers are actually enacting and communicating transparency practices. To do so, we conducted a comprehensive genre analysis of qualitative research across six management journals, which enabled us to map out transparency practices and identify three genres of writing about research transparency: protocol, diary, and critique. Based on our analysis, we motivate a genre repertoire approach to research transparency, a reflexive and pluralistic way of addressing transparency concerns in our field. This approach highlights researcher discretion and responsibility, moving the methodological debate beyond suggesting new practices, checklists, and templates for transparency in qualitative research. The genre repertoire approach aligns with the diversity of scholarship in organisation studies and invites further critical scholarly debate on methodological transparency and its place in the future of qualitative research.

Koljonen, Tomi (2026). Called Upon or Stumbled Upon? A Careers Perspective on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Work in UK Higher Education. Work and Occupations. 53(1): 25-57: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/07308884251368255 (Open Access)

Social scientists are showing increasing interest in workers engaged in social change work and related organizational roles. While the sociological literature on occupational activism as well as scholarship on organizational change agents have provided insights into this work, the career pathways employes take to these roles are rarely the explicit focus of this research, prompting the following research question: how do workers enter socially conscious jobs, and with what consequences? I address this question by drawing on qualitative interviews of professionals working in equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) roles across universities in the United Kingdom. My analysis finds three divergent pathways to EDI roles: the activist, the administrative, and the hybrid pathway. These different occupational pathways are further related to varied occupational rhetorics, workplace challenges, and career outlooks. My research contributes to scholarship on occupational activism, the literature on social change within organizations, and the sociology of EDI.

Ritwick, S., & Koljonen, T. (2025). Enter the Spiral: The Adverse Consequences of Professional and Lay Expertise for Sufferers’ Lived Experiences. Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 97, 293–317. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X20250000097013

While professional expertise is often the first recourse for diagnosing and treating personal problems, it cannot always satisfactorily solve them. In such instances, lay expertise can often complement professional knowledge and practices. Due to easily accessible digital platforms, it is increasingly common for people to utilize both professional and lay expertise to solve problems. This warrants further examination of how utilizing both professional and lay expertise co-constitute the lived experiences of sufferers. To answer this question, we qualitatively studied a prominent online community dedicated to reflux disease. We found that, in many cases, both professional and lay expertise proved inadequate in alleviating suffering. The nature of the symptoms faced by the sufferers, the subsequent dependence on and failure of professional and lay expertise to satisfactorily solve the problems led sufferers to experience what we call the spiral. The process of spiraling exemplifies how the sufferers engage with diverse forms of expertise and how this in turn shapes their lived experiences. By developing this notion, we contribute to the literature on expertise by showing the combined effects of both professional and lay expertise on the sufferers’ lived experience. Our study also highlights the limitations to the complementarity of professional and lay expertise, as well as the potential harms of engaging with lay expertise.

Koljonen, Tomi and Chan, Curtis K. (2024). Balancing Professional Autonomy And Managerial Goals Amid Broad Technology Adoption Pressures: Intraprofessional Segmentation At A Finnish School. Academy of Management Journal. 67(3): 798–828. https://journals.aom.org/doi/full/10.5465/amj.2022.1093

Managers often desire to see their organization adopt new technologies but depend on autonomous professionals to use such technologies in practice. In seeking technology adoption, organizations thus must find a middle ground between professional autonomy and managerial goals. Extant scholarship has examined such middle grounds but has focused on adoptions of specific technologies. However, amid broad technology adoption pressures—expectations on organizations lacking precise prescriptions, success criteria, and sanctions—novel middle-ground approaches might emerge. Our 16-month ethnography of a Finnish school indicates that intraprofessional segmentation—specialization of work tasks within a professional community—can allow organizations to navigate technology adoption while balancing professional autonomy and managerial goals. This segmentation supported managers’ and certain teachers’ enthusiasm about new technologies at work, without undermining other teachers’ autonomy. This segmentation emerged, persisted, and intensified through two processes. First, it emerged through differentiating practices, which allowed a divergence of what teachers said and did regarding technology. Second, this segmentation persisted and intensified through reinforcing practices, which furthered differentiation by formalizing, reorganizing, and strengthening it. Our study contributes to scholarship on occupations and technology by showing how intraprofessional segmentation can help organizations align technology with professional work amid broad technology adoption pressures.

Heimstädt, Maximilian, Koljonen, Tomi and Elmholdt, Kasper Trolle. (2024). Expertise in Management Research: An Integrative Review and a Path Forward. Academy of Management Annals. 18(1): 121-156. https://journals.aom.org/doi/full/10.5465/annals.2022.0078

Management scholars and practitioners have a longstanding interest in expertise and its benefits for individuals, organizations, and markets. However, today, experts and expertise also face a significant and broad crisis of credibility, authority, and trust in society. In order to better examine, understand, and realize the potential of expertise in and around organizations, our field is overdue for a comprehensive review of recent work on the concept. With an integrative review of the past two decades of management research on expertise, we map out this fragmented field and outline three perspectives on the concept. A “realist perspective” sees expertise as a substantive ability of individuals, a “constructivist perspective” sees expertise as socially constructed quality of collective actors, and a “situationist perspective” sees expertise as a situated enactment involving human and nonhuman actors. These perspectives make different assumptions about the nature of expertise and therefore reach different conclusions about its benefits and problems. By teasing out similarities and differences across the perspectives, we work toward greater construct clarity and develop six integrative opportunities for future research. We conclude with suggestions about how each of the three perspectives can help us better understand the crisis of expertise.

Research projects

Doing diversity: A study of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) experts in UK higher education (2023-)

I am currently researching the work of equity, diversity, and inclusion experts in UK higher education. If are interested in participating in this research or simply hearing more, please get in touch with me.

Teaching with Technology: Policy Reform and Professional Labor in the Digital Age (2018-2021)

In my dissertation, I examined technological policy reform in the Finnish educational system in the 2010s to understand how professionals’ work is shaped by and shapes technology-related public policy reforms. For this research project, I undertook a 16-month ethnography at a Finnish school, collected extensive archival materials, and conducted expert interviews. Work based on this research has received Best Student Paper nominations at AOM and EGOS, and one of the manuscripts has been accepted for publication at Academy of Management Journal.