// Associate Professor of Social Innovation • emlyon
// Ph.D. in Sociology • Stanford
CHRISTOF BRANDTNER
// Organizations are a major driver of institutional change and sites of actions that structure and shape cities, nations, and markets. My research explores the reciprocal relationship between organizations and society, particularly in the contexts of social innovation, the civic life of cities, and the digital transformation of the economy.
ABOUT ME
// I am an organizational sociologist and an Associate Professor of Social Innovation at emlyon Business School. I am also a CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar in the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research's program on Innovation, Equity, and the Future of Prosperity, a senior research fellow at the Civic Life of Cities Lab at the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, and the Research Institute of Urban Management and Governance at WU Vienna. Previously, I was a postdoctoral scholar in sociology at the University of Chicago's Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation. I studied nonprofit management and innovation at WU Vienna (B.Sc.), organizational and economic sociology at Stanford (Ph.D. in sociology), and urban sociology at the University of Chicago (postdoc). I contribute to ASA, EGOS, AoM, SASE, and ARNOVA.
RESEARCH
// I study how mission-driven organizations contribute and respond to calls to make cities more socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable. My empirical work is theoretically grounded in sociological institutionalism, which understands organizations' behavior as co-evolving with their external social and cultural environment. Methodologically, I combine quantitative, comparative analyses of many organizations with specific knowledge of the cases I study, taking me into the domains of qualitative interviews, experiments, and computational text analysis. I regularly build new datasets of cities, neighborhoods, and organizations to test my arguments.
MANAGERIAL AND DIGITAL CHANGE AMONG NONPROFITS
// Performance-oriented management practices and professionalism have spread from businesses to nonprofit organizations. I am interested in contradictions resulting from what Max Weber described as the "disenchantment of the world," and how rational practices are actually implemented in value-oriented organizations and communities. I have examined these questions as part of the Civic Life of Cities Lab. Related work is published in Organization Studies, NVSQ, Voluntas, and a Special Collection of papers published in Global Perspectives.
CITIES AND THEIR ORGANIZATION(S)
// In the 21st century, cities bear unprecedented responsibility for fixing socio-economic inequality, building resilience to crises, and mitigating climate change. My dissertation, Cities in Action, explored how organizational infrastructures (e.g., nonprofits, businesses, and movements) and macro-institutional influences (e.g., inter-city associations and networks) shape the local capacity to act strategically and innovatively in the context of cities' climate change strategies. Cities in Action is under advance contract at Columbia University Press. Related work is published in the American Journal of Sociology, Urban Studies, Organization Studies, RSO, and ARPA.
ACCOUNTABILITY AND ORGANIZATIONAL EVALUATION
// One of the most important contemporary transformations in the institutional environment of organizations is the rise of accountability and evaluation mechanisms that expose organizations to external scrutiny. I study how organizations respond to evaluation, especially when their constituencies disagree about what matters for success. And I am curious about how open practices interact with established bureacratic structures, which are by definition averse to the public. Related work is published in Sociological Theory and the Socio-Economic Review.
PUBLICATIONS
BOOK
Brandtner, C. Cities in action: Climate change and the organization of cities (under contract at Columbia University Press, Society and the Environment Series, in production)
ARTICLES
Brandtner, C., Ashur, P., and Srinivasa Desikan, B. 2025. “Dynamic persistence of institutions: Modeling the historical endurance of Red Vienna’s public housing utopia.” Organization Studies. [OS]
Bergemann, P. and Brandtner, C. 2025. “Territoriality and the emergence of norms during the COVID-19 pandemic.” American Journal of Sociology 130(5): 1150–1216. [AJS]
Brandtner, C., Laryea, K., Park, G., Luo, W., Meyer, M., Suárez, D., Hwang, H., and Powell, W. W. “Neighborhood effects on integrative organizational practices in five global cities.” 2024. Nature Cities 1: 853–60. [Nature Cities]
Laryea, K. and Brandtner, C. 2024. “Organizations as agents of social and systemic integration.” Sociological thinking in contemporary organizational scholarship (Research in the Sociology of Organizations 90): 177–200. [RSO]
Gonzalez, A. and Brandtner, C. 2024. “Green in their own way: Pragmatic and progressive means for cities to overcome institutional barriers to sustainability.” Urban Studies 61(13), 2513–2530. [USJ] [SSRN]
Brandtner, C. Powell, W. W., and Horvath, A. 2024. “From iron cage to glass house: Bureaucratic repurposing and the turn to openness.” Organization Studies. [OS]
Lankao-Romero, P., Rosner, N., Brandtner, C., Rea, C., Meja-Montero, A., Pilo, F., Burch, S., Castán-Broto, V, Dokshin, F., and Schnur, S. 2023. “Centering justice in energy-transition innovations: A novel framework.” Nature Energy 8: 1192–1198. [Nature Energy]
Brandtner, C., Kornberger, M., and Douglas, G. 2023. “Where the relational commons take place: The city and its social infrastructure as sites of commoning.” Journal of Business Ethics 184: 917–932. [JBE]
Brandtner, C. 2022. “Green American City: Civic capacity and the distributed adoption of urban innovations.” American Journal of Sociology 128(3): 627-679. [AJS] [SSRN] [TC Europe] [WIP]
2023 Allan Schnaiberg Outstanding Publication Award in Environmental Sociology (ASA)
2024 Jane Addams Best Paper Award of the Community and Urban Sociology Section (ASA)
Brandtner, C. and W.W. Powell. 2022. “Capturing the civic lives of cities: An organizational, place-based perspective on civil society in global cities.” Global Perspectives 3(1): 36408. [GP] [Sage] [UC Press]
Brandtner, C. and Bromley, P. 2021. “Neoliberal governance, evaluations, and the rise of win–win ideology in corporate responsibility discourse, 1960–2010.” Socio-Economic Review 20(4): 1933–1960. [SER]
Brandtner, C. 2021. “Decoupling under scrutiny: Consistency of managerial talk and action in the age of nonprofit accountability.” Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 50(5): 1053–78. [NVSQ]
Brandtner, C., Bettencourt, L. M. A., Berman, M. G and Stier, A. J. 2021. “Creatures of the state? Metropolitan counties compensated for state inaction in initial U.S. response to COVID-19 pandemic.” PLOS One 16(2): e0246249. [PLOS]
Brandtner, C. and Suárez, D. 2020. “The structure of city action: Collaborative governance and sustainability practices in U.S. cities.” American Review of Public Administration: 1–18. [ARPA]
Brandtner, C. and Dunning, C. 2020. “Nonprofits as urban infrastructure.” In The Nonprofit Sector, 3rd edition, edited by Powell, W.W. and Bromley, P. Stanford University Press. [Book]
Brandtner, C., Lunn, A., and Young, C. 2019. “Spatial mismatch and youth unemployment in U.S. cities: Public transportation as a labor market institution.” Socio-Economic Review 17(2): 357–379. [SER]
Horvath, A., Brandtner, C., and Powell, W. W. 2018. “Serve or Conserve: Mission, strategy, and multi-level nonprofit change during the Great Recession.” Voluntas 29(5): 976–993. [Voluntas]
Brandtner, C. 2017. “Putting the world in orders: Plurality in organizational evaluation.” Sociological Theory 35(3): 200–27. [SocT]
Brandtner, C., Höllerer, M., Meyer, R., and Kornberger, M. 2017. “Enacting urban governance through strategy: A comparative study of governance configurations in Sydney and Vienna.” Urban Studies 54(4): 1075–91. [USJ]
Kornberger, M., Meyer, R. E., Brandtner, C., and Höllerer, M. 2017. “When bureaucracy meets the crowd: Studying open government in the Vienna city administration.” Organization Studies 38(2): 179–200. [OS]
Powell, W. W., Horvath, A., and Brandtner, C. 2016. “Click and mortar: Organizations on the web.” Research in Organizational Behavior 36: 101–20. [ROB]
Brandtner, C., Bromley, P., and Tompkins-Stange, M. 2016. “Walking the line: How institutional influences constrain elites.” How Institutions Matter (Research in the Sociology of Organizations 48B): 281–309. [RSO]
Powell, W. W. and Brandtner, C. 2016. “Organizations as sites and drivers of social action.” Pp. 269–91 in Handbook on Contemporary Sociological Theory, edited by Abrutyn, S.B. Springer. [Book]
Brandtner, C., Kinschner, M., and Polzer, T. 2014. “Austria, Inc: Performance orientation between technocracy and democracy.” Momentum Quarterly 2(4): 208–30. [MQ]
Brandtner, C. 2012. “Eco-social glocalization: Elitist and egalitarian tendencies of the concept of urban governance.” Momentum Quarterly 1(4): 75–89. [MQ]
ESSAYS & OPINION
Brandtner, C. (2024, September 11). ‘Upcycling’ Organizations: Lessons from nonprofits’ transition to open management. knowledge@emlyon. [knowledge]
Brandtner, C. (2023, March 23). Can Cities be the Source of Scalable Innovations? Stanford Social Innovation Review. [SSIR]
Brandtner, C. (2023, March 1). Look to cities, but past their mayors, for new climate solutions. The Conversation Europe. [TC Europe] [Le Fil]
Brandtner, C. (2023, May 3). Lutte contre le réchauffement : Comment les villes montrent la voie par l’expérimentation. The Conversation France. [TC France]
Brandtner, C. (2023, June 1). How civic capacity gets urban social innovations started. Work-In-Progress Blog. [WIP]
Powell, W., Brandtner, C., & Zhao, Y. (2022, July 25). The Civic Life of Cities Around the World. UC Press Blog. [UC Press]
Brandtner, C., & Powell, W. (2022, July 25). Special Collection on ‘Civic Life of Cities’ Puts Civil Society Organizations in Their Place. Sage Social Science Space. [SSSS]
PUBLIC WRITING & SPEAKING
Urban innovation ecosystems
Local climate solutions
TEACHING
SOCIAL INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
CITIES, COMMUNITIES, &
SOCIAL INNOVATION
RESEARCH DESIGN AND QUANTITATIVE METHODS
// How can we leverage the power of organizational forms located on the spectrum between traditional for-profit corporations and nonprofit associations to tackle social and environmental problems? At emlyon, I teach classes on these topics, including the foundations of social innovation as well as applied problems of social entrepreneurship. I also supervise related student theses and dissertations.
// How do organizations affect urban communities and vice versa? I deepened this question at the Mansueto Institute of Urban Innovation, where the emerging field of urban science meets the foundations of urban sociology. These issues converge nicely with my passion for civil society and philanthropy as sources of social innovation, a topic debated vigorously at Stanford PACS.
// I have an avid interest in using and teaching cutting-edge methods, from computational text analysis in historical analyses to online experiments for pinning down causal mechanisms. At emlyon, I teach an applied research design class for master's students called RECAPSS. At Stanford, I offered statistical software consulting for undergraduate and graduate students.
UPDATES
COLLABORATORS
// I am grateful for my collaborators in Europe and the United States. If you are looking for a reference, these people can probably tell you all about me. Walter W. Powell, Krystal Laryea, Aaron Horvath, and many others are my collaborators on the Civic Life of Cities. At Stanford, I have also worked with Patricia Bromley, Michelle Jackson, and Cristobal Young, among others. Outside Stanford, I have worked with Markus Höllerer (UNSW), Martin Kornberger (University of Edinburgh), Renate E. Meyer (WU, CBS), David Suárez (U of Washington), Amanda Sharkey (ASU), and Patrick Bergemann (UC Irvine). With Juan Pedroza (UCSC), I once submitted a tiramisu titled Problem of Embreadedness to Stanford's annual dessert competition.
COMMITTEE
// The people who told me to finish my dissertation are Walter W. Powell (Stanford GSE, chair), Xueguang Zhou (Stanford Sociology), and Sarah A. Soule (Stanford GSB).