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Employee Profile

Mark Brown

Associate Professor - Department of Communication and Culture

Biography

First degree: Master's in Chemical Engineering 1978 - 1982, Imperial College, London. Intention was to go into the oil industry - worked for Mobil Oil in vacations. 1983 - accepted a job in sales division with IBM (UK). Five years at IBM, then sales manager roles in smaller IT companies in London. I met my Norwegian wife-to-be in late 1990, we were married in 1991 and I moved to Oslo the same year.

Change of career from business to teaching. 1994 to 1997 I completed the Bachelor's and Master's degrees in English at the University of Oslo while working part-time as a teacher. First full-time position in tertiary education was at the Norwegian Police Academy (Politihøgskolen) 1998 - 2000, then the BI Norwegian Business School, first temporary then permanent from 2004. I was given three years leave of absence from BI in order to take a temporary three-year research position in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Oslo between 2005 and 2008. My PhD thesis has the title Managing Nature - Business as Usual: Patterns of wording and patterns of meaning in corporate environmental discourse. I defended it successfully in June 2008 and returned to my position at BI.

Research areas
Research interests combine language with business and the environment. My Master's thesis in 1997 was on the Kentucky farmer and poet: Wendell Berry, and explores his interpretation of the central American idea of self reliance as a function of a life within the constraints of community. In my PhD thesis I compared patterns in the wording of texts produced by (a) 'green' business corporations in Britain and (b) British-based environmental NGOs. The differences in patterning in the language point, I argue, to differences in the way in which the natural landscape is conceptualised by these two different communities of practice.

Teaching areas
I teach on the two Bachelor-level communication courses in English at BI: SPÅ 2901 Intercultural Communication in English - Business Cultures and Ethical Dilemmas and SPÅ 2902 Intercultural Communication in English - Negotiations and Presentations.

Area of Expertise

Publications

Alm, Kristian & Brown, Richard Mark (2020)

John Rawls' concept of the reasonable: A study of stakeholder action and reaction between British Petroleum and the victims of the oil spill in the gulf of Mexico

Journal of Business Ethics Doi: 10.1007/s10551-020-04474-9 - Full text in research archive

In his political philosophy, John Rawls has a normative notion of reasonable behaviour expected of citizens in a pluralist society. We interpret the various strands of this idea and introduce them to the discourse on stakeholder dialogue in order to address two shortcomings in the latter. The first shortcoming is an unnoticed, artificial separation of words from actions which neglects the communicative power of action. Second, in its proposed new role of the firm, the discourse of political CSR appeared to offer a promising synthesis of deliberation and action. However, the discourse has been criticized for its shortcoming in failing to provide a regulatory environment for corporation—stakeholder dialogue. Through our interpretation of Rawls’ notion of reasonableness in citizens, the article makes two important theoretical contributions to the debate on stakeholder dialogue. First, we transfer Rawls’ injunction in insisting that dialogues between business corporations and their weaker stakeholders must be understood as consisting of both verbal exchanges and actions. Second, we propose that the coercive power of government ought to provide a necessary context for stakeholder dialogue, and that by doing so, it can provide a way forward for the discourse of political CSR. We illustrate the usefulness of this contribution from Rawls in an analysis of BP’s behaviour towards thousands of victims following the Deepwater Horizon blowout in 2010.

Brown, Richard Mark & Alm, Kristian (2016)

Tillit til sannheten. En utfordring for BBC.

Alm, Kristian; Brown, Richard Mark & Røyseng, Sigrid (red.). Kommunikasjon og ytringsfrihet i organisasjoner

Alm, Kristian; Brown, Richard Mark & Røyseng, Sigrid (2016)

Kommunikasjon og ytringsfrihet i organisasjoner

Cappelen Damm Akademisk.

Brown, Richard Mark (2015)

Managing nature-business as usual: Resource extraction companies and their representations of natural landscapes

Sustainability, 7(12), s. 15900- 15922. Doi: 10.3390/su71215791

Brown, Richard Mark (2013)

From Classroom to Digital Arena in Seeking Higherlevel Learning: Student Experience

Seminar.net - Media, technology and lifelong learning, 9(1)

Brown, Richard Mark (2013)

A Methodology for Mapping Meanings in Text-Based Sustainability Communication

Sustainability, 5(6), s. 2457- 2479. Doi: 10.3390/su5062457

Brown, Richard Mark & Luccarelli, Mark (2012)

Oslo's Ullevål Garden City : an experiment in urbanism and landscape design

Luccarelli, Mark & Røe, Per Gunnar (red.). Green Oslo : visions, planning and discourse

Brown, Richard Mark (2012)

Speaking up for the Natural Landscape: a Rhetorical Dilemma

Journal of Management and Sustainability, 2(2), s. 96- 111. Doi: 10.5539/jms.v2n2p96

Brown, Mark (2010)

A Linguistic Interpretation of Welford's Hijack Hypothesis

Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 17(2), s. 81- 95. Doi: 10.1002/csr.233

Brown, Richard Mark (2007)

Wendell Berry's Farmer: Balancing 'the Natural' with 'the Cultural'

American Studies in Scandinavia, 39(2), s. 14- 28.

Brown, Richard Mark & Alm, Kristian (2017)

John Rawls' concept of the reasonable - a key to Stakeholder Dialogue. British Petroleum's compensation for the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico

[Academic lecture]. European Business Ethics Network EBEN Annual Conference.

Brown, Richard Mark & Alm, Kristian (2016)

Stakeholder Dialogue and Rawls' Reasonable Disagreement

[Academic lecture]. EBEN Research Conference 2016.

Brown, Richard Mark (2015)

The organization as whistle-blower: safeguarding organizational freedom of expression in order to safeguard society's freedom of expression

[Academic lecture]. EBEN Research Conference 2015.

Brown, Richard Mark (2015)

"Business - nature relations: from nature incorporated to Nature Inc"

[Academic lecture]. EBEN Research Conference 2015.

Brown, Richard Mark (2015)

Learning Lab Pilot Programme 2014-2015: Work Package 1 (Mark Brown and Siân Griffith) - Report of Steering Group on the Audio Slides Project

[Report]. Handelshøyskolen BI.

Brown, Richard Mark (2014)

Learning Lag Pilot Programme 2014-2015: Work Package 1 - Repåort of Steering Committee on the Audio Slides Project

[Report]. Handelshøyskolen BI.

Brown, Richard Mark (2014)

Managing Nature – Business as Usual?

[Academic lecture]. NORDKOMM (7) Nordic Research Seminar on Communication.

Brown, Richard Mark (2011)

Patterns of Wording to Patterns of Meaning?

[Academic lecture]. ICAME 32.

Brown, Richard Mark (2011)

Not a Hijacking of the Discourse - rather an Appropriation of its Language

[Academic lecture]. Nordkomm (5).

Brown, Richard Mark & Groth, Brian Ibbotson (2010)

Language and Meaning

[Article in business/trade/industry journal]. Språk og språkundervisning

Luccarelli, Mark & Brown, Mark (2010)

Ullevål Hageby and the English garden city: reflections on a designed landscape

[Academic lecture]. Green Oslo Research Symposium.

Brown, Richard Mark (2009)

Re-voicing the landscape: from nature incorporated to Nature Inc

[Academic lecture]. Counter Natures: Revising Nature in an Era of Environmental Crisis.

Brown, Richard Mark (2008)

Miljøsaken er også et humanistisk anliggende

[Article in business/trade/industry journal]. Samfunnsviteren, s. 18- 19.

Brown, Richard Mark (2008)

Kamp om grønne ord

[Article in business/trade/industry journal]. Apollon : Forskningsmagasin for Universitetet i Oslo, s. 35- 35.

Brown, Richard Mark (2008)

Green Business in Britain means a Managed Nature

[Article in business/trade/industry journal]. British Politics Review, 3(3), s. 14- 15.

Brown, Richard Mark (2008)

Not a Hijacking of the Discourse - rather an Appropriation of its Language by a New Discourse Community

[Academic lecture]. 14th Annual International Sustainable development Research Conference.

Brown, Richard Mark (2006)

Chapter four: The practical difficulties of designing and constructing corpora

[Academic lecture]. Internt møte i ILOS Corpus Linguistics Group.

Brown, Richard Mark (2006)

Contextualisation of 'the Natural'

[Academic lecture]. Internt møte i ILOS Corpus Linguistics Group.

Brown, Richard Mark (2006)

Characterising, Contextualising and Conceptualising 'the Natural'

[Academic lecture]. Internt møte i BI Kommunikasjonsgruppe.

Brown, Richard Mark (2006)

The 'Aboutness' of Corpora

[Academic lecture]. Møte i anledning besøk av Mike Scott, Universitetet i Liverpool.

Brown, Richard Mark (2006)

Wendell Berry's Farmer: Balancing 'the Natural' with 'the Cultural'?

[Academic lecture]. Småforsk-finansiert "mini-konferanse" om natur-skriving.

Brown, Richard Mark (2006)

Language as a way to ideas?

[Academic lecture]. 8th ABC European Convention.

Brown, Richard Mark (2006)

Area Studies and Language

[Academic lecture]. Internt møte i ILOS EAS gruppe.

Brown, Richard Mark (2005)

Corpora Design and Tools

[Academic lecture]. Internt møte i ILOS Corpus Linguistics Group.

Brown, Richard Mark (2005)

Building Specialised Copora: some practical considerations

[Academic lecture]. Internt møte i ILOS Corpus Linguistics Group.

Brown, Richard Mark (2005)

Culture Studies and Corpus Linguistics - different types of science

[Academic lecture]. Internt møte i BI Kommunikasjonsgruppe.

Brown, Richard Mark (2005)

Trying to bridge the divide between language and culture - current problems

[Academic lecture]. International PhD workshop in Corpus Analysis with Michael Stubbs.

Brown, Richard Mark (2005)

The Potential of Corpus Linguistics for Culture Studies

[Academic lecture]. Internal Meeting of the Corpus Linguistics Group.

Brown, Richard Mark (2004)

The Corporate Social Responsibility of Green Business

[Academic lecture]. Five-day Doctoral Seminar.

Brown, Richard Mark (2003)

Green Business in Britain: a Cultural Evolution?

[Academic lecture]. Internt møte av BI Kommunikasjonsgruppe.

Academic Degrees
Year Academic Department Degree
2008 University of Oslo Ph.D.
1997 University of Oslo Master Cand. Philol.
1995 University of Oslo Bachelor
1982 Imperial College, University of London Master
Work Experience
Year Employer Job Title
2008 - Present BI Norwegian Business School Associate Professor
2005 - 2008 University of Oslo PhD Candidate
2004 - 2004 BI Norwegian Business School Senior Lecturer
2001 - 2003 BI Norwegian Business School Lecturer
1998 - 2000 Norwegian Police University College Lecturer
1991 - 1997 Assorted language schools Free-lance teacher
1990 - 1991 Touchstone Computers Sales Manager
1989 - 1990 Ram Computer Group New Business Sales Manager
1983 - 1988 IBM (UK) Ltd Key Account Sales Representative