Associate professor at the Centre for Business History
My research interests have evolved around many things, but particularly ownership and corporate governance.
By ownership I mean the importance of owners and ownership, and also differences between different types of owners, passive-active, long-short-term, and concentrated-diffuse, as well as stat, national and foreign ownership. And lastly how ownership affect industrial policy and innovation.
With corporate governance I primarily mean the principal-agent relationship between owners and managers, but also the purpose of the company, and issue of corporate social responsibility.
I have written about international business in Norway in my phd on the Norwegian telecom industry and a commission work on the Norwegian subsidiary of ABB. These books discusses foreign owned companies in Norway, and not least the corporate governance of these companies.
In 2017 the history of Norwegian insurance company Storebrand was published. I was in charge of the History project, and the main author of the second volume (1945-2017) other authors were Espen Ekberg, Trond Bergh and Christine Myrvang. Among other things, the book deals with the importance of corporate governance in Norway from the 1980s and onwards, and in particular Storebrand's pioneering role with CSR and ethical investment.
I have published several articles and chapters on the Norwegian state ownership in listed companies. Its historical background and special features.
The last years I have been engaged with setting up a centre at BI for competence and knowledge on state ownership in Norway, in cooperation with Equinor, Yara and Hydro; as well as the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries, and Ministry of Petroleum and Energy.
Lastly, I am course responsible for The Firm (Bedriften), an introductory course, which is compulsory for all bachelor students at BI.
This article aims to explain the considerable state ownership in listed companies in Norway (SOiN) at present. The extant literature has pointed to alleged national idiosyncrasies to explain this special feature of Norwegian capitalism. The main contribution of this article is a comparative perspective. It shows that most European countries have pursued selective protectionism (i.e., to secure national ownership in key companies). It also shows that financial capital was not crucial for selective protectionism. On this background, the article discusses why state ownership became the mode of selective protectionism in Norway. It argues that the main reason is that large private (often multinational) companies did not develop in the wake of the second Industrial Revolution. Another key reason is that a specific hybrid ownership model that was developed after 1945 became an available institutional solution for securing national ownership after 1990. A common ground and a compromise were found on this model, based both on trust and distrust toward the state: a trust in that the state could operate as a passive and private owner, and a corresponding distrust in the state as an active industrialist and owner.
Christensen, Sverre August (2021)
A Narrative Approach to Corporate Relations: The Historical Background on Telenor’s Success
The first globalisation, in the decades around 1900, was propelled by free-standing companies. This article discusses the establishment of a Norwegian free-standing company in Russia in 1910. It was the culmination of an eastwards movement from the Norwegian forest industry that went through Sweden and Finland before reaching Russia. The article discusses who controlled the company, and how this changed over time. It makes two main contributions to the literature. Firstly, how a family network can solve some of the puzzles free-standing companies have posed to theories of international business, especially regarding the origins and internalisation of ownership advantages. Secondly, it shows that, although free-standing companies were important for the first global economy, they were also integral to the deglobalization that followed.