Hello there Per Skålén, professor of Business Administration ...

... You have been on “RJ Sabbatical” the past year. What have you been working on?

– The aim of my sabbatical project has been to complete the research that I have conducted within the areas of marketing and service research based on practice theory. Practice theory focuses on understanding reality by studying what people do and the activities in which they engage. In my case, this refers to what marketers do and how this can be improved. The goal of my research has been to establish new reference frameworks that other researchers can apply to study marketing practices and value-creating activities in order to, for example, differentiate between marketing activities that work well and marketing activities that do not work quite as well.

How did it go?

– It went according to plan. The goal of the project was to publish a number of scientific articles, which I have. I have, for example, published my research in Journal of Service Research, Marketing Theory, and the newly established Journal Nordic Journal of Innovation in the Public Sector.

What are the takeaways from your RJ Sabbatical?

– To be able to focus solely on research for a whole year has been a privilege. At the same time, I have had the opportunity to visit other research environments and researchers. For example, I spent a month in Naples at the University of Naples Federico II where I learned a lot about service research on artificial intelligence, which was very interesting.

What are you working on at the moment?

– I’m working on further developing my research on practices so that it can be used within research on public services, as well as developing a new reference framework for studying and developing services based on practice theory.

Read more about Per Skålén’s research:

Per Skålén received funding from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond to conduct full-time research during 2022. Through RJ Sabbatical, researchers are offered project support to conduct full-time research for up to one year. The purpose is to allow more researchers the opportunity to complete research that has reached an advanced stage and to finish writing major works with potential to be regarded as scientifically significant.