Maria Norbäck

Professor

Department of Business Administration

Telephone

+46 31-786 66 64

Mail

maria.norback@handels.gu.se

Visiting address

Viktoriagatan 13

41124 Göteborg

Postal address

Box 610

40530 Göteborg

About Maria Norbäck

Maria Norbäck is professor of business administration specializing in management and organization. Her research focuses on how work and labor markets are organized, and how sustainable work can be created across different industries. Much of her research has focused on the media industry, but she has also studied work in other sectors and contexts, including both highly skilled and low-skilled work.

In her current research projects, Norbäck studies the labor market consequences of the green transition in the automotive industry in Western Sweden, with a focus on how educational actors work with skills provision, transition, and reskilling. In another research project, her research group collaborates with work-integration social enterprises that create jobs for foreign-born women who are far from the labor market.

Norbäck has previously led a research project on worker-controlled cooperatives in the cultural sector. She has participated in projects examining flexibility, mobility, and choice in the labor market. Earlier in her career, Norbäck studied freelance journalists and other professional freelancers; professional work in venture capital-funded companies; urban development managers and their work; and workplace organization in the retail sector. In her doctoral dissertation, she studied film and television production. In both her research and teaching, she frequently draws on institutional theory and the body of literature commonly referred to as “critical labour studies.” In her teaching, she enjoys using art and other cultural forms to promote learning and intellectual development. Norbäck is director for Work and Employment Research Centre (https://wexsus.se/forskning/we).

Ongoing Research Projects

Maria is involved in various research projects focusing on the organizing of work. Read about each project below!

Labor market challenges of the green transition: https://www.gu.se/en/research/labor-market-challenges-of-the-green-transition-in-western-sweden-electrification-and-the-transition-of-the-automotive-cluster

Labor-integrating social enterprises: https://www.gu.se/en/research/women-4-integration-co-producing-an-inclusive-working-life-in-social-enterpriseskvinnor-for-integration

Previous Research Projects

Mobility, choice, and flexibility in the gig economy: https://www.gu.se/en/research/mobility-choice-flexibility

Gig work and cooperative work forms: https://www.gu.se/en/research/gig-cooperative-work-platforms

Selected Publications

Brorström, Sara., & Norbäck, Maria. (2024). Fast fashion: the rapid layering of management fashions in the Swedish city of Gothenburg. Public Management Review, 1-20.

Norbäck, Maria. (2023). Back to the future of journalist work? Entrepreneurial subjectivity and freelance journalism in Sweden. Journalism, 14648849211033131.

Norbäck, Maria. (2022). Maintaining a Freelance Career: How Journalists Generate and Evaluate Freelance Work. Journalism Studies, 1-19.

Norbäck, Maria., & Zapata Campos, Maria José (2022). The market made us do it: Public procurement and collaborative labour market inclusion governance from below. Social Policy & Administration, 1– 16.

Norbäck, Maria & Styhre, Alexander (2021) On the Precarity-Spectrum: Exploring Different Levels of Precariousness in Market-Mediated Professional Work. Mrev: management revue. Vol. 32 (3) 266 – 29.

Norbäck, Maria (2021) Glimpses of resistance: Entrepreneurial subjectivity and freelance journalist work. Organization.

Norbäck, Maria & Styhre, Alexander (2019) Making it work in free agent work: The coping practices of Swedish freelance journalists. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 35(4), 101076.

Norbäck, Maria (2019) Recycling Problems and Modernizing the Solution: Doing Institutional Maintenance Work on Swedish Public Service Television. Journal of Management Inquiry, Vol 27, no 4, (published on-line first 2017, published in print (2019) Vol 28(1), 94–112.)