Christof BRANDTNER

Christof Brandtner is an organizational theorist and sociologist seeking to understand the societal impact of organizations by linking theories and methodologies from the study of organizations to the sociology of urban governance, climate change, civil society, and the economy. At emlyon, he teaches classes in social innovation, social entrepreneurship, and the organization of communities.

Christof's research examines the emergence, diffusion, and implementation of social innovations—organizational practices and policies designed to make communities more sustainable and prosperous—by combining econometrics with computational text analysis, interviews, and experiments. Christof's research has been published in leading journals in organization theory, sociology, and nonprofit research, including the American Journal of Sociology, the American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Organization Studies, Journal of Business Ethics, Sociological Theory, the Socio-Economic Review, and Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, and has received best-paper awards from the American Sociological Association and the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics.

The broader goal of this research is to understand how organizations contribute to the development of equitable and sustainable cities and communities (SDG 11). Christof's book Cities in Action: Organizations, Institutions, and Urban Climate Strategies (Columbia University Press, 2026) demonstrates that variation in whether cities act on climate change is an organizational problem that results from their dual embeddedness in a shared institutional superstructure and a unique organizational infrastructure of civil society organizations, public agencies, and socially responsible firms.

Christof is a Fellow in the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research's program on Innovation, Equity, and the Future of Prosperity, and a co-founder of the Civic Life of Cities Lab. He holds a PhD and an MA in Sociology from Stanford University, as well as a BSc in Business, Economics, and Social Sciences from the Vienna University of Economics and Business, and was previously a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Chicago. He serves on the editorial boards of Organization Studies and the Academy of Management Journal and as the provider of seeds for one parrot.