Norbert Thom


Norbert Thom is a German-Swiss economist and emeritus professor at the University of Bern where he taught business administration, organization design and human resource management until he retired in summer 2012.

Education

Thom studied business administration and the minor subjects macro-economics and sociology at the University of Cologne. receiving his doctoral degree in 1976 for his dissertation: ‘On the efficiency of innovation processes’. He was a member of the graduate seminar of the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management in Brussels. At the same time he was an assistant to Erwin Grochla. In 1984 he obtained postdoctoral teaching qualifications and taught business administration at the University of Cologne.

Faculty positions

In 1984, Thom became Deputy to the Chair of Organization and Human Resource Management at Justus-Liebig University/Giessen. Then he received in 1985 his appointment to the professorial Chair of Management, Organization and Human Resources at the University of Fribourg, and was Founder and head of its Corporate Management and Organization Seminar.
Thom moved in 1991 to the University of Bern where he founded the Institute for Organization and Human Resource Management and remained its director until 2012. In the academic year 2000/2001 he was appointed Acting Director the university's Institute for International Innovation Management. In 2002 he co-founded its interfacultary Competence Center for Public Management.
He hase served as: Vice-chancellor of the University of Bern; responsible for finance and planning. He has also held visiting professor positions at the universities of Basel, Bern, Linz, Dresden, Fribourg, Vilnius, Cluj-Napoca, Alcalá de Henares and Regensburg.

Positions

Thom has published more than 30 books as author or editor, mostly in the field of corporate innovation management, planning of programs for fostering young talents, transformation management in private and public enterprises and public management at all government levels.
His publications have been translated into 27 different languages. Some are: