WG 3: Co-leader

Kjell A. Eliassen, BI – Norwegian School of Management

Kjell A. Eliassen, born 1946, is a professor of Public Management and director of the Centre for European and Asian Studies at the Norwegian School of Management – BI in Oslo and professor of European Studies at The Free University in Brussels. He has been professor at University of Aarhus, Denmark and a visiting professor at several European, American and Asian Universities, and is an honorary professor at the Fudan University in Shanghai and at the Jiaotong Xian University.

Eliassen’s main fields of research are: telecommunications and information society politics, egovernment, globalisation and regional integration, public management and privatisation, regulation and industry development in Europe and Asia. He has published 20 books and several articles on these issues. He has as well as worked as a consultant for major firms, governmental agencies and ministries. His most recent books are: European Telecom Liberalisation (Routledge, 1999), which was in 2002 published in Chinese, a new edition of Making Policy in the European Union (Sage, 2001), which also was published in Chinese and European Telecommunications Liberalisation (Ashgate, 2007) and Understanding Public Management (Sage, 2008).

Lately, his focus has been on the new information society and egovernment. Eliassen is involved in several projects in this area and has wide range contact with both academics and bureaucrats in this field. He has previously been the project leader of several Nordic, European and Asian-European research projects. He has developed several programs and courses on telecommunication regulation and strategy, information society and egovernment and is responsible for a new program in this field at the Norwegian School of Management. He is currently co-directing a large project on corporatisation and privatisation of national telecommunications monopolies.

Furthermore, Eliassen has built up a part-time Master of Change Management program with Fudan and an Information industry management program for Ericsson representing the Norwegian School of Management. He was the first chairman of the Nordic Centre at Fudan University. He has been working closely with the Fudan University in Shanghai, Renmin University in Beijing and the Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, both within research and the development of management training programs. He has also earlier developed and run similar programs in the Central Europe. He is also, in cooperation with Renmin University, in charge of a Master of Public Administration “Training the trainers” program for professors involved in MPA programs at 24 Chinese universities. He is the editor of a new series of book in Chinese on Public Management.

He has been working as a consultant for major firms, governmental institutions and ministries in Europe and Asia in management development, regulation, privatisation, telecommunications, defence policy, armament procurement, offset and the development of European and global defence industry.