San Francisco State University

Faculty Member, Management

Professor

College of Business

About

Ronald Purser is Professor of Management in the College of Business and the Educational Doctorate in Leadership program in the College of Education at San Francisco State University. Prior to this, he was a tenured professor and Graduate Program Director at the Center for Organization Development at Loyola University of Chicago. Dr. Purser earned his Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University and his B.A. in Psychology from Sonoma State University. He is past Division Chair of the Organization Development and Change division of the Academy of Management. He is currently Chair of SFSU's Academic Freedom Committee, and a member of California Faculty Association's (CFA) executive board.

His scholarship has focused on temporality in organizations, virtuality and cyberspace, social creativity, organizations and the natural environment, Buddhist social theory, psychoanalysis and organizations, sociotechnical systems redesign of knowledge work, organizational learning and democratic self-management . He has published over fifty refereed journal articles and book chapters and is co-author and co-editor of five books including, The Search Conference (Jossey-Bass, 1996), Social Creativity, Volumes 1 & 2 (Hampton Press, 1999), and The Self-Managing Organization (The Free Press, 1998), and 24/7: Time and Temporality in the Network Society (Stanford University Press, 2007). Dr. Purser has been a recipient of numerous U.S. Department of Education and National Science Foundation grant awards. .

Dr. Purser is currently Associate Editor of the Business Discipline Editorial Board for the Multi-media Educational Resource for Online Learning and Teaching (MERLOT). He has been an active consultant and researcher in both the private and public sector. He is currently on the board of the Center for Creative Inquiry, and President of Timeless Wisdom--both non-profit 501(c)(3) educational organizations.

Prior to his academic career, he was a journeyman industrial electrician at a number of factories in Chicago, including the historic Pullman-Standard plant. He was a member of the IBEW. His other interests and hobbies include playing electric guitar (blues), qigong, tai chi, weight-lifting and Zen and Tibetan Buddhist meditation.

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