In commemoration of Mark Easterby-Smith 15 05 2020

I have been asked to talk about Mark and the OLKC conferences - or the OL conferences as they were called when Mark and colleagues organized the first in 1996. This was held in Lancaster, and we were a small select group of which Mark was the natural center.  Mark was a frontrunner within the field of Organizational Learning, and I personally owe him a lot for having included me in the original small ‘crowd’ of OL scholars and for having helped me to find my particular way into OL research. In his early days,  when commenting on some of my writing he pointed out that my pragmatist take was an original one and asked me to pursue it. He of course turned out to be right - judging from the upsurge in interest in pragmatism in later years. 

I always had the sense that Mark could make you ‘do’ something – not only by stressing what he found novel in writings, but he also made me organize an OLKC conference. The latter happened on a train trip back from a most memorable OLK conference in Trento (but that IS quite another story). We were a small group of people in a train compartment, chatting and laughing, when Mark suddenly and out of the blue asked me if I could host an OLKC conference in Copenhagen? I was a little bit surprised – but what else to do than click your heels and say ‘but, of course’. I silently cursed him many times during the time of all the work that goes into organizing conferences. However, having said ‘no’ to Mark himself was impossible – at least for me.

So, why was Mark so special? I think he was inclusive in his way of thinking of colleagues, but mostly I remember his great sense of humor –you were always in for a good laugh when you were together with Mark. He appeared relaxed and he was in my eyes the complete opposite of a pompous ass [I apologize for the language, but this is what it said in the dictionary]. I for example remember once when he was to give a talk to some PhD students in one of the OLKC pre-conferences – I don’t remember when, but it was after he had caught his Parkinson's disease, which made him a bit unstable on his feet. There he stood in front of the students and introduced himself in his self-ironic way as NOT being drunk but ill and this is why he was swaying a bit. I thought that was sad, funny, and courageous – and very Mark-like.

To finish this small commemoration of an important person for the field of OL and particularly the OLKC conferences, it is somewhat ironic that the year, 2020, when Mark passes away, the corona-virus, covid19, has cancelled the annual OLKC conference …

May Mark rest in peace, colors and with people who share his sense of humor. 

Bente Elkjaer; 13 May 2020