Welcome to my academic website and thank you for your interest in my work.

My name is Berend van der Kolk and I work as an associate professor at the Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam, School of Business and Economics, department of Accounting. I am interested in how people behave in organizations and the role of management practices such as performance measurement in shaping this behavior.

With my co-authors, I address research questions such as “What is the impact of management practices on employee motivation?” (link), “Which role should ethics play in business education?” (link), and “What are the social and ethical implications of performance measurement?” (link) I research and teach topics related to accounting, psychology, organization studies and philosophy, and make use of both qualitative (e.g. interviews) and quantitative (e.g. surveys) research methods.

My research is published in international academic journals, as well as in outlets for more general audiences, such as Holland Management Review, Follow The Money and The Guardian.

I hold degrees in Accounting (BSc, MSc), Business Administration (MSc) and Philosophy of Social Sciences (BA) from the University of Groningen, where I also defended my Ph.D. thesis in 2016. From 2016 to 2021 I worked as an assistant professor at IE Business School Madrid, and I also held visiting positions at the University of Sydney and the London School of Economics.

I am an editorial board member of the Journal of Accounting Education and the European Journal of Management Studies, and a fellow of the Amsterdam Young Academy. In November 2021, I published De Meetmaatschappij – a Dutch popular science book on the impact of performance measurement systems on individuals, organizations and societies.

If you have any questions regarding my work, please do not hesitate to contact me via this form, or to connect via Twitter or LinkedIn.