Background

Olgierd Kuty was born in Lodz in 1943. Born into a family thqt had fled Poland when it fell under the communist yoke in 1947, the young Olgierd thought he would become a union “technician” until a union leader told him that unions were no places for scholars! He therefore set about studying law at Liege. As a result of his personal experiences, very early on he began to study relationships between man and society and took an interest in trade unionism. He continued his studies in France and then in the United States. “I had the good fortune to meet Michel Crozier” he said. “That was a revelation, something phenomenal: a sociology of organisations while there was still a tendency to talk above all of ‘class’. At a time when I was ready to follow in the footsteps of Bourdieu, I was captivated by Crozier and also by Touraine".

A Doctor in Law and in Sociology (with Michel Crozier as his thesis supervisor), Kuty became a professor at ULg and specialises in sociology. He was a visiting professor at the Universities of Fribourg and Paris I. He founded and co-led (from 2003-2007) with Christian Thuderow, the journal Negociations. The theme of negotiation is for Kuty a field of transversal preoccupation: specialising in organisation sociology he has led research on the subject of hospitals and the judiciary. Most recently, he has been working on Belgian political regulation. Olgierd Kuty was granted emeritus status in 2008, after some 40 years of teaching and research.