Photo: Flip Franssen
13 July 1952, The Netherlands
BA psychology 1977
PhD History 2004
Member of ICIJ since 2014
Editor-in-chief of The Investigative Desk
Major books
Hoog Spel, een politieke biografie van Royal Dutch Shell.
Published 11 May 2023. details
The Haughty. A short history of the management profession. November 2011 (in Dutch).
A Changing Tide. New Public Management: a case study of cultural, managerial and organisational change at the Public Works and Water Management Agency in The Netherlands, ‘Rijkswaterstaat’. March 2010 (in Dutch).
Farewell to a Negligent Élite. Essays, interviews, reports and contemplations about the bureaucratic/corporate ideological mix in the Dutch public sector, and a call for a socially responsible, historically conscious and unifying leaderschip. By John Balm and Marcel Metze. Published December 2009 (in Dutch).
Anton Philips (1874-1951), a biograpy of the co-founder of Philips Electronics. Published October 15, 2004, as a doctoral thesis (in Dutch, English summary).
Let´s talk Dutch now (1999).
A history of the cultural and political roots of the Dutch economic model.
XXL. The power, the network, the performance and the world of Dutch top-managers (1998).
An analysis (with researcher Jos van Hezewijk) of the top-100 most influential executive and non-executive directors in the major Dutch corporations in 1998, and of the performance of the top-100 Dutch corporations between 1982 and 1997.
Let´s make things better (1997).
An investigative book about Philips Electronics in 1991-1997, describing how the company narrowly escaped bankrupcy, and then entered a period of strategic indecision, resulting in a succession drama (review in English).
Stranded (1995).
A study of the dramatic loss of the Dutch christian-democratic party CDA in the parliamentary elections of 1994, after having been in power since the beginning of the twentieth century.
The Smell of Money (1993).
An investigative study of the wave of mergers, scandals and conflicts of interest in the Dutch banking sector in the beginning of the nineties.
Short Circuit (1991).
A historical analysis of the disastrous condition of Philips Electronics in 1990. The first serious corporate biography published in The Nederlands (reviews in English).
Other facts:
In 2000 both Short Circuit and Let’s make things better appeared in the all-time (i.e. after World War II) top-10 of non fiction bestsellers in The Netherlands.