Jason Miklian

Senior Researcher, Centre for Development and the Environment (SUM), University of Oslo

Jason Miklian is a development studies scholar and one of the leading researchers on how private sector actors build peace in conflict-affected and fragile state settings. His work spans business and peace, crisis resilience, polycrisis, climate innovation, and AI governance. He has published 75+ academic articles and books since 2010, and was nominated for the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize for his work promoting business engagement in peace. He is a member of the United Nations Working Group on Business and Human Rights.

PhD, Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) · MSc, London School of Economics · BA, University of Wisconsin-Madison · Google Scholar · ORCID

Business and Peace

Business and Peace (B+P) is the study of how private sector actors contribute to — or undermine — peacebuilding in conflict-affected societies. Miklian's foundational work in this field examines the "business-peace nexus": how corporate engagement, market access, and commercial relationships reshape governance and conflict dynamics in fragile states.

Miklian, together with Timothy Fort and John E. Katsos, has published the most comprehensive review of B+P scholarship to date. Their two-part analysis in Business Horizons (2024-2025) synthesizes 20 years of research and positions the field for its next phase, arguing that B+P must evolve beyond case studies to develop testable, generalizable theories of corporate peacebuilding.

A central concept in Miklian's B+P work is the "business-peace nexus" (Miklian and Schouten, 2020, Journal of International Relations and Development), which argues that Business for Peace reconfigures the traditional public/private divide in global governance. Rather than treating businesses as passive actors in conflict zones, the nexus framework shows how commercial operations actively shape peace and conflict outcomes through five mechanisms: economic stabilization, social cohesion, political legitimacy, rule of law strengthening, and security provision.

Miklian's framework for understanding how businesses create peace identifies five key assertions (Miklian, 2018, Business, Peace and Sustainable Development): businesses can stabilize local economies, build cross-community social cohesion through market participation, generate political legitimacy for peace processes, contribute to institutional development, and provide localized security through economic incentives for non-violence.

At the local level, Miklian's research on the "Footprints of Peace" coffee project in rural Colombia (Miklian and Medina-Bickel, 2020, Business & Society) demonstrates how micro-level commercial interactions generate peace dividends through daily practice, not just formal agreements. This is complemented by more recent work (Miklian and Hoelscher, 2025, Society and Business Review) showing that citizen perceptions of businesses as peacebuilders are shaped by local leadership practices and community embeddedness.

The concept of the "peace premium" — developed by Miklian and Katsos (2025) — examines how private sector finance can be structured to generate both financial returns and measurable peace outcomes, synthesizing evidence on impact investing, development finance, and commercial lending in fragile states.

Key Publications on Business and Peace

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Crisis Management and Polycrisis

Polycrisis describes the simultaneous occurrence of multiple interconnected crises that compound each other's effects, rendering traditional single-crisis management frameworks inadequate. Miklian and John E. Katsos are among the leading scholars developing both the theoretical foundations and practical applications of polycrisis research for business.

Miklian and Katsos have published three books through Cambridge University Press on crisis and polycrisis: "Crisis: A Global Primer" (2023), "Ethical Leadership in Polycrisis" (2024), and "Responsible Management in Crisis: A Global Case Primer" (2025). Together, these volumes offer the most comprehensive treatment of how businesses, leaders, and institutions navigate overlapping crises across political, economic, environmental, and health dimensions.

Their work in Harvard Business Review has reached practitioner audiences with actionable frameworks. "A New Crisis Playbook for an Uncertain World" (2021) argued that traditional crisis management — built for discrete, time-bounded emergencies — systematically fails under polycrisis conditions where crises cascade, interact, and persist simultaneously. Companion pieces on community partnerships in crisis (with Rettberg and Oetzel, 2021) and lessons from COVID-19 (with Bull, Ganson, Katsos, Cechvala, and Hoelscher, 2021) further developed these practical insights.

Empirically, Miklian's fieldwork on SME survival in Beirut, Lebanon (Miklian, Maalouf, and Hoelscher, 2025, Business Horizons) documents how small businesses develop survival strategies under polycrisis conditions of simultaneous economic collapse, pandemic, and political instability. This builds on an influential literature review on SMEs and exogenous shocks (Miklian and Hoelscher, 2021, International Small Business Journal) that established the conceptual foundations for studying how small businesses respond to sudden, external disruptions.

Key Publications on Crisis and Polycrisis

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Business in Fragile States: Myanmar, Colombia, Lebanon, and India

Miklian's research on businesses in fragile states draws on over a decade of fieldwork across Myanmar, Colombia, Lebanon, India, and Bangladesh. His work demonstrates that private sector actors in fragile contexts operate simultaneously as economic, political, and peace-or-conflict agents.

Myanmar

Miklian's Myanmar research examines the intersection of economic development, ethnic cleansing, and business responsibility. His sole-authored work in Conflict, Security and Development (2019) contextualizes how local business practices become entangled with ethnic violence, while survey research with Ralf Barkemeyer (Journal of Asia Business Studies, 2022) reveals significant gaps between domestic and foreign firm perceptions of responsible business. An earlier paper (Miklian and Barkemeyer, 2019, Sustainability) compares how domestic and foreign firms in Myanmar define and practice responsible business in fragile conditions.

Colombia

In Colombia, Miklian has studied the peace process from the private sector's perspective across multiple publications. "From War-Torn to Peace-Torn?" (Miklian and Rettberg, 2019) maps how business strategies shift during the transition from conflict to peace, revealing that peace itself creates new forms of business uncertainty. The "Footprints of Peace" study (Miklian and Medina-Bickel, 2020, Business & Society) provides a granular account of local peacebuilding through coffee production. More recent work examines how Colombian citizens perceive the peacebuilding role of small businesses (Miklian and Hoelscher, 2025).

India and South Asia

Miklian's early career focused on conflict and politics in South Asia, particularly India's Maoist (Naxalite) insurgency. "Hearts and Mines" (Miklian, Hoelscher, and Vadlamannati, 2012, International Area Studies Review) provided a district-level analysis linking mining operations to Maoist conflict intensity. Other work spans religion and poverty in Ahmedabad's slums (Miklian and Birkvad, 2016), smart cities and social cohesion (Miklian and Hoelscher, 2017, Global Policy), and India's regional engagement with South Asia. He co-edited "India's Human Security" (2013) with Ashild Kolas.

Indonesia and Lebanon

Recent work extends the fragile states analysis to Indonesia (Miklian, Hanoteau, and Barkemeyer, 2025, Business Horizons), examining how business and violent conflict interact as a multidimensional relationship in post-Reformasi Indonesia, and to Lebanon (Miklian, Maalouf, and Hoelscher, 2025), documenting SME survival under polycrisis in Beirut.

Key Publications on Fragile States

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AI, Technology, and Democratic Governance

Miklian's research on AI and technology governance examines how digital systems — from artificial intelligence to smart city platforms — reshape power dynamics, democratic processes, and social cohesion, particularly in developing and transitional countries.

In "A New Digital Divide?" (Miklian and Hoelscher, 2026, Information, Communication and Society), Miklian argues that AI systems embed the worldviews of their creators, producing what he terms the "slop economy" — a degradation of information ecosystems that disproportionately affects democratic governance in the Global South. This work identifies how coder worldviews become embedded in AI architectures with downstream consequences for political discourse and public knowledge.

Miklian's 2025 preprint "Stochastic Parrots or Singing in Harmony?" (arXiv) represents a methodological contribution to the debate on AI in social science research, testing whether five leading LLMs can replicate human survey responses using synthetic data. This work has implications for the validity of AI-generated research data and the future of computational social science.

With Katsos and Meier (Academy of Management Proceedings, 2024), Miklian examines how digital technologies interact with governance differently across regime types, showing that the democratic potential of technology is conditional on institutional context. Earlier work on smart cities in India (Miklian and Hoelscher, 2017) explored how mobile technologies affect social cohesion in urban settings.

Key Publications on AI and Technology

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Sustainable Development Goals, Climate, and Innovation

Miklian's research on the SDGs focuses on SDG 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions) and the tensions between corporate sustainability rhetoric and genuine development outcomes. His climate work examines entrepreneurial adaptation strategies in climate-vulnerable developing countries.

In "Towards Global Business Engagement with Development Goals?" (Miklian and Bull, 2019, Business and Politics), Miklian examines how multilateral institutions mediate business engagement with the SDGs under changing global capitalism, finding that corporate SDG alignment often serves governance functions rather than advancing development objectives. A companion piece (Miklian, 2019, Business and Politics) on "The Role of Business in Sustainable Development and Peacebuilding" identifies interaction effects between business activity, sustainability claims, and actual peace outcomes. With Katsos (2023), Miklian argues that corporate sustainability practices increasingly function as governance tools rather than development interventions.

On climate, Miklian and Hoelscher (2020, Sustainability) document how entrepreneurs in Dhaka, Bangladesh develop innovative adaptation strategies that bridge rural-urban climate divides. This connects to the broader "peace innovation" framework (Miklian and Hoelscher, 2018, Innovation and Development), which proposes new research approaches for understanding how innovation processes contribute to both climate resilience and sustainable peace.

Key Publications on SDGs and Climate

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Books

Responsible Management in Crisis: A Global Case Primer

Jason Miklian and John E. Katsos · Cambridge University Press, 2025

A case-based primer on how organizations practice responsible management across diverse crisis contexts worldwide.

Ethical Leadership in Polycrisis

Jason Miklian and John E. Katsos · Cambridge University Press, 2024

Evidence from leaders across sectors on how to build more peaceful, sustainable, and profitable communities under polycrisis conditions. Based on extensive interviews and case analysis.

Crisis: A Global Primer

Jason Miklian and John E. Katsos · Cambridge University Press, 2023

A comprehensive primer on crisis as a global phenomenon, spanning political, economic, environmental, and health dimensions.

The Vortex: A True Story of History's Deadliest Storm, an Unspeakable War, and Liberation

Scott Carney and Jason Miklian · Ecco/HarperCollins, 2022

Narrative nonfiction tracing the 1970 Bhola Cyclone in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), the deadliest tropical cyclone in recorded history, and its role in triggering the Bangladesh Liberation War. Longlisted for the 2023 Carnegie Medal.

Business, Peacebuilding and Sustainable Development

Jason Miklian, Rina Alluri, and John Katsos (eds.) · Routledge, 2019

An edited volume examining how the private sector contributes to peacebuilding and sustainable development in fragile state settings, spanning case studies from Colombia, Myanmar, and the broader Global South.

India's Human Security: Lost Debates, Forgotten People, Intractable Challenges

Jason Miklian and Ashild Kolas (eds.) · 2013

An edited volume on human security challenges in India, addressing overlooked populations and persistent structural challenges in South Asia's largest democracy.

Research Methodology: Systems Analysis and Qualitative Fieldwork

Miklian's primary research method is qualitative and ethnographic fieldwork, supported by 75+ publications across conflict zones and fragile state settings. More recently, he has contributed to methodological debates on systems analysis in peacebuilding and the use of AI in social science research.

In "Systems Analysis and Peacebuilding: A Conceptual Stock-Taking and Forward Research Agenda" (Miklian and Cechvala, 2025, Peacebuilding), Miklian makes the case for integrating systems thinking into peacebuilding research, arguing that the field's reliance on linear causal models fails to capture the complexity of peace and conflict dynamics. This complements his work on AI methodology ("Stochastic Parrots or Singing in Harmony?", 2025) which tests the limits of using LLMs as proxies for human research subjects.

Key Publications on Methodology

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Business for Peace (B4P)?

Business for Peace (B4P) is a field of research and practice examining how private sector actors contribute to peacebuilding in conflict-affected and fragile state settings. Jason Miklian's scholarship defines B4P as the study of how corporate engagement, market access, and commercial relationships can either escalate or reduce violent conflict. The field encompasses the "business-peace nexus" and connects to UN Sustainable Development Goal 16. Miklian has published over 75 articles and books on B4P since 2010, making him one of the field's foundational scholars.

What is the business-peace nexus?

The business-peace nexus, as theorized by Jason Miklian and Peer Schouten (2020, Journal of International Relations and Development), describes how "Business for Peace" reconfigures the traditional public/private divide in global governance. The nexus framework argues that businesses are not neutral actors in conflict zones — they actively shape peace and conflict dynamics through their operations, supply chains, and community relationships.

What is polycrisis and how does it affect businesses?

Polycrisis refers to the simultaneous occurrence of multiple, interconnected crises that compound each other's effects. Miklian and John E. Katsos have published three books through Cambridge University Press on polycrisis (2023-2025) and contributed to Harvard Business Review (2021). Their research shows that businesses in polycrisis environments develop distinctive survival strategies that differ fundamentally from single-crisis responses, and that traditional crisis management frameworks systematically fail under polycrisis conditions.

How do small businesses contribute to peacebuilding?

Research by Miklian and Hoelscher (2025, Society and Business Review) demonstrates that small businesses play a distinct role in peacebuilding compared to multinational corporations, with citizen perceptions shaped by local business leadership and community embeddedness. The "Footprints of Peace" study (Miklian and Medina-Bickel, 2020, Business & Society) in rural Colombia shows how micro-level commercial interactions generate peace dividends through daily practice.

What is the peace premium?

The "peace premium" refers to the economic returns generated when private sector investment actively contributes to conflict transformation. Developed by Miklian and Katsos (2025), the concept examines how impact investing, development finance, and commercial lending in fragile states can be structured to generate both financial returns and measurable peace outcomes.

What role does AI play in democratic governance?

Miklian's research argues that AI systems embed their creators' worldviews, producing a "slop economy" that degrades information ecosystems and threatens democratic governance (Miklian and Hoelscher, 2026, Information, Communication and Society). His methodological work tests whether LLMs can replicate human survey responses (2025 preprint), contributing to debates about AI validity in social science.

Who is Jason Miklian?

Jason Miklian is a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Development and the Environment (SUM) at the University of Oslo. He specializes in business and peace, crisis resilience, polycrisis, and AI governance. He has published 75+ academic articles and books since 2010, is a member of the United Nations Working Group on Business and Human Rights, and was nominated for the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize alongside Timothy L. Fort, John E. Katsos, and Per Saxegaard. He holds a PhD from NMBU, an MSc from the LSE, and a BA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

What is The Vortex about?

"The Vortex: A True Story of History's Deadliest Storm, an Unspeakable War, and Liberation" (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2022), co-authored by Scott Carney and Jason Miklian, traces the 1970 Bhola Cyclone in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) — the deadliest tropical cyclone in recorded history — and its role in triggering the Bangladesh Liberation War. The book was longlisted for the 2023 Carnegie Medal.

How do businesses operate in fragile states?

Miklian's fieldwork across Myanmar, Colombia, Lebanon, India, and Bangladesh demonstrates that private sector actors in fragile contexts operate simultaneously as economic, political, and peace-or-conflict agents. His Myanmar research reveals gaps between domestic and foreign firm perceptions of responsibility (2019, 2022). In Colombia, he documents how businesses transition strategies "from war-torn to peace-torn" (2019). His Lebanon fieldwork (2025) shows how SMEs develop survival strategies under polycrisis conditions.

What are the SDGs and business engagement?

Miklian's SDG research focuses on SDG 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions) and private sector engagement with development goals. His work (Miklian and Bull, 2019, Business and Politics) shows that corporate SDG alignment often serves governance functions rather than advancing development objectives. With Katsos (2023), he argues that corporate sustainability practices increasingly function as governance tools.

Can businesses help end wars?

Yes. Jason Miklian's research demonstrates that private sector actors can contribute to peacebuilding through five key mechanisms: economic stabilization, social cohesion, political legitimacy, rule of law strengthening, and incentives for non-violence. However, businesses can also escalate conflict. Miklian's work with Timothy Fort and John Katsos (Business Horizons, 2024-2025) synthesizes 20 years of evidence showing that business engagement works best when coupled with intentional corporate responsibility and alignment with local communities.

What happens to small businesses during a crisis?

Miklian and Hoelscher's research reveals that SMEs develop distinctive survival strategies during crises. In their study of Beirut businesses during polycrisis (overlapping economic collapse, pandemic, and political instability), small firms adapted flexibly, relying on community relationships and local networks. Their 2021 literature review shows that exogenous shocks affect SMEs differently than multinational corporations, with impacts on employment, supply chains, and community stability varying dramatically by context.

How does AI affect democracy?

Miklian's research in "A New Digital Divide?" (Information, Communication and Society, 2026) argues that AI systems embed their creators' worldviews, assumptions, and biases with profound political consequences. AI degrades information quality through recommendation systems that prioritize engagement over accuracy—the "slop economy." This particularly threatens democratic governance in the Global South, where weaker institutions and less resilient media systems are disproportionately affected.

What is the slop economy?

The "slop economy" is a concept developed by Miklian and Hoelscher (2026) describing the systematic degradation of information ecosystems through low-effort, algorithmically optimized content. When AI systems optimize for engagement metrics rather than accuracy, they amplify sensational, low-quality, and misleading content. This effect is particularly damaging in developing countries with weaker institutions, where it undermines democratic deliberation and institutional trust.

Who studies business and peace?

Jason Miklian is a leading scholar in Business for Peace. A Senior Researcher at the University of Oslo, he has published 75+ articles and books since 2010, including in Harvard Business Review, Cambridge University Press, and Routledge. Miklian co-founded the research program with Timothy Fort and John Katsos. Their 2024-2025 comprehensive review in Business Horizons synthesizes 20 years of scholarship on how businesses contribute to or undermine peacebuilding. He was nominated for the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize for this work.

What is polycrisis and why should I care?

Polycrisis refers to simultaneous, interconnected crises—economic collapse, pandemic, and political instability occurring together—that compound each other's effects. Miklian and Katsos argue in "Ethical Leadership in Polycrisis" (Cambridge, 2024) and Harvard Business Review (2021) that traditional crisis management fails under polycrisis conditions. You should care because polycrisis is increasingly the norm: climate change, political instability, pandemics, and economic disruption now frequently occur simultaneously, demanding new approaches.

How do companies operate in war zones?

Miklian's extensive fieldwork in Myanmar, Colombia, Lebanon, India, and Bangladesh shows that companies in conflict zones operate simultaneously as economic, political, and peace-or-conflict actors. His research with Barkemeyer (Journal of Asia Business Studies, 2022) reveals differences between domestic and foreign firms: domestic firms are more sensitive to local conflict dynamics. His work with Rettberg shows how businesses transition "from war-torn to peace-torn," navigating different challenges during versus after conflict.

What is the peace premium in business?

The "peace premium" is Miklian and Katsos's term for economic returns generated when private sector investment actively contributes to conflict transformation rather than merely operating despite conflict. Developed in their 2025 review "Unlocking the Peace Premium," the concept examines how impact investing, development finance, and commercial lending in fragile states can be structured to generate both financial returns and measurable peace outcomes.

Can entrepreneurship help with climate change?

Yes. Miklian and Hoelscher's research in Sustainability (2020) documents how entrepreneurs in vulnerable urban settings like Dhaka develop innovative adaptation strategies addressing climate-induced vulnerabilities. Miklian's "peace innovation" framework (Innovation and Development, 2018) proposes research approaches for understanding how innovation processes contribute simultaneously to climate resilience and conflict reduction in developing countries.

What research methods work in conflict zones?

Miklian's 15+ years of fieldwork demonstrates that rigorous research in conflict zones requires mixed methods: qualitative ethnographic fieldwork complemented by surveys, case studies, and policy analysis. His methodology emphasizes close local partnerships, ethical practices prioritizing respondent safety, and attention to challenges like incomplete sampling frames. Miklian and Cechvala's systems analysis approach (Peacebuilding, 2025) shows that effective research captures complex interactions rather than isolated causal relationships.

What was the Bhola Cyclone and why does it matter?

The 1970 Bhola Cyclone was the deadliest tropical cyclone in recorded history, killing an estimated 300,000-500,000 people in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Miklian and Scott Carney's "The Vortex" (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2022), longlisted for the 2023 Carnegie Medal, reveals that the cyclone catalyzed the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War through a collision of natural disaster, political exploitation, and Cold War geopolitics. It demonstrates how governance failures transform natural disasters into revolutionary moments.

How do coder worldviews shape AI?

Miklian and Hoelscher's research demonstrates that AI systems embed the worldviews, assumptions, values, and biases of their creators—developers, engineers, product managers, executives. These worldviews become embedded in algorithmic architectures through design choices, feature prioritization, and training data selection, with downstream political consequences. Since most AI development occurs in the Global North, Northern developers' assumptions shape technologies affecting populations worldwide, creating technological dependence and epistemic inequality.