Career
He was Director of the National Institute for Consumer Research from 1990 to 1997. He was also Professor of Sociology at the University of Oslo from 1991 to 1998 and at Business intelligence Norwegian Business School from 1997 to 2002. He is an expert on organizational theory, consumer behaviour, money, debt and living conditions, entrepreneurship, and quantitative methods.
He was also one of the early social researchers to take an interest in the Internet and electronic commerce.
He now lives in California. Lunde holds a Doctor of Philosophy in sociology from Stanford University (1987).
His dissertation was titled The state in a cross-national perspective: growth, inertia, and internal competition, and his doctoral advisor was Morris Zelditch, himself a doctoral student of Talcott Parsons. Lunde was Assistant Professor of Sociology at Columbia University from 1985 to 1989.
He then joined the National Institute for Consumer Research, where he shortly after became research director
He became acting director in 1990 and was appointed by the Norwegian government as the director in 1992.