Managing Transformations in Organizations, Work & Society

The research field Managing Transformations in Organizations, Work & Society addresses the management of knowledge-intensive organisations and their work environments. We pay particular attention to their transformation, taking into account explicitly social implications and ethical perspectives. Current trends such as digitisation, changes in values, knowledge society and internationalisation are changing organisations, the shaping of work in these organisations as well as the importance of ethics and sustainability.

The special relevance of this focus is based on the trend to progressively more knowledge-intensive organisations and more knowledge-intensive work. In industry knowledge-intensive and creative work are increasing, particularly in the form of highly qualified development and project work as well as in management and leadership positions. In the context of digitisation, for example, more and more hybrid products are being created. These comprise a classical industrial product and a (digitally based) application or service. Employees have to deal both with the creative requirements and the sale of physical products as well as with the new service and application logic. For enterprises the transformation process means a large number of challenges: How do digitisation and the change in values change work and leadership in the interrelated issues of Work 4.0, new work, Generation Y? What organisational designs are sustainable? How important are ethics, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability in knowledge-intensive organisations?  

Together with our partners from science and industry, we are working on these challenges by developing practice-oriented solutions and implementing them in companies.  
By cooperating closely with experts from different faculties and disciplines we are able to make use of existing strengths and to obtain and expand synergies relating to the topics. Thus, issues can be addressed using an integrated and interdisciplinary approach. Our objective is to support small, medium-sized and large enterprises with the transformation of their organisation and their work environments.

The areas of competence of practice-oriented research include:

• Theory and design of sustainable organisations and of their transformation (organisational design, change management, agile project management)
• Developments in working environments (new work models, work design, personnel management, human resources management)
• Relevance to society, ethics and sustainability of organisations and work (CSR, sustainability, business ethics, responsible leadership, social entrepreneurship)