Research

The goal of our research is to advance organizations’ and individuals’ ability to manage the digital transformation. We pay particular attention to mechanisms through which individuals augment their work with technology, the corresponding transformations of business and operating models, and aspects of good governance to ensure corporate digital responsibility.

Our work’s driving force is the tension inherent in the triad of digital innovation, digital disruption, and digital transformation, a key tension that drives research and practice on digital business. In this thematic area, most of our work crystalizes around two thematic focus areas: (a) becoming digital (i.e., successful transformation processes) and (b) being digital (i.e., future digital lifescapes and workscapes).

Becoming Digital

Our research in this focus area is focused on the design and investigation of successful transformation strategies. We examine the mechanisms that drive and enable digital transformation across multiple levels. In particular, we focus on how technology and tasks can be designed to enable people to successfully digitalize. Complementarily, we also study topics such as digital product and business model innovation.

Across the various research topics in this focus area, we are interested in better understanding how humans and machines can work together effectively – with relations ranging from tool to teammate. Our goal is to better understand the interplay of humans and technology in the context of organizational and task design and to create a better understanding of how individuals, organizations, and societies can (pro-)actively shape their digitalization by studying learning and adaptation processes.

Being Digital

In the second focus area of our research, we dedicate ourselves to the development and investigation of future digital lifescapes and workscapes. In this, we focus on studying topics that are of central importance for a sustainable and livable digital future. This work is supported by the idea that there is a live after digital transformations have been concluded, where what is now unique, novel, and exciting (i.e., the digital) has become a mundane part of our everyday lives and work.

A key topic in this focus area is Corporate Digital Responsibility (CDR). While our past worke contributed to the conceptual shaping of the term in business and information systems research, the further expansion of research in this focus area is primarily driven by the discovery and description of functioning CDR approaches in practice. In particular, the close exchange with industry partners is a key concern of ours.

We complement our work in this area with aspects of strategic foresight. The resulting insights can not only provide important impulses for research in this focus area, but also provide vital input for decision makers and our learners to work on their Futures Literacy.

The work in this pillar is aimed at the proactive anticipation and forward-looking design of digital work and life. We aim at developing important insights into the new possibilities of a sustainably digitized world through research and transfer.

In our work, we understand real digitization fundamentally as a multi-disciplinary phenomenon and seek an intense exchange with partners across a variety of scientific disciplines and beyond academia – both locally as well as internationally.