Mr. Decius, what are you currently working on?

My research focuses on how employees can maintain and increase their skill level – with the short-term goal of responding well to the challenges of everyday work, the mid-term goal of maintaining their personal employability, and the long-term goal of sustainable career development. Employers can encourage self-regulated and informal workplace learning and a positive learning and feedback culture by applying “new work” approaches. These benefit not only the employees, but also the organization as a whole. However, I also examine the “dark side” of further training, learning, and knowledge transfer. This includes, for example, the acquisition of unethical behavioral patterns or deliberately hiding one’s own knowledge from others. Together with my team, I am currently conducting a lab experiment to investigate if using generative AI such as ChatGPT assists or inhibits work-related learning, as well as whether this might depend on external factors such as time pressure.
 

Why did you decide on a career path as a researcher with tenure track to senior researcher?

This job category is an appealing model to me because by fulfilling the criteria in my evaluation agreement I can work permanently in my ideal career in academia. Having this security as a solid foundation motivates me to initiate long-term projects such as the five-year, BMBF-funded regional competence center for employment research “RessourcenEntwicklung in Dienstleistungsarbeit – RessourcE” (Resource Development in Service Work), which I recently acquired with a colleague from Institute Labour and Economy (iaw). This job category also offers the potential for further qualification, since a positive evaluation is proof of habilitation equivalence.
 

Would you choose this career path again, and if so, why? 

I would make the same decision again because the job category allows for a high degree of autonomy. As a researcher with tenure track to senior researcher, I can develop my research and teaching independently and hone my research profile. In my eyes, this career path is much more attractive than regular postdoc positions due to this independence combined with excellent integration into the institutional structure, the prospect of a permanent contract, high recognition of the job category within the faculty, as well as extensive opportunities for collaboration within and outside of the university.