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Who decides to initiate change processes in organizations? Who sets the goals? What does it mean for employees to participate in change processes? The book examines organizational change processes based on collaboration between employers, employees and action researchers in Europe and the U.S. in the later part of the 20th century. The authors offer important insights into participation and change in organizations for researchers and practitioners by identifying dilemmas and paradoxes, conflicting interests and exercising of power. Change processes are launched in organizations every day. Which goals should be pursued? How can change be designed and evaluated? Do employees and their closest managers participate in deciding whether a change process is to be initiated? This has been discussed since the middle of the 20th century within organizational action research. It is an integrated change- and research process which employees, managers, researchers, and various stakeholders contribute to with varying knowledge and interests. The book deals with different ways of understanding participation in organizational action research, especially self-managing groups, democratic dialogues, and co-generation. Projects from the USA, England, Norway, Sweden, and Spain from 1940 to 2000, as well as a Danish project from 2010 are analyzed. The book shows that participation is characterized by tensions and exercise of power throughout history. Moreover, it investigates if employees and managers were involved as respondents, practitioners, or co-researchers. Based on these analyses and the authors' experience as action researchers, the book summarizes relevant points of attention. These can be of help for future action researchers, change agents, consultants, and professionals dealing with dilemmas and challenges in citizen-, patient-, parent-, or employee-participation in change processes.

Die Art wie wir arbeiten unterlag schon immer einem gewissen Wandel, von der Industrialisierung über die Entstehung und Konsolidierung des Sozialstaats bis hin zu Digitalisierung und Flexibilisierung der heutigen Zeit ("Arbeiten 4.0"). Dennoch scheint sich dieser Wandel in den letzten Jahren beschleunigt zu haben, insbesondere im Zuge der von der Corona-Pandemie geprägten vergangenen zwei Jahre. Dieser Bericht stellt daher die Veränderungen "erlebter Arbeit" zwischen 2013 und 2021 dar, betrachtet somit also sowohl die Zeit vor als auch während der Pandemie. Dabei stehen die Beschäftigtenperspektive und somit subjektive Dimensionen im Fokus.

The digital transformation increases the pressure on innovation capabilities and challenges organizations to adapt their business models. In order to cope with the increased competitiveness, organizations face two significant internal challenges: Enabling internal digital collaboration and knowledge sharing as well as information system-induced change. This dissertation will investigate seven related research questions divided in two main parts. The first part focuses on how an organization can foster digital knowledge exchanges and collaboration in global organizations. Enterprise social media has attracted the attention of organizations as a technology for social collaboration and knowledge sharing. The dissertation will investigate how organizations can moderate the employee discourse in such platforms from a novel organizational perspective and provide insights on how to increase the encouragement for employees to contribute and assure content quality. The developed framework will provide detailed moderation approaches. In addition, the risk of privacy concerns associated with organizational interference in the new digital collaboration technologies are evaluated. The second part of the dissertation shifts the focus to the shop floor environment, an area that has faced substantial digital advancements. Those advancements change the organizational role of the shop floor to a more knowledge work-oriented environment. Firstly, a state of research regarding technology acceptance and professional diversity is presented to create an enterprise social media job-characteristic framework. Further, a unique and longitudinal shop floor case study is investigated to derive organizational challenges for enterprise social media and potentials for empowerment. To validate the future shop floor environment needs use cases for the shop floor are derived and a user profile is established. The case study is extended by expert interviews to focus on conceptualizing organizational i

The effects of digital transformations are already being researched in many ways in the context of the police. What this body of work has in common is that it refers to current developments. My research also focuses on current processes of change within a classic criminal phenomenon but places it in the context of long-term processes in order to derive both the resistances to innovation and possible specific opportunities for organisational change that result. The online drug platform "Chemical Revolution" serves as an exemplary case study. Norbert Elias’s figuration and process sociological approach (expansion by Rammert’s concept of distributed action) enables an analysis at micro, meso, and macro levels. It shows that long-term social processes continue under digital conditions and reproduce diverse modes of action. At the same time, power chances for crime investigation are shifting under digital conditions from consumers (micro-crime) to markets (macro-phenomena). Although Elias himself did not deal with digital technologies, this illustrative study nevertheless makes clear the value of his process-oriented perspectives and tools (valencies, interdependencies, power balances, figurations)

In der Migrationsforschung spielt die Frage nach den Veränderungsprozessen in der Aufnahmegesellschaft in Folge von Migration und gesellschaftlicher Diversifizierung eine zunehmend wichtige Rolle. Die Beiträge des Bandes widmen sich den Wandlungsprozessen in vier zivilgesellschaftlichen Organisationen, die sich als Interessenvertreter*innen von potenziell benachteiligten Bevölkerungsgruppen verstehen. Dabei zeigen sie auf, inwiefern und wie sie sich für Migrant*innen und migrationsbezogene Themen öffnen.

The COVID 19 crisis has had a massive impact on the world of work. Based on a standardized survey of 540 company sites and 34 qualitative case studies in six industries (automotive, chemicals, mechanical engineering, logistics, healthcare and financial services), this study examines how companies’ digitalization and automation strategies have changed in the context of the pandemic. The analysis shows that the companies surveyed have by and large coped well with the crisis. However, an increasing polarization is becoming apparent. Digital pioneers intensified digitalization measures to a greater extent than those that were already behind in this respect before the pandemic. The focus of digitalization during the pandemic was particularly on supporting processes in administration, human resources management and sales. Automation also primarily played a role in these fields and only a minority of respondents expected employment losses in the medium term. Another key finding of this study is the correlation between technical and organizational innovation. It can be observed that those companies that invested more heavily in technical digitalization processes were also more inclined to make organizational changes with regard to management styles, working hours and work organization.

Die COVID-19-Krise hat massiven Einfluss auf die Arbeitswelt. Basierend auf einer standardisierten Befragung von 540 Betrieben und 34 qualitativen Fallstudien in sechs Branchen (Automobil, Chemie, Maschinenbau, Logistik, Gesundheit und Finanzdienstleistungen) untersucht die vorliegende Studie, wie sich im Kontext der Pandemie die Digitalisierungs- und Automatisierungsstrategien von Unternehmen verändert haben. Die Analyse zeigt, dass die befragten Betriebe die Krise im Großen und Ganzen gut bewältigt haben. Dabei zeigt sich allerdings eine zunehmende Polarisierung. Digitale Vorreiter haben Digitalisierungsmaßnahmen während der Pandemie in stärkerem Maße intensiviert, als jene, die in dieser Hinsicht bereits vor der Pandemie zurücklagen. Der Fokus der Digitalisierung während der Pandemie lag insbesondere auf der Unterstützung von Prozessen in der Verwaltung, dem Personalmanagement und dem Vertrieb. Automatisierung spielte primär in diesen Feldern eine Rolle und nur eine Minderheit der Befragten erwartete mittelfristig Beschäftigungsverluste. Ein zentraler Befund der vorliegenden Studie ist zudem der Zusammenhang zwischen technischer und organisatorischer Innovation. Es lässt sich beobachten, dass jene Unternehmen, die stärker in technische Digitalisierungsprozesse investiert haben, zugleich auch eher geneigt waren, organisatorische Veränderungen im Hinblick auf Führungsstile, Arbeitszeit und Arbeitsorganisation vorzunehmen.

Quantification theories assume that numbers govern and steer a policy field or an organisation. In order to steer successfully, however, the local interpretation of numbers takes centre stage as the meaning of numbers - and thus the way how actors respond to them - varies between systems or sectors. Empirically, this article reviews how a German university makes sense of political numbers and their implicit steering signals, and how quantification alters its organisational structures and reshapes the roles of academics. The article analyses the translation process distinguishing between three levels: the political discourse on university reform; the organisational adaptations; and the effects they have on the professional academic role. The article finds that the university has highly differentiated strategies to respond to the 'governance by numbers,' and that it has established independent number-based steering systems. We also find that such differentiation of programmes makes the university management more flexible, helping it deal with anticipated goal conflicts and unwanted allocative effects, but it also places serious strain on - and potentially overburns - the coordination provided by the university’s central administration. We also find that academics have started to align their behavioural strategies towards fulfilling their organisational goals and that they tend to deviate from professional expectations. Discussing these differentiated strategies, this article shows how the differentiation of governance approaches also contributes to the university becoming an 'organisational actor.' These preliminary findings suggest the need for and potential direction of further investigations.

"Wer sind wir als Organisation und wer wollen wir in Zukunft sein?" - Geht man davon aus, dass die wachsende Bedeutung digitaler Technologien für Organisationen nicht nur technische Implikationen hat, sondern einen umfassenden Organisationswandel induziert, dann wird 'digitale Transformation' zugleich zu einer Frage der organisationalen Identität. Dabei bildet die etablierte organisationale Identität die Basis, vor deren Hintergrund digitale Technologien wahrgenommen und bewertet werden; sie kann digitale Transformationsprozesse ermöglichen, aber auch hemmen. Gleichzeitig lösen solche Veränderungen eine (Neu-)Aushandlung der (zukünftigen) Identität aus. Anhand einer qualitativen Fallstudie in einem weltmarktführenden, mittelständischen Maschinenbauunternehmen illustrieren wir, inwiefern die aktuelle organisationale Identität als Ermöglichungsbedingung die konkrete Ausgestaltung der digitalen Transformation im Unternehmen prägt und wie sich die Identitätssuche im Zuge dessen gestaltet., "Who are we? And who do we want to be in the future?" - Assuming that the increasing importance of digital technologies for organizations has not only technical implications, but rather leads to far-reaching changes in value creation and in the organizational setup, digital transformation becomes nothing less than a question of identity. On the one hand, the current organizational identity frames how organizations perceive and evaluate the potential of digital technologies. Therefore, the identity may either enable or impede digital transformation processes. On the other hand, this transformation triggers a (re)negotiation process about the (future) organizational identity. Referring to qualitative interview data from a case study in a traditional, market-leading engineering company, we illustrate how organizational identity serves as an enabler for digital transformation and how the identity quest evolves.

Purpose: This study aims at investigating how digitalisation (in the sense of industry 4.0) has changed the work of farmers and how they experience the changes from more traditional work to digitalised agriculture. It also investigates what knowledge farmers require on digitalised farms and how they acquire it. Dairy farming was used as domain of investigation since it, unlike other industries, has strongly been affected by digitalisation throughout the last years. Method: Exploratory interviews with 10 livestock farmers working on digitalised dairy farms were analysed using qualitative content analysis. A deductive and inductive coding strategy was used. Findings: Farming work has changed from more manual tasks towards symbol manipulation and data processing. Farmers must be able to use computers and other digital devices to retrieve and analyse sensor data that allow them to monitor and control the processes on their farm. For this new kind of work, farmers require elaborated mental models that link traditional farming knowledge with knowledge about digital systems, including a strong understanding of production processes underlying their farm. Learning is mostly based on instructions offered by manufacturers of the new technology as well as informal and non-formal learning modes. Even younger farmers report that digital technology was not sufficiently covered in their (vocational) degrees. In general, farmers emphasises the positive effects of digitalisation both on their working as well as private life. Conclusions: Farmers should be aware of the opportunities as well as the potential drawbacks of the digitalisation of work processes in agriculture. Providers of agricultural education (like vocational schools or training institutes) need to incorporate the knowledge and skills required to work in digitalised environments (e.g., data literacy) in their syllabi. Further studies are required to assess how digitalisation changes farming practices and what knowledge

Housing markets play a decisive role in the spatial distribution of populations and the integration of immigrants. Looking specifically at Germany, shortages of low-rent housing in many cities are proving to be an open door for discrimination. This article looks at the influence institutional housing providers have on migrants' access to housing. Based on 76 qualitative interviews with housing experts, politicians, local government officials, civil society and academics, the internal routines of housing companies are examined for the first time in a German context, looking at what effect they have on producing socio-spatial inequality. Using Lipsky's (1980) 'street-level bureaucracy' as our conceptual framework, we argue that the barriers denying migrants access to the rental housing market are attributable to two factors: the organisational culture, whether in the form of official guidelines ('policy as written') or of day-to-day activities in the front-line context ('policy as performed'), and the huge gap between the two. Corporate policies, the resultant allocation policies, staff training and housing company involvement in local governance structures play a decisive role in determining migrants’ access to housing. The goal of achieving the right social mix and the lack of guidelines for housing company staff in deciding who gets an apartment - turning their discretionary power into a certain kind of 'forced discretion' - in many cases arbitrarily restrict access to housing in Germany. Theoretically embedding these findings in organisational sociology, the article adds to urban geographical and sociological research into the drivers and backgrounds of residential segregation.

Der Strukturwandel im Gesundheitswesen wird häufig als Effizienz- und Qualitätsgewinn zugleich gepriesen. Ein soziologischer Blick indes zeigt: was sich hinter der "Ökonomisierung" der Krankenversorgung verbirgt, ist ein höchst kontroverses Unterfangen. Der Autor nimmt in Anlehnung an relationale Sozialtheorien eine Neubestimmung vor. Seine praxissoziologische Studie verdeutlicht, womit die nach professionellen Werten arbeitenden Berufsgruppen in Krankenhäusern zu kämpfen haben, wenn sie den neoliberalen Managementreformen zu entsprechen suchen. Es droht eine "Verkehrung des Gewöhnlichen": Die Autonomie der Arzt- und Pflegeberufe wird nunmehr als kalkulative behandelt und es ist folglich das Krankenhaus, das mit immer mehr Kranken versorgt werden muss, um zu überleben.

The entrenchment of the neoliberal state and rise of populist leaders has marginalized the role of voluntary organizations in society. This presents significant challenges for nonprofit leaders in economically challenged areas as it erodes their ability to protect and serve vulnerable populations. Attention turns to maintaining hard fought gains at the expense of making progress. Yet doing so requires new skills and leadership styles to manage organizational change where innovation and transformation are key. Based on 42 qualitative interviews with disability nonprofit leaders in Atlantic Canada, our study aims to characterize this transformation. Using Szerb’s (2003) key attributes of entrepreneurship that distinguish between entre-, intra-, and interpreneurs, we find disability leaders have become interpreneurs. We find a strong emphasis on networked service delivery underscoring shared goals, risks and responsibilities, and resources. For disability leaders, cultivating relationships and strong communication skills are essential. In the face of populist desires for state retrenchment, we question how long this collective response can hold given ongoing economic challenges.

author Laverne Iminza Chore, Masterarbeit University Innsbruck 2021

Nach Einschätzung von Expert*innen wird sich die Arbeitswelt infolge der fortschreitenden Digitalisierung in den kommenden ein bis zwei Jahrzehnten fundamental verändern. Einige Beobachter*innen prognostizieren, dass sich dieser Wandel auch auf die Geschlechterverhältnisse in Betrieb und Verwaltung auswirken wird. Die Tagung hat einen Beitrag dazu geleistet, den Blick auf diese zukünftigen Entwicklungen zu schärfen. Anhand empirischer Erkenntnisse aus der Arbeitsmarkt- sowie der ­Arbeits- und Geschlechterforschung wurde die Bedeutung der Digitalisierung für die Arbeit vorgestellt. Diskutiert wurde außerdem, wie der digitale Wandel das Geschlechterverhältnis berührt und verändern kann. Ein besonderes Augenmerk lag auf der Frage, wie Erkenntnisse der Geschlechterforschung in die Unternehmen, in die Arbeits- und Technikgestaltung sowie in die Informatik einfließen können. Ein weiteres Thema war die Frage, welche Bedeutung Informatiker*innen als gestaltenden Akteur*­innen der Digitalisierung zukommt, ob und wie Technologien selbst vergeschlechtlicht sind. Aus verschiedenen Blickwinkeln (Wissenschaft, Politik, Unternehmen und Gewerkschaften) wurde diskutiert wie Arbeit 4.0 geschlechtergerecht gestaltet werden kann: Welche Erfahrungen haben die unterschiedlichen Akteur*innen? Welche Optionen erkennen sie im Prozess der Digitalisierung von Arbeit? Welche Rahmenbedingungen müssen betrieblich geschaffen werden für eine gute und geschlechtergerechte Arbeit? Gibt es verallgemeinerbare Ziele oder verhindert dies die Heterogenität des Feldes? Welche Einflussmöglichkeiten existieren zum jetzigen Zeitpunkt? Das Ziel der Tagung war die gemeinsame Suche nach Antworten auf die Frage, wie und unter welchen Bedingungen durch die Digitalisierung der Arbeitswelt neue Chancen für Frauen und Männer sowie für mehr Geschlechtergerechtigkeit entstehen.

The renegotiation of secularity for Muslims has reached sports facilities such as swimming pools, where the human body is central and an element of cross-cultural contestation. The present study identifies factors that could explain intra-organizational variations in religious accommodation. Data from a survey of geo-located swimming pools in Germany (n = 339) shows that conflict among users becomes more likely if the variation in body practices, the share of right-wing populist votes and the population of immigrant background increases. On the organizational level, we find that 75 per cent of the pools in our sample allow the burqini while only 10 per cent provide separate swimming hours for women. Higher shares of right-wing populist (and to a lesser extent of conservative) votes in the organization’s environment correlate with a higher likelihood of burqini bans. Our findings suggest that the relationship between organizational change and citizens’ attitudes is loose at best.

Mindfulness has recently attracted a great deal of interest in the field of management. However, even though mindfulness - broadly viewed as a state of active awareness - has been described mainly at the individual level, it may also have important effects at aggregated levels. In this article, we adopt a team-based conceptualization of mindfulness, and develop a framework that represents the powerful effect of team mindfulness on facilitating effective decision-making. We further discuss how a conceptualization of team mindfulness may mitigate the process of false consensus by interacting positively with the following five central team processes: open-mindedness, participation, empowerment, conflict management, and value and ambiguity tolerance. A false consensus constitutes a cognitive bias, leading to the perception of a consensus that does not exist. In essence, we argue that, although a conceptualization of team mindfulness does not guarantee effective decision-making in itself, it may successfully reduce false consensus when coupled with these five team processes. Accordingly, this article contributes to the theory and practice of team decision-making by demonstrating how a conceptualization of team mindfulness can be helpful in the increasingly complex and ambiguous situations faced by contemporary teams.

Purpose: This paper details an experimental study (n=197) that explores how different types of managerial change justifications affect employees’ reactions. The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of managerial justification of a controversial decision in referential terms, ideological terms or a combination of the two. Design/methodology/approach: A randomized controlled experiment was used applying case-based video clips to ensure vividness and realism in the experimental manipulation. Findings: The results show that referential justification caused a drop in the perceived trustworthiness of management, such that it reduced employees’ perceptions of the manager’s integrity. The effect was most pronounced in participants having elevated levels of dispositional resistance to change. The drop in perceived integrity was indirectly associated with reduced intention to support the change together with adverse affective and cognitive reactions to change. Originality/value: A robust test of different change justifications in a randomized, controlled setting, which also highlights the psychological mechanisms through which referential change justifications reduce follower trust. This result should help managers more readily understand the components of successful communication in organizational change.

Die Dissertation entwickelt ein Konzept zur Analyse von Entscheidungen über den Computereinsatz und kombiniert hierzu Erkenntnisse aus dem organisationssoziologischen Neo-Institutionalismus (Meyer/Rowan 1977) und einer macht- und koalitionstheoretischen Perspektive (Mintzberg 1983). In der Folge rekonstruiert die Arbeit den langen Prozess der Computerisierung in der Bundesanstalt für Arbeit und die Bearbeitung der unzureichenden und enttäuschenden Ergebnisse (gemessen an den durch den Mythos hochgetriebenen Erwartungen). Gegen Ende des Beobachtungszeitraums erschöpft sich der Computermythos und macht anderen Rationalitätsmythen Platz. Die Arbeit legt eine zyklische Abfolge von Mythen nahe, bei der die Folgemythen jeweils die nicht-intendierten und nicht-antizipierten Folgen zu bearbeiten verspricht.

Wie kann der digitale Wandel in wissenschaftlichen Bibliotheken personell, organisatorisch und serviceorientiert gestaltet werden? Welche Auswirkungen hat die Digitalisierung für das professionelle Selbstverständnis? Drei Mitarbeiter*innen des Wissenschaftszentrums Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB) haben renommierte Einrichtungen des US-amerikanischen Wissenschaftssystems in New York City und Boston besucht und Trends, Probleme und Erfahrungen erkundet., How can the digital transformation be structured and managed in matters of staff, organisation and service orientation? How does digitisation affect the professional self-conception of librarians? Three researchers of the Social Science Research Centre Berlin (WZB) have visited prominent institutions of the US-American science and research system in New York City and Boston to scout trends, issues and new experiences.

Electronic Government hob die seit einem halben Jahrhundert stetig voranschreitende Informatisierung der Verwaltung erstmals ins politische Bewusstsein. Über eine Erklärung der bisherigen Entwicklung hinaus lassen sich mit dem soziotechnisch ausgerichteten Ansatz der Verwaltungsinformatik Transformationsperspektiven für die ausführenden Staatstätigkeiten erfassen. Diese verändern sich weniger auf der Ebene der gesellschaftlichen Steuerungswirkungen und der Governance-Strukturen als vielmehr in den Infrastrukturen der administrativen Leistungserstellung und in dieser Leistungserstellung selbst. Informatisierung befördert eine Tendenz zur Systematisierung und Modularisierung der technischen und wissensmäßigen Ressourcen der Verwaltungsarbeit. Diese Entwicklung beruhte bislang weithin auf unkoordinierten Anpassungsreaktionen der Verwaltungsorganisationen an eine Vielzahl von Einflüssen, sie wird aber zunehmend gesteuert., With Electronic Government, the creeping informatization of public administration which went on for the last 50 years gained political relevance. The socio-technical approach of Administrative Informatics (Verwaltungsinformatik) which was developed in the German-speaking countries since about 1970 helps to perceive the significance of this development for the executive functions of the state. Their "E-Transformation" occurs less at the level of societal steering effects and of governance structures than at an infrastructure level of human, technological and organisational resources which serve as input for the production of administrative output. Informatizationpromotes a more systematic view of the technical and knowledge-related resources of administrative action. Informatization so far was largely the effect of uncoordinated reactions of institutional actors, but now political steering efforts can be observed.