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The Research Unit on "Innovation and Organization"
focuses on the willingness and ability of organizations to
create, adopt, develop, and implement new ideas in selected
social and technological spheres of innovation. The
research program will empirically explore the various phases
of innovation processes and different patterns of
organizational action and response. It centers on four
topics in the medium-term. |
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Mobility and Transport
The project group on Mobility studies societal,
organizational, and political aspects of physical mobility
and the interactions between these dimensions. Some of the
main issues are: |
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the future of the “vision of mobility”: Innovative forms of
mobility with different and possibly new kinds of vehicles
in the context of new demands on organizational change and
organizational learning in the global automotive industry. |
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causes and consequences of changes in organizations,
political regulation, and user demand in present and future
public transport in Germany and abroad. |
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the
sociology of transport: systemic links between modernity and
mobility, including the change in demand and the
entrepreneurial reorganization of leisure travel in a global
perspective. |
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Internet
Governance
The Internet is a transnational communication infrastructure
with a weak coordination center. The innovative dynamic of
the Internet stems from its decentralized structure. The
topic of Internet governance, an area of growing
international interest, concentrates on change in the
technical and administrative regime structures of the Net.
The chief research issues include: |
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transnational forms of consensus-building, decision-making,
and representation in the administration of the Net. |
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the connection between the setting of technical and social
norms in the Internet and in the Knowledge Society. |
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the future of intellectual property in the digital age. |
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Organizational Learning and Culture
The globalization of the Knowledge Society requires
organizations to be capable of creating, acquiring, and
using knowledge both locally and transnationally. In order
to understand these processes, researchers must inquire into
cultural and political dimensions of organizational behavior
and knowledge distribution that have received little
attention to date. Among the themes for study in the coming
years are: |
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processes for creating new knowledge and sharing tacit
knowledge. |
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means of improving the ability of multinational corporations
and other organizations to tap into cultural diversity. |
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roles of different types of boundary-spanning units or
actors in organizational learning processes, particularly in
relation to the knowledge and interests of diverse
stakeholder groups. |
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Knowledge Transfer and Networks
The differentiation and specialization of organizations in
the public sector coincide with a rise in the salience of
interorganizational exchange relationships. Multiple
public-private cooperative relationships are emerging with
the objective of generating social, process, and product
innovations. Among the principal topics for study are: |
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the impacts on innovative potential of structural patterns
in networks that traverse sector and organizational
boundaries. |
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the processes whereby knowledge and ideas are shared,
created, and implemented in order to solve problems and
develop competencies. |
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the ways in which problems of legitimization are resolved in
new forms of participation. |
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The research in the unit on Innovation
and Organization will explore the connections between
the four topic areas outlined above. For example, studies
will look at issues of learning and culture in the
transformation processes of the automotive industry and will
compare processes of knowledge-sharing in the Internet and
in other organizational forms. The ties to the research unit
on "Internationalization and Organization" lie
primarily in the areas of “service intermediary
organizations and knowledge” and “transnational logistics
network facilitators.” The connections with the studies by
the working group "Knowledge, Production Systems, and
Work" are in the complementary theoretical approaches to
issues of governance in the Internet and in transnational
corporations. |
