Work & Organisations

Digital technology disrupts markets for products, services and jobs. In manufacturing, intensive use of data and 3D printing could transform value and production chains and bring us closer to a more circular economy. Automation, robotics and artificial intelligence can revolutionise major industries (including logistics, retail and white-collar professions). That could also require new ways to balance education, work, free time and retirement, and new strategies nets to prevent social inequalities and societal exclusion. These and related societal challenges are addressed in programme line Work & Organisations.

Academics that are working on finding solutions to societal challenges related to Work & Organisations:

Expertise

Huysman is professor at the School of Business and Economics (SBE) at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. In her research she studies the, often unintended, consequences of digital technologies for how we work and organise. Huysman studies the socio-technical practices to understand how our traditional ideas about organising work are challenged in our digital society. A hallmark of the research at her group (KIN Centre for Digital Innovation) is that they create understanding of the development and use of digital technologies by studying these processes in practice, working in close collaboration with organisations.

Expertise

Tanja van der Lippe is Professor of Sociology of Households and Employment Relations at the Department of Sociology and Research School (ICS) of Utrecht University, head of the Department of Sociology and research director ICS Utrecht. Her research interests are in the area of work-family linkages in Dutch and other societies, for which she received a number of large scale grants from Dutch and European Science Foundations. She is an elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW, 2014), and of the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (KHMW, 2013). She has published extensively on work and care of men and women, time use and time pressure in a comparative way, and the position of men and women on the labor market (including supervisory positions) in Western and Eastern European countries.

Examples

The concepts of busyness and balance in a society where institutions are shifting

“'Busy, busy, busy'. This, I'm sure, is a feeling familiar to us all. We are living in a society where it seems time waits for no one, and we're switched on all the time, everywhere. And for some of us it poses quite a challenge, whilst sitting here in the Dom Church, not to briefly rove in other worlds, glance at our iPhones, check the latest headlines, read our newest emails.”
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The ‘onlooker effect’: how bystanders influence our use of digital technologies

The use of mobile devices has permeated our daily lives and has in various ways influenced the way we interact with each other. For instance, even during an animated conversation with a loved one we allow ourselves to be disturbed by intruding push messages on our phone. In work meetings we often switch between screens on our laptop to check emails or multitask. And although we know we need an eye on safety in traffic we regularly prioritize texting while crossing the streets. How did we get this ‘addicted’ to our mobile devices? Why do we seem to have developed norms that allow ourselves to be so distracted by technology?
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Research on Digital Innovation

KIN is all about Digital Innovation. KIN is fascinated by the ways in which the use and development of digital innovations affect the way we work and organize. Their mission is to make the world a better place in the digital era: they bring together academia and practice to truly understand the social and long-term consequences of digital innovations in organizations.
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