New Digital Work II: Digital Sovereignty of Companies and Organizations

This book is an open access book. Following the edited volume ‘New Digital Work’ focusing on Digital Sovereignty at the workplace, this volume with the title ‘New Digital Work II’ provides insights into aspects of Digital Sovereignty of companies and organizations and its implications for those. It aims to broaden the views of the previous book beyond the significance of digital work for workers and their respective workplaces to companies and entire industry branches. To this end, not only common challenges concerning the Digital Sovereignty of companies and organizations but also suggestions, best practice examples, and thoughts from different academic perspectives and industry sectors are included. Various interdisciplinary contributions from computer science, economics, social sciences, HR management, organizational psychology and human factors, mechanical and industrial engineering, and law address different building blocks of Digital Sovereignty of companies and organizations.

Dr. Ulrike Schmuntzsch studied ‘Business Psychology’ at the former University of Applied Science in Lüneburg and ‘Human Factors’ at the Technical University (TU) Berlin. Focusing on Work and Engineering Psychology, she worked as a research associate at the Chair of Human-Machine Systems at the TU Berlin from 2011 until 2022. As part of several application-oriented research projects with various industry partners, she was responsible for human-centred evaluation and design. Her doctoral thesis, which she completed in 2014, focuses on the development and evaluation of a warning glove as a means of user support during maintenance work in industrial applications. Since 2022, she has been a Research Associate at the Institute for Innovation and Technology (iit) and a consultant at VDI/VDE Innovation + Technik GmbH. In this role, she is part of the project team ‘Digital Sovereignty in Business’.

Dr. Alexandra Shajek is a Research Associate at the iit and Team Leader of the ‘Education and Work’ group at VDI/VDE Innovation + Technik GmbH. At the iit, she worked on projects such as ‘Case studies on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on operational transformation processes in organizations’ among others. Previously, she worked as a visiting researcher at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) and, in addition, completed her doctorate in the field of innovation research at Humboldt University of Berlin.

Dr. Ernst Andreas Hartmann after studying psychology, is specialising in work and organisational psychology—obtained his doctorate as Dr. rer. nat. at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at RWTH Aachen University in 1995. In the 1990s, he worked at the Hochschuldidaktisches Zentrum/Lehrstuhl Informatik im Maschinenbau (University Teaching Centre/Chair of Information Technology in Mechanical Engineering) at RWTH Aachen. In this context, he engaged in projects on academic reform and took part in the development of new forms of academic teaching/learning. Furthermore, he carried out research on the design of man–machine systems and issues of industrial work organisation. In the mid-1990s, he was an internal consultant for organisation and process development at John Deere Werke Mannheim. In 2002, he qualified as lecturer (habilitation) in psychology and received the ‘venia legendi’ for Work and Organisational Psychology; since then, he has been a private lecturer for work systems and process design at RWTH Aachen. From2001 to 2004, he was responsible for the scientific coordination of the programme ‘Lernkultur Kompetenzentwicklung’ (‘competence development and learning cultures’) of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research at the ‘Arbeitsgemeinschaft Betriebliche Weiterbildungsforschung ABWF e.V.’ (‘Association for Research in Continuing Education’). From 2004 to 2016, Ernst Andreas Hartmann was head of the Socio-economic Department at VDI/VDE Innovation + Technik GmbH in Berlin; since 2016, he has been head of the Education, Science and Humanities Department. Since 2007, he has functioned as one of the directors of the Institute for Innovation and Technology (iit).