Research

The Organisation Unit explores how organisations shape their employees and how these imprints drive individuals’ decisions, in turn affecting organisational performance. While prior research has extensively examined the direct effects of organisational features on organisational performance, we focus on an indirect pathway. Specifically, we investigate how organisational features shape employees and their decision-making processes, tracing a macro-to-micro link. We then return to the macro level by examining how these micro-level mechanisms translate into organisational performance. We study this indirect linkage through two streams.

For one we look at organisational affiliations and investigate their ability to shape interpersonal relationships and affect individual dyadic interactions within and across organisations. Another research focus lies on decision-making in the context of resource allocation. There organisational features such as the composition of decision panels and the structure of the decision-making process are investigated on their ability to influence the selection of strategic alternatives.

Our research relies primarily on large-scale quantitative data analysis, using unique data collected through scraping multiple data sources. Much of this work focuses on the video game development industry and various sports (e.g., ice hockey, basketball, and soccer), as well as collaborations with organisations such as ARUP among others. This is then oftentimes combined with semi-structured interviews to contextualise our findings and uncover mechanisms that are difficult to observe in archival data alone. More recently, we have also incorporated laboratory experiments into our methodological toolkit.

To further advance our research, we continuously expand the methodological approaches we employ. Inspired by interactions with researchers from different backgrounds we aim to bridge disciplines using and modifying tools from other areas for this purpose. A recent example is the incorporation of natural language processing methods from computer science.