Chair of Sociology of Technology and Organization (STO)
At my chair, great emphasis is put on team spirit! Examples are an early integration of interested students as assistants in our team, tandem solutions in our research in which junior researchers are accompanied by senior researchers, a culture of exchange, of mutual support and inspiration, team development activities and cheerful parties.
Prof. Dr. Roger Häußling
Vision and Mission
Our vision consists of the conception that, besides the expertise of engineering sciences and economics, socio-technical and socio-organizational expertise is at least equally embedded in the development process of technical and organizational innovations in a constitutive way. At the core of this vision lies the belief that technical and organizational innovations always go along with social, societal and cultural innovations – in close interdependency.
Accordingly, the underlying mission of our research is to get our team involved in interdisciplinary projects with engineers and computer scientists, bringing in our expertise at early stages of technical innovation and organizational change. Why so early on? Because sustainable and resilient socio-technical innovations only succeed, if the social processes of change are shaped early on by studying the manifold interdependencies between technical, organizational and social processes at a stage where they are still shapeable.
The mission for our academic teaching includes the whole spectrum of theoretical and methodological approaches of the Sociology of Technology and Sociology of Organization. The basis for the work within these fields of study is laid in introductory lectures which are then followed by seminars where specific questions, problems, recent debates and research of the before mentioned sociologies are discussed. By involving our students in the chair’s current projects we ensure that they gain insights into empirical social research, the “state of the art” in academic research and especially into possible professional fields of sociologists.