Thommes - Organizational Behavior | Paderborn University

Welcome to the Chair of Organisational Behavior!

The Chair of Organisational Behaviour operates at the interface between people and organisations. We investigate how companies build and shape relationships with employees and what effects organisational structures and processes have on employee behaviour.

We appreciate your interest and would be happy to inform you about our courses and current research activities on our website and other platforms.

We work together, we grow together!

News

05.03.2025

Management meets professional football - the Capstone course in summer semester 2025 in cooperation with SC Paderborn 07

08.08.2024

We are hiring!

25.07.2024

New paper at the World Conference on eXplainable Artificial Intelligence

05.07.2024

New paper at the International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction

04.07.2024

Vacancy for research assistant as of 01.09.2024

More news

Our research

Our research generally aims to understand the behaviour of employees in organisations and to assess the effects of organisational characteristics or measures on employee behaviour.

In the spirit of evidence-based management, we want to help decision-makers in companies to find better solutions to organisational problems.

On this basis, in addition to mainly university research projects, we also pursue numerous projects with practitioners. Our projects can be roughly divided into the topics of teamwork, organisational identity and human-machine interaction.

More about our research Publications of our chair

News from research projects

Working World Plus

The aim of the Arbeitswelt-Plus project is to establish a regional competence centre "AI in the working world of industrial SMEs" (KIAM). It is intended to act as a contact point for companies and all other players in the industrial world of work. This project takes place as part of the it's OWL technology cluster with partners from the field.

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Constructing Explainability

The Collaborative Research Centre/Transregio "Constructing Explainability", newly established by the DFG at Bielefeld and Paderborn Universities on 1 July 2021, deals with the question of how transparency of algorithmic decisions, in particular through black-box methods of modern artificial intelligence, can be established.

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EcoDrive

As part of the EcoDrive project, we are conducting field experiments with professional drivers to investigate how companies need to use telematics systems to achieve the most efficient, effective and sustainable improvement in driving behaviour. The project is being carried out in co-operation with permanent partners from the field.

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PredictTeams

PredicTeams aims to develop a practice-orientated framework for predictive competence management for agile teams that enables companies to manage the transition to agile teamwork in digital working environments. The project is being carried out in cooperation with companies from the it's OWL technology cluster.

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Teamwork

This purely academic research project on teamwork is concerned with the extent to which the heterogeneity of team members influences team performance and, in particular, which types of heterogeneity have an impact on team performance.

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Our teaching

Companies and employees influence each other: on the one hand, the behaviour of people in organisations is decisive for the success of the company, while on the other hand, the working relationship has a significant impact on the well-being of employees. Organisational behaviour is therefore interdisciplinary, drawing on economic, sociological and psychological theories. It is also empirically orientated, i.e. explanatory approaches are tested on the basis of empirical data using statistical methods.

In our courses, we teach theoretical and methodological foundations in the field of organisational behaviour. Students should learn how to systematically analyse specific problems, make current research findings usable in practice and develop solutions for corporate practice on this basis. In addition, students should be trained to critically analyse management tools and concepts.

We use various forms of teaching and examination. Students are encouraged to actively participate in the learning process, critically scrutinise content and apply newly acquired knowledge. To this end, we combine lectures, exercises (e.g. in the form of business games or the application of empirical methods) and structured self-study. Guest lectures and case studies also provide insights into business practice.

more about our teaching