About
Work
THE DSI COMMUNITY WORK
Digitalization is transforming work as we know it. Our community examines how technological advances and other forces are changing the world of work and how people and societies can act to shape change in a positive direction.
People spend more time at work than almost any other activity during their lifetime. The research scholars in our community conduct aims to harness the promise of digitalization to make work better for people. Our community events aim to bring together academics, practitioners, and the public to spark dialogue on the opportunities and challenges people will face in the future of work.
The DSI Community Work brings together scholars across disciplines and faculties to promote a scientific understanding of digitalization and its effects on workers, leaders, organizations, the economy, and society at large. Our activities support the exchange of ideas, innovative research and teaching projects, knowledge sharing through lectures, workshops, conferences, and more. As digitalization rapidly changes work and challenges existing paradigms, our goal is to ensure that scientists critically reflect on and influence its course to make the most of the opportunities that times of change afford.
Community facts
10
Projects
52
Members
THE DIGITAL SOCIETY INITIATIVE (DSI)
What questions about digitalization are on your mind? And how has your life changed with the digital transformation? Digitalization is presenting society and science with new challenges. It is taking hold of a large part of our lives at an ever faster pace.
The Digital Society Initiative (DSI) shapes the digital transformation of society and science. With interdisciplinary activities in research, education and outreach, the DSI is the University of Zurich’s (UZH) competence center on digital transformation.
The DSI is a scientific institution supported by all faculties of the UZH, which promotes independent scientific reflection and innovation on questions of digital transformation. It prepares UZH students to help shape the digital transformation, engages in regular discourse with the public and supports policy-making on digital transformation issues.
Meet Our Community
People spend more time at work than almost any other activity during their lifetime. Our research aims to harness the promise of digitalization to make work better.
The scholars in the DSI Community Work bring a range of perspectives from different fields to examine how to make the world of work better for people as technology changes it. Our members drive forward cutting-edge new research on work in a variety of qualitative and quantitative empirical projects. Key areas of focus include understanding the myriad of ways in which digital platforms and gig work influence the world of work, harnessing the crowd for innovation work, investigating what the “future of work” means to people and why this matters, and improving how employees experience their work through job crafting.
We hold events that bring scholars from the University of Zurich and other universities together to focus on the changing world of work. Additionally, we host events for the larger UZH community and the wider public, like our spring lecture series (“Ringvorlesungen”), to inspire conversations about the future of work and people’s role in shaping it. We see people not as passive recipients of the future of work, but as active co-creators of the future they will inhere.
We welcome a variety of perspectives to research on the field of work. Our current members bring expertise from the fields of:
- Education
- Gender Studies
- Geography
- Informatics
- Law
- Management
- Psychology
- Public & Organizational Health
- Sociology
Membership in the DSI Community Work is open to researchers affiliated with a Swiss university. For other individuals, membership is conditional on an ongoing cooperation with the DSI Community. To become a member of a DSI Community, membership in the DSI Network is required. Please follow this link.
Discover some of our Projects
Our current projects investigate topics from job crafting, to digital platform work, to harnessing the crowd for innovation, to how people across the globe envision the future of work.
