PhD positions in Online Communities in Zürich

The Chair of Strategic Management and Innovation (SMI), Prof. Dr. Georg von Krogh at the Department of Management, Technology and Economics, ETH Zurich, invites applications for a PhD positions in Online Communities.

Over the past years, online communities have rapidly become important sources of innovation in society. This project aims to advance understanding of how members of such communities coordinate their work and create knowledge and innovation. These questions are of particular relevance due to the unique organizational characteristics of online communities, including their flat hierarchies, voluntary membership, and open organizational boundaries that enable ideas for new products and services to be sourced from anywhere and anyone. The PhD candidate will investigate various aspects of online communities that have been shown to be of critical importance for the success of online communities yet remain underexplored. The research will focus on healthcare-related online communities and open source software development communities.

The prospective candidate should have a MSc, MA, or MPhil degree in business administration or related fields such as management information systems, computer science, psychology, sociology, mathematics, engineering, physics, and statistics (MBAs are not eligible). We invite applicants with a strong affinity for machine learning, big data analytics, and statistical analysis OR qualitative analysis.

Furthermore, the candidate should have excellent written and spoken English skills, have an interest in developing outstanding research skills, enjoy research and writing, be curious, learning-oriented, and self-directed, enjoy collaborating in teams, and have a strong interest in contemporary issues in management and organizations. Given the research-focused orientation of the team, we are specifically looking for aspiring scholars with ambitions to pursue an academic career. The project should culminate in a PhD thesis composed of at least three high quality research papers, targeted at the field’s leading journals.

The PhD candidate will be co-supervised by Prof. Georg von Krogh and a team of senior researchers at SMI () and will be funded by Swiss National Science Foundation. The duration of the PhD program is three to four years. The starting date is August 2022.

The SMI group offers an inspiring, supportive, and team-based research environment to support your immediate immersion into an ambitious research agenda. Our team consists of a dynamic and international group of researchers who share a common vision of contributing significantly to the highest-level academic research in the fields of strategic management and innovation. Our work is directed to topics such as knowledge management, information systems innovation, collaborative innovation, organization and management theory, and competitive strategy.

The team has an excellent track record of publishing in the field’s leading journals (including The Academy of Management Journal, Harvard Business Review, Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly, Nature Biotechnology, Management Science, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal), and has a strong international network of collaborators.

We offer competitive salary conditions. Funding is secured for at least three years. For more information on employment at ETH Zurich see:

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