Two re­cent PhD de­fences at MSC

1) In her dissertation, ‘Local Business at the Frontlines: Cross-Sector Dynamics in Disaster Response and Resilience’, Dorothee Nussbruch investigated the role of local businesses in disaster response and resilience by examining a local intermediary organization that represents business interests and works to integrate them into disaster governance systems across multiple levels. The dissertation focuses on the processes that shape the inclusion and exclusion of local businesses in cross-sectoral efforts and analyses how intermediary organizations navigate engagements with national and international humanitarian structures.

Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Vanuatu, the study develops a socio-spatial perspective on cross-sector collaboration, highlighting how local business actors negotiate their roles in disaster response and resilience work and seek access to international aid spaces. Through three interrelated articles, the thesis advances debates on organizational resilience, cross-sector collaboration, and the spatial politics of humanitarian governance.

Overall, the research calls for more equitable and effective disaster governance that centers local knowledge and supports meaningful participation from local business actors in shaping recovery and resilience futures.

2) In his dissertation, ‘Exploring agency and power dynamics at work in algorithmic management systems. An activity-centered and relational inquiry’, Sébastien Brossard, basing his work on 16-month observations in several workplaces, examines employees’ ambivalent response to algorithmic management systems (AMS), using relational ethnography and a techno-anthropological approach informed by Simondon’s perspective on human-technology relations.

The research challenges the prevailing view in organizational studies of employees’ confrontational resistance to AMS, proposing instead the concept of ‘resistive participation’ to capture their ambiguous engagement with technology. Through this lens, it highlights subsequently employees’ dual agency in AMS use, arguing the emergence of a ‘techno-subject’ characterized by its potential to appropriate technology for its own benefit. This is further supported by findings on organizations’ reliance on employees’ autonomy and ‘non-formal’ labor for AMS to function, thereby upending established roles in technology use.

Ultimately, the dissertation deepens understanding in organizational research of how AMS reshape employees' agency and autonomy at work, and the implications for power dynamics in the digital workplace.