Julian Fricke

Julian Fricke finished his bachelor’s sociology and master’s degree in labour in society at the Georg August University in Göttingen. Both thesesfocuses the social relationship between employees and its enterprises or organization. Main focus lies on labour- and organizationsociology as well as a wide range of quantitative and qualitative research or even mixed methods approaches. These interests in labour science especially in the relationship between employees and its organization leads into the doctoral thesis: “The Transition into a new organization. The social relationship as regulatory practice?” Aim of the study is examinethe mechanisms of making and shaping thetransition in a new business enterprise on institutional level. Thus should obtain a transdiszilinary contribution to linkorganization and transition research. The empirical implementationshould be realize by a case study, which combines quantitative and qualitative research approaches.

research project

This interdisciplinary research project aims to reconstruct and analyze the organizational framework and design of the transition into a new company. The case study focuses on the social relationship between employees and the organization such as looking into the regulation and process of this exchange. The main question to be answered is: How is entry into an organization organized, regulated and processed at the institutional level?

The theoretical approximation will be used to resort to the construct of the psychological contract, which describes the social relationship between employees and the organization as a mutual exchange of expectations. Research to date shows that the social relationship has a regulating character on the behavior of the employees. However, the role of the organization has only been marginally examined, because the theory of industrial psychology is confronted with inherent limits. The organization’s role in the regulation and processing of this transition should therefore be examined with the research perspective of the Economy of the Conventions and theoretically founded on the doing-difference approach which is in line with the “Doing Transition” research group. The project is based on an empirical case study. The case study follows a methodology and result triangulation in order to get closer to the studied subject for the matter of a better understanding and ultimately enable a better analysis. The goals of the project are not only to contribute to the research about transition at the institutional level, but also to introduce the perspective of transition within organizational research, because the social practices within a company and the subjective requirements are part of the transitions. It will also contribute to the debate about psychological contract. Finally, it will shed light and open the discussion on the possibilities and limits at an institutional level for organizations to design transitions.