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PhD Research Fellow in Digitalization and Entrepreneurship

Deadline: 29.02.2020

Job description

Universitetet i Oslo

The University of Oslo is Norway’s oldest and highest rated institution of research and education with 28 000 students and 7000 employees. Its broad range of academic disciplines and internationally esteemed research communities make UiO an important contributor to society.


The Department of Informatics (IFI) is one of nine departments belonging to the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences. IFI is Norway’s largest university department for general education and research in Computer Science and related topics.


The Department has more than 1800 students on bachelor level, 600 master students, and over 240 PhDs and postdocs. The overall staff of the Department is close to 370 employees, about 280 of these in full time positions. The full time tenured academic staff is 75, mostly Full/Associate Professors.

Flere stillinger fra Universitetet i Oslo

Position as PhD Research Fellow inDigitalization and Entrepreneurship available at the Department of Informatics.

The fellowship period is 3 years devoted to research education. Candidates may be offered one additional year by the Department of Informatics; the 4 years position then entails a compulsory work load of 25% that may consist of teaching, supervision duties, and research assistance.

No one can be appointed for more than one PhD Research Fellowship period at the University of Oslo. Starting date no later than 01.10.2020.

More about the position

In the past decade, digitalization using ever-changing technologies has gained renewed interest in both industry and academia. Digital technologies such as internet platforms, big data, artificial intelligence, and others have transformed the products/services we use, the way we socialize, and the methods we use to work with each other. While presenting the opportunities for improved efficiency and fast-growing economies of scale, they are positing risks, including notably the biased nature of machine-based process and user experiences, and other unexpected internalities and externalities for new ventures.

Ventures enabled by digital technologies (i.e. digital ventures) are consciously engaged in an ongoing cyclical, recursive, and complex social process of learning and problem solving in their product/service development, which should be integral to and inseparable from the larger process of new value creation.

The so-called “reimagining” working process in the digital age - digital transformation - involves behavioral changes for individual, team, and organizational actors, which are critical to almost any fast-growing digital venture worldwide. Many digital ventures (such as Airbnb, Uber, Finn.no) that often operate multi-sided market businesses (i.e. digital platforms) face more uncertainties from behavioral changes in markets, and thus require different management than traditional ventures.

Hence, there is a need to uncover the design principles for managing the digital transformation process for fast-growing new ventures. Meanwhile, we encourage the candidate to critically explore unexpected circumstances that seemingly break working principles that are yet to be identified and their consequences with regards to the impact of digital transformation on users and organizations.

The Entrepreneurship group’s research has both multi- and interdisciplinary bases in the domains of organizational science, strategic management, design thinking, system thinking, and potentially others. Specifically, it relates to the management of resource mobilization within the domain of digital ventures, including both process-oriented studies as well as behavioral studies of the multi-actors (i.e. users and creators - entrepreneurs and creative teams).

For example, there is some common ground between behavioral strategy and entrepreneurship studies during the opportunity search of the entrepreneurial resource mobilization process (i.e. three stages of search, access and transfer) when the new venture creators face uncertainty in the dynamic social environment (Clough et al., 2018). However, it needs more contingency research beyond entrepreneurial attempts but decisions and for the larger process to yield the end delivery of the user value.

Recently, a growing importance of design heuristics have been asserted to link logics and systematic experiments in handling the true uncertainties in new venture development (Gillbert-Saad et al., 2018). It is thus critical to adopt a design approach to address user behaviors for empathy accuracy by the creators, in which “observation, memory, knowledge, and reasoning are combined to yield insights in the thoughts and feelings of others” (McMullen, 2015, Mabogunje et al., 2016). Based on that, the decision making that brings all the other forces together can be carried out in the underlying the stages of access and transfer in the entrepreneurial resource mobilization process.

The research can address not only the strategic questions for managing the entrepreneurial digitization process from a resource-based view, but also study the design principles of collective response management that involve behavioral changes towards digitalization for both users and creators.

More generally, this research aims to contribute to the micro-level processes and resource-based views that nascent creators can use to master the digitalization success. Despite the micro-level focus, this research also has macroeconomic implications for business scale and challenges the conventional over-simplistic view of ideation, especially the belief that creators have to be “natural” entrepreneurs to be successful.

The candidate is expected to work with industrial digital ventures and new venture teams for data collection, conduct empirical work within these themes, and publish his/her research in top international conferences and journals.

Qualification requirements

The Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences has a strategic ambition to be among Europe’s leading communities for research, education and innovation. Candidates for these fellowships will be selected in accordance with this, and expected to be in the upper segment of their class with respect to academic credentials.

  • Master’s degree or equivalent in business, social science, psychology or technology fields.
  • Foreign degrees (M.Sc.-level) must correspond to a minimum of four years in the Norwegian educational system
  • Experience with interdisciplinary research is desired.

Candidates without a Master’s degree have until 30 June, 2020 to complete the final exam.

Personal skills:

  • The candidate should be highly self-driven and able to take responsibility for his/her own work, including troubleshooting and acquiring additional skills required to reach the project goals.
  • The candidate should possess good interpersonal and communication skills

Grade requirements:

The norm is as follows:

  • the average grade point for courses included in the Bachelor’s degree must be C or better in the Norwegian educational system
  • the average grade point for courses included in the Master’s degree must be B or better in the Norwegian educational system
  • the Master’s thesis must have the grade B or better in the Norwegian educational system
  • Fluent oral and written communication skills in English; mastering a Scandinavian language will be considered an advantage.
  • English requirements for applicants from outside of EU/ EEA countries

The purpose of the fellowship is research training leading to the successful completion of a PhD degree.

The fellowship requires admission to the PhD programme at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences. The application to the PhD programme must be submitted to the department no later than two months after taking up the position. For more information see:

http://www.uio.no/english/research/phd/

http://www.mn.uio.no/english/research/phd/

We offer

  • Salary NOK 479 600 – 523 200 per annum depending on qualifications and seniority as PhD Research Fellow (position code 1017)
  • Attractive welfare benefits and a generous pension agreement
  • Vibrant international academic environment
  • Career development programmes
  • Oslo’s family-friendly surroundings with their rich opportunities for culture and outdoor activities

How to apply

The application must include:

  • Cover letter - statement of motivation and research interests
  • CV (summarizing education, positions and academic work - scientific publications)
  • Copies of the original Bachelor and Master’s degree diploma, transcripts of records and letters of recommendation
  • Documentation of English proficiency
  • List of publications and academic work that the applicant wishes to be considered by the evaluation committee
  • Names and contact details of 2-3 references (name, relation to candidate, e-mail and telephone number)
  • A two-page research proposal (based on the given job description, please briefly describe your research idea and research plan for the PhD)

The application with attachments must be delivered in our electronic recruiting system, please follow the link “Apply for this job”. Foreign applicants are advised to attach an explanation of their University's grading system. Please note that all documents should be in English (or a Scandinavian language).

Applicants may be called in for an interview.

Formal regulations

Please see the guidelines and regulations for appointments to Research Fellowships at the University of Oslo.

No one can be appointed for more than one PhD Research Fellowship period at the University of Oslo.

According to the Norwegian Freedom of Information Act (Offentleglova) information about the applicant may be included in the public applicant list, also in cases where the applicant has requested non-disclosure.

The University of Oslo has an agreement for all employees, aiming to secure rights to research results etc.

The University of Oslo aims to achieve a balanced gender composition in the workforce and to recruit people with ethnic minority backgrounds.

Contact information

For more information please contact:

  • Yangyang Zhao, phone: +47 98023696, e-mail: yangyang.zhao@sfe.uio.no

For questions regarding the recruitment system, please contact: Torunn Standal Guttormsen, phone:+47 22854272,e-mail:t.s.guttormsen@mn.uio.no

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