The inteRKombi project investigates how organizations use digital platforms to manage and “recombine” various external requirements such as supply chain transparency and sustainability.

In the BMBF-funded project, PD Dr. Marc Mölders (project manager) and Benjamin Doubali M.A. are investigating digital platforms in the industrial environment over a period of four years. Unlike the well-known consumer-oriented Internet platforms, industrial platforms have been little researched to date. This gap is being closed from the perspective of organizational sociology and the sociology of technology.

Industrial organizations face a wide range of challenges: from supply chain transparency and sustainability to the shortage of skilled workers. Re-combination refers to the ability to translate these external social requirements and expectations into concrete action programs and technical solutions (Besio/Meyer 2020).

The project investigates how companies use digital platforms for this purpose. The study is based on qualitative social research using expert interviews, supplemented by observations and analyses of digital applications.

With this exploratory research approach, we are working on questions that interest us both sociologically and also offer the prospect of practical added value. The research results should therefore not only provide sociologically relevant findings, but also help companies and political decision-makers to better understand and shape the complexity of the digital transformation in the second, application-oriented part of the project.

The project is part of the BMBF funding measure “Dynamics of digitally networked value creation systems (DynaVer)” and runs from 2024 to 2028.

Further information on the website of the working group Media Sociology and Social Theory.