Claudia Manca
Department of Engineering Technology and Didactics
Lautrupvang
Building 015 Room A2.01B
2750 Ballerup
Danmark
Research interests:Hybrid work and organizing Digitalization and the future of workOnline and digital communities Managerial work and practiceSpace, place and materiality in organizationsIdentity, liminality and sensemaking Organizational change and transformationLeadership and temporality Preferred research methods: Claudia prefers qualitative, process-oriented and practice-based approaches. In her work, she has primarily used:Case studies In-depth interviewsFocus groups Practice-based and ethnographies sensibilities Process theorizing Grounded theory Supervision opportunities: Claudia supervises Bachelor’s and Master’s theses on topics related to:The impact of new technologies (including AI) on people and organizationsThe connections between leadership and timeInclusion, diversity, and equality in the digital or hybrid workplaceLearning from extreme contexts to inform leadership practice She's also open to supervising PhD students working on closely related topics. I particularly welcome students who are curious, theoretically engaged, and interested in qualitative or mixed-method research. Description: Claudia is an Associate Professor at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and a Visiting Professor at Bologna Business School. Her research examines how interventions aimed at increasing workplace flexibility and digitalization generate intended and unintended consequences for people, leadership, and organizations. She is especially interested in exploring how organizational changes reshape everyday work practices, social relations, and power dynamics in ways that are not always anticipated. For instance, part of her work investigates how office redesigns and the introduction of hybrid work affect collaboration, leadership practices, and the functioning of organizational communities. She has also studied how increasing levels of digital mediation in interactions are transforming how people coordinate, relate to one another, and develop a sense of belonging at work. Another key part of her research draws insights from extreme contexts, such as hospitals responding to large-scale emergencies or the coordination of medical teams in war zones. These settings offer a unique lens to rethink leadership, coordination, and decision-making under pressure. Within this stream, she is especially interested in the relationship between leadership and time—how temporal constraints, urgency, and pacing shape leadership practices. Through her teaching and research, Claudia's ambition is to foster critical reflection on the transformations reshaping work and society, from emerging technologies to new forms of organizing, so that innovation and progress create opportunities for all rather than leaving some behind.