This PhD research studies the micro-level processes of strategic long-term decision making in the transition of municipalities with different governance systems to green and sustainable ones in the province Gelderland. It aims to develop an integrated framework to enhance theory and refine methodologies and tools to support strategy decision-making practices within different governance arrangements for organisations, communities and industries in the process of transition. You will further facilitate stakeholder meetings, collect and analyse empirical data, conduct qualitative interviews with key informants, contribute to the development of a Maptable game for the sustainable transition of communities, and write articles to be published in international scientific journals. You will contribute to the project’s dissemination and knowledge-sharing activities. The results of this research should lead to recommendations on how to improve strategic long-term decision-making practices with regard to goal framing and dilemma conceptualisation in the context of the transition towards a sustainable society, and to generate usable output for the stakeholders.

- a Master’s Degree or equivalent in business administration, spatial planning, environment and society, social geography, sustainability or another relevant social science;
- knowledge of and experience with quantitative and qualitative research techniques, facilitative planning and modelling approaches, transdisciplinary methodologies, and good organisational skills;
- broad knowledge of theories on strategic stakeholder management, decision making, transition management and/or sustainability;
- an excellent command of spoken and written Dutch and English;
- a willingness to work with others in an interdisciplinary group.

you will be appointed for an initial period of 18 months, after which your performance will be evaluated. If the evaluation is positive, the contract will be extended by 2.5 years
- you will be classified as a PhD Candidate (Promovendus) in the Dutch university job-ranking system.
the starting salary is €2,222 per month on a full-time basis, which will increase to €2,840 per month in the fourth year (P scale)

Radboud University

Strategically located in Europe, Radboud University is one of the leading academic communities in the Netherlands. A place with a personal touch, where top-flight education and research take place on a beautiful green campus in modern buildings with state-of-art facilities.

http://www.ru.nl

Nijmegen School of Management

Radboud University’s Nijmegen School of Management (NSM) is an academic centre of research and higher education that focuses on institutional and managerial issues concerning complex organisations in both the public and private domain. It has seven disciplines: Business Administration, Public Administration, Political Science, Economics and Business Economics, Social and Political Sciences of the Environment, Human Geography, and Spatial Planning. The NSM strives for a multidisciplinary approach whenever possible. It employs 265 FTEs of whom 75% are academics and currently caters to some 4,000 students. The NSM’s research is embedded in the Institute for Management Research (IMR), an academic centre of expertise conducting research on the structure and performance of public and private organizations and institutions that regulate, govern and manage purposive action and interaction. IMR research aims to contribute to the understanding and improvement of the effectiveness, efficiency and legitimacy of organisational arrangements through which people try to structure and govern the complexity of the environments in which they operate. IMR’s aim is to combine and integrate theoretical perspectives from different disciplines in order to provide a richer understanding of international, societal and organisational phenomena, their complexity and their interrelatedness.

This PhD project will be part of the Integrated Decision Making (ID) research programme. The focus of this programme is on how decisions are made across individual, intra-group and inter-group levels, how the efficiency of decision-making processes can be improved, and which methodologies can be used to improve the design and implementation of integrated decisions. The strength of the ID research group is that it brings together diverse researchers to tackle big societal challenges that cannot be solved by one research area alone.

No commercial propositions please.

http://www.ru.nl/nsm/ ; http://www.ru.nl/nsm/imr/ ; http://www.ru.nl/nsm/imr/our-research/hot-spots/integrated-decision-making-id/ ;