Postdoctoral Researcher Organizing Human-Centric Industries

Join our NWO-funded research program Smart Skills@Scale in a unique four-year, full-time (1.0 FTE) postdoctoral position and help managers shape the future of a human-centric industry. We are seeking a postdoctoral researcher to study people management and leadership in Industry 5.0. This new industrial era is characterized by smart technology (including artificial intelligence, robotics, and mixed reality) that augments people, drives innovation responsibly, and fosters adaptive, inclusive, and empowering workplaces.

The responsible use of smart technology challenges managers to make complex people-related decisions. These include fostering human-machine learning (i.e., hybrid intelligence), involving employees in non-linear, multi-stakeholder technology implementation processes, balancing humanistic values with economic goals in digital transformations, and preventing the unwanted use of smart technology by workers.

Research Focus
Your research will help managers lead this transformation. You will examine how managers envision desirable futures of work in industry, make strategic decisions, and build conditions for employee-driven innovation where humans are simultaneously augmented by, and augmenting, smart technology. With industry, you will co-create interventions to support and lead managers and their teams through these socio-technical processes. The project’s precise focus can reflect your expertise and interests. Possible directions include, but are not excluded to:

• Decision-making, meaning-making, and sensemaking in industrial transformation
• Implementing and sustaining changes
• Human–technology collaboration, hybrid intelligence, and responsible digital innovation
• Leadership and organizational learning for sustainable change and managing organizational paradoxes
• Organizing for desirable futures of work
• (re-)designing Organizational routines and transformation in Smart Industry
• Participatory innovation, democratic organization of innovation, and employee voice/participation in decision-making
• Project management and multi-disciplinary teams in technology design processes
• Embodiment in learning, technology implementation and leader-member exchanges

About Smart Skills@Scale
This postdoctoral project is part of the 8-year large-scale Smart Skills@Scale project, which aims to support a robust, resilient workforce and a human-centric, sustainable, and resilient Smart Industry. This position is part of the research line that focuses on supporting organizations in their Industry 5.0 transitions, for example, by ensuring human-centric production cells and fostering the adoption and use of technology by production workers. You will collaborate with an EngD candidate who will design a serious game to support managerial decision-making, translating insights into a practical learning tool for industry. For more information about the entire project, please visit our website and LinkedIn page.

Your Role

• Conduct empirical research in Dutch small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to understand how managers lead employee-centered transformations related to smart technology adoption and use
• Contribute to academic knowledge and practical tools that strengthen human-centric technology use
• Publish in international journals and engage with industrial partners to create societal impact
• Take part in teaching (maximum 20%) and the opportunity to gain your University Teaching Qualification

The PLT research group is an engaged group of people who share a passion for how people learn, develop, collaborate, and innovate at work, within and across their organizations. We bring together diverse backgrounds and scholarly communities, including Educational Sciences, Business Administration (HRM), Organization Studies, Communication Science, and Psychology. Core concepts include transformative learning, meaning-making, self-directed workplace learning, technology-enhanced learning, team learning, organizational change, and new forms of organizing. Our research ranges from advanced quantitative analyses and measurements with bodily sensors to highly embedded, ethnographic, and interpretative approaches. We teach in the Human Resource Development track of the (pre)master Educational Science & Technology program and in a minor module on Professional Learning in Organizations. The PLT research group is embedded in the Learning, Data, and Technology Department withing the Faculty of Behavioural, Management, and Social Sciences.

Please send the following via www.utwente.nl/vacatures/en (click twice to find the vacancy):

• Cover letter (in English or Dutch) specifying your specific research interests, how your expertise aligns with the position, and your motivation for applying
• Curriculum vitae
• Copy of your PhD thesis, or if not yet available, an outline and summary plus one scientific paper

Since you can only upload three documents, please combine documents if needed.

The application deadline is January 11, 2026. We will hold first-round interviews on January 23, followed by a second round of interviews. The preferred starting date is April 2026.

For more information or to ask for the full research proposal funded by NWO, contact Dr. Suzanne Janssen (s.janssen@utwente.nl).