VIP-NET - Virtual Work and Learning in Project Based Networks

Interdisciplinary approaches for human centred workplace arrangements and conductive human resource management

VIP-NET is an interdisciplinary research project which aims to support virtualized and enterprise spanning cooperation by technical solutions and managerial arrangements. The focus of the research is the exploration of knowledge intensive service work, which is structured in context of projects among the dimensions of time, property and sociality. Therefore the research will take projects and their embeddedness in enterprise networks and communities of practice into account.

The emergence and sustainability of networks will be forced at personal and interorganisational levels from the perspectives of computer science, human resource management and labour sociology perspective. In this context projects can be seen as the organisational units which are the crystallisation points for enterprise spanning and virtualised cooperations. For this reason, project managers, employees with different types of contracts within the projects, enterprise spanning networks and technical tools and methods are important parts of the empirical investigation. Thereby the core focus of the VIP-NET project is on the research of project based networks within small and medium-sized IT companies, which are contrasted by case studies from the architecture sector.