Claudia Manca

Profile

I am an Associate Professor at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and a Visiting Professor at Bologna Business School.

My research examines how interventions aimed at increasing workplace flexibility and digitalization generate intended and unintended consequences for people, leadership, and organizations. I am 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 my work investigates how office redesigns and the introduction of hybrid work affect collaboration, leadership practices, and the functioning of organizational communities. I have 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 my 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, I am especially interested in the relationship between leadership and time—how temporal constraints, urgency, and pacing shape leadership practices.

Teaching

I have developed and taught courses at Bachelor’s and Master’s levels, including:

• Organizational Behavior
• Culture and Diversity Management
• Cross-Cultural Management
• Introduction to Global Business Engineering

I am also involved in the Innovation Pilot, a project-based course in which students collaborate with real companies to co-develop solutions to concrete organizational challenges.

Supervision opportunities

I supervise Bachelor’s and Master’s theses on topics related to:

• The impact of new technologies (including AI) on people and organizations
• The connections between leadership and time
• Inclusion, diversity, and equality in the digital or hybrid workplace
• Learning from extreme contexts to inform leadership practice

I am 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.

Research areas

• Digitalization and the future of work
• Leadership and time
• Organizational change
• Extreme contexts
• Inclusion and diversity in the new world of work