Sociological Research Institute Göttingen

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The Sociological Research Institute Göttingen (SOFI) at Georg-August-Universität was founded in 1968 by Hans Paul Bahrdt , Martin Baethge , Hannes Friedrich , Ulfert Herlyn , Horst Kern , Martin Osterland and Michael Schumann as a non-commercial, university-related institute. The legal form is a registered non-profit association.

As a non-university but university-related research organization, the SOFI is part of the Göttingen science location. The SOFI has been closely linked to the social science faculty of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen since the institute was founded. In 1983 the University Senate granted SOFI the status of an “ Institute at the University ”.

research

The SOFI is dedicated to central topics of the present: The research projects deal with questions of digitization , aspects of demographic change or the problems of growing inequality.

Since 1968 the institute has been involved in empirical social research that focuses on the sociological analysis of gainful employment in its socio-economic context and its significance for social structure and social relationships. The SOFI understands its scientific work as “application-oriented basic research with the intention of diagnosing time”.

SOFI research integrates various research perspectives on gainful employment . These perspectives focus on gainful employment in industrial and service sectors, on training systems and professional status issues, on social disparities and the structuring of labor markets, on industrial relations and the composition of the workforce. Of particular interest is the focus on the working people: on their work experience and orientations, their employment histories and ideas of good work, their handling of unequal working and living conditions.

In order to be able to grasp the complexity of the working society and its changes and to be able to place the findings in a comprehensive context, the SOFI pursues three research perspectives:

  • The focus of the work - organization - subject perspective are the changing forms and situations of work, company work policies and complex interactions between work organization and work orientations of employees. The negotiation processes, conflicts and design options associated with the change in gainful employment are examined. On the basis of comparative analyzes of different organizational concepts, basic orientational knowledge about design options and effects of labor policy strategies is developed.
  • A second research perspective has the socio-economics of work on the topic. From this perspective, too, disputes about the design of work at company level are considered. However, the focus here is more on the interactions between operational "politics in production" (such as the conflicts over the design of work processes) and those "politics of production" ( Michael Burawoy ), which are outside the company as a complex economic, political and social regulation affect gainful employment, for example in the form of changes in labor markets, social and educational policy or standards of the social division of labor.
  • The third perspective analyzes changes in the tension between gainful employment and the social order . The theoretical and normative foundations of the working society are emphasized more in this perspective. This includes research on welfare production, the value of public goods as well as employment and life-course related processes of socio-structural development. The education system becomes an issue as well as the infrastructure of services of general interest, the dynamics of migration as well as precarious forms of work and life.

Institute structure

The institute receives basic institutional funding from the state of Lower Saxony . Most of the funding comes from third-party funds from state and federal ministries, the German Research Foundation , the Volkswagen Foundation , the Hans Böckler Foundation , the European Union and, to a lesser extent, from associations and companies.

The SOFI is managed by the directorate elected by the general assembly. Berthold Vogel , who heads the institute with Nicole Mayer-Ahuja and Martin Kuhlmann , has been the managing director since 2015 . The presidents of the SOFI are Jürgen Kädtler and Herbert Oberbeck, the “Senior President” is Michael Schumann.

A board of trustees, made up of internationally renowned scientists, accompanies and reviews the research work of the institute.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ List of centers and institutes of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. In: uni-goettingen.de. Retrieved August 9, 2017 .
  2. ^ "Research" section of the Göttingen Sociological Research Institute. In: sofi-goettingen.de. Retrieved August 9, 2017 .
  3. ↑ Profile of the institute. In: sofi-goettingen.de. Retrieved August 9, 2017 .
  4. ^ Research. In: sofi-goettingen.de. Retrieved March 26, 2019 .
  5. ^ Structure of the institute. In: sofi-goettingen.de. Retrieved August 9, 2017 .
  6. ↑ Board of Trustees. In: sofi-goettingen.de. Retrieved August 9, 2017 .

Coordinates: 51 ° 31 '50.7 "  N , 9 ° 56" 43.7 "  E