leonidobusch

New Book Chapter: »Open Digital Infrastructures for Democratic Resilience and Economic Sovereignty«

Cover of the Book "the Politics of Open Infrastructures

Together with Maximilian Heimstädt, I had the honor to contribute the closing chapter of the volume “The Politics of Open Infrastructures: Power, Governance, and Justice in Digital Knowledge Practices”, edited by Katja Mayer, Astrid Mager and Renée Ridgway (editor)

Our concluding chapter is somewhere between manifesto and essay, entitled “Open Digital Infrastructures for Democratic Resilience and Economic Sovereignty”. Check out the abstract below:

This chapter advances six theses on why digital resilience and economic sovereignty in platformised societies depend on the systematic strengthening of open digital infrastructures. It argues that proprietary, centralised platforms generate structural dependencies, democratic vulnerabilities and economic lock-in effects, while open standards, open protocols and free software enable decentralisation, interoperability and collective self-empowerment. Conceptualising open digital infrastructures as digital commons shifts attention from problems of overuse to challenges of provision, maintenance and sustainable financing. Treating open infrastructures as essential public services, comparable to transport or energy networks emphasises responsibilities of the state in funding and regulating such infrastructures. Yet, to avoid undermining their decentralised character, pluralistic governance arrangements and new legal forms of public social ownership such as public infrastructure funds, mandatory commons contributions and multi-stakeholder oversight are needed.

The whole book has been published by Open Book Publishers and is thus available open access in various formats.

New Article in Strategic Organization: »Open Strategy and Traditional Workplace Democracy: Bridging Breadth and Depth of Inclusion«

Figure: The breadth-depth matrix of inclusion in strategy-making — The breadth-depth matrix of inclusion in strategy-making (Schmid & Dobusch, 2026)

Looking back, I can hardly remember a research project where the research gap was so glaringly obvious to me: while open strategy research investigates transparent and participatory approaches to strategy-making, over more than a decade of Open Strategy research not a single article addressed its relationship to traditional forms of workplace democracy. This is particularly stunning since increasing transparency and participation in strategy are key tasks of works councils and codetermination regulations in many continental European countries.

Yet, there are several reasons for this omission:

There is an inherent top management bias in strategy research as top management is defined as the acting subject in traditional strategy theory
Another bias in strategy research is an overwhelming focus on the Anglo-Saxon realm, while traditional workplace democracy as a topic is predominantly pertinent in continental Europe and frequently published in languages other than English
In addition, open strategy research reflects that most empirical cases of strategy-making labelled as ‘open’ are mostly management-led and temporary initiatives.

Give this situation, it was by no means certain that the research essay by Felix Schmid and myself on “Open Strategy and Traditional Workplace Democracy: Bridging Breadth and Depth of Inclusion” was to be easily published. Consequently, I am all the more pleased to report that it has just been accepted for publication at Strategic Organization. The abstract reads as follows:

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re:publica 2026: Digitale Souveränität und »Ganz normale Medien«

Totale von Stage 1 bei der re:publica 2026

Zum ersten Mal durfte ich dieses Jahr bei der Berliner re:publica, Europas größter Konferenz zur digitalen Gesellschaft, auf Stage 1 vortragen. Gemeinsam mit der Kommunikationswissenschaftlerin Nadia Zaboura habe ich zum Thema “Ganz normale Medien und ihr Beitrag zum Comeback des Faschismus” gesprochen. Aus der Ankündigung des Vortrags:

Das ist keine Übung. Der Vormarsch neofaschistischer Ideen und Parteien ist real. Ermöglicht und mitbefeuert hat diesen Vormarsch ganz normaler Journalismus in ganz normalen Medien – mit vermeintlich neutralem Blick und falscher Objektivität.

Autoritäre und neofaschistische Kräfte profitieren weltweit von einer Doppelstrategie: Einerseits setzen sie seit Jahren auf neue Digitalplattformen, um Menschen direkt zu erreichen – und profitieren dort von deren Algorithmen. Andererseits profitieren sie aber auch von ganz normalem Journalismus in ganz normalen Medien und deren “Algorithmen”: falsche Ausgewogenheit, falsche Gleichsetzung, falsche Dilemmata, Doppelstandards, Mikrofonständerjournalismus und viele weitere Standardsituationen des Medienversagens mehr.

Entscheidend ist dabei, dass diese nicht Ausnahme- sondern Regelfall von normalem, sich als möglichst ‘neutral’ oder ‘objektiv’ verstehendem Journalismus sind. Es ist nicht nur der ‘Boulevard’, es sind nicht nur Axel-Springer- und Newscorp-Medien. Sondern es sind dominante Medienlogiken bis tief hinein in den Qualitätsjournalismus, die sie zu hilflosen Helfern und damit aktiven Ermöglichern neofaschistischer Kommunikationsstrategien und Raumnahme machen.

Die zentrale Ableitung unseres Vortrags: Journalism-as-usual muss enden. Medien ohne klare, antifaschistische Ausrichtung sind Teil des Problems und nicht der Lösung.

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New Article in Information & Organization: »Digital platforms and democratic publics: How social media platforms selectively appropriate and strategically subvert institutional logics«

Cover of the Journal "Information & Organization"

One reason why it is so hard to reign into Big Tech social media platforms is their own contradictions. In a brand new article by Elke Schüßler, Sara Maric and myself, we try to unpack how Big Tech both expand and subvert democratic publics by looking at the case of YouTube – and explore the potentials and challenges of Fediverse alternatives based on decentralized architectures and distributed governance.

The issue is that both is true at the same time: YouTube has expanded our democratic public by lowering barriers for content creation and distribution; and it also has subverted our democratic public by amplifying extremist, emotionalising or propagandistic content.

To give another example, it is YouTube’s monopolistic market dominance is that makes it so strong and valuable as a market place for creators and users alike; at the same time, the proprietary governance by profit-driven algorithms leads to discriminatory practices such as shadow bans without accountability, frustrating both creators and users.

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New Article in Health Policy: »Experiences and social constructions of loneliness in later life: Collaborative focus group discussions in Germany«

Graphical Abstract of the article "Experiences and social constructions of loneliness in later life: Collaborative focus group discussions in Germany" — Graphical abstract of the article

While Aging in Place – the possibility to grow old in one’s own home – is a wide-spread ideal for many people, it comes with an increased risk of loneliness in later life. In a study spearheaded by my PhD student Andrea Kastl and co-authored together with Ulrike Fettke, we empirically explored the perspectives and practices of dealing with loneliness as voiced by older people who want to age in place. The study entitled “Experiences and social constructions of loneliness in later life: Collaborative focus group discussions in Germany” has now been published in the journal Health Policy. Our main conclusions based upon collaborative focus group discussions:

Assessing loneliness requires taking individual perspectives into account, as mere quantification of social contacts is insufficient for evaluation or intervention design. To help cope with loneliness, health professionals are an important social interface and can become a substitute for close relationships. This should be reflected in professional roles and in developing complementary technologies and policies.

The article is available open access over at Health Policy.

New Essay in »Digital Responsibility: Building Bridges Between Organization Theory and Information Systems« in SBUR

In the wake of a workshop on “Digital Responsibility” at the Annual Meeting of the Association of Professors of Business Administration (VHB) at Leuphana University Lüneburg that brought together scholars and perspectives from organization studies (OS) and information systems (IS), the workshop organizers Hannah Trittin-Ulbrich, Markus Zimmer and Stefanie Habersang edited a curated essay collection to be published in Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research (SBUR).

Together with Elke Schüßler and Maren Gierlich-Joas, I contributed one such essay offering “Interdisciplinary Theoretical Reflections On Digital Responsibility”. It is summarized in the introducation as follows:

Essay 1 situates the first and second fault line in OS and IS scholars ongoing discourses on theory. The authors distinguish three views of theorizing that we can find in both disciplines. They highlight that OT and IS scholars often draw on the same theories, which provides a basis for interdisciplinary research into digital responsibility. Offering a vantage point, they present avenues for such research by their three views of theorizing.

The whole essay collection is available open access over at SBUR.

Digital Democracy Day 2025: Interview und Impuls

Screenshot Online-Impuls im Rahmen des Digital Democracy Day 2025

Am 6. November 2025 fand in Berlin zum ersten Mal der #DigitalDemocracyDay2025 statt. Ich durfte mit einem kurzen Online-Impuls zum Thema “Von Wikipedia für Digitale Demokratie lernen” mit dabei sein (Slides). Bereits vorab hat Bernhard Seiler für SWR Aktuell Radio mit mir zum Thema gesprochen – das Interview findet sich hier zum Nachhören:

Die Aufzeichnung des Livestreams der Veranstaltung ist bereits online, mein Beitrag beginnt ungefähr bei 1h40 Minuten:

Im Folgenden meine Vortragsnotizen für all jene, die lieber lesen als schauen:

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Call for Submissions: 3rd Open Strategy Workshop at University of Innsbruck

Location of the 3rd Open Strategy Workshop in Innsbruck (Credit: Leonhard Lenz, CC0)

After the first two workshops gathering Open Strategy scholars took place in Zurich (2024) and Oxford (2025), we are excited to announce the 3rd workshop will be hosted by University of Innsbruck on June 25-26, 2026. The call for extended abstracts is already live. Your extended abstract should align with the general theme of Open Strategy and must not have been previously published. Authors of accepted abstracts will have the opportunity to attend the two-day workshop in person and apply for poster presentations. To ensure high-quality exchanges and foster meaningful connections, on-site participation is limited.

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New Article in Journal of Business Ethics: »Parrying Diversity-Hostility and Ethical Dilemmas of Organizing Inclusion«

various covers of journal of business ethics

It is not a coincidence that organizational efforts to support diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) are in the eye of the neofascist storm that is currently devastating US-based institutions and has already begun to reverberate globally. The hostility toward DEI results from the fact that such initiatives not only seek to broaden participation, but also unsettle entrenched hierarchies and cultural privileges. This makes them an obvious target for movements aiming to restore exclusionary orders under the guise of tradition, merit, or freedom of speech. Yet, despite their centrality to current political contestations, organizational approaches to DEI remain ill-prepared to address the growing intensity of diversity-hostile communication.

In the article “Parrying Diversity-Hostility and Ethical Dilemmas of Organizing Inclusion” co-authored by my sister Laura Dobusch, Milena Leybold and me, we explore ‘parrying’ diversity hostility as an increasingly necessary DEI practice (in addition to traditional orientations of promoting inclusion and preventing discrimination). The case we are looking at is that of the controversy around the so-called ‘Google Diversity Memo’ by James Damore, which eventually led to the author’s dismissal. Check out the abstract below:

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Call for Papers: Special Issue in Business & Society on »Collective actorhood and organizationality: Recalibrating responsibility in business-society relations«

Ten years after Dennis Schoeneborn and I had introduced the idea of ‘organizationality’ to conceptualize organization as a matter of degree in our joint article “Fluidity, Identity and Organizationality”, we have teamed up with Héloïse Berkowitz, Frank de Bakker and Consuelo Vásquez for a special issue on “Collective actorhood and organizationality: Recalibrating responsibility in business-society relations” (PDF of the Call) to be published in Business & Society. We will be supported in the editorial work by consulting editor Devi Vijay as well as Business & Society editor Colin Higgins. Deadline for submissions is September 30, 2026. Please check out the full call for papers below:

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