Discover My Research

I study how strategy, organization, and innovation emerge from the practices and routines of people at work. Focusing on software- and technology-intensive industries, my research shows how everyday routines enable organizations to respond to digitalization, sustainability, and technological change. This practice-based approach provides scholars with insights into the micro-foundations of transformation and offers organizations evidence on how to design more adaptive ways of working.

Organizing Digital and Sustainable Transformations

I explore how people’s everyday practices drive organizational responses to digital, sustainable, and twin transformations. Building on practice theory and routine dynamics, my research shows how grand challenges are addressed through local action and the embedding of new routines in organizational life. This work highlights how organizations mobilize their human resources and develop new skills to sustain change — insights that inform the design of more robust organizations.

Managing Technology and Innovation

Technological innovation depends on the routines that people create, adapt, and coordinate. My studies reveal how actors work with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence or the metaverse, and with organizational practices like agile methods and self-managed forms of organizing. These micro-practices of coordination and experimentation enable organizations to manage technological transformations, while also offering guidance on how new technologies can be integrated and innovation sustained in practice.

Strategizing in Dynamic Environments

Strategy is not only planned in people's minds but accomplished in practice. I examine how individuals’ situated actions, embedded in organizational and industry contexts, give rise to agility and dynamic capabilities. This micro-level perspective reveals how strategizing emerges from patterns of work that allow organizations to navigate uncertainty and change. This stream of work helps scholars understand the dynamics of capabilities and enabling organizations to foster adaptive strategies.

Methods: Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches

To capture strategy and organizing at the level of everyday action, I combine qualitative ethnographic fieldwork with quantitative analyses of digital trace data. This mixed-methods approach makes visible how practices unfold over time and across contexts, generating insights into how organizational phenomena are accomplished in practice. The integration of qualitative depth with quantitative scope provides scholars with robust explanations, and offers organizations evidence to design more effective transformations.

My Research Communities

Building Bridges Between Practice and Academia

I support organizations in navigating strategy, innovation, and digital transformation by translating cutting-edge research into actionable tools. My expertise lies in technology-intensive industries, with a focus on leading organizational change, enabling agile product development, and transforming customer insights into innovation outcomes.

Offerings

• Speaking: Scientifically grounded talks on agile methods, digital transformation, and the future of work
• Consulting & Workshops: Hands-on support for agile organizing, HR competencies, and managing digital transformation
• Executive Training: Research-based frameworks and tools tailored for leaders and their organizations

Key Achievements

• 35+ scientific and practitioner publications, including internationally leading journals such as Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Management Studies, and Organization Studies
• 5 long-term collaborations with industry (3–12 months each), generating deep immersion and process improvements
• 50+ presentations at international conferences and industry events
• 200+ teaching sessions including lectures, seminars, and workshops across academic and professional contexts

Project Example: Partnering with Agile Teams to Shape Better Ways of Working

Over 12 months, I worked side by side with agile software development teams in a medium-sized high-tech organization, spending 2–3 days per week immersed in their everyday work. I joined sprint plannings, stand-ups, retrospectives, and project meetings, but also the informal conversations where much of the real collaboration happens. Rather than only observing, I actively mirrored back what I saw and facilitated workshops to help teams reflect on their practices. I developed reports and concepts that supported improvements in agile development across teams—for example, making learning impediments transparent and supporting the strutured scaling up of agile methods. This approach not only generated insights recognized in leading scientific journals, but it also created immediate value for practitioners. My role was to connect everyday challenges with broader patterns and to turn those insights into tools and practices that teams could apply. I see such projects as genuine partnerships: combining rigorous research with practitioners’ expertise to build more adaptive ways of working.

About Me

Publications

Scientific articles

• Mahringer, C.A., Danner-Schröder, A., (In press). Autonomous, yet interdependent: Designing interfaces across routine clusters. Academy of Management Journal.
• Mahringer, C.A. (2025). Twin transformation in action: Conceptualising the entanglement of digitalisation and sustainability in organisational routines. International Journal of Innovation Management, 29(5/6), 1-25.
• Danner-Schröder, A., Mahringer, C.A., Sele, K., Feldman, M.S., Gehman, J., Gherardi, S., Huysman, M., Jarzabkowski, P., Pentland, B.T., Rouleau, L., Sergeeva, A., Sutcliffe, K.M. (2025). Tackling grand challenges: Insights and contributions from practice theories. Journal of Management Inquiry, 34(2), 143-166.
• Mahringer, C.A. (2025). Media review: The untapped power of discovery. Organization Studies, 46(5), 771-773.
• Mahringer, C.A., Schmiedle, L., Albicker, L., Mayer, S. (2025). The iceberg model of change: A taxonomy differentiating approaches to change. Heliyon, 11(2), 1-10.
• Sele, K., Danner-Schröder, A., Mahringer, C.A. (2025). Embodied connection work: The role of the lived body in routine recreation in extreme contexts. Journal of Management Studies, 62(3), 1063-1345.
• Mahringer, C.A., Danner-Schröder, A., Müller-Seitz, G., Renzl, B. (2024). How does artificial intelligence promote change and stability of organizational routines? The role of automation and augmentation. Journal of Competences, Strategy & Management, 12, 1-17.
• Sele, K., Mahringer, C.A., Danner-Schröder, A., Grisold, T., Renzl, B. (2024). We are all pattern makers! How a flat ontology connects organizational routines and grand challenges. Strategic Organization, 22, 530-549.
• Mahringer, C.A., Pentland, B.T., Renzl, B., Sele, K., Spee, P. (2024). Routine dynamics: Organizing in a world in flux. Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 88, 1-15.
• Mahringer, C.A. (2024). Innovating as chains of interrelated situations. Scandinavian Journal of Management. 40(1), 1-8.
• Mahringer, C.A., Baessler, F., Gerchen, M.F., Haak, C., Jacob, K., Mayer, S. (2023). Benefits and obstacles of interdisciplinary research: Insights from members of the Young Academy at the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. iScience, 26, 1-6.
• Renzl, B., Mahringer, C.A., Rost, M. & Scheible, L. (2021). Organizational agility: Current challenges and future opportunities. Journal of Competences, Strategy & Management, 11, 1-10.
• Pentland, B.T., Mahringer, C.A., Dittrich, K., Feldman, M., & Wolf, J.R. (2020). Process multiplicity and process dynamics: Weaving the space of possible paths. Organization Theory, 1(3), 1-21.
• Mahringer, C.A., Rost, M. & Renzl, B. (2019). How individuals perform customer knowledge absorption practices – A contextual approach to open innovation. International Journal of Technology Management, 79(3/4), 274-298.
• Mahringer, C.A., & Renzl, B. (2018). Entrepreneurial initiatives as a microfoundation of dynamic capabilities. Journal of Accounting and Organizational Change, 14(1), 61-79
• Mahringer, C.A., & Gabler, M. (2018). Wie können Wissensmanagementsysteme nutzerorientiert gestaltet werden? Die Rolle organisationaler Routinen. HMD – Praxis der Wirtschaftsinformatik, 55(4), 791-800.

Scientific proceedings

• Gäckle, D., Mahringer, C.A., Renzl, B. (2025). Rethinking change in business process management: From prescriptive to explanatory research. European Conference on Information Systems Proceedings, 1-16.
• Mahringer, C.A., Dittrich, K., Renzl, B. (2024). Provisional directionality: How Scrum teams use organizational routines to accomplish agility. Academy of Management Proceedings.
• Mahringer, C.A., & Walleser, N. (2023). How process models change business processes in organizations: From planned to emergent change. European Conference on Information Systems Proceedings, 1-12.
• Mahringer, C.A. (2022). Analyzing digital trace data to promote discovery – The case of heatmapping. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, 436, 209-220.

Contributions to managerial and public media

• Albicker, L., Renzl, B., Mahringer, C.A. (In press). Twin Transformation. Organisatorische Herausforderungen und Gestaltungsoptionen im Zusammenspiel von Digitalisierung und Nachhaltigkeit. Austrian Management Review.
• Danner-Schröder, A., Mahringer, C. A., & Sele, K. (2025). Wie wir alle zur Bewältigung globaler Herausforderungen beitragen können. Fostering Innovation Blog.
• Mahringer, C.A., Mayer, S. (2023). Veränderung verstehen: Die Relevanz konzeptioneller Klarheit. Athene – Magazin der HAdW, 1.
• Rost, M., Peter, M., Mahringer, C.A., & Renzl, B. (2020). Rollen-Anforderungen zur Zusammenarbeit in Scrum Teams. Austrian Management Review, 10, 36-46.
• Mahringer, C.A. (2017). Scrum. WISU – Das Wirtschaftsstudium, 12, 1345.
• Mahringer, C.A., Gabler, M., & Renzl, B. (2017). Agilität in wissensintensiven Organisationen. Von der Produkt- zur Dienstleistungsorientierung. IM+io, 1, 38-42.
• Mahringer, C.A., & Renzl, B. (2016). Employer Branding 2.0 – Change Smart! Austrian Management Review, 6, 48-55.
• Gabler, M., Mahringer, C.A., Metzger, P., & Renzl, B. (2016). Medicus Adaptabilis – Wenn Fachwissen alleine nicht mehr ausreichend ist. Zeitschrift für Führung und Personalmanagement in der Gesundheitswirtschaft, 2(3), 48-56.

Books and book chapters

• Renzl, B., Gäckle, D., Mahringer, C.A. (In Press). Agility. In Grossmann-Hensel, B., Jarzabkowski, P., Kratochvil, R., Seidl, D., Spee, P., Whittington, R. (Eds.). Elgar encyclopedia of strategy as practice. Edward Elgar.
• Danner-Schröder, A., Mahringer, C.A., Sele, K. (In Press). Routine dynamics. In Grossmann-Hensel, B., Jarzabkowski, P., Kratochvil, R., Seidl, D., Spee, P., Whittington, R. (Eds.). Elgar encyclopedia of strategy as practice. Edward Elgar.
• Leybold, M., Mahringer, C.A. (In Press). Social media. In Grossmann-Hensel, B., Jarzabkowski, P., Kratochvil, R., Seidl, D., Spee, P., Whittington, R. (Eds.). Elgar encyclopedia of strategy as practice. Edward Elgar.
• Brakemeier, M., Mahringer, C.A. & Renzl, B. (2022). Wie können organisationale Routinen Intrapreneurship nachhaltig fördern? In Kraus, R., Kreitenweis, T. & Jeraj, B. (Eds.). Intrapreneurship – Unternehmergeist, Systeme und Gestaltungsmöglichkeiten (pp. 61-75). Berlin: Springer.
• Mahringer, C.A., & Pentland, B.T. (2021). Sequence Analysis in Routine Dynamics. In Feldman, M.S., Pentland, P.T., D’Adderio, L., Dittrich, K., Rerup, C. & Seidl, D. (Eds.), Cambridge Handbook of Routine Dynamics (pp. 172-183). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Mahringer, C.A. (2019). Exploring routine ecologies – A characterization and integration of different perspectives on routines. Dissertation. Stuttgart: University of Stuttgart.
• Mahringer, C.A., & Renzl, B. (2015). Internationale Personalentsendungen als strategischer Erfolgsfaktor. In Urnik, S. & Pfeil, W. (Eds.). "Internationale Personalentsendungen": Chancen und Risiken aus Management- und Rechtsperspektive (pp. 1-26). Wien: Manz.

Publications List (PDF)

A complete version of my publications is also available as a PDF file.

Download Publications List (PDF)

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