DEGIT Lab: Strategic Management, Data Analytics, Empirical Digital Governance, AI Ethics, Organizational Resilience
DEGIT Lab bridges academic insight and policy relevance, operating at the intersection of strategic management, data analytics, and digital transformation. Using empirical research and computational tools, the lab explores how organizations, industries, and regions adapt to digital change. Its work generates actionable insights that inform innovation governance, public-private partnerships, and digital transformation strategies at national and EU levels. DEGIT Lab aims to strengthen institutional capacity, guide decision-making, and shape evidence-based policies and strategies, empowering institutions to navigate digital and organizational change responsibly, ethically, and successfully.
- Strategic Management
- Data Analytics
- Empirical Digital Governance
- AI Ethics
- Organizational Resilience
- Ethical and strategic governance of AI-driven personalized learning system (PLS) in education, aligned with the EU AI Act, GDPR, EEA, and public institutions
- Adaptive, Data-driven governance for organizational resilience, crisis management, including oversight loops for ethical AI in digital education
- Institutional barriers and coordination challenges in digital transformation
- SME innovation, digital foresight, and regional economic growth within EU policy frameworks
The lab examines how digital technologies, from artificial intelligence to cloud computing, are transforming governance structures, strategic decision-making, and institutional practices across public and private sectors. It addresses questions such as:
- How can strategic management leverage data analytics to improve innovation and organizational performance?
- How can institutions govern digital transformation responsibly, effectively, and ethically?
- How can data-driven methods enhance policy, foresight, and organizational resilience?
Prof. Sohaib Hassan’s research forms the foundation of DEGIT Lab, promoting strategic insight through empirical, data-driven analysis of digitalization, innovation, and resilience. Key contributions include:
- Empirical studies of SME digital transformation, analyzing how digital diffusion affects innovation performance and organizational capabilities
- Digital business foresight using keyword analysis and CorEx topic modeling to identify weak and strong innovation signal
- Startup profiling within the EU Smart Specialization Strategy to support regional innovation and evidence-based policy design
- Research on coopetition in service innovation, highlighting how firms simultaneously collaborate and compete in digital markets
- Modeling adoption behavior of social media and public cloud technologies in SMEs, linking perception, infrastructure, and regulation
- Organizational resilience and crisis continuity research, including the KontiKat project on civil and institutional stability during disasters
- Mapping digital disruption across industries using co-word and foresight analyses
- Assessing enablers and barriers to sustainable innovation in SMEs
- Modeling knowledge-seeking FDI strategies of emerging-market multinationals in the EU
- Analyzing institutional and economic effects on outward investment from Central and Eastern Europe
DEGIT Lab is led by Prof. Hassan and supported by an interdisciplinary team of researchers committed to strategic, data-driven digital transformation. Current doctoral researchers include:
- Asif Shahriar: AI ethics and adaptive governance in education, developing institutional frameworks aligned with GDPR, the EU AI Act, and federated learning to balance personalization, privacy, and transparency in learning systems. Focus on personalized learning systems (PLS) and EU AI act, GDPR, and EAA aligned oversight with privacy preserving architectures, balancing personalization, privacy, transparency, and learning outcomes
- Qamar Altaf: Government organizational digital transformation, examining how bureaucratic inertia, regulatory complexity, and federal decentralization influence strategic capacity and innovation in German administration.
Together, their work supports DEGIT Lab’s broader mission to help educational, governmental, and enterprise-level organizations navigate digital change with strategic clarity, ethical integrity, and evidence-based decision-making
- Is digitalization a source of innovation? Exploring the role of digital diffusion in SME innovation performance
- Digital business foresight: Keyword-based analysis and CorEx topic modeling
- Review of Enablers and Barriers of Sustainable Business Practices in SMEs
- Dynamics of digital change–measuring the digital transformation and its impacts on the innovation activities of SMEs
- Mapping the wave of industry digitalization by co-word analysis: An exploration of four disruptive industries
- Identifying entrepreneurial discovery processes with weak and strong technology signals: a text mining approach
- “Frenemies” of innovation: understanding the role of coopetition in service innovation in emerging markets
- Perception or capabilities? An empirical investigation of the factors influencing the adoption of social media and public cloud in German SMEs
- Infrastructuring for organizational resilience: Experiences and perspectives for business continuity
- Data-based startup profile analysis in the European Smart Specialization Strategy: A text mining approach
- Digitalisierung und Zivile Sicherheit: Zivilgesellschaftliche und betriebliche Kontinuität in Katastrophenlagen (KontiKat)
- Economic institutions and the outward fdi location strategies of emerging market multinational business groups: Evidence from central and eastern European countries
- What does location choice reveal about knowledge-seeking strategies of emerging market multinationals in the EU?
- European Integration and Outward FDI from Central and Eastern Europe–is There Any Evidence of Knowledge‐Seeking?
DEGIT Lab actively engages with:
- National and EU-level organizations
- Ministries of education and digital affairs
- SME networks and innovation hubs
- Policy thinktanks and academic consortia