About
I am a Professor of Strategy and Organization Design at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU), where I lead the Strategic Organization Design research unit at the Department of Business and Management. I am also affiliated with the Digital Democracy Center.
My research examines the architecture of adaptation: how organizations design structures and decision processes to learn and innovate under uncertainty. I combine computational modeling (including NK landscapes and reinforcement learning), experiments, field studies, and digital trace data to understand how formal design interacts with behavior.
Research Areas
Performance Feedback and Search
How social comparison, aspiration levels, and self-enhancement shape exploration, adaptation, and innovation outcomes.
Organization Design in Human-AI Systems
How decision rights, hierarchy, and coordination evolve when algorithmic systems influence managerial judgment.
Decentralized Organizing
How coordination emerges in DAOs and other networked structures where authority is partially replaced by code.
Roles and Service
- Co-Editor, Journal of Organization Design
- Editorial boards: Academy of Management Discoveries, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal
Recent Publications
How Mixed Performance Feedback Shapes Exploration: The Moderating Role of Self-Enhancement (Franziska Lauenstein, Daniel Newark and Oliver Baumann). Organization Science, 36(1), 166-185 DOI
The Blind Men and the Elephant: Mapping Interdisciplinarity in Research on Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (Giorgia Sampo, Oliver Baumann and Marco Peressotti). Journal of Organization Design, 14(4), 239-263 DOI
Organizing for Good: Using Organization Design to take on Grand Challenges (Oliver Baumann, Gerald F. Davis, Sven Kunisch, Jao Luo and Brian Wu). Journal of Organization Design, 12(4), 165-176 DOI
Learning to Search Collaboratively: How Dyads Overcome Complexity and Misaligned Incentives in Imperfect Modular Decompositions (Stephan Billinger, Stefano Benincasa, Oliver Baumann, Tobias Kretschmer and Terry Schumacher). Industrial and Corporate Change, 32(1), 208-233 DOI
Managerial Hierarchy in AI-driven Organizations (Oliver Baumann and Brian Wu). Journal of Organization Design, 12(1-2), 1-5 DOI
Education
- PhD in Business Economics, LMU Munich
- MS in Industrial Engineering and Management, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
- MS in Engineering Management, Portland State University
Before joining SDU, I was an Assistant Professor at LMU Munich and a Visiting Scholar at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.