PhD student position

Institute of Management and Organisation (IMO)

PhD student position at the Institute IMO,

Faculty of Economics at USI Università della

Svizzera italiana

Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) is a young and lively university, a hub of opportunity
open to the world where students are offered a quality interdisciplinary education in which
they can be fully engaged and take center stage, and where our researchers can count on
having the space to freely pursue their initiative.

Established in 1996, USI is in constant evolution, always taking on new challenges while
remaining true to its three guiding principles: quality, openness and responsibility.

The Institute IMO is distinguished by various methodological approaches and for a
perspective that focuses on the social context within which organisational behavior looms
and takes shape. On the one hand, (more macro level) organisations are perceived as social
actors that do not only react and act upon economic logics. On the other hand, (more micro
level) organisations are understood as the result of internal social processes that influence
the decisions of their members and sometimes those decisions are not following a pure profit
maximization logic.

The Institute invites applications for a fully funded Ph.D. position in management for
conducting research in the SNF project entitled Exploring the effects of audience-
organization linguistic alignment on access to social benefits.

The project
The project aims to study the effects of linguistic alignment between an organization’s
employees and external stakeholders on organizational performance, using natural language
processing on a corpus of over 400.000 emails exchanged between a French governmental
agency in charge of distributing social benefits in France and its beneficiaries. The project
further includes a field experiment in partnership with the French governmental agency to
test the effect of different types of linguistic content on beneficiaries’ response. The doctoral
student will work on the SNF project with Prof. Paul Gouvard, the SNF project leader
(https://usi.to/6sk).

The Ph.D. Position
The doctoral student will be enrolled in the PhD program in Management at USI. The
successful candidate will be offered the possibility to work in a dynamic research team and in
a multidisciplinary and international scientific environment.

The PhD candidate will collaborate to the development of the institute research agenda. He
or she will have the task of setting up a collection of data for his or her dissertation, while at
the same time participating in a variety of tasks related to the research streams in which
he/she is involved.

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On the teaching side, he/she will work as teaching assistant in courses at either bachelor or
master level, helping in the preparation of teaching materials and tutoring students.

The PhD candidate is also asked to present papers at scientific conferences, and produce
publications for scientific journals.

Candidates’ profile
Ideal candidates should satisfy the following requirements:

• A Master (or equivalent title) in management, economics, sociology, psychology, or related
  disciplines


• High personal interest in organization theory, sustainability, and strategy, motivation to
  address important societal issues and a keen enthusiasm for quantitative empirical research


• Expertise in quantitative methods, computational social science, machine learning, natural
  language processing and/or knowledge of programming languages (e.g., Python) would be a
  plus


• Good skills in oral and written English (official language of the Ph.D. program)


• Good oral and writing skills in one (OR MORE) national Swiss languages (German, French,
  Italian, Romansh)


• Ability to work independently and to plan and direct own work


• Motivation to engage in the elaboration of a PhD dissertation. Ability to work in team and
  autonomy in scheduling research steps. Interest for teaching and tutoring students and
  availability to collaborate with colleagues (engage in scientific dialogue, listen and think
  critically) are required.

Contract terms
Admission to the Ph.D. program is highly competitive. Admission decisions are based on the
candidate’s background, interests, attitude and potential for academic achievement.
Successful enrolment in the Ph.D. program and the position as doctoral researcher are not
compatible with a further professional activity.

The position is internally financed and the salary levels correspond to those set by
the Swiss National Science Foundation for PhD researchers.

The successful candidates will work as research assistants at the Institute IMO, and will
have the possibility to interact with an international network of collaborators.

Workplace is USI Università della Svizzera italiana, located in Lugano, Switzerland.
Availability to travel to other parts of Switzerland and abroad (for purposes of collaboration
and research) is required.

Starting date is April 2024 (at the earliest). However, the position will be kept open until a
suitable candidate has been found.

The Application
Applications should contain: (1) a letter in which the applicants describe their research
interests and the motivation to apply, (2) a complete CV, (3) copies of relevant diplomas,
certificates as well as the full transcript of records that prove the candidates’ eligibility for
doctoral studies in Management, (4) an electronic version of a research work (Master thesis
or other scientific publication).
The latter must be accompanied by a short summary in English (1 page maximum). A
support letter written by the Master thesis supervisor (or another Professor who knows the
candidate well) is equally welcome.

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Please send your application in electronic form or requests for further information to Paul
Gouvard (gouvap@usi.ch).

Applications received before 01/01/2024, will be given priority. However, applications will be
received until the position is filled.

USI strives to be an equal opportunity and family friendly employer and is further responsive
to the needs of dual career couples. We guarantee that the selection process will give equal
opportunities to female and male researchers.
As an institution that values diversity, USI particularly encourages applications from women
and from all individuals from underrepresented groups.

Lugano, November 22nd, 2023