Projects

We can never be quite clear whether we are referring to the world as it is or to the world as we see it.

― Gregory Bateson

Exploring the dynamics of collective action, coordination, and sensemaking.

Research Approach

Research Process

My projects are organized around a shared research process that investigates the dynamics of collective action in real-world cooperative settings. Rather than treating organizations, teams, or ecosystems as static entities, I study how interpretations, conflicts, and complementary perspectives emerge over time — and how these processes shape coordination, learning, and decision-making.



A central feature of this work is the use of AI-supported qualitative analysis. AI is not employed as a substitute for human judgment, but as an analytical instrument that helps trace inferential patterns, feedback dynamics, and shifting interpretations across complex bodies of empirical material. This often leads to unexpected insights into how collective outcomes arise — or fail to do so.

Collaboration & Network

All projects are conducted in close collaboration with an international network of researchers, practitioners, and institutions. I strongly believe that research on collective intelligence must itself be collective: grounded in dialogue, plural perspectives, and sustained cooperation across disciplinary and organizational boundaries.


This network operates under the umbrella of the Collective and Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (CAIR Institute) — a distributed research initiative designed to support collaborative, research-intensive projects at the intersection of theory, method, and application.


For private companies and public institutions, participation in these projects offers the opportunity to engage with cutting-edge research, contribute empirical insight, and jointly explore new analytical perspectives on complex organizational and ecosystem-level challenges.

Current & Concluded Projects

My project portfolio includes both ongoing and completed research initiatives, spanning topics such as:



  • collective intelligence in teams and organizations
  • business ecosystems and digital platforms
  • AI-supported sensemaking and decision processes
  • socio-technical infrastructures and coordination dynamics


Each project is tailored to its empirical context, while contributing to a broader, cumulative research agenda.

Interest in Collaboration

If you represent a business, public institution, or research organization and are interested in engaging with any of these projects, I welcome your inquiry. My work is designed to connect conceptual rigor with practical relevance, offering a research-based perspective on challenges that matter in organizational and societal practice.



I look forward to exploring potential points of connection.

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Urban Sustainability Dynamics—Collective Intelligence and Information Systems for Creating Adaptive Cities and Policies for Climate Change (Rubicon)

This project intends to utilize System Dynamics modelling for an empirical study of urban development projects, with the aim to achieve managerial guidelines (policy recommendations) for urban planning. It is sponsored by the EM Research Cluster on climate responsibility.

Selected Publications:

Rehm, S.-V., McLoughlin, S., & Maccani, G. (2021),

Rehm, S.-V., McLoughlin, S., & Donnellan, B. (2022)


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Collective Inference

This project intends to articulate a theoretical basis for the study of collective inference in hybrid social systems. It uses topic modelling to analyze inferential patterns in expert dialogues. First research results indicate that AI is able to identify significant causal inferences from dialogues that were not articulated - and to enhance our human reasoning in this way. Practical objective is to formulate guidelines for setting up decision-making structures across all organizational scales.

Selected Publications:

Rehm, S.-V., Goel, L., & Junglas, I. (2022), Junglas, I., & Rehm, S.-V. (2023), Rehm, S.-V., Goel, L., & Junglas, I. (2023)

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Virtual Materiality

The project intends to formulate a theoretical conception of ‘virtual materiality’ that allows to capture phenomena of emergent organization related with pervasive digital infrastructures. Our conceptualization helps to understand how complex networks of action emerge from potentials for communicating and influencing matter and information across space and time. It aims at building the basis for describing how complex business models emerge in the (Industrial & AI) IoT and the metaverse.

Selected Publications:

Rehm, S.-V., and Bondel, G. (2021) Managing Networked Innovation on Digital Infrastructures: A Cybernetic Method for Collective Sensemaking of Complex Dialogical Problems. ACM Collective Intelligence Conference 2021 (CI2021), Copenhagen Business School, Denmark.


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Cyber-resilience in non-executive boards

The project uses system dynamics modelling and further techniques to simulate board dialogue dynamics and their impact on the board’s and firm’s capability for resilience to cyber-incidents. Objective is to formulate guardrails of action for non-executive boards of firms.

Selected Publications:

Rehm, S.-V., Georg Schaffner, L., & Goel, L. (2021)


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CONCLUDED PROJECTS (selection)

Digital Transformation of Live Communication

Duration: 2017—2021, Partner: WWM GmbH & Co. KG (Germany), Dr. C. Coppeneur-Gülz, CEO

Project Description

This cooperation with WWM focused on insights for management practice. In the book on Event-Resource-Management (Springer 2018), co-authored with Dr. Coppeneur-Gülz, we describe effective guidelines for management of digital transformations and performance measurement in the live communication and event industries.

Publications: Coppeneur-Guelz and Rehm (2018) Springer/edited book, Rehm and Coppeneur-Guelz (2021) book chapter.

BEEx – Business Ecosystem Explorer: Visual Analysis of Urban Mobility Business Ecosystems

Duration: 2017—2020, Partners:  TU Munich, Chair of Software Engineering of Business IS (Germany), Prof. Dr. F. Matthes

Project Description

This research project with TU Munich focused on visual analysis of urban mobility business ecosystems. It comprised development of a visual analytic system, the Business Ecosystem Explorer (BEEx) and led us to formulate policy recommendations for data collection and management towards governance of mobility business ecosystems in large metropolitan areas. The work based on findings of the TUM Living Lab Connected Mobility (TUM LLCM) project and was co-funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) grant BEEx+ 01IS17049. This cooperation resulted in various publications including several book chapters and conference papers and builds a basis for the current research on smart city governance and urban sustainability.

Publications: Faber et al. (2020) in AJIS, Faber and Rehm (2020) Book Chapter, Rehm and Faber (2020) Book Chapter, Faber et al. (2019) Book Chapter, Faber et al. (2018) in Information Open Access (Prix Concours Recherche 2019 by EM Strasbourg Business School)

Presentations:  ACM Collective Intelligence 2019, ACM SIGCHI, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA (06/2019)

Conference papers: Faber et al. (2019) at AMCIS2019 (Best Paper Nomination), Faber et al. (2018) at ACIS2018 (Best Paper Nomination), Faber et al. (2018) at ICEIS2018 (Best Paper Nomination), Rehm et al. (2017) at ICIS2017

SmartNets – The Transformation from Collaborative Knowledge Exploration Networks into Cross Sectoral and Service Oriented Integrated Value Systems

EU Project, Duration: 2011-2014, Partners: intl. consortium with 15 European partner organizations

Project Description

In this project, I explored management concepts and IS strategies for the digitalization of innovation and organization through qualitative and design science studies, by examining collaborative work systems in innovation networks. Findings indicated that inter-organizational IS allow firms and networks to radically restructure their innovation strategies and practices to redefine themselves through platform-based business models. In this respect, I have for example looked at the emergence of “boundary clusters” in inter-organizational settings (Rehm & Goel 2015 in Information & Organization), complementarities (Rehm & Goel 2017 in Information & Management), and at how IS enable cooperative innovation (Rehm et al. 2016 in Int. J. of Information Management). By adopting cooperative, adaptive work environments, firms can seek more open and fluid collaboration, sharing and engagement (Rehm et al. 2015 in MISQE). Together with my co-authors I have framed the concept of IS-embedded network resources (Rehm et al. 2017 in JAIS) that captures how organizing becomes a dynamic system of dialogues in which new value creation potentials are being opened and seized concurrently with the emergence of new resources. This change in the nature of organizing and managing brings about new dynamics and patterns of work, new capabilities and practices, leadership styles and approaches, and places and spaces of work.

Publications: Rehm et al. (2017) JAIS, Rehm and Goel (2017) Information & Management, Rehm et al. (2016) Int. J. of Information Management, Rehm et al. (2015) MIS Quarterly Executive (Best Paper Nomination), Rehm and Goel (2015) Information & Organization

Conference papers: Goel and Rehm (2017) AMCIS2017, Rehm and Gross (2015) I-ESA2014, Rehm et al. (2014) ICIS2014, Rehm (2014) R&D Management Conference, Rehm and Goel (2013) ECIS2013.