Astuteness and vision.
Our Institute for Work Research and Organizational Consulting (iafob) emerged from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich and, as a private-sector institute, cultivates the link between state of the art research in industrial and organizational psychology and implementation-oriented organizational consulting.
With our work we aim to contribute to a humane, economic and sustainable development of companies as well as to a socially responsible development of society.
Some of our projects
Developing strategy
In an industrial company, which among other things is active as a supplier for the construction industry, the challenge was to develop a strategy and goal-oriented management cycle and to implement it. At the level of the board of directors as well as in the 4 company units.
Solving conflicts between two teams of experts
In an expert organization in an institution of Swiss higher education, different interpretations of specifications, different priorities and insufficiently coordinated actions in specific cases led to tensions and subsequent conflicts between a team of experts and a team with administrative and organizational tasks, which in turn also led to differences of opinion and acceptance as well as difficulties in cooperation at the higher levels and functions.
Relaunch of a disrupted project
In a project to digitize central work processes of a large organization, repeated standstills and conflicts occurred. The dialog between the IT service management as the technical driving force and the specialist departments as those responsible for content and strongly affected by the changes was - to say the least - demanding, the terminologies mutually unclear, and the needs very different. The project had been operating in crisis mode for a long time. The project roles were blurred, the responsibilities between the project organization and the regular structure were not clear, and decision-making competencies repeatedly disputed. The project thus moved between two aeras: technical project vs. organizational project, rule structure vs. project structure and technical concerns vs. strategic development. External help for a successful relaunch was called for.