Organizing and decision-making in drone operations

Organizing and decision-making in drone operations

We are looking for a PhD Candidate in

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Background

We invite applications for a PhD Candidate position focused on organizing and decision-making in drone operations. The position is based at the Department of Industrial Economics and Technology Management, located at NTNU’s campus in Trondheim.

The mission of Department of Industrial Economics and Technology Management is to carry out education and research activities at a high international level in the intersection between technology/natural sciences and business economics, management, and HSE to promote sustainable value creation in technology-based areas in industry, business, and public sector organizations in Norway.

About the position

A more resilient society is increasingly dependent on robust critical infrastructure across different sectors. The geopolitical situation in Europe, including experiences from war and hybrid threats, shows that critical infrastructure can be deliberately targeted using low-cost, commercially available technology, especially drones. There is a need for knowledge and solutions on how to prevent damage to critical infrastructure caused by drone attacks. The threat landscape, technological development, and resilience capabilities are changing rapidly. This increases the demand for research-based innovation and rapid adaptation.

This PhD project aims to advance knowledge of how sociotechnical actors shape decision‑making and organizing in drone operations. Although drone technologies are rapidly adopted across civilian and military domains, the understanding of how organizations adapt to and govern these technologies remains limited. As a PhD candidate, you will investigate how automation influences professional roles, situational awareness, and decision‑making. You will also examine how organizational design enables or constrains coordination, self‑organization, and safety practices under uncertainty. Particular attention will be given to the relationships between technological capabilities, professional expectations, and the allocation of tasks, responsibilities, and decision‑making authority. The project brings together organizational theory, sociotechnical perspectives, and human factors research. It will examine how technologies shape and are shaped by institutions and everyday work practices. The research will generate knowledge to inform the organization and governance of drone operations. It will contribute to a broader understanding of how people, organizations, and technologies evolve together in increasingly data‑driven and automated work environments.

The PhD candidate will:

• Design and conduct multi-method research using comparative case studies across civilian and military domains.
• Conduct sociotechnical analyses of how technical, organizational, and human factors enable or constrain decision‑making under uncertainty in drone operations.
• Examine how drone operations are organized and how risk understanding informs decision‑making at strategic, tactical, and operational levels.
• Investigate how emerging technologies influence decision‑making in critical situations and longer‑term assessments related to value chains and infrastructure protection.
• Assess the transferability of organizational practices and decision‑making models between different operational contexts.

Research environment

The position is part of the project ‘Managing drone threats to critical infrastructure’. The primary objective of the research project is to contribute to a more resilient society by developing knowledge and solutions to understand, manage, and respond to drone threats and attacks against critical infrastructure. The research project will develop and integrate technological, organizational and supply‑chain knowledge needed to contribute to robustness and resilience for Norwegian critical infrastructure against rapidly evolving drone threats, thereby strengthening societal resilience, national preparedness and scientific understanding of hybrid risks.

The project consists of four PhD projects:

• Drone detection and interception. Objective: develop solutions for drone detection & interception for protection of critical infrastructure.
• Consequences of drone attacks. Objective: test and simulate detonating drones and their impacts on critical infrastructures.
• Modelling risk and vulnerability in the supply chains for drone detection and interceptio