Biographical Sketch

Lisa Hohensinn (née Schmidthuber) is an associate professor at the Department of Management’s Institute for Public Management and Governance at WU Vienna University of Economics and Business. In her habilitation thesis “Digital Governance: Openness and the Transformation of Public Accountability”, she investigated the global trends of digital governance development and elaborated how government openness influences individual perceptions of government and behavior. In addition, she holds a doctoral degree in business administration from Johannes Kepler University Linz. Her doctoral thesis focused on how government organizations can benefit from digitalization and how the exploration and exploitation of external knowledge is related to public sector innovation. The doctoral thesis was awarded with the “Kommunalwissenschaftlicher Preis der Carl und Anneliese Goerdeler-Stiftung“. She has been Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Stanford University and visiting scholar at Suffolk University Boston and University of Mannheim. Lisa Hohensinn is co-editor of Public Management and Governance Review.

In addition to her research activities, she has gained extensive experience in academic teaching and in supervising PhD, master’s, and bachelor’s students. Her teaching generally focuses on public, nonprofit, and health care management. For example, her lectures explore how digital transformation affects organizations and the implications of digitalization for the management of public, nonprofit, and health care institutions. She also teaches financial management in public sector organizations, aiming to help students understand how transparent financial data—such as public debt—can inform and support public decision-making. During an Erasmus+ project, she co-developed an online course and an open access textbook on European Public Sector Accounting together with University of Rostock, University of Coimbra, University of Tampere and University of Leicester (https://www.diepsam.uni-rostock.de/).

Research Interests

Her research interests lie in the fields of public, nonprofit, and health care management. She is particularly interested in how digital transformation is reshaping the relationship between organizations and their stakeholders, such as citizens, employees, and clients. The following selected projects illustrate key aspects of her current research.

• AI Ethics: Artificial intelligence (AI) and AI-driven robots are increasingly being used across various organizations and sectors—in the hope that collaboration between humans and machines, as well as the targeted application of AI technologies, can make production and work processes more efficient. Her particular interest lies in exploring the added value that AI can bring to the public sector. The use of AI comes with a range of challenges, particularly regarding data protection and ethical considerations. A central focus of her work is on societal acceptance and trust in AI-driven robots.

• Government Transparency & Citizen Trust: It is often assumed that increased information disclosure enhances citizen trust in the public sector. The underlying rationale is that transparency enables citizens to more closely monitor government processes and decisions, thereby strengthening public accountability. However, previous research has shown that greater transparency can also lead to increased skepticism among citizens. This suggests that transparency does not automatically build trust, but that the relationship may be context-dependent. In her research, she examines the extent to which the presentation of public information influences citizens’ trust in that information, emphasizing that trust in the information itself is a necessary precondition for any positive effects of information disclosure to occur.

• Digital Government & Participation: Digital technologies enable organizations to interact more directly with their stakeholders, leading to a rise in participatory platforms aimed at solving public problems collaboratively. Despite their potential, many of these initiatives struggle with consistently low levels of citizen engagement. In her research, she examines the factors that influence participation. Since studies have shown that unmet expectations and dissatisfaction with interaction design can contribute to low engagement, she also investigates which forms of interaction processes citizens prefer and how organizations can design platforms that foster meaningful and value-generating participation.