Karl Werder is an Associate Professor in the Section Digital Business Innovation of the IT University of Copenhagen, DK, where he is the Co-head of the Master's Programme in Digital Innovation & Management. He studies sociotechnical tensions of digital innovation, with a particular focus on AI in organizations.

In particular, he investigates why and how AI's inherent properties simultaneously enable and constrain performance of and within organizations. For example, the autonomy that enables algorithmic systems to augment organizational decision-making is the same autonomy that generates resistance and erodes trust among users and experts alike. His research centres on three areas: artificial intelligence for decision making, systems development for performance, and organizing for digital innovation. 

His work has been published or is forthcoming in leading outlets in information systems (e.g., Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Journal of Strategic Information Systems), software engineering (e.g., IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Communications of the ACM, Information & Software Technology), and management (e.g., California Management Review). Karl's work received funding support from the Independent Research Fund Denmark (DFF), the German Science Foundation (DFG), and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).

Karl's teaching portfolio includes courses on  Managing Business Analytics, Systems Analysis & Design, Database Systems, Enterprise Systems, and Statistics. He has held teaching appointments at universities across Europe and North America. Karl wants students to see why theory matters by applying it to real problems. His courses pair lectures and seminars with hands-on projects in which students build digital solutions to business and societal challenges.

He is an Associate Editor at the Communications of the Association for Information Systems and Business & Information Systems Engineering Journal and an editorial review board member for the Decision Sciences Journal. He served as an Associate Editor and Track Chair at several Information Systems conferences, co-organized the Dagstuhl Seminar on Software Business, Platforms, and Ecosystems: Fundamentals of Software Production Research in 2018, and reviews for independent research-supporting agencies such as the ERC, US NSF, and Rannís. He has shared his expert opinion with media outlets such as IEEE Spectrum.

Before joining ITU, Karl was an assistant professor at the Cologne Institute for Information Systems (University of Cologne, DE) and a senior researcher at paluno, the Ruhr Institute for Software Technology (University of Duisburg-Essen, DE).  He has been a visiting scholar at Laval University, CA (2023) and at Georgia State University, US (2019, 2021). He holds a doctoral degree in Information Systems from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, DE, and a master's degree in Business Informatics from Utrecht University, NL. He also holds a bachelor's degree in Computer Science, is a certified IT specialist, and has professional experience from working at IBM (BE) and Procter & Gamble (DE).

More details are in his Google Scholar, ORCID, and ITU profiles.