Biographical Sketch

Kai U. Klein is a researcher at the Institute for Public Management & Governance at the WU Vienna University of Economics and Business. Since April 2023, he is employed in a third-party funded FWF-project and is investigating the provision of social services in non-profit organizations deploying volunteers and paid staff. His focus lies on the emerging conflicts and best practices, cross-organizational network governance, epistemic communities, as well as Organizational Theory on collective identity and hegemony.

Kai holds an MA. in ‘Public Policy’ from the University of Bamberg, Germany, where he focused on economic policy developments in Western welfare states. During his time in Bamberg, he was employed as a Research Assistant at the “Chair of Governance of Innovative and Complex Technical systems at the Institute of Political Science”. His master's thesis examined the hegemonic discourse of neoliberalism in relation to labor force resistance and welfare in times of crisis in the UK.

Research Interests

His research focuses on welfare state retrenchment, economic policy, social service provision and policy change. His methodological interests include social network analysis, hegemonic discourse analysis and qualitative comparative analysis.