In her dissertation "Compatibility of care and work from a company perspective", GAT employee Katja Knauthe examines how SMEs react to the challenge of supporting family carers in their everyday work.
In April 2025, Katja Knauthe successfully defended her dissertation at the Technical University of Dortmund, earning the title of Dr. phil. with the top grade of "summa cum laude".
The doctorate was completed in a cooperative process between TU Dortmund University and Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences(Faculty of Social Sciences) and was funded by a three-year scholarship from the Sächsische Aufbaubank (SAB) as part of a state innovation doctorate.
Katja Knauthe studied social work at the Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences and completed a master's degree in social policy at the Ernst Abbe University of Applied Sciences in Jena. During her doctorate, she worked as a visiting researcher at the University of Sheffield on the "Sustainable Care" project. She is currently a research assistant in the EU project "Well Care" at the Institute for Health, Work, Ageing and Technology (GAT) at the HSZG. She is also involved in the executive committee of the DRK district association in Görlitz and, as a scientific author, has written a highly regarded report for the German Social Association (SoVD) on old-age poverty caused by family care.
In her dissertation entitled "Compatibility of care and work from a company perspective", Katja Knauthe investigated how micro and small enterprises (SMEs) react to the challenge of supporting family carers in their day-to-day work. The dissertation sheds light on company strategies, legal framework conditions and factors that influence the decision-making behavior of companies. The analysis focuses on the views of company management, who have to weigh up economic requirements and social obligations. Using an organizational sociology approach, Knauthe shows how SMEs design work-life balance measures, which internal company processes play a role and which support services are perceived as helpful or burdensome. The derived recommendations for action are considered to be particularly relevant in practice. They include concrete reform proposals to support SMEs in introducing care-sensitive measures. At the same time, political solutions are developed to provide better structural protection for family caregivers. In this way, the work not only makes a scientific contribution, but also provides directly implementable impulses for legislators, social associations and companies.
The dissertation will soon be published as an eBook by Springer VS and will thus be made available to a wider specialist audience.
