On December 8th, 2025, Mario Sosa Hidalgo successfully defended his doctoral thesis titled “In-house, but not at home: The emerging role of data science practitioners in organizations."
Mario Sosa HIdalgo from the KIN Center for Digital Innovation has successfully defended his PhD dissertation at the School of Business and Economics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
Supervised by Ella Hafermalz, Wendy Günther and Marleen Huysman, Hidalgo investigated what it's like to develop data science products in-house. His findings show that these workers are highly dedicated to their craft, to the extent that it can mismatch with expectations of managers and organisations, who tend to treat them as IT staff. He found that sticking to a 'data science ethos' can also instil distance between end users and developers, because the latter avoid 'subjective' data that could muddy the waters of idealised data science practices. Interventions include acknowledging the 'craftiness' of data science, and including messy and political organisational and work contexts in data science education.
Hidalgo's dissertation contributes to understanding how data science practitioners directly and actively influence the development of AI in organizations in practice, as well as how they root for their role and push forward its importance within organizations. It highlights the need for managing efforts regarding how to handle and support data science practitioners in the in-house development of AI systems in organizations.