Research Profile

The generation of knowledge and the active participation in the discourse of the scientific community are the main characteristics of research, which is one of the most important factors contributing to WU’s international reputation. Research is a central component of WU’s identity and an indispensable element in research-supported teaching.

Research competence lies with the basic academic units, i.e. the 11 Departments – Marketing, Finance, Accounting and Statistics, Management, Strategic Management and Innovation, Cross-Border Business, Information Systems and Operations, Economics, Business, Employment and Social Security Law, Public Law and Tax Law, Social Sciences, Foreign Language Business Communication. Each Department includes varying numbers of institutes and groups focusing on specific academic fields. To achieve top-level, internationally recognized research performance, these units must provide for sufficient development in the area of research.

University management is responsible for creating the necessary incentive structures to ensure that certain research topics are given priority treatment. To this end, Research Institutes have been set up to facilitate profile building in research activities. They provide researchers with a structure for cooperation across subject boundaries. Actually 14 Research Institutes are involved in theme-oriented, interdisciplinary research: Central and Eastern European Legal Studies, Co-Operations and Co-Operatives, Computational Methods, Economics of Aging, European Affairs, Gender and Diversity in Organizations, International Taxation, Managing Sustainability, Nonprofit Organizations, Regulatory Economics, Risk and Insurance Management, Supply Chain Management, Health Care Management and Economics, Spatial and Real Estate Economics.

The research of the 11 Departments and the 14 Research Institutes is clustered in seven research areas yielding a unique research profile:

  1. Finance
  2. International Tax Coordination
  3. CEE Region Studies
  4. Innovation, Communication and Information in Profit and Nonprofit Organizations
  5. Growth, Employment and Competitiveness
  6. Business and Economic Law
  7. Computing, Decision and Information Technology

The research profile is complemented by three major externally funded research activities:

WU has a Special Research Program “International Tax Coordination” which has been widely funded by the Austrian Science Fund with Euro 3.45 Million over seven years. Researchers’ disciplines range from law and economics to business administration. The group is uniquely positioned worldwide to investigate the consequences of EU policies on international taxation practices.

The Vienna Graduate School of Finance (VGSF) represents a further step taken to support young researchers at WU. Scientists from the University of Vienna, WU and the Institute for Advanced Studies have combined forces to create the VGSF, a European center of excellence in finance. The main goal of the VGSF is to provide first-class, internationally recognized PhD education. Students can study capital market analysis, bank management, corporate financing and financial engineering, and instruction is based on quantitative analytical methods.

The Vienna Institute of Finance (VIF) is a research institution in the field of mathematical finance, founded in 2007 by the University of Vienna and the Vienna University of Economics and Business . The Institute is funded by the Vienna Science and Technology Fund.