Call for Master Theses at IfSTO (March 2024)

Dear students,

The Institute for Strategy, Technology and Organization is currently looking for students who want to write their master thesis at our institute in one of the following areas:

Online user communities are internet-based platforms for communication and exchange among individuals and/or organizations interested in a given product or technology. They represent new forms of organizing for innovation.

The following topics could be addressed in a master thesis:

• Building strong online communities

• Maintaining strong online communities

• Conflict resolution in online communities

• User roles and corresponding motivations in online user communities

If you are interested in one of these topics please shortly draft on 2-3 pages an outline/essay along the lines given here and send this per email to elisabeth.brunner@wu.ac.at.

(Cooperation between WU Vienna and TU Berlin)

Background

Social media influencers are playing an increasingly central role in shaping public opinion on a variety of issues including the perception of companies, brands, products, and services. Therefore, influencer marketing has become big business. But while influencers have the potential to spread marketing messages and drive purchase, we also know about the following discrepancy: some posts get lots of engagement and boost sales, while others do not.

This master thesis looks at this discrepancy from an innovation perspective. The main hypothesis to be tested is that influencers may be better suited to propel the diffusion of incremental innovation compared to their radical counterparts. To test this hypothesis with a rigorous empirical approach, it will be crucial to trace the information provided by an influencer regarding a particular innovation and how this information is put forward by followers (influencer-to-follower and follower-to-follower). For this information analysis one could use traditional software-supported content analysis techniques as well as more recent AI-based techniques.

Required interests and skills:

-Affinity to social media and social media marketing

-Profound skills regarding the crawling and analysis of digital trace data

Supervision:

-Univ.-Prof. Dr. Jan Kratzer (TU Berlin): jan.kratzer@tu-berlin.de

-Univ.-Prof. Dr. Christopher Lettl (WU Vienna): christopher.lettl@wu.ac.at

Interested candidates send the following document to the supervisors:

-First proposal about how to tackle the topic

Selection will be based on quality of proposal.

The Gender Data Gap refers to circumstances where the majority of data on which organisational decisions are based are biased in favor of men. That is, data are often incomplete and unreliable because of the absence of information about women’s preferences, fit, etc. (e.g., devices designed to optimally fit male handspans, personal protective equipment designed for male bodies, and organisational practices such as informal networking over drinks in the evening, when women and caregivers are not present). Understanding Gender Data Gap effects is important for designing effective interventions to achieve gender equality all the way up the organisational ladder. To address this research gap, we are interested in Bachelor Theses which enlarge our current understanding of the Gender Data Gap’s (negative) impact on women as well as on organizations altogether. Possible questions, which can be focused on, are (but are not limited to):

1. How can our management and organization theories be extended and strengthened by making ‘invisible acts’ (e.g., instrumental work activities done by women that are neither recognized nor rewarded) more visible?

2. What assumptions in management and organisation studies must be revisited based on novel insights derived from efforts to close the Gender Data Gap?

 

If you are interested in this topic, please send a short draft (max. 1 page) of your proposed topic along with the formulation of a specific research question and an outline for the thesis to Dr. Sonja Sperber (sonja.sperber@wu.ac.at).

If you are interested in the topic, please contact:

Digital sustainable entrepreneurship, so the embeddedness of digital technologies in sustainable business models of newly founded companies, has been in the centre of researchers’ interest for some time. While so far the focus has mainly been on the blended value propositions, the extensive opportunities which digital technologies offer for new sustainable business models has not been investigated in detail.

We therefore seek master theses which look into how existing sustainable business models can implement digital technologies. The focus of the master thesis could either be on the asset which existing companies could gain from applying certain new technologies, or on the difficulties and threats associated with their application (for instance, regarding tensions between financial value of sustainable products and the costs of value creation). Are there specific (internal or external) preconditions for a company’s successful implementation of digital technologies? What hinders, what supports their application? Which roles do the customers play in the (successful) implementation of such “digital sustainable business model innovations”?

If you are interested in this topic and would like to discuss it further, please get in contact with Dr. Sonja Sperber (sonja.sperber@wu.ac.at).

If you are interested in this topic and would like to discuss it further, please get in contact with

An ongoing discussion on gender-based factors in entrepreneurship has provided profound insights on several conditions which differ between women and men when starting a business, among them the distinct availability of resources and a discrepancy in the support provided by the founder’s ecosystem. However, once anticipating a successful foundation of the start-up, little is known on how/if the external perception of the venture with its associated success factors differs depending on who the founder is (see further the AMJ article by Kanze, Huang, Conley and Higgins, 2018: “We ask men to win and women not to lose: Closing the Gender Gap in startup funding”). We hence are interested in Master Theses which investigate the external perception of success, for instance through the analysis of newspaper data on startup success. How does the perception of female and male success differ? What is the different perception based on (e.g., personal characteristics, educational background, etc.)?

If you are interested in this topic, please send a short draft (max. 1 page) of your proposed topic along with the formulation of a specific research question and an outline for the thesis to Dr. Sonja Sperber (sonja.sperber@wu.ac.at).

If you are interested in this topic, please send a short draft (max. 1 page) of your proposed topic along with the formulation of a specific research question and an outline for the thesis to:

Reasons for the failure of innovative ideas before they enter the market have been discussed for a long time, ranging from internal lack of support within the organization, a lack of funding, to missing commitment from the firms’ decision makers etc. Besides these issues, one of the crucial obstacles during the organizational idea generation process is the missing identification of the real value of ideas, meaning the clear identification of the problem statement and the solution that is offered with the innovative idea.

Companies often struggle to identify this real value of new ideas early on. We hence seek bachelor theses which address and analyse reasons for failure that are caused by the missing identification of value, and develop ideas for organizational mechanisms that can alleviate these effects. Preferably, this will either be accomplished with a case study approach or with an in-depth qualitative analysis.

If you are interested in this topic and would like to discuss it further, please get in contact with Dr. Sonja Sperber (sonja.sperber@wu.ac.at).

If you are interested, please contact:

Previous studies have started to investigate the most relevant knowledge ties of managers within their networks. Especially when considering the vital role of innovations for organizations, the understanding of where the most important knowledge for innovation endeavors originates from is of high importance. While some studies have found out that predominantly the cross-hierarchical network ties can have a special impact on the generation of organizational innovations, we still aim to find out more about – among others – the specific type of knowledge transmitted between network partners as well as potential differences between managerial levels (e.g., top level vs. low level).

If you are interested in this topic and would like to discuss it further, please get in contact with Dr. Sonja Sperber (sonja.sperber@wu.ac.at).

If you are interested, please contact:

Lately, Artificial Intelligence has shown its high possible impact on businesses, including the increase of productivity and of improving operational efficiencies. However, one central factor which influences the success of AI applications are persistent data gaps.

One of the largest data gaps, the Gender Data Gap, refers to circumstances where the majority of data on which organisational decisions are based are biased in favor of men. That is, data are often incomplete and unreliable because of the absence of information about women’s preferences, fit, etc. With this topic for potential bachelor theses, we are seeking examinations of how AI will help to close (or potentially even severe) the persistent data gap, and how this will eventually impact the businesses and their productivity.

If you are interested in this topic, please send a short draft (max. 1 page) of your proposed topic along with the formulation of a specific research question and an outline for the thesis to Dr. Sonja Sperber (sonja.sperber@wu.ac.at).

If you are interested in this topic and would like to discuss it further, please get in contact with:

Social movements (SMs) can be regarded as an attempt to solve social problems as perceived by (parts of) civil society. Suggested solutions to these problems often break with the status quo, challenging presumptions about what is important and how certain things are done in different parts of society. If SMs are successful in achieving their goals on a long-term basis, new practices, processes, organizational forms, and societal structures can emerge. Therefore, the question of what leads SMs to long-lasting success is of crucial importance to all parts of society, including business, social care, education and many more.

However, there are many open questions about what factors lead SMs to long-lasting success in the form of permanent societal impact. While a lot of studies have focused on case studies and comparative analyses of (un)successful SMs, an overall framework of what leads some SMs to achieve lasting success is still lacking. A large part of that challenge stems from the variety of different SMs and varying definitions and degrees of success. Potential bachelor theses regarding what makes SMs successful could tackle the following research questions (and many more):

• What constitutes a “successful” SM?

• How could the success of SMs be measured and evaluated with actual data?

• What factors differentiate SMs that fail in their goals, SMs that achieve long-term goals, and SMs that have a long-term impact on society?

• How could the abundance of case studies and comparative analyses on social movements be summarized and integrated into an overarching framework?

• …

These questions could be tackled via literature reviews, theoretical and conceptual work and/or secondary data analyses. Depending on the concrete question, other methods might yield new, innovative results, leaving room for conceptional (and creative) freedom in approaching those questions.

If you are interested and need more information, please contact Florian Nemetz (florian.peter.nemetz@wu.ac.at). If you have a very concrete idea already, feel free to send along a short draft (max. 2 pages) of the research question and how the question could be approached methodically.