Supervisors and exemplary areas of supervision

Topic ideas proposed by students will be further defined with a possible supervisor/examiner and developed into an exposé and research proposal.

We are happy to supervise bachelor’s theses in line with the respective topics listed below. Please note that supervision is contingent on supervisor/examiner availability.

Elisabeth Anna Czischek

• Urban governance and management: What are current governance issues in the management of city shareholdings? What challenges arise?

• Urban change and transformation: What are relevant (current) issues regarding the change and transformation of cities?

• Urban management & Institutional Persistence: What contemporary issues emerge concerning the long-term survival of historically established urban entities?

Johanna Ayrault (Supervision only in English)

• Transformation of urban infrastructures: How to govern the transformation of urban infrastructures (e.g., energy supply, waste management) facing new societal and environmental challenges? How are technical solutions and societal networks interlinked and with what effects on the system's transformation?

• Climate change and organizations: How do organizations develop and implement instruments or practices to tackle climate change? How are different types of organizations cooperating and collaborating when it comes to climate change issues?

Anna Katharina Grill

• Social expectations: How do societal expectations influence decisions in organizations? Which actors are perceived as particularly relevant stakeholders? What does this reveal about power relations in organizations and their environment?

• New organizational forms: Which new organizational forms are emerging as a result of the decentralization of the energy system? How do these differ from established energy supply companies? How is their cooperation coordinated?

Thorsten Koch

• Sport: How do actors in sport—such as clubs, leagues, federations, or commercial sports organizations—organize themselves, and what particular characteristics distinguish sport as an institutional field? Using examples of current developments, such as the use of digital technologies, changing forms of commercialization, or new participation models for fans and members, it is possible to examine how organizations in sport are evolving and what insights can be gained from this for organizational studies.

• Digital transformation: How do digital technologies impact the values, structures, and processes of organizations? What new forms of organization are emerging from the digital transformation, and how do these differ from established organizational models?

Andreas Stocklasser

• (Information) Warfare: How does private media concentration change democracy? How are the media instrumentalised to shape public opinion? What role do private military companies (PMCs) and security companies play in war and democracy? How is the war in Ukraine changing perceptions of the arms industry in Europe?

• Liberalisation/privatisation/marketisation: How is private concentration of power and resources changing the relationship between  state, market and society? Which factors limit reindustrialisation and which promote it? How are privatisation and professionalisation changing the healthcare system?