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 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?

Dennis Jancsary

• Management concepts: Which management concepts are currently considered as part of (or, are in the process of being established as part of) ‘modern’ management, and how do they relate to other concepts?

• Visualization and ‘languages’ of organization: How is organizational reality expressed ‘non-verbally’ and which are the texts and media used for this purpose (e.g., organizational charts, process diagrams, pictures, PowerPoint slides, etc.)?

Ines Kuric

• Trends and developments in urban management: Which urban concepts (e.g., smart city, global city, resilient city) are currently shaping the design of cities? Which planning instruments are used in this context? How do urban concepts such as these manifest?

• Imaginaries and ideas: Which future imaginaries are shaping the global discourse? How is the "future" (e.g., of housing, working, the post-pandemic city) translated into local contexts?

Stephan Leixnering

• Urban Management and Governance: What forms of management and governance are applied in cities?

• New public interest-oriented organizational forms: How are new public interest-oriented corporations established (e.g., after the model of the US B-corp?)

Selin Öner-Kula

• Digitalization and Sustainability: What are the opportunities and challenges of digitalization for ecological and social aspects of sustainability? How do different types of organizations address these?

• New forms of organizing, sharing economy, and trust: What does organizing for collective action look like in the post-digital age? How is the purpose of business changing and what defines the trustworthiness of an organization in the 21st century?

Tobias Polzer

• Digital governance: How do organizations take up, develop, and translate digital technologies? What are implications for aspects such as trust and accountability?

• Standards and organizations: How are international standards translated into organizations? What is the relationship between standard setters and adopters?

Nikolai Staudinger

• Wicked problems and grand challenges: How can complex problems in business and society be understood and overcome? What practices can enable and maintain collective action in the face of such organisational challenges?

• Interorganisational collaboration: How do diverse organisations work together (in crises)? What are the advantages and disadvantages of different modes of coordinating networks of autonomous actors?