Education and Previous Positions

Gerhard Speckbacher studied Mathematics, Economics and Philosophy, and earned a Master-level degree in Mathematics/Economics, a PhD in Economics, and a Habilitation degree in Economics and Business at the University of Ulm. Before joining WU, Gerhard Speckbacher has been Associate Professor at the University of Ulm (Managerial Economics), Professor for Decision Theory at the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University of Greifswald, and Professor for Management and Accounting at the Catholic University Eichstätt. He worked as Visiting Researcher at numerous Universities in Europe, USA, and Australia.

Research

Gerhard Speckbacher’s main field of research is Managerial Accounting and Strategy Implementation with a focus on creativity and innovation processes.

His recent empirical research has been published in journals such as Accounting Review, Accounting, Organizations and Society, and Strategic Management Journal. His earlier mathematical-analytic Decision Sciences research was published in journals such as Economics Letters, European Journal of Operational Research, Journal of Mathematical Economics, and Mathematical Social Sciences.

For his research Gerhard Speckbacher received the University of St. Gallen Financial Leadership Award for Research Excellence in Accounting, Auditing, and Corporate Finance, the Nonprofit Management and Leadership Best Contribution Research Award, Los Angeles, USA, the VMI-Award at University of Mannheim, Germany, the Senator Wilfing Research Award, Austria, the Erste Bank Research Award, Austria, and the Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly Best Paper Award, Denver, USA. For almost 10 years Gerhard Speckbacher served as an Editor of Management Review Quarterly (JfB), and he is serving on several editorial boards of journals in his field. Since 2011 Gerhard Speckbacher has been organizing the yearly ERMAC International Research Conference.

Recent key publications:

• Peer Evaluations in Diverse Teams: How External Validation of Team Performance Influences Ingroup Favoritism. Accounting, Organizations, and Society forthcoming 2025 (with Martin Wiernsperger).

• Managing the Tradeoff Between Autonomy and Task Interdependence in Creative Teams. Accounting, Organizations and Society 2022 (with Isabella Grabner and Aleksandra Klein).

• Does Using Accounting Data in Performance Evaluations Spoil Team Creativity? The Role of Leadership Behavior. Accounting Review 95(4), 313-330, 2020 (with Aleksandra Klein).

• Incentivizing Innovation: The Role of Knowledge Exchange and Distal Search Behavior. Accounting, Organizations and Society 86. 2020 (with Markus Wabnegg)

• Resource Relatedness and the Mode of Entry into New Businesses: Internal Resource Accumulation vs. Access by Collaborative Arrangement. Strategic Management Journal 36, 1675-1687, 2015 (with Werner Hoffmann and Kerstin Neumann).

Teaching

For his teaching Gerhard Speckbacher has been nominated two times for the Austrian State Award for Excellent Teaching (Ars Docendi) and he received this Austria-wide teaching reward in 2016. Since the introduction of the WU Excellent Teaching reward in 2015, Gerhard Speckbacher was nominated every year by the students of WU University as Excellent Teacher (now more than 10 times in a row). His introductory course in Business as well as his newly designed Business Project Course won an Excellent Teaching Award. Moreover, Gerhard Speckbacher won the Student Association’s (ÖH) Best Lecturer Award which was awarded only once.

Gerhard Speckbacher teaches classes on Management (e.g., the Introduction to Business for all ~3.000 yearly beginners at WU), Strategy Implementation, Performance Management and Corporate Finance, and Management Control. For more than five years he directed the MBA Program Controlling & Finance. Gerhard Speckbacher headed a committee that proposed the new English language Bachelor Program (Business and Economics) at WU, and he developed the program structure of this study program together with Edith Littich (Vice Rector for Students and Teaching). He also developed the Specialization Program in Strategy and Managerial Accounting which continuously was the best rated specialization program in Alumni surveys.

Gerhard Speckbacher initiated the Consulting Partnership Program, a program where students do real world case studies coached by Strategy Consultancies such as McKinsey, Strategy&, BCG, AT Kearney, Bain, and Roland Berger.

For more than ten years Gerhard Speckbacher directed WU’s support program for outstanding undergraduate students (WU Top League), since 2009 he directs the Center of Excellence for the best students from WU’s Master programs.

Gerhard Speckbacher is Alumnus of the ITP Program, a faculty-development program arranged by the International Schools of Business Management (ISBM) and originated by Harvard Business School. He completed the ITP program at IMD Lausanne. He has been member of several accreditation teams for international Business Schools and programs in Europe and Asia.

Service

When WU was first organized into Departments following the UG 2002, Gerhard Speckbacher headed the Department of Business, which was the largest WU Department at that time. In this role, he developed a strategy to divide this department into two departments – the Department of Global Business and Global Trade, which became an internationally leading department in its field, and the Department of Strategy and Innovation, which he then headed and developed for more than 15 years. Under his leadership the Department of Strategy and Innovation not only became an internationally leading research-oriented department, it became also the first (and still only) business department at WU with a gender-balanced faculty of 50% female/male full professors. Since 2025 Isabella Grabner is heading the Department of Strategy and Innovation.

Gerhard Speckbacher was a member of WU’s UG 2002 Gründungskonvent, and he has been member of the WU Senate for more than 10 years.

Gerhard Speckbacher is regularly providing his consulting services to various Austrian and international firms as well as nonprofit organizations and public institutions such as the Austrian Ministry of Finance.

Since 2015, Gerhard Speckbacher co-organizes the Thought Bridge together with the Austrian Controllers’ Institute (ÖCI), an event where the leading researchers in Strategy, Finance and Accounting discuss future challenges with top executives. Gerhard Speckbacher is member of the supervisory board of the Austrian Controllers’ Institute (ÖCI), as well as a board member of several students’ consultancy firms.