Bachelor and Master Theses

(Dikova, Ipsmiller)

By appointment as well as irregularly through the joint thesis appointment mentioned below.

Formal requirements for Bachelor & Master Theses

Expectations & Guidelines for Bachelor & Master Theses

Professors Fisch, Mohr, Nell, and Puck & their assistants regularly publish a list of topics that are currently available to work on in a bachelor or master thesis on the IIB website.

Twice a semester, a list is published where the institute members outline their topics. Students can submit their applications for topics by emailing a completed application form to the supervisor (see link and deadline below).

Topics cannot be reserved in advance. Although it is not obligatory, we recommend completing the course "Wissenschaftliches Arbeiten" (Scientific Work) before applying for a thesis. Date and place of the assignment as well as the available topics (~1 week before the assignment) are announced on this site in time. Being familiar with International Business concepts (e.g. by completing the specialization International Business) is handy but not a prerequisite.

If you want to suggest your own topic, you should contact a potential supervisor four weeks before the assignment takes place at the latest. If your suggested topic fits the institute's research interest, it will be included in our list and published on the website along with the other topics. The application procedure remains the same as explained above.

Within four weeks after the topic presentation a proposal has to be submitted electronically to your supervisor. Based on the quality of your proposal, a final decision on thesis supervision will be taken. As a rule, there is no maximum to the number of students that work on one topic. The decision whether a student is supervised is taken solely based on the quality of the proposal.

Submission of your final thesis

• Upload the final version of your thesis to Learn@WU.

• Ensure that your thesis is complete, signed, and includes the "Deckblatt" (click here: Bachelor, Master).




• Hand in one hardcopy of your thesis at the institute.

• The submitted hardcopy has to be identical to your electronically uploaded version.

Please inform yourselves about necessary documents and administrative issues regarding the completion of your studies at WU.

(Stahl, Brand, Gruber, Miska)

If you are interested in having your thesis supervised by the academic unit (AU) Prof. Stahl, please follow the process and requirements outlined as follows:

Prerequisites

Students have the opportunity to suggest thesis topics they are particularly interested in. However, proposed topics must be research-oriented rather than consulting- or practice-focused and must match one or several of the broadly defined core research areas of the AU. These are currently:

• Corporate responsibility (CR), sustainable development, and business ethics in the context of IB (not generally) and in relation to MNCs

• Grand societal challenges and their implications for IB and MNCs

• Cross-cultural and diversity management in IB and MNCs

• New forms of work and organizing in the context of IB and in relation to MNCs

• Corporate Responsibility (CR) and its impact on individuals (micro-CSR)

• Corporate Responsibility CR and its impact on employer branding of MNCs

• International experience and cultural intelligence and their impact on individuals

• Ethical decision-making processes and facilitators of unethical behavior in cross-cultural environments

NB: These are broadly defined thematic areas. Students are encouraged to focus on aspects they are interested in and to establish the linkages to the AU’s core research areas. For a detailed overview of the AU’s research, please click here. NB: Proposed topics outside the AU’s area of expertise cannot be supervised and will be rejected.

Both bachelor and master students need to possess good academic writing skills as well as the required research abilities matching their intended thesis projects (e.g., sound basics in data collection/multiple regression/multi-level analyses, etc. for quantitative work; sound basics in content analyses/grounded theory/ethnographic methodologies, etc. for qualitative work; etc.).

Thesis Proposal

Students confident about the above prerequisites are invited to submit a thesis proposal that aligns with the AU’s research expertise. The AU reviews thesis proposals and informs students about the acceptance or rejection of their proposals within ten working days after the following submission deadlines:

• 31 January

• 30 April

• 31 July

• 31 October

NB: Submissions prior to these deadlines do not result in earlier information about the acceptance or rejection status of students’ thesis proposals.

Thesis proposals must be submitted via email by the above submission deadlines, be written in good academic English, include supporting in-text references, should be sufficiently specific, well-structured, approximately three to five pages in length, and need to include the following elements:

• A working title

• Student name, ID, contact information

• A brief general description of the proposed topic

• The research gap to be addressed

• Research question(s)

• Research objective(s)

• Intended method(s)

• A statement how the proposed topic ties in with the AU’s core research areas

• Intended time line of the thesis project

• Complete reference list 

Incomplete proposals are not considered for review and are desk-rejected. For reasons of fairness, the AU does not discuss intended thesis proposals in person or via email before students submit their proposals. Thesis proposals are assessed based on their quality and the extent to which the AU has the expertise and capacities to supervise the proposed topics.

Recommendations

• If students feel that they do not possess the necessary skills and competencies for a thesis project, it is highly recommendable that they take courses in foundations of scientific research (e.g., managing and organizing literature, quantitative/qualitative methods, etc.) and academic writing (e.g., paragraphing, meta-communication, etc.) prior to embarking on their thesis projects.

• The AU expects students to fully comply with academic standards in regards to citing and referencing relevant literature. Acts of plagiarism are taken very seriously and entail consequences. For additional information, please refer to the WU Directive on plagiarism

• The AU requires research-oriented theses, which is why a sufficient review of relevant academic literature is foundational prior to the submission of a thesis proposal. The AU’s own research provides a starting point for reviewing relevant literature.

• Bachelor students should complete a first full thesis draft after three months. Master students should complete a first full thesis draft after six months. Students are required to meet these time frames and to plan their workload accordingly. NB: The AU’s thesis supervisors may decide to terminate supervisions if students unreasonably exceed these time frames. It is the students’ responsibility to plan ahead and to manage time in order to submit their theses in a timely manner so that additional deadlines (e.g., completion of studies, CEMS Graduation Ceremony) can be met. Therefore, it is important that students consider in their planning the time required for feedback by the AU’s thesis supervisors as well as the time needed for the final evaluation. After the final submission of the thesis on learn@WU is completed, the evaluation process can take up to one month for a bachelor and two months for a master thesis.

• The AU does not define specific formatting requirements in terms of font type or citation style for thesis proposals or theses. However, it is recommended that students choose a commonly applied style guide (e.g., APA6, AOM) and use it consistently throughout their entire works. As for language, it is advisable to have English native speakers and those with a good command of academic English proofread texts prior to final submissions.

Responsibilities of accepted students

After a thesis proposal is accepted, it is the students’ responsibility to ensure that all WU requirements regarding proper procedure, formality, and completion related to Bachelor and Master theses are met.

The AU wishes all students under the supervision of its members the best of luck for a successful completion of their thesis projects, and hopes that they will benefit from this experience.

By appointment.