Bachelor Thesis, Master Thesis or Project Study
📌 Key facts
Contents
💡 Background
In the last 20 years, considerable amounts of financial and personnel effort were invested by states and company to increase diversity - unfortunately only with limited success. It should be this work's goal to analyze and evaluate the possibilities and impact of "Diversity Tech", that means technology and innovation as measure to increase the diversity in organisation. To date, states and organisations tried to solve the topics unconscious, unconscious bias, and diversity via workshops, trainings, mentoring, and coaching programs. However, the percentage of women in higher positions did not significantly increase (as you see below). Similar and even worse developments can be expected for racial, ethnic, political, and gender diversity. The only increasing diversity is likely the diversity of skills and academic backgrounds.
However, no it is time to consider the solution that has humanity advanced the furthest so far - technology. We want to finde a novel approach: "Diversity Tech" - solving diversity topics with technology.
🦾Who We Are
The Chair for Strategy and Organization is focused on doing research with impact. This means we do not want to repeat old ideas and base our research solely on the research people did 10 years ago. Instead, we currently research topics that will shape the future. Topics such as Agile Organizations and Digital Disruption, Blockchain Technology, Creativity and Innovation, Digital Transformation and Business Model Innovation, Diversity, Education: Education Technology and Performance Management, HRTech, Leadership and Teams. We are always early in noticing trends, technologies, strategies and organizations that shape the future, which has its ups and downs.
🎯 Goals
- Review literature on diversity, technologies, and innovation
- Review start-ups tackling diversity, their technologies, and innovations (search crunchbase, dealbook, LinkedIn, Venture Capital portfolios etc.)
- Define diversity pain points
- Consider potential problems like algorithmic bias
- Recommend technologies that could potentially solve those pain points
🎓 Profile
- Reliable and self-driven
- Enthusiasm for organisational change / diversity / technology / discrimination
- Ability to do sophisticated internet, desk research, and connect with practitioners
- Passion to learn more about the future and do research with impact
📚 Further Reading
Shore, Lynn & Chung, Beth & Dean, Michelle & Ehrhart, Karen & Jung, Don & Randel, Amy & Singh, Gangaram. (2009). Diversity in organizations: Where are we now and where are we going?. Human Resource Management Review. 19. 117-133. 10.1016/j.hrmr.2008.10.004.
📄 Requirements to any Work
We do not want your research to gather dust in some corner of a bookshelf but make it accessible to the world. Thus, we warmly encourage you to create some or all of the following:
- Infograph - visually represent some of your work (find examples here)
- Slide Deck - summarize your research and possibly present it
- Extract most important sequences from podcasts, videos, and other media
- 3-4 Tweets about the most important findings and summarizing the topic
- optional: Medium Article - let people outside university know about your research and start your personal brand
📬 How to Apply
If you are interested, please contact Prof. Dr. Isabell Welpe (e-mail below) by submitting your CV and grade report. Please also briefly outline your tentative research idea (research question, data and methods, possible outcomes with a tentative outline all in word as *.docx)
We're greatly looking forward to hearing more about you!