📌 Key facts
💡 Background
The demands of society on the safety and reliability of technical and socio-technical systems are constantly increasing. At the same time, these systems are becoming more complex and more interconnected. This trend is affecting all areas of society and poses important challenges for technology and society. The current management of risks using experience-based procedures and isolated standards is increasingly insufficient. Instead, an explicit assessment and communication of risks is more and more required in order to make decisions on the approval of technical systems and processes. Risk management is thus increasingly becoming a decisive factor in the introduction of new technologies and solutions. In particular, risk management professionals must be able to flexibly apply the appropriate modeling methods and tools to specific issues involving rare events. Furthermore, knowledge of practical tools of safety and risk management is essential to ensure and prove the safety of socio-technical systems. Since safe systems always require a corresponding safety culture, an understanding of decision-making processes and structures in organizations is also an essential element in order to minimize risks and to implement effective, integral, and holistic risk management in organizations.
🦾Who We Are
The Chair for Strategy and Organization is focused on 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
Goals of this thesis are to identify the most important theories of leadership and risk management, current trends in leadership and organizational research, and their application in practice.
You will present the current state of research regarding Risk Management, show in which research areas relevant theories are applied, and identify research gaps. This thesis dives into the theory of risk management and people management. It could cover topics such as power dynamics, organizational politics, leadership 4.0, as well as organizational design and structure. It is designed for those who want to be on top of relevant management literature while gaining insights into practical implementation.
🧠 Topics of Interest
🎓 Profile
- Reliable and self-driven
- Enthusiasm for Risk management, people management, and leadership
- 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
Burnison, Gary (2011): No Fear of Failure: Real Stories of How Leaders Deal with Risk and Change, New York. Yilmaz, Ayse Kucuk & Flouris, Triant (2017): Corporate Risk Management for International Business, Singapore Webster, Jane and Watson, Richard T. (2002): Analyzing the past to prepare for the future: writing a literature review, MIS Quarterly 26(2), xiii-xxiii.
📄 Requirements to any Work
We do not want your research to gather dust in some corner of 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 the 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!