Here you find all relevant starting information for writing your Bachelor's or Master's thesis, Project Study, or IDP at the Chair for Strategy and Organization.
Please carefully read the following information first. Then, for further information on specific topics, refer to the files below. In case you have questions, please look at the FAQ first.
Topics of this page
Preliminary remarks
- General Information about your thesis
- Administration
- Submission documents
- Format guidelines
- Different thesis types and procedures (research & practice-oriented)
- Our Thesis Seminar Thesis Seminar
- Information regarding Project Studies and IDPs
- FAQs
Preliminary remarks
In our team and in collaborations, we highly value conscientiousness, autonomy, and proactivity. Please send regular (about once per month) updates per email which concisely and shortly summarize the follwing points:
- what are you working on right now
- are you within your predefined timeline
- what challenges do you face at the moment
- what will you be working on until the next update
Please specify your questions that only your supervisor can answer.
- Topic definition (if not specified through predefined topics)
- After you have read and know the literature:
- summary of what we already know abou this topic
- what we don’t know about this topic and why it would be important to know
- your research question
- Your research model and empirical approach (that is: how do you want to answer your research question)
- Your results and conclusions
For all other questions, please ask them in the Q&A sessions of our thesis seminar.
1. General information about your thesis:
Administration:
- Find a supervisor that agrees to supervise your thesis. You cannot write a thesis / project study / IDP at our chair without a supervisor that has agreed to supervise you.
- Please fill out the application form for your thesis / project study / IDP at our chair - your supervisor will send you the link. We will register you in the online portal of the TUM School of Management.
- The official registration is approved by grade management - not by our chair - it will take up to four weeks. If you have not received a confirmation after two months, please very briefly contact Mrs. Eva Pongracz (pongracz@tum.de).
Submission documents:
The faculty has allowed solely digital submissions! If your supervisor does not notify you otherwise, the following documents need to be submitted digitally together with your thesis. Again, your supervisor may require additional submissions and will notify you about it.
Please send all documents per email to your supervisor. In case, the files are too large, you can send them via Dropbox, LRZ Sync&Share, Wetransfer or similar. Submit the files marked with a star (*) additionally to this form: https://forms.gle/qJBv4adescNZfEQn9:
- Final Thesis: Thesis (as word and pdf)
- Executive summary*: short summary of your thesis (3-5 pages) (as word and pdf)
- Presentation on your thesis topic (as ppt)
- Infographic on your thesis topic* (as ppt and PDF/JPEG)
- Notion page on your thesis topic* (should also contain your infographic and a link to the article if available)
- Appendix:
- All data, articles/chapters, statistics, literature etc. – thus the whole input and all sources and references you used
- Your project file from the literature management software, such as Citavi, Endnote, Mendeley, etc.
Optional: Prepare your executive summary as an article on medium: https://medium.com/ (or any other free publication medium) and include a word document with the link to the article in the shared folder.
For more details about your final thesis, please see information below.
For more details about submissions 2 to 5, please refer to the thesis seminar.
Designation of documents:
- All non-literature documents (Word, Excel, PPT, etc): YYYYMMDD_name (e.g. 20200301_Mustermann_Report.ppt)
- Literature: Author(s)_(Year)_Journal abbreviation_Title keyword (more than 2 Authors: 1. Author and et al.: e.g. Mustermann et al._.pdf)
Assessment:
Once you completed and submitted your work, your supervisor will grade it. When we finished our evaluation, we will enter your grade to the online portal of the TUM School of Management.
We will forward the grade report to grade management and they will enter your grade in TUMonline. Please note that this process may take up to 2 weeks!
Formatting guidelines:
Here are the general scientific formatting guildelines of our chair and the current APA manual for all additional formatting questions.
Template for Cover page: https://portal.mytum.de/corporatedesign
Log in with your TUM account, Sitemap > Corporate Design > Vorlagen > Wissenschaftliche Arbeiten - Deckblatt – Wissenschaftliche Abschlussarbeit
Template for declaration of authorship: https://www.ie.mgt.tum.de/fileadmin/w00cem/tim/Abschlussarbeiten/8_Declaration_of_Authorship_Master_s_Thesis.pdf
Optionally, a template for LaTeX incorporating the guidelines of our chair is available here: Thesis Template Chair for Strategy and Organization (APA7) https://latex.tum.de/templates/5f6082fb7e4e66b3014a16f3. To create a sharelatex project, you have to log in with your TUM-ID (e.g. "ab12asdf") and your password. Documentation is available under https://sharelatex.tum.de/learn.
2. Different thesis types and procedures:
There are three types of theses at our chair. Please make a suggestion for your type of thesis to your supervisor and get approval.
For a start, please go through the slides about the empirical research process in the thesis seminar. The materials within the thesis seminar also contain, recordings of the detailed explanation of these slides and a number of scientific articles.
A. Empirical thesis: Your empirical thesis should consist of Abstract, Introduction, Theory, (Hypothesis development for quantitative research), Method, Results, Discussion (incl. theoretical implications, limitations & directions for future research, practical implications), and Conclusion. The theory part (i.e., theory + hypotheses) should roughly take up the same space as the empirical part (i.e., methods + results) and should together amount to around 80% of your thesis. Smaller deviations are not problematic; larger ones should be discussed with your supervisor. Typically, it is important to see a clear research model (visualized; typically with about 2 to 6 hypotheses) in your thesis, which is, subsequently, empirically tested. The “testing” part may take on different forms, of course: via an own data collection or secondary data. Of course, hypotheses are not always supported. This is quite normal, and your grade does not depend on significant results. In fact, they may sometimes be even more interesting as they challenge theory – that is if they are well analyzed and interpreted! It is important for us that deviating results are mentioned and discussed in the Discussion part: Which meaning do those results have for theory? Our understanding of the world? Why were certain results found, and others not? What do we learn from your thesis? We propose starting with the theory part, then continuing with the empirical part, discussion and conclusion. Finish by writing the introduction. The theory part still takes a significant portion of this paper and should be based on a complete literature review table. This literature review follows specific steps which help you organize your literature search process. Documentation of the included papers is very important. As an example, please find a completed literature review below Please read the instructions and papers in the excel file itself for further instructions.
B. Literature-based thesis: The literature-based thesis is structured a bit differently. It is typically divided into introduction, methods, results, discussion, and conclusion. Compared to the empirical thesis, the method part is much smaller though and limited to the way the systematic literature research has been conducted (e.g., keywords, number of papers found etc.). The results part should collect relevant literature, cluster them in different research streams and topics, and be summarized visually. The nature of the clusters should be discussed early on. The results and discussion part takes on the vast majority of this paper and should be based on a completed literature review table. You find more information (slides, videos, papers) about a systematic literature review in the thesis seminar.
C. Practice-oriented thesis: A practice-oriented thesis is similar to an empirical thesis (please refer to the section above) and typically involves the following structure: abstract, introduction, theory, method, results, discussion, and conclusion. Apart from working hypotheses-based, a practice-oriented thesis can provide propositions and recommendations for action. This depends on the goal of the thesis and should be discussed early on. In practice-oriented theory sections, it is substantial to include theory from scientific literature, but you should also include a section that focuses on current practical developments in relation to the industry or sector you are considering for your research. Below you find a description of how to systematically gather practical data about organizations, start-ups, or emerging technologies.
Here are the generic steps for gathering practice-oriented data:
- Goal specification - why should this data be collected, and what are we looking for?
- Get an understanding of the topic and start reading some papers regarding the topic.
- The list is dynamic and should also be adopted during the initial phase of the research.
- Build a table for data collection suitable for the objective of the data collection
- Search in databases with the keywords or, if possible, with the designed search query
- Be attentive during the research and look out for interesting technologies or interesting Startups, which are only indirectly related to the question, but could also be relevant.
- Other advice for collecting data
The page limits for each kind of thesis are determined in the guidelines.
3. Thesis seminar
It is compulsory for all students to study the materials in the thesis seminar of our chair when writing your thesis here. If you have questions beyond the provided material, you can attend the montly Q&A sessions.
No registration is necessary for the thesis seminar. No attendance is required for the Q&A sessions. You do not need to present your thesis.
You can find all information about the thesis seminar here:
Thesis Seminar4. Information regarding Project Studies and Interdisciplinary Projects (IDPs):
General
If you want to register your Project Study, please contact your supervisor at the chair. He/she will send you a link to an online form for your registration.
Attached you may find the respective registration form for Interdisciplinary Projects (Anmeldung_IDP.pdf). Please clarify with your supervisor if you also have to hand in the attached Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) (NDA_Formular.pdf).
For IDPs, please also consider your faculty’s guidelines (e.g. - please check for the most current Version of the following link and its content yourself - , https://www.in.tum.de/en/current-students/masters-programs/informatics/interdisciplinary-project/fpo-2012-and-2016-and-2018/)
For Project Studies, please find helpful information regarding the organizational requirements for project studies.
As these requirements are defined by the TUM School of Management, please contact the TUM School of Management if you have any questions.
Evaluation:
- Practical work (individual evaluation): 50%
- Project report (team evaluation): 30%
- Presentation (individual evaluation): 20%
Project Report (Use the font style Times New Roman (font size 12) for the text. Write with a line spacing of 2.0. All margins should be 1 inch. You should use the citation guidelines of the American Psychological Association (APA)):
- Main Report: 15 pages per person (+/- 10%) of written text (not including tables, cover sheet, references, graphs, pictures, and appendix).
- Executive Summary: short summary of the project study (3-5 pages) (as PDF or Medium link)
- Infographic: Summary of the most interesting findings (as JPEG/PNG and original file).
- Optional: Prepare your Executive Summary as an article on the website: https://medium.com/ and include a Word document with the link to the article in the shared folder.
Submission Documents:
When submitting your Project Study/IDP, keep in mind our submission guidelines. Submission documents, as well as their specifications, are summarized here:
Submit your additional material (infographic, medium article, notion website): (Also send it to your supervisor via email)
5. FAQ:
Most of your questions will be clarified by carefully reading this starter package. In case you have any questions on the above-mentioned issues, please take a closer look at the FAQ documents!
Please check the download center for more information: https://www.mgt.tum.de/download-center
If you still have any questions after reading the FAQ document, please do not hesitate to contact your respective supervisor.