New at the Faculty
Table of contents
2024
Jun.-Prof. Dr. Jacqueline Schmidt
Since January 2024, Jacqueline Schmidt is holder of the newly established Junior Professorship für Business Education and Management Training, esp. Digitalization in Education and Work Environments. Jacqueline Schmidt studied Business Education and Management Training at the University of Leipzig, where she also worked as research associate. She successfully completed her dissertation in September 2023.
1) Being a Junior Professor means ...
... at the same time a great honour and a great responsibility. I am delighted to have the opportunity to further develop my teaching and research activities in an excellent environment and to be able to set priorities independently. At the same time, I see it as my duty, especially towards the students, to represent those topics in teaching that I consider to be particularly relevant and forward-looking. ....
2) I would like to convey to the students that ....
... Business Education and Management Training is an incredibly exciting and multifaceted field with numerous interfaces to other disciplines and researching the complex issues is really fun! Especially in the field of (vocational) education, we can not only react to transformation processes, but can also initiate them. By integrating current research projects into my teaching, I want to share not only my enthusiasm for the subject, but also my enthusiasm for research and academic work with the students and facilitate a lively discourse.
3) My most exciting research projects to date has been about …
That's a very difficult question, as all the projects I've worked on are and have been very interesting without exception! As a rule, they involve changes in vocational education and training that are either caused by digitalization or made possible by it. One very exciting joint project that I worked on as part of a collaboration involved the use of video vignettes that confront students with challenging situations in their future professional practice while they are still studying. This enables them to be sensitised to these challenges and develop initial strategies for overcoming them in a protected environment.
4) Some of my current research projects are …
Questions relating to the digital transformation in vocational education and training contexts driven by developments in the field of artificial intelligence. For example, the question of which AI-related competences are required by vocational training personnel and to what extent these competence facets are developed. So far, I have primarily focussed on school education personnel. In the future, I also want to look at the specific needs and challenges in vocational education and training. These studies are so important because they enable us to develop (continuing) education programs that are tailored to the needs of the target group. In this context, I am also interested in questions relating to the acceptance of AI-supported systems.
2023
Dr. Philipp Richter
Since October 1, 2023, Dr. Philipp Richter is member of the faculty. He completed his doctorate in the field of corporate management on the topic of shared service centers at ESCP Europe in Berlin. He has published his research projects in international journals such as the European Management Review, European Management Journal and the Journal of General Management as well as practice-oriented journals such as WPg - Die Wirtschaftsprüfung.
1What was your academic career like so far?
I studied business administration in Magdeburg, Vienna and Bielefeld and specialized in the subject combination of finance, accounting, controlling and taxes (FACT). I worked as a research assistant at the Chair of Business Ethics and Controlling at ESCP Europe in Berlin and completed my cumulative dissertation on "The Emergence of Shared Service Centers in Multidivisional Corporations: Theoretical Considerations and Empirical Evidence" with summa cum laude. I found the doctoral period enormously enriching, as I gained a view beyond the FACT area and this has strongly influenced my research interests.
After my doctorate, I wanted to get a taste of practical experience. I therefore worked in two Berlin start-ups (most recently as Head of Finance) and built up the finance and accounting departments. Despite the exciting and mostly time-consuming projects, I remained loyal to science in various research projects during my practical phase. In Dresden, I am really looking forward to an intensive exchange and the start of my habilitation.
2) For what reasons did you decide to move to Dresden?
What particularly appealed to me was the strong research profile of the new Chair of Management Accounting and Control. I see excellent opportunities here to develop further in terms of content and methodology. The framework conditions also played an important role for me. The TU enjoys an excellent reputation as a university of excellence. As a native Saxon, I also know that Dresden is a beautiful city!
3) What are your research interests?
I am interested in both management and accounting topics, which is why I find this area of business administration so appealing. I am particularly interested in aspects that are answered in the interaction between the CFO and CEO. Specifically, I am researching questions relating to corporate governance, aspects of sustainability performance and non-market strategies (i.e. CSR and lobbying) of companies. A current example: Do different preferences regarding the attitude towards sustainability between shareholders and board members lead to the introduction of sustainability targets in the remuneration system of CEOs? Or in other projects: Does effective corporate governance have an impact on the non-financial performance of companies?
4) In which methods are you interested in?
Methodologically, I went through a development process. My cumulative publication projects in the dissertation were quite heterogeneous in terms of methodology. I worked with conceptual, qualitative and quantitative methods. In my current research, I use quantitative-empirical methods, in particular archival-empirical and survey-based methods to answer my research questions.
Prof. Dr. Kamila Cygan-Rehm
Since October 1st, 2023, Prof. Dr. Kamila Cygan-Rehm holds the Chair of Quantitative Methods, esp. Econometrics. Kamila Cygan-Rehm obtained her Ph.D. from the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) in 2013, where she also spent several years as a post-doc. Before joining the TU Dresden, she led the Research Group “Outcomes of Education Across the Lifespan“ at the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi) in Bamberg.
1) I want to convey to students that ...
a correlation between certain phenomena does not imply a causal connection. Understanding this principle is fundamental for decision-making processes in business, science and politics. A central question is how to design an analysis with available data so that a causal interpretation is possible. Tips on how to do this can be found in my courses, to which I cordially invite you. Starting in the coming winter semester, I will be expanding the courses offered in the area of econometrics and empirical methods. Hopefully, I will be able to convey my passion for empiricism to the students along the way.
2) While building my chair team, it is important to me ...
to create a working atmosphere of mutual respect and esteem. In doing so, everyone in the team should receive both the support they need and enough freedom to develop their individual skills and interests. There are many exciting and varied activities in research and teaching that we will work on together. This requires commitment and mutual support. I am currently looking for dedicated student assistants. Contact me if you are interested in economic and social policy issues.
3) My most exciting research project to date involved ...
I find all of my previous research projects exciting. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't have started them. Most of them deal with the econometric evaluation of various policy interventions. From the impact of parental benefits to mini-job reforms to school enrollment regulations, I study the direct and indirect effects of political decisions on the individuals or organizations affected. The main goal is to better understand their consequences on our society in order to derive solid foundations for evidence-based policy.
4) Current research topics that I am working on are, ...
Currently, the focus of my work is on two core areas. First, I examine the financial and non-financial effects of school policy regulations over the life cycle. For example, I analyze the lifelong consequences of canceled school lessons on labor market outcomes using the example of shortened school years in Germany in the 1960s. Second, I explore how policy interventions set the course for early childhood inequalities and children's later life trajectories. A new project looks at the consequences of universal screening for gestational diabetes.
Dr. Ilka Weissbrod
Since September 1, 2023 Ilka Weissbrod works as a postdoc at the Junior Professorship in Sustainability Assessment and Politics. She brings a lot of international as well as practical experience to her new job, as she describes in more detail in the interview.
1) What was your academic career like so far?
I am a sustainability scientist with a passion for business. My anchor point are innovation processes. I have had the privilege to explore several topics with some depths over the years: for example systems thinking, impact metrics, learning alliances, and transitions. At Imperial College London I did my PhD at the Center for Environmental Policy on 'Business Experimentation for Sustainability', with close research links to the Institute for Manufacturing of the University of Cambridge. In Germany I was postdoc at the Leuphana University Center for Sustainability Management. At the same time as my academic roles, I held roles in practice that closely connect to my research interests. During the last couple of years, for instance, I worked as ‘Director Sustainable Circularity’ in an innovation agency with a strong industrial design heritage and, during a secondment, assisted as ‘Sustainable Circular Economy Systems Expert’ with a national research-oriented innovation project for the manufacturing industry in Ireland.
2) For what reasons did you decide to move to Dresden?
As a guest researcher at the TUD, I worked with Prof. Samanthi Dijkstra-Silva and appreciated her national and international collaborative approach. The content, general conditions, and timing of this postdoc position contract were simply perfect. I am also very happy to be able to get to know a second German university and to be based in a faculty of business and economics.
3) What are your research interests?
I summarize my research interest under the umbrella of ‘learning for sustainable innovation processes’ and am building on my PhD research on business experimentation for sustainability. Especially interested I’m in incorporating urgency in the implementation of sustainable innovation. Two further research interests are defining the impact of operationalizing a Circular Economy in business and industrial innovation processes, and applying systems thinking to scaling sustainable innovation.
4) In which methods are you interested in?
It is important to me that my research in the field of sustainable business is relevant for the 'researched entity'. That's why I follow an action research approach and mainly use qualitative methods. In the UK during my PhD studies, I have found the action research approach used at prestigious universities with great value to researchers and participating businesses; this has been a formative experience and informs my research methods today. For example, I am research collaborator at the innovation agency where I worked until August 2023. This collaboration means the agency and I are interested in answering a research question and I will work on this question with data I access through the agency while independently deciding on research design, data collection modes and outputs.
Prof. Dr. Peter Schäfer
From July 1st, 2023, Prof. Dr. Peter Schäfer holds the Chair for Business Administration, esp. Management Accounting & Control. Prof. Dr. Peter Schäfer comes from the TU Munich. He researches and teaches on topics such as executive compensation, top management incentives and management controls.
1) I would like to teach the students that ...
... you can do a lot right and a lot wrong with the selection and design of control systems in your company. Small changes can have big effects. It is important to first be aware of what goal you want to achieve with a control system. Do I want to support decisions such as pricing or product design? Do I want to create incentives? Do I want to support non-financial goals, such as environmental or social goals? What is good for one goal may be harmful to the other. So a key question is how to select and design the most appropriate system. For this, I invite you to attend my lectures and seminars. Starting in the winter semester, I will complement the existing range of courses already offered by Prof. Günther and his team.
2) In building my team it is important to me...
... to convey enthusiasm for my subject and to support them in the best possible way. There are many exciting questions that we want to research with joint commitment. This enthusiasm also shapes our teaching. Regular exchange and a lively culture of discussion are the basis for mutual success. To this end, I am currently looking for employees who are passionate about their work.
3) My most exciting research project to date has been about …
I find the vast majority of research projects exciting. We work on questions that are important for corporate practice. In our field, we are looking at how companies can best design their control systems. One example: Some companies evaluate their boards not only on their own success, but in comparison to competitors. How well did we do compared to other companies in our industry? We found that boards with such relative performance measurement tend to align their strategies more closely with those of other companies. They are less likely to choose innovative strategies that would differentiate their company from industry-standard approaches - a highly relevant finding, especially for innovation-driven companies.
4) Some of my current research projects are ...
... compensation systems and evaluation of board members or other control systems such as transfer prices and budgets. A current example: Do supervisory boards learn a lot during crises about whether their board members are suitable for the job? Or in another project: How can companies reduce budget slack, i.e. the buffer that managers sometimes build into their budgeted figures? In addition to the classic topics, I am also interested in questions at the interfaces to other research areas. I'm looking forward to the exchange with my new colleagues here at the TU Dresden.
Prof. Dr. Lars Hornuf
Since March 2023, Lars Hornuf is the new holder of the Chair of Business Administration, esp. Finance. He moves from the University of Bremen to Dresden where he held the Chair for Financial Services and Financial Technology since 2017.
1) I would like to teach the students that ...
... finance is one of the most exciting topics in economics which is undergoing a fundamental change..
2) In building my team it is important to me that ...
... everyone is passionately committed to research and teaching.
3) My most exciting research project to date has been about …
Every research project is exciting! Otherwise I wouldn't start it. But the questions why people donate their data for a good cause, whether East or West Germans generally cheat more or less, and whether celebrities are the better investors were particularly exciting.
4) Some of my current research projects are ...
.... Finacial Technology (FinTech), esp. Crowdfunding, Blockchain Technology and Robo-Advice, Sustainable Finance, Datenökonomie und Datenschutz, Crowdworking
2022
Jun.-Prof. Dr. Valentin Lindlacher
Valentin Lindlacher started his work as Junior Professor for Economics, especially International Economic Policy on October 1st, 2022. He is moving from the ifo Institut in Munich to the Dresden Dresden. Valentin Lindlacher completed his PhD at LMU Munich in summer this year.
1) Being a Junior Professor means ...
.... an excellent environment to pursue my own research agenda.
2) I would like to convey to the students that ....
... every question is exciting as long as it can be answered causally.
3) My most exciting research projects to date has been about …
.... changes of polling places in Munich and how they affect voting behavior.
4) Some of my current research projects are …
... still questions about voting behavior. Furthermore, I analyze the impact of the internet on developing countries (particularly in sub-Saharan Africa), where I am concerned not only with economic growth, but also with migration and social participation.
Jun.-Prof. Dr. Karoline Glaser
Since September 1st, 2022, Karoline Glaser has held the Junior Professorship for Business Information Systems, esp. Management Analytics. Bevor moving to Dresden, she worked as a research assistant at the Chair of Enterprise Systems at the University of Mannheim where she completed her doctorate at the end of August this year.
1) For me, the first weeks at the TU Dresden and the faculty were ...
… exciting – and it still is. I took up the junior professorship in the middle of semester break, so it was rather quiet on the campus. However, I was pleased with it, because my move from Mannheim to Dresden was more than seamless and I had some time for orientation. Now, I am still in the middle of the "settling in" phase. I am happy about every encounter at the faculty, where without exception I was given a really warm welcome.
2) Being a Junior Professor means ...
no time for boredom, responsibility as well as an honor and recognition. For me, the junior professorship is associated with responsibility in two respects. First, with even more freedom, I take on the main responsibility for my research projects and my further academic career. Second, the responsibility towards stutdents to successfully teach relevant topics grows grows.
3) I would like to convey to the students that…
… research is fun! Unfortunaltely, I sometimes have the feeling that some students consider scientific work as a rather unpleasant duty and want to turn their backs on the academic world after completing their studies. That is a pity, and I would be happy to contribute to change this. I would like to motivate and support students to develop and pursue their own research ideas. That way, I hope to give students an eye for exciting issues and to introduce them to handling complex problems and possibilities of finding approaches to them.
4) What particularly excites me about my research projects is...
… the fact that they are driven by real problems from companies. My research projects are mainly located in the area of software development in large enterprises. Due to constant technological developments, new challenges arise in this area which are exciting to investigate. For the data collection I often talk with employees and thus get a comprehensive insight into their daily work. It is an exciting challenge to come to scientifically relevant results on this basis.
Dr. Maximilian Happach
Since June 2022, the Chair of Energy Economics has a postdoc. In our interview, Maximilian Happach talks about his career and his interests in research and teaching.
1) What was your academic career like so far?
After my bachelor's degree in International Business Administration and the European master's degree in System Dynamics, I did my PhD in the Cluster of Excellence "Simulation Technology" at the University of Stuttgart. I wrote my dissertation with the title "System dynamic models as an extension of the methods of investment calculation for electricity storage in the German electricity market" at the Institute for Diversity Studies in Engineering and completed it in the midst of the pandemic. Working there was a very nice experience, because as an economist I was able to work with students from the technical sciences on complex socio-technical issues. I can now deepen this experience further.
2) For what reasons did you decide to move to Dresden?
I have known Professor Möst for many years through events organized by the Society for Energy Science and Energy Policy. Last year, Professor Möst presented a job advertisement that appealed to me directly and I applied for it. Now I am part of a team that delivers excellent scientific output and acquires many projects. I can work on a very exciting hydrogen project and also help to shape the teaching. I also think that the Technische Universität Dresden, as a university of excellence, creates a wonderful environment for chairs and institutes to work together across disciplines and to attract highly motivated students. This are simply very good basic conditions for science and teaching.
3) What are your research interests?
My previous research has been on policy analysis in the energy industry and on studies of decision-making in dynamic complex systems. For this purpose, I have used system dynamics. In the energy industry, I am particularly interested in renewable energies and how to enable the transformation to a carbon-neutral energy system. Methodologically, I would like to orientate myself towards optimization models used at the chair and to identify synergies with system dynamics.
4) And which topics you are interested in in teaching?
Our students are the decision-makers of tomorrow and my goal is to equip them with tools and knowledge that enables them to make better decisions. Energy economics is a very dynamic subject. Thus, teaching must be adapted again and again and I am fascinated by how teaching can be further developed didactically. Especially due to shock of the pandemic, established methods in teaching were faced with great challenges. The results are digitized lectures and zoom meetings. With the return to face-to-face meetings, we can now combine the digitized lectures and the previous didactic methods to convey complex issues in a practical way and offer them in a student-oriented manner. I am excited and looking forward to feedback from the students.
Lisa-Marie Langesee
Lisa-Marie Langesee has been a research assistant and doctoral student at the Chair of Information Management since October 2021. Already during her master's degree in Business Information Systems, Lisa-Marie worked for three semesters as an e-tutor at the chair of Professor Schoop. Recently, Lisa-Marie has also been supporting the faculty by being a member of the study commission on the one hand and part of the digital teaching team in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. In our interview, Lisa-Marie reports on what she is working on at the Chair of Information Management and what tasks she faces in the digital teaching team.
1) How did it come about that you did not switch to a company after your studies but took up a position at the Chair of Information Management?
During my master's studies, I worked as a student assistant at the professorship for three semesters and built up my interest in research activities. Early on, the staff of the chair gave me a very good and extensive insight into the everyday life of a research assistant, which only increased my enthusiasm for this multi-perspective work. During my master's degree, I also deepened my knowledge in the field of information management, as I found and still find the combination of business information systems with pedagogical aspects very innovative and exciting. Before starting my master's thesis, I contacted Prof. Schoop and informed him of my interest in a doctorate and employment at the chair. Only a short time later I was able to start working at the chair.
2) How did you master the change from studying to working at the chair?
The change from study to job was not too difficult for me. I already knew all my colleagues and received a very warm welcome. Due to the fact that I was involved in different courses from the beginning and partly organized and moderated them, I was quickly familiar with the "normal" semester schedule and everything that goes with it.
3) What are your tasks at the Chair of Information Management and which of them do you particularly enjoy?
My teaching activities at the professorship include courses, the supervision of seminar and final theses, the correction of exams and consultations. However, employment as a research assistant is also associated with a scientific research activity. This involves the writing of scientific publications that are to be presented at conferences or published in journals. But in addition to research and teaching, the so-called academic self-administration is also an aspect of the position. This includes, for example, participation in the study commission, in which I have been working since June 2022.
It is not easy to say what gives me the most pleasure, as I find the combination of teaching and research quiet good, never boring and always challenging. It is this combination and the flexibility that make the job as a whole just right for me.
4) In addition to your work at the chair, you have recently started supporting Digital Teaching team of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. What ist this project all about?
Yes, since 06/2022 I am the representative of the Faculty of Business and Economics in the "Digital Teaching" team of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. This team consists of one representative of each of the faculties of the BU school and a representative of the ZiLL. The core task of this team is to act as a permanent contact person and change agent for digital or hybrid teaching. By involving representatives of each faculty, faculty-specific requirements can be observed and the staff can be supported by a competent team experienced in the field of e-learning. By the end of this year, we will present an concept for digital teaching to the Vice-Rector for Education. We want to establish ourselves as a central point of contact for questions, challenges, or even wishes in the digital teaching of students and teachers. A website for our team is currently under construction, but you can reach us at . The "Digital Teaching" team operates according to the service concept and aligns itself with the goals and mission statements of a university of the 21st century.
Jun.-Prof. Dr. Samanthi Dijkstra-Silva
Since April 2022, Samanthi Dijkstra-Silva is the holder of the Hans Carl von Carlowitz Junior Professorship for Sustainability Assessment and Policy at the Faculty of Business and Economics. She moves to Dresden from the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), where she conducted research on sustainability assessment and transformation. At the same time, she completed her doctorate at the Centre for Sustainability Management at Leuphana University in Lüneburg on 'Managing, measuring and assessing sustainability performance'.
Her main research topics are corporate sustainability, sustainability management, sustainability performance, measurement and assessment. In current research projects, she focuses on sustainability impact, the positive contribution to sustainable development (keyword: handprint) and investigates sustainability assessment from a behavioral science perspective.
The first period at the TU Dresden and the faculty were for me...
characterized by upheaval and change. For me, it is not only the start of the junior professorship at a new institution, but also the return from parental leave. In the quieter phases of parental leave, I was able to focus well on research, while teaching and administrative tasks were given less consideration during that time. Now I am looking forward to developing new, innovative courses and expanding my research profile at TU Dresden. Having worked for a long time at the smaller, rather young and strongly sustainability-oriented Leuphana University, I am struck by the character of the TU Dresden as a long-established university with a technical and scientific focus. I can continue the interdisciplinary cooperation that I have known from Leuphana at TU Dresden, as I am a member of the Faculty of Economics, but also of the Faculty of Environment, and can open my courses to students with various professional backgrounds.
For me, being a junior professor means ...
above all, three things: independence, joy and being a role model. Independence in research, but also freedom in the selection of courses allow me to set priorities that I consider to be particularly important. One specific example that I will be investigating in more detail is what influence lifestyle minimalism can have on sustainable consumption and companies. I enjoy the tasks of the junior professorship, because this path has always been my goal. And to go this way as a woman of color fills me with special pride - if I can be a lighthouse to others, I will be grateful.
I would like to convey to the students that ...
teaching is a collaboration and an exchange. I would like to give my students the opportunity to trigger and drive change and transformation in the functions they will perform later. In particular, to give the generation of Fridays for Future, in which there is a lot of desire for change and potential, access to tools and arguments with which they can bring about change towards sustainable development. On the one hand, I would like to share my passion topics, such as positive contributions to sustainable development like the handprint, on the one hand, and be open to what students need right now, on the other. For example, in a past course it became clear that students had a need to look at specific individual opportunities for taking action towards sustainability and then we use a session to deal with our own consumer behavior and possibilities for change.
What I would like to push forward in the next few years ...
feels like a lot – this is only possible in cooperation with my team and network. In the field of corporate sustainability and sustainability management, I focus on how sustainability assessment can contribute to a transformation to a sustainable world. Specifically, research and teaching projects are planned on the topics of impact, minimalism and the interaction of sustainability assessment and individuals. A concrete look at the area of impact, here I work with Alexa Böckel on the understanding of impact in the context of incubation and innovation programs and startups. Central to all topics is that sustainable action aims to secure our human (survival) life on this planet. To be successful, a sustainable mindset must therefore continue to move out of the niche and into the mainstream of science and practice.
What unites my most exciting research projects ...
is to look at an object of investigation from different perspectives and thus to discover new facets and aspects. Using a new theory or behavioral perspective to examine sustainability assessment and discover new facets – for example, why it is so difficult to find examples of measuring positive contributions of products or companies to sustainable development. A sub-area of my research is precisely the question: what are exactly positive contributions to sustainable development? That's when I looked at the handprint, which, as a counterpart to the footprint, deals with how we can creatively contribute to sustainable development. The footprint primarily measures the negative effects of our lives, such as emissions, and how we can reduce them. So far, we often think of sustainable development in terms of reducing the negative, but from a business perspective, it is much more exciting to see what positive contribution we can make through an innovative product or a new service.
Jun.-Prof. Dr. Tristan Becker
Since January 2022 Tristan Becker has been working at the faculty and is the holder of the newly established Junior Professorhsip for Business Administration, especially Management Science. Tristan Becker comes to Dresden from RWTH Aachen, where he has been a postdoctoral researcher at the Chair of Operations Management since 2019. Tristan Becker completed his PhD on "Innovative Optimization Methods for Location and Personnel Planning: Models and Algorithms with Applications in Production and Service" at Ruhr University Bochum in 2019 with top marks.
The first period at the TU Dresden and the faculty were for me...
very pleasant thanks to the comprehensive support from the dean's office and my secretary Ms. Krug. Although I have only been here for a few weeks, I feel that I have been very well received at the faculty and I am looking forward to research collaborations and my teaching in the summer semester.
For me, being a junior professor means ...
being able to teach and research independently and represent the field of Management Science at the faculty. I particularly value the freedom of being able to set the agenda of my research by myself. In addition, I can independently develop innovative teaching, with direct interfaces to my research.
I would like to convey to students that ...
Management Science methods, and in particular Operations Research, can help us solve a variety of problems. However, in order to select a suitable method, one should also know the theoretical foundations. For the application of quantitative methods such as mathematical optimization, however, it is at the same time important to implement these methods and, at least for small case studies, to implement them in a programming language. It is therefore important to me that, in addition to theory, all students are given the opportunity to implement quantitative methods "hands-on" with computer support.
As a junior professor, you don't have your own team and are more of a lone wolf....
and, of course, I can't pursue all of my research ideas on my own. But I believe that some of these research ideas would be excellent to work on in dissertation projects. Therefore, my goal is to attract external funding. Thus, I hope to offer new doctoral students the opportunity to work on exciting research questions in the field of Management Science at the faculty.
My most exciting research projects so far have been...
supply chains of renewable fuels in the Cluster of Excellence "The Fuel Science Center". We developed new mathematical optimization models to analyze the structure of future supply chains of renewable fuels in Europe. In doing so, we have taken into account limited availability of renewable resources, different production pathways and future demand for fuels in order to identify transformation pathways towards climate neutrality in the transport sector. In addition to the costs of future supply chains, we also considered other criteria, such as social acceptability. Research at the "Fuel Science Center" is exciting due to its high level of interdisciplinarity, as the project brings together researchers from all fields.
Current research topics I am involved with are ...
the consideration of uncertainties in the development of rotating shift schedules. In a rotating shift schedule, each employee works the same schedule that repeats after a certain amount of time. Rotating shift schedules are used in a wide variety of organizations. However, in the past, uncertainties in the development of rotating shift schedules were mostly neglected. The uncertainties companies face in workforce planning are exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, if employees are unavailable on short notice, this will cause the original plan to become unacceptable. The result can then be high costs or many last-minute changes to individual employees' shift schedules.
Dr. Sebastian Oelrich
We welcome Dr. Sebastian Oelrich as a new research associate (post-doc) at the faculty. He did his PhD in Accounting on the topic of whistleblowing and white-collar crime at Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg. Parts of his dissertation, dealing with incentive systems and motivation of whistleblowers, have already been published in journals such as Business Research, Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility and Betriebswirtschaftliche Forschung und Praxis. He is currently working regarding whistleblowing in auditing firms. A practical article on this topic has just been published as a co-author in WPg - Die Wirtschaftsprüfung, and current projects have already been awarded research promotion prizes by EURAM and GfeW.
What was your academic career like so far?
I studied Business Economics at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) in the Bachelor and International Area Studies in the Master. The Master's degree helped me to better understand other approaches, theories and disciplines and still shapes my research today. Building on this, I attended a Master's in Business Law at MLU and SWUPL in Chongqing, China, focusing on white collar crime and criminal law. For my PhD, I then moved to Magdeburg, where I completed my dissertation on "Whistleblowing as a means to detect and prevent fraud: Four essays from different behavioral and economic perspectives" with Summa Cum Laude in 2021. In addition, I also conducted research on corporate culture and corruption in a third-party funded project at MLU. I am now starting my habilitation in Dresden and look forward to an exciting time.
For what reasons did you decide to move to Dresden?
It was actually the job advertisement that appealed to me due to its interdisciplinary character and its branching out of several chairs at the faculty. I saw direct links in research with the Chairs of Management Accounting & Control, Auditing and Taxation, Environmental Management and Organization, among others. Of course, the general conditions were also important: the TU as a research-strong university and Dresden as a simply beautiful city!
What are your research interests?
I am particularly interested in issues around white-collar crime and ethics and therefore often find myself in literature and discourses outside the traditional accounting field. Thats why I also really appreciate the interdisciplinary linkages at the faculty! Using experimental approaches and surveys, I try to better understand pro-social, but also corrupt, immoral or illegal behavior of the actors involved in order to develop effective interventions. I am increasingly interested in aspects of social and corporate norms, as well as actors of (social) control and supervision, especially auditing and mass media. Of course, I am also interested in more "classical" accounting topics, especially the development of non-financial indicators, often referred to as CSR or sustainability reporting.
And what topics are you interested in teaching?
I expect to teach content related to internal corporate accounting and controlling in particular. I will also focus on the link to topics such as white-collar crime and fraud risk, but also on business ethics and sustainability. This is where I see the ever-growing importance for practice as well. In the summer of 2022, for example, I will be teaching a course on "Fraud and Ethics in Accounting Practice" as a Visiting Professor at Aarhus University in Denmark.
2021
Prof. Dr. Blagoy Blagoev
Since June 2021, Professor Blagoy Blagoev holds the Chair for Business Administration, esp. Organization. The chair was established in addition to the existing chair of Professor Frank Schirmer. Thus, it strengthens the management area of the faculty.
Prof. Dr. Blagoev moves from Leuphana University Lüneburg to Dresden, where he worked at the Institute of Management and Organization as a post-doctoral research associate. Blagoy Blagoev received his doctoral degree as a fellow of the DFG graduate school “Research on Organizational Paths” with a thesis on the path dependency of organizational time regimes in 2015.
To the students, I would like to convey ...
that organization is an important, fascinating and multifaceted subject within business administration, especially because it opens up exciting connections to neighboring disciplines in the social sciences and beyond. On the one hand, the discussion of organization-theoretical questions prepares students for consulting and management positions in companies. On the other hand, it also promotes critical thinking and reflexivity in terms of the social and ecological implications of business activities. Organizations, especially globally acting companies, bear a responsibility for the major social challenges of our time, such as climate change, global inequality, or digitalization. Organizations today must therefore be conceived, designed and managed in such a way that they can behave meaningfully and take into account issues of sustainability, ethics and innovation in addition to economic efficiency. Thus, I want to awake an interest in organizational research in all its complexity and diversity of perspectives in my students. In addition, I think it is important to foster the students' organizational imagination. This means teaching them how to recognize organizational connections that are not immediately visible and how to critically question organizational structures and practices that are taken for granted. This is precisely what enables students to develop informed alternatives to traditional organizational concepts in science and practice.
In building my team, it is important to me to ...
create a collegial, collaborative and creative working environment that offers all team members the necessary freedom to develop their skills and interests in order to optimally represent the subject of organization within the university and to help shape international research discourses. By collegiality, I mean that important decisions are made in a participatory and inclusive manner, involving as many diverse voices as possible. This, of course, requires the inclusion of diverse life experiences and backgrounds. This also builds an open working environment. By collaboration, I mean a fundamental orientation towards cooperation in research and teaching, both within the chair team and within the faculty, the university, and beyond. Many of my research projects are international and interdisciplinary. Thus, I am very much looking forward to the numerous opportunities for collaboration with my new colleagues at TU Dresden. In addition, creativity - the effort to develop novel, original, and useful ideas in research and teaching - is very important to me. My goal is to build a team of open-minded, curious, and intrinsically motivated people who enjoy scholarly discourse as well as exploring contemporary problems, practices, and forms of organization. Creativity always includes a critical attitude, i.e. the courage to question existing knowledge, to dare new things, and to explore unfamiliar research terrain. I would be very happy if the activities I am planning create an open, creative thinking space for idea development and knowledge exchange.
My most exciting research project to date has been about ...
That's really hard to answer because I'm very interested in all my projects, both completed and ongoing. Basically, I would say that I am fascinated by unusual, contradictory and puzzling phenomena in the world of organization and work, which I research primarily using qualitative methods. The methods can be as diverse as the phenomena and contexts of investigation. I am thinking, for example, of my case study-based research on excessive working hours, a widespread and, above all, persistent phenomenon despite its well-known negative consequences for people, organizations, the economy, and society. Or my ethnographic research on the phenomenon of co-working spaces, i.e., the regular gathering of freelancers and self-employed people in the very open-plan office-like structures that they actually wanted to escape through their career choice, but in which they now increasingly work and pay for. In another project, I have investigated the contradictory character of history in organizations: In the case of the tradition-rich British Museum, I have been able to show how history can both promote and prevent the introduction of new technologies. Thus, the spectrum of phenomena that seem exciting to me is broad. What they all have in common, however, is that they question our common knowledge and understanding of organization and management, and thus allow for theory building and development. What these projects certainly also have in common is their theoretical imprint through my interest in questions of temporality. The latter open up exciting perspectives on important and current topics of organizational research, especially through their broad as well as deep theorization and transdisciplinarity.
Current research topics I am engaged in include ...
temporality, sustainability, and new forms of organizing. On the topic of temporality, I am currently working on two conceptual papers. One of them deals with the constitution of time in organizations, i.e. the question of how idiosyncratic time regimes, decoupled from the time structures of society, emerge in organizations. The other paper theorizes the influence of history on contemporary organizational events by analyzing patterns of interdependence between routines and roles. In the field of sustainability, I am fascinated by the question of how organizations that have historically been primarily economic-short-term oriented can learn to be ecological-long-term oriented in order to be able to implement their ambitious sustainability strategies. I pursue this question empirically by means of a case study at a large German automobile manufacturer. Temporality, in particular the tension between short- and long-term time horizons, plays a central role here as well. In addition, I am working on two projects on new forms of organizing, one dealing with the formally hierarchy-free organizational form of two Copenhagen startups and the other with openness as an innovative organizational principle of scientific work. I would like to expand this research portfolio at the TU Dresden with two topics that are currently of particular interest to me: the influence of emergent technologies such as AI on organizations and the world of work on the one hand, and innovation in new forms of cooperation on the other. For both topics, the TU Dresden offers numerous opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration, which I am very much looking forward to.
More information about Prof. Blagoev and his chair:
https://tu-dresden.de/bu/wirtschaft/bwl/org-prof-blagoev