Teaching
Digital innovations are impacting everyone’s everyday live. While technological advancements have become increasingly complex and intertwined, transforming the technological landscape, ultimately forcing a cascade of transformations.
Change, as an aspect of transformation, is something that has been studied by organizational scholars for decades. A deep understanding about how to manage change is available, yet many transformations fail. Given the increasing awareness of the importance of sustainability on all kinds of dimensions, these two trends are at odds and solving this dissonance is paramount for becoming a sustainable digital society.
A small “warning” in advance, to manage expectations for this seminar: this is not a seminar to “sit back and listen.” Instead, it is a course that builds on interactive and cooperative learning and requires continuous work throughout the semester. Participation in this seminar involves teamwork, presentations, peer feedback, and intensive exchanges. The course is held in English.
Digital innovations are impacting everyone’s everyday live. While technological advancements have become increasingly complex and intertwined, transforming the technological landscape, ultimately forcing a cascade of transformations.
Change, as an aspect of transformation, is something that has been studied by organizational scholars for decades. A deep understanding about how to manage change is available, yet many transformations fail. Given the increasing awareness of the importance of sustainability on all kinds of dimensions, these two trends are at odds and solving this dissonance is paramount for becoming a sustainable digital society.
A small “warning” in advance, to manage expectations for this seminar: this is not a seminar to “sit back and listen.” Instead, it is a course that builds on interactive and cooperative learning and requires continuous work throughout the semester. Participation in this seminar involves teamwork, presentations, peer feedback, and intensive exchanges. The course is held in English.
Different conditions apply depending on the department or examination office. Please contact the examination office responsible for you for more information. In general, however, two examiners are always required: the first examiner and main supervisor, as well as a second person who usually only acts as an examiner. Please think about both persons at the beginning of your efforts to find a place for your thesis.
Theses in cooperation with a company are possible and welcome, but it is always important to have a clear and above all main theoretical reference and contribution. This type of collaboration is particularly helpful when collecting data by means of interviews, for example. Group work is theoretically possible, but is an exception.
If your thesis is supervised by the Information Systems working group, you will opt for supervision with (mostly) fixed, usually bi-weekly appointments or appointments that are arranged at short notice and on an ad-hoc basis. Since many questions can be answered at short notice by e-mail, you should preferably use this medium for questions, but meetings on site or via Zoom can often also be scheduled at short notice.
Once you have received general confirmation of possible support, the next step for you is to prepare an exposé. Based on this, the last major uncertainties are discussed and the next steps are discussed. The thesis can then be officially registered.
| Themengebiet | Thema | Fragestellung | Methodik | Literatur |
| Digitale Transformation | Digitale Transformation im Gesundheitswesen | Wie verändert sich insbesondere in Kliniken die Arbeitsweise, Praktiken und Routinen, sowie Interaktionen zwischen und Verhalten von Mitarbeitenden durch Informationssysteme und (teil-) autonomen Agenten? | Interviews Spurdatenanalyse | |
| TBD | ||||
| TBD |
Exposé
The Exposé should be one to three pages long (excluding bibliography) and should emphasize the following aspects:
Introduction
Describe the general phenomenon or topic and why it is important to study it.
State of research:
Explain what is known about the topic, what has been studied so far in the literature in this area, and why this topic is interesting to study.
Problem:
Explain the specific question to be addressed by the topic.
Aproach/Method:
Briefly describe how you will approach your work. What methods will you use? Also indicate which suitable theory(ies) can contribute to answering your problem.
Literature:
If possible, 10 or more references, preferably from high quality journals, cited according to APA including page references for citations.
Introduction
In the introduction, you introduce the reader to your topic and present the research question and the aim of the paper. It is important that you explain in the introduction why it is important to investigate your research question. The following guiding questions can help you write your introduction:
- What is the topic being investigated?
- Why is the topic important and exciting?
- Why have I chosen a particular research question and why is it important to answer this question?
- What methodology am I using?
Theory
The focus of the theory section is to provide the reader with the necessary background knowledge to understand your work. Important terms are briefly defined and the theoretical approach is explained. In the case of empirical work, the current state of research is also presented.
Methodology
In the methods section of your paper, you describe to the reader how you proceeded and why you chose this method. The methodology includes information on the data basis used (e.g. number of subjects, number of sources used), data collection (e.g. recruitment of interviewees, databases used, key terms) and the procedure. It is important that the reader receives enough information to be able to carry out the study themselves if necessary.
Results
- No interpretation of the results
- Only report results that are relevant to the research question
- Integration of the results (classification into subject areas, categories, etc.)
Discussion
The goal of the discussion is to highlight the insights gained from the work and to derive implications for science and practice from the results. The following guiding questions can help you when writing the discussion:
- How does the work contribute to a better understanding?
- What do the results mean? How can the results be interpreted against the chosen theoretical background?
- What new insights have I brought to light with my work? What contribution does my work make?
- What are the implications for practice?
- What are the weaknesses and limitations
Information on literature research
To better understand how a structured literature review works, this explainer is very good.
Also quite helpful:
- A Video of the Universitätsbibliothek on literature reviews
- A list of Databases focusing on journals publishing economic and business research
- The SuUB also has a homepage for queries on economic and business research
- The SuUB is also a great place to search for PDFs
In general, I would recommend using the following literature databases in particular:
- Business Source Premier / EBSCO
- ProQuest
- SSRN
- Web of Science
- ACM digital labrary
- emerald insight
- IEEE xplore
You will probably not need all of the literature databases listed here, and you may also need additional ones - the results depend heavily on the topic in question, the journals required, etc.
Another very good place to go is the Association for Information Systems (AIS). It provides the following resources, among others:
- AIS eLibrary
- A list of all associated journals and conferences
- A list of high-quality journals focusing on Information Systems (Senior Scholar's Basket)
- A list of upcoming and past conferences
- A Research Repository
- As well as an overview of central methods, theories, and publications in Information Systems
Different conditions apply depending on the department or examination office. Please contact the examination office responsible for you for more information. In general, however, two examiners are always required: the first examiner and main supervisor, as well as a second person who usually only acts as an examiner. Please think about both persons at the beginning of your efforts to find a place for your thesis.
Theses in cooperation with a company are possible and welcome, but it is always important to have a clear and above all main theoretical reference and contribution. This type of collaboration is particularly helpful when collecting data by means of interviews, for example. Group work is theoretically possible, but is an exception.
If your thesis is supervised by the Information Systems working group, you will opt for supervision with (mostly) fixed, usually bi-weekly appointments or appointments that are arranged at short notice and on an ad-hoc basis. Since many questions can be answered at short notice by e-mail, you should preferably use this medium for questions, but meetings on site or via Zoom can often also be scheduled at short notice.
Once you have received general confirmation of possible support, the next step for you is to prepare an exposé. Based on this, the last major uncertainties are discussed and the next steps are discussed. The thesis can then be officially registered.
Theses in a Master's program can be supervised as long as the topic is clearly related to the core research topics of the RG. These are in particular theses on digital transformation, information system development, as well as psychological or social factors in the context of digital artifacts. Work related to the analysis of digital trace data can also be supervised.
If you are interested, please contact us by e-mail with a description of your topic or subject area.
Exposé
The Exposé should be one to three pages long (excluding bibliography) and should emphasize the following aspects:
Introduction
Describe the general phenomenon or topic and why it is important to study it.
State of research:
Explain what is known about the topic, what has been studied so far in the literature in this area, and why this topic is interesting to study.
Problem:
Explain the specific question to be addressed by the topic.
Aproach/Method:
Briefly describe how you will approach your work. What methods will you use? Also indicate which suitable theory(ies) can contribute to answering your problem.
Literature:
If possible, 10 or more references, preferably from high quality journals, cited according to APA including page references for citations.
Introduction
In the introduction, you introduce the reader to your topic and present the research question and the aim of the paper. It is important that you explain in the introduction why it is important to investigate your research question. The following guiding questions can help you write your introduction:
- What is the topic being investigated?
- Why is the topic important and exciting?
- Why have I chosen a particular research question and why is it important to answer this question?
- What methodology am I using?
Theory
The focus of the theory section is to provide the reader with the necessary background knowledge to understand your work. Important terms are briefly defined and the theoretical approach is explained. In the case of empirical work, the current state of research is also presented.
Methodology
In the methods section of your paper, you describe to the reader how you proceeded and why you chose this method. The methodology includes information on the data basis used (e.g. number of subjects, number of sources used), data collection (e.g. recruitment of interviewees, databases used, key terms) and the procedure. It is important that the reader receives enough information to be able to carry out the study themselves if necessary.
Results
- No interpretation of the results
- Only report results that are relevant to the research question
- Integration of the results (classification into subject areas, categories, etc.)
Discussion
The goal of the discussion is to highlight the insights gained from the work and to derive implications for science and practice from the results. The following guiding questions can help you when writing the discussion:
- How does the work contribute to a better understanding?
- What do the results mean? How can the results be interpreted against the chosen theoretical background?
- What new insights have I brought to light with my work? What contribution does my work make?
- What are the implications for practice?
- What are the weaknesses and limitations
Information on literature research
To better understand how a structured literature review works, this explainer is very good.
Also quite helpful:
- A Video of the Universitätsbibliothek on literature reviews
- A list of Databases focusing on journals publishing economic and business research
- The SuUB also has a homepage for queries on economic and business research
- The SuUB is also a great place to search for PDFs
In general, I would recommend using the following literature databases in particular:
- Business Source Premier / EBSCO
- ProQuest
- SSRN
- Web of Science
- ACM digital labrary
- emerald insight
- IEEE xplore
You will probably not need all of the literature databases listed here, and you may also need additional ones - the results depend heavily on the topic in question, the journals required, etc.
Another very good place to go is the Association for Information Systems (AIS). It provides the following resources, among others:
- AIS eLibrary
- A list of all associated journals and conferences
- A list of high-quality journals focusing on Information Systems (Senior Scholar's Basket)
- A list of upcoming and past conferences
- A Research Repository
- As well as an overview of central methods, theories, and publications in Information Systems