Course Schedule
Veranstaltungen von Prof. Dr. Matthias Wenzel
Lehrveranstaltungen
Foundations of Management & Entrepreneurship (Seminar/Übung)
Dozent/in: Matthias Wenzel
Termin:
14-täglich | Mittwoch | 12:15 - 17:45 | 16.10.2023 - 02.02.2024 | C 25.006 coworking space
14-täglich | Mittwoch | 12:15 - 17:45 | 16.10.2023 - 02.02.2024 | C 25.006a coworking space
14-täglich | Mittwoch | 12:15 - 17:45 | 16.10.2023 - 02.02.2024 | C 25.007 coworking space
14-täglich | Mittwoch | 12:15 - 17:45 | 16.10.2023 - 02.02.2024 | C 25.019 Seminarraum
14-täglich | Mittwoch | 12:15 - 17:45 | 16.10.2023 - 02.02.2024 | C 25.021 Seminarraum
14-täglich | Mittwoch | 14:15 - 17:45 | 16.10.2023 - 13.12.2023 | C HS 1
14-täglich | Mittwoch | 14:15 - 17:45 | 10.01.2024 - 24.01.2024 | C HS 1
Inhalt: What does it mean to be a “manager” and/or “entrepreneur” in today’s ever-more complex business environment and societal context? What does it mean to be a student or researcher of management and entrepreneurship? Among others, this seminar provides a forum for reflections and discussions on the roles of managers and entrepreneurs in organizations and societies, the historical evolution of these roles as well as their timeliness in the face of digital business contexts and pushes toward more sustainable business practices, implications for the set of skills to be acquired by students of management and entrepreneurship, implications for scientific work in the areas of management and entrepreneurship, and the entrepreneurial management of contemporary organizations. Blending in-class sessions with interactions in the digital sphere, the seminar builds on students’ group reflections, discussions, investigations, and presentations. Therefore, participants are asked to bring any digital devices (notebooks, tablets, smartphones, etc.) that they would like to use for in-class investigations.
Utopia: Organizing for Innovation (Seminar)
Dozent/in: Matthias Wenzel
Termin:
14-täglich | Dienstag | 16:15 - 19:45 | 23.10.2023 - 02.02.2024 | C 25.021 Seminarraum | C 25.021
Inhalt: Innovation is ascribed to be a central driver of competitive advantage and economic growth, as well as way to effectuate desirable futures in the present. Therefore, firms increasingly aim to foster novelty systematically by organizing their innovation processes. However, “organizing” and “innovation” are situated in a paradigmatic tension: Whereas the former builds on continuity, the latter implies change. In this seminar, we will zoom in on this tension by observing, evaluating, and discussing ways to organize innovation at Utopia, a start center for new ventures with social and ecological missions in Lüneburg. This involves participating in Utopia’s event series, conducting short, ad-hoc interviews with other event participants, evaluating these events based on a prestructured questionnaire, and reflecting on these events as ways to organize innovation based on a deep reading of prior literature.
Betreuung Abschlussarbeiten SoSe 2024 - Organisation (Belegung)
Dozent/in: Sarah Stanske, Matthias Wenzel
Inhalt: TOPICS The Professorship for Organization Studies supervises Bachelor and Master theses in the areas of organization, strategy, and entrepreneurship that are designed as conceptual papers, qualitative studies, or literature reviews. The approach of the Professorship for Organization Studies is to help students find and specify their topic in areas of organization, strategy, and entrepreneurship. Therefore, students do not apply for a supervision place with a fixed topic, nor are potential topics prediscussed in one-on-one meetings before the provision of supervision places. 1. APPLICATION AND SELECTION The selection procedure at the Professorship for Organization Studies is inseparably connected with the formal procedure for coordinating supervision places at the School of Management & Technology. The application deadline is communicated by the Study Dean’s Office, and selection decisions are communicated in keeping with the regulations by the Study Dean’s Office. For an application to be complete, it is indispensable to upload an up-to-date performance record from QIS. Please use the folder “applications” on myStudy to do so. If the number of applications exceeds available supervision capacities, decisions on acceptance/rejection are made based on your performance in courses and seminars of the Professorship for Organization Studies. For this purpose, we convert the grades achieved in these courses and seminars into points and rank received applications from the highest to lowest total number of points achieved; in case of point parity, the lot decides. For this, we use the following scheme: -1.0: 10 points -1.3: 8 points -1.7: 6 points -2.0: 5 points -2.3: 4 points -2.7: 3 points -3.0: 2.5 points -3.3: 2 points -3.7: 1.5 points -4.0: 1 point -5.0: 0 points For courses and seminars with (at least partial) written performance records, we concede the double amount of points. Students who submit an application after rejection in previous semesters receive five extra points. Please note that an acceptance notification is conditional upon meeting the deadlines specified below. 2. TOPIC DEVELOPMENT Once you receive an acceptance notification, your main task is to develop a topic for your final thesis. As you know, a final thesis is a piece of scientific work. As such, your final thesis is expected to extend theory debates—in our case, in organization, entrepreneurship, or strategy. Therefore, your next step is to read, read, read, … so as to embed your thesis in a stream of research that you would like to extend. This does not mean that you are not allowed to be interested in a certain organizational, strategic, or entrepreneurial phenomenon that is relevant for practitioners, quite the contrary. After all, a key question that we will ask you is in which ways your analysis of that phenomenon extends our understanding of extant debates in organization, strategy, or entrepreneurship research. As you most likely also know by now, the key currency in management and entrepreneurship is journal articles. Therefore, we recommend focusing your reading on journal articles. This list provides you with an overview of journals in our field: https://vhbonline.org/vhb4you/vhb-jourqual/vhb-jourqual-3/gesamtliste In the colloquium (more on this below), we will discuss some merits and pitfalls of such rankings. However, as a rule of thumb, when searching for and specifying topics, you can typically ignore articles published in journals with a rating of C or lower; or you should be even more reflective about the use of articles published in lower-than-B journals. To provide you with more specificity: What we ask you to do is to identify a stream of literature that faces a certain gap/challenge that you would like to address with your final thesis. Among others, streams of literature could be: -Utopias and dystopias, real utopias -Organizational identity -Strategy as practice -Legitimacy/legitimation -Discourse/narratives in strategy-making -Temporality -Path dependence -Strategic persistence -Tensions, dilemmas, dualities, dialectics, and paradoxes -Rigor/relevance, or the academic-practitioner gap -Boredom in organizations -Affect and atmospheres in organizations This is not a definite list. Zillions of other options are feasible as well. Your task is to position your final thesis in a stream of literature that you find interesting, and that deserves to be extended. 3. TOPIC SPECIFICATION Furthermore, we ask you to specify your topic while reading. Importantly, this work should lead you to a clearly articulated research question. Good research questions typically begin with “how” or “why”. Furthermore, when specifying your topic, please remember that the university system is dedicated to truth-seeking, not consulting (but of course, your can write a section on practical implications later on). Therefore, we are interested in understanding and explaining how things *are*, not in prescribing how things *can* or *should* be. As a stylistic example, a good research question is: How do organizational members change an organizational identity? In turn, a bad example is: How can actors change an organizational identity? (please note that the good example is good in terms of style, not content because it is way too broad) 4. PROPOSAL Based on these specifications, we ask you to compose a proposal (max. two pages) for your final thesis. This proposal should explicate the following aspects: 1. The working title 2. Research question: (as explained in the previous paragraph) 3. Relevance: Why is it interesting to address this research question? By relevance, we mean “theoretical relevance”: Why is it important to address the theoretical problem at hand? 4. Positioning: In which stream of literature is the topic embedded? What do we know? What do we not know or what is the problematic assumption that you would like to challenge? 5. Methodological approach: If your intend to conduct an empirical study, please specify your research design and your aspired data collection procedures. Please note that conceptual theses are eligible as well. If so, elaborations on methodical procedures are not required. 6. Abstract description of expected findings: When developing your ideas, you might already have ideas about the direction that your analysis might take. If so, please sketch this direction here. Please use the “Proposal upload” folder on myStudy to hand in our proposal. 5. FEEDBACK MEETINGS AND REGISTRATION OF FINAL THESES In order to provide you with feedback and enable mutual learning, the minimum requirement for a supervision of your final-thesis project is to participate in two meetings in which we will discuss your proposal. The first meeting is meant to be a status report. We will use this meeting to discuss your initial ideas based on your proposals as well as a brief two-min pitch of your idea (no slides required). Neither your proposal nor your ideas have to be perfect at this stage. The key aim of this meeting is to provide you with constructive feedback. However, if we conclude after the first meeting that your topic is well-elaborated, and if you would like to immediately start working on your final thesis, we will register your final thesis immediately after the meeting. The working time specified in your study regulations will start at this day. If we conclude after the first meeting that the concept of your final thesis requires substantial revisions, we allow you to revise your proposal until the second meeting. The second meeting, then, serves as a further feedback platform for open questions, potential adjustments, and specifications. Your final thesis will be registered immediately after this meeting. 6. PROCEDURES AND DEADLINES -Ca. 1 month after the acceptance notification: Proposal submission -Ca. 1 month after the acceptance notification: 1st feedback session and potential registration of your final thesis -Ca. 1.5 months after the acceptance notification: 2nd feedback session and definite registration of your final thesis The exact dates and deadlines are communicated with the acceptance notification. 7. COLLOQUIUM/FORUM Based on current study regulations, Bachelor students are required to take a Bachelor Colloquium, and Master students a Master Forum. You may select any of the ones on offer. 8. THE FINAL THESIS: STRUCTURE AND FORMAL REQUIREMENTS Final theses composed at the Professorship for Organization Studies adhere to the style guide of the Institute of Management & Organization. You find the style guide under “Material” on myStudy. The submission format is set by the current study regulations. 9. DEFENSE (only for Bachelor Theses) Upon submission, we will begin to assess your final thesis. Once this is complete, we will set up a ZOOM meeting in which you will get to defend your final thesis. This meeting will take about 30 min. For this meeting, we ask you to prepare a 5-min summary of the key arguments of your final thesis (slides are optional). This summary will serve as a springboard the subsequent discussion.