Course Schedule

Course Schedule

Start > Masterprogramm Sustainability: Sustainability Science: Entrepreneurship, Agency and Leadership (M.A.) -> Komplementärstudium -> Reflecting on Research Methods

Lehrveranstaltungen

Inclusive Entrepreneurship Research Methods (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Rebecca Namatovu

Inhalt: This course provides students with the opportunity to apply theoretical knowledge and research methods to practical situations addressing grand challenges. The focus is on exploring entrepreneurship related to sustainable development goals, particularly inclusive entrepreneurship. The course covers theoretical foundations that help formulate good research questions and appropriate research designs to investigate these questions. It emphasizes the importance of conducting meaningful research in unconventional entrepreneurial contexts or as initiated by unconventional actors, such as refugees, immigrants, and the disabled. Both quantitative and qualitative methodologies contribute to understanding complex entrepreneurial contexts and processes. Quantitative methods utilize big data and AI as new sources of inspiration, while qualitative methods find innovation from other fields of social science. In general, qualitative approaches enhance knowledge of entrepreneurship and are well-suited to the study of entrepreneurial processes and mechanisms. They reveal the situated nature of entrepreneurial practices, deal with complexity, engage in sensemaking, and develop socially constructed theory. Mixed methods are also seen as a creative way to gain a deeper understanding of a phenomenon. However, methods alone do not guarantee good research. The purpose of the course is to sensitize students by alerting them to the challenges of conducting inclusive entrepreneurship research and guiding them to formulate methodologically and theoretically sound questions. In so doing, the course helps students refrain from promoting misleading narratives about entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship research contributions. The course is divided into three themes: theoretical foundations, designing appropriate research projects, and becoming a responsible researcher. By the end of the course, students should be able to outline and critically reflect on a variety of methodologies and theories relevant to inclusive entrepreneurship, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of empirical results in light of research questions, methodologies, and theories, and plan a social scientific research project addressing a research question in an inclusive entrepreneurship context.

Tba (Seminar)

Dozent/in: N. N.

Inhalt: Recognising the impact of digitalisation and the informative value of online platforms, there is an increasing scholarly interest in social media data and the corresponding methods of analysis. As a form of verbal and written communication, discourses are insightful indicators of public perceptions and commonly accepted societal narratives. Qualitative social media analysis and netnography are rooted in the traditions of ethnography and cultural anthropology and the principles of theoretical sampling and theoretical generalisation. The methods allow to observe textual discourse, while preserving the authentic nature of discussions created online by numerous contributors. Discourse analysis captures contextual richness of studied phenomena by emphasising relationships between language and social structures and identifying meanings in various forms of communication. The methods assist in the understanding of social phenomena by the identification of discourses, themes, and patterns. The course will cover research design, data collection, approaches to data analysis and interpretation, and relevant ethical aspects.