Research areas

Example research projects

• Analyzing and Improving the Market Success of Digital Offerings

  Management challenge:

  • Company has developed software and digital services to complement their traditional hardware products
  • Company has faced problems bringing their digital offerings to the market
  • For future market success digital offerings are vital; problems have to be analyzed and measures to overcome them have to be determined

  Key questions covered by this project:

  • What are the most relevant problems in sales (concerning personal skills of sales reps, motivations, organizational framework)?
  • How can the company overcome those problems (concerning recruitment, education, leadership behavior, incentive systems, organizational structures, among others)?
  • Do regional differences have to be considered (Germany – China – USA)?

• Corporate Governance in Times of Deglobalization

  After decades of growth, the global trade of goods and services has lost momentum. This trend of ‘deglobalization’ has been driven by developments in politics, society, and technology.

  It forces globally active companies to reevaluate traditional government structures that determine the distribution of power within the organization. In this context questions such as the following need to be answered:

  • For which decisions in an industrial company is a revision of organizational structures the most relevant?
  • What are the approaches that exist in practice to adjust a corporate organization?
  • How beneficial is a 2nd or 3rd headquarters? What are the implications regarding HR policy/ the required skill set of future leaders? How can modern technology be used to overcome the challenges of deglobalization in industrial companies?