Our Mission
Our research aims at integrating the scientific analysis of structures, behavior, and processes in organizations with highly relevant topics for organizational practice. We want to create knowledge with impact: When choosing our research topics, we focus on current and future challenges in leadership and management practice and examine effective managerial strategies and solutions.
Research Foci
Our research focuses on effective leadership and management approaches for fostering well-being, engagement, and high performance in organizations. We thereby take a holistic perspective and examine leadership strategies for individuals, teams, and organizations, as well as their interplay.
In detail, our research includes the following major areas:
- Diversity & Inclusion: Here, our focus is on the consequences and the effective management of organizational demographic changes. Due to social megatrends such as demographic change, the employee structure of many companies is rapidly changing. What impact do these changes have on teamwork and the performance of entire organizations? What are effective leadership approaches for effective diversity management that both promote inclusion and realize the potential of diversity?
- Engagement & Well-Being: Maintaining and promoting employees’ health is particularly important given the increasing number of mental illnesses at work. How can companies and leaders create conditions for healthy high performance, in which employees develop their full commitment and at the same time deal effectively with stress at work? We analyze strategies for executives and HR management to face these and other challenges.
- New Work & Leadership: Increasingly decentralized structures, dynamic and agile forms of working, and digitization are characteristics of modern organizations. What are success factors of new forms of working, organizing, and leading? How can we effectively design flexible work models, and what form of leadership do we need in dynamic organizations? In conjunction with the other major research areas, we explore these questions about the future of work.
Partners & Methodology
Our research takes place in close cooperation with corporate partners. In the past, we have cooperated with companies from the automotive, mechanical engineering, pharmaceutical, chemical, finance & insurance, IT, and service sectors, among others.
To answer our research questions, we primarily use quantitative-empirical methods from the field of people analytics. At the same time, we value a holistic research approach using qualitative research methods. Among other things, we have extensive experience with the conception, implementation, and evaluation of large-scale survey studies, the evaluation of secondary data, the implementation of meta-analyses, and the use of expert interviews and focus groups.
