As one of the leading research institutions among the universities of Applied Sciences in Baden-Wuerttemberg research and transfer play an important role for us. On the following pages we would like to give you an overview about our research and transfer activities.
Publications
Purpose and benefits of applied research
Research in economics aims to understand and explain how things work in business practice. It should also develop suggestions and advice on how companies can become more successful. Our university is committed to applied research. That is why we see empirical research and knowledge and technology transfer as our focal points. Arguably, the most important goal of study - and an important competence in practice - is not learning facts. It is to enable students to make their own judgements. How could this be done better than when lecturers develop research questions and involve the students in them?
On the one hand, students benefit from current findings; on the other hand, they sharpen their analytical skills and their power of argumentation. Thirdly, they learn methods and procedures for arriving at justifiable findings and judgements by participating in transfer projects and also in carrying out empirical or conceptual theses in their Bachelor's or Master's degree programmes.
Our Vice Dean for Research Prof. Dr. habil. Patrick Ulrich is as a competent contact person for common research projects as well as for discussion and information.
Research focus
The research focus of the faculty is on applied research topics and interdisciplinary cooperation in all key functions and applications in economics. These are in particular
- Health system design
- Strategy and Leadership in Healthcare
- Corporate Health Management
- DataCast
- IT Service Review
- Big Data & Business Analytics
- Social CRM
- International and European Tax Law
- Global Integrated Human Resources Management
- Sustainable development
- SME financing
- Business Information Systems in SMEs
- Industry 4.0, production digitisation and data security
We have structured our research activities in several competence centres to bundle resources and thematic research skills and to call scientists, advanced students and practitioners contact persons.
The centres pursue the objective of training and promotion of young scientists, the establishment and development of a research-oriented cooperation with companies and other universities, the strengthening of existing research collaborations and ensure a rapid application of scientific knowledge in the economy and society:
Medium-sized companies have long been the backbone of our region. Its success also depends on how they manage to formulate their goals, implement and measure successes or learn from failures. Our goal is to develop and evaluate together with medium-sized companies customised methods and systems for planning and control.
Your contacts: Jürgen Bischof and Ralf Härting
Corporate Health Management is an increasingly important issue in companies and a study focus on job-integrated courses of study in Health Management at Aalen University. The research activities of the study program mainly handle of workplace health promotion, internal re-entry management and employer attractiveness of companies in the health and social economy.
Your contacts: Prof. Dr. Kerstin Rieder, Prof. Dr. Anke Rahmel and Prof. Dr. Dieter Ahrens
Aalen University of Applied Science and the Faculty of Management and Business Science have taken an active role in many areas of environmental protection and sustainable development in the last 20 years. Besides the technical areas of sustainability, where in particular the issue of energy plays an important role, many issues such as environmental management, security, prevention and demographics were processed. In both the technical as well as in business study programmes, sustainability is anchored implicitly and explicitly in research and teaching. The working group "(education for) Sustainable development" meets regularly under the direction of Prof. Dr. Ulrich Holzbauer at Aalen University and provides the exchange of information between the actors of sustainable development.
Your contact: Prof. Dr. Ulrich Holzbaur, Senate Representative for Sustainable Development
Many companies still have reservations concerning the use of quantitative methods. Often people are afraid of the abstractness or complexity. Our goal is to test different methods in practice and to help companies to apply them.
Your contacts: Prof. Dr. Günther Hachtel and Prof. Dr. Ulrich Holzbaur
The competence centre deals with the challenges of the development of optimisation potentials and access to mission-critical business information through the use of new, modern business information systems (in particular business intelligence applications) in small and medium businesses. The focus is not only the technical consultation and mobilisation of the middle class, but also application-oriented research projects.
Your contacts: Prof. Dr. Christian Härting
The research is focused especially in the subjects of prevention and health promotion in different settings and in health systems research.
Your contacts: Prof. Dr. Dieter Ahrens and Prof. Dr. Kerstin Rieder
The competence centre deals in theory and practice with central management issues in the healthcare industry. The main topics are the areas employer attractiveness and shortage of skilled workers as well as innovation and change management.
Your contact: Prof. Dr. Anke Rahmel and Prof. Dr. Jana Wolf
The competence centre is located around the Industry 4.0 research laboratory with a CP (Cyber Physical) Factory. For applied research is thus an ideal test field available to develop new approaches and methods in production digitisation as well as innovative products and to assess their market and industry maturity already in the development stage. A special attention is given to research into the safety of intelligent production systems (cyber security).
Your contact: Prof. Dr. Axel Zimmermann
Research projects and facilities
The competence centre is located around the Industrie 4.0 research laboratory with CP (Cyber Physical) Factory. This provides an ideal testing ground for applied research to develop new approaches and processes in production digitalisation as well as innovative products and to test their market and industrial readiness at the development stage.
Your contact: Prof. Dr. Steffen Schwarzer
The Aalen Institute for Corporate Governance (AAUF) was established in 2017 and pursues the overarching goal of establishing corporate governance with a primary focus on value orientation in corporate management within research and transfer projects. Methodological excellence is always at the centre of our efforts in the context of closing the existing research gap "Success factors of value-based corporate governance" and beyond for further research projects. One of our concerns is to anchor the topic of corporate governance in the research context and to disseminate it on the practical side through an ongoing range of training and continuing education programmes as well as regular dialogue.
Contact: Prof. Dr. Ingo Scheuermann, Prof. Dr. habil. Patrick Ulrich
Ansprechpartner: Prof. Dr. Ingo Scheuermann, Prof. Dr. habil. Patrick Ulrich
AI has been on the rise for many years Voice based (chat)bots are one application of AI. They are a further development of text based (chat) which enjoy great popularity. The best known use of voice based (chat)bots is in so called intelligent personal assistants. The aim of voice based (chat)bots is to enable the user to carry out a wide range of functions by means of a simple verbal request, in order to make this considerably easier through intuitive operation For example, they can be used to operate smart home devices or to order things on the Internet. The aim of the work is to find out how well the four most common bots namely Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, Google Assistant, and Microsoft Cortana currently work, and to compare their functionality with each other. Following an evaluation of the found results, future uses will also be discussed.
The triumph of smart speakers and digital voice assistants such as Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant seems unstoppable. What we are currently observing is that these applications are increasingly developing from non commercial and private applications such as weather forecasts or homework support to commercial applications along the entire customer journey In addition to the great convenience advantage, the benefit in terms of accessibility should also be seen as a driver for voice commerce. The voice interface, as the most natural interface for us humans, faces the challenge of understanding different languages, dialects, ways of speaking and expressions and translating them into clear intents and answers. Against this background, this study examines the range and quality of voice based systems in the finance and insurance industry in Germany based on a comprehensive catalogue of criteria.
The concept of knowledge graphs can be traced back to the 1960s and after three decades, advances in knowledge graphs focused on the Semantic Web, ontologies and taxonomies. Today, knowledge graphs are gaining momentum as their business value is proven in various domains and use cases. But what are they actually? Knowledge graphs are a platform that contextually ingests disparate data (internal and external) to transform data points into insights and insights into actionable knowledge to improve business decision-making capabilities. improve. What's new: Why is there so much emphasis on the importance of knowledge graphs in today's business world?
Negotiations play a paramount role in business, politics and society. Without them and the famous "negotiation breakthrough", there would often be no solution. However, negotiation processes are also an exciting field of research, and Prof. Dr Ingmar Geiger from Aalen University has dedicated himself to this. Now the economist received special recognition for his work on negotiation research: He was awarded the "Gregory Kersten GDN Journal Best Paper Award" for the first time.
The past few months with the mask affair, various accounting scandals and spectacular insolvencies have once again provided Prof. Dr. Patrick Ulrich with plenty of material for research and teaching. The economist has been researching and teaching at Aalen University since 2016 on evidence-based management, business ethics and sustainable corporate governance, the formulation of guidelines and ethical standards for practice as well as modern personnel management in the context of digitalisation. Topics that are more topical than ever today. He has now been awarded the Aalen University Research Award for his outstanding commitment.
The number of cyber attacks has risen sharply, and more and more SMEs and family businesses are feeling the effects. In the current study "Cyber Security in Medium-Sized Businesses", the management consultancy Deloitte gets to the bottom of the threat. Scientific support was provided by Aalen University under the leadership of Prof. Roland Hellmann, a specialist in IT security, and the Aalen Institute for Corporate Management (AAUF). The study shows that the majority of German SMEs are not yet sufficiently prepared for IT attacks. In many cases, the risks are still underestimated.
How good are chatbots? Savings banks and credit unions beat fintech! Many companies already offer the possibility to get in touch via so-called chatbots, also in the insurance and financial sector. But how good are the virtual assistants and what questions can they already answer? Prof. Dr. Peter Gentsch from Aalen University at the Institute for Conversational Business investigated this. The result is surprising: traditional banks like Sparkassen and Volksbanken beat fintech companies in the use of chatbots.
You can find the entire Chatbot Study 2020 here.
Customers want more contact with companies via WhatsApp, Alexa and Co. Online shopping is booming - especially in Corona times. But how can retailers or industrial companies maintain personal contact with customers? The study "Conversational Business 2020" by Aalen University shows that the current pandemic has given messenger services and smart speaker systems for marketing and service offers an enormous boost. End consumers want messengers, chat bots and voice assistants as purchasing channels. However, this strategic potential is mostly not yet used on the corporate side.
Cooperative PhD programme
The faculty has a joint doctoral programme with Newcastle Business School (NBS) at Northumbria University. The doctoral students usually work as research assistants at Aalen University or in other companies and do their doctorate as external students at NBS. Supervision is provided by professors of the faculty as well as by British colleagues. The title (PhD) is awarded after submission of the dissertation and successful oral examination by the NBS. In addition to the joint doctoral programme, a few other cooperative doctorates with other universities in Germany and abroad have recently been successfully completed at the faculty.
If you have any questions about the joint doctoral programme with the NBS, please contact Prof. Dr. Robert Rieg.