Theses

Topics

Bachelor

• Generativity theory and affordance theory in platforms, e.g.,
  • How has iOS become a jack-of-all-trades?
  • What enables influencers on social media platforms to produce ever more and ever more diverse content?
• Platform ecosystems and the common good: Investigating ecosystem design and expansion around renewable resources, e.g.,
  • How does sustainable design impact network effects? (supervisor: Annemarie Bloch)
• Sovereign AI: Creating network effects in local and global ecosystems
• ​The impact of AI on digital smart services and the actors that use them (supervisor: Daniel Courtney)

Master

• Impact of the Computational Frame Problem on Digital Entrepreneurs, an empirical approach. (supervisor: Mahnoor Shahid)
• Assessing the limits of risk management and requirements for neuro-symbolic AI: a design-science approach. (supervisor: Mahnoor Shahid)
• Generativity in data:
  • generative use of data by ML projects (contact: Hannes Rothe)
  • a quantitative analysis of health data ecosystems. (contact: Daniel Courtney)
• Framing Platform Governance: Explaining the role of narratives in platform strategies, e.g., 
  • How concrete should you inform users and partners about strategic changes? (contact: Hannes Rothe)
  • Should you position your platform as innovative, sustainable, or both? (contact: Hannes Rothe)
• Regenerative organizations and/or regenerative entrepreneurs applying digital technologies for the common good, specifically to address ecological challenges, e.g., (supervisor: Annemarie Bloch)
  • The implementation and usage of Blockchain technologies for climate action and ecological ecosystems.
  • Theoretical explorations on decentralization for approaches towards (poly-) governance of global commons
• Investigating healthcare platforms in the age of digitalization: the development of their ecosystems, frameworks and (business) models (supervisor: Daniel Courtney)
• Designing a data-driven (smart) service for good: an exploratory approach (supervisor: Daniel Courtney)
• Examining the rise of digital platform ecosystems within healthcare and their influence on the roles of the practitioner and user (supervisor: Daniel Courtney)

Bachelor & Master

• Open topics on theory testing and theory expansion with empirical investigation into Digital Innovation and Digital Entrepreneurship with Platforms, Data, or AI.
• Open topics on design-science research in smart service system design with machine learning methods.
• Open topics on digital entrepreneurship for sustainability, regenerative practices and/or tackling ecological challenges (supervisor: Annemarie Bloch)
• Open topics on the development of e-Health regarding user experience and/or service design with a focus on procedures and practices (supervisor: Daniel Courtney)

FAQ

During a period of about 3 months (bachelor) or 6 months (master), students prove that they are able to self-suffiently write an academic thesis on a current topic of management information systems. In the following, we shed light into how students can write their thesis at the chair of information systems and sustainable supply chain management.

Do you write your thesis in English or German?

As we are a highly international chair, we expected theses in English.

Where to start and how to choose a topic?

Subject to remaining capacities, we supervise bachelor's and master's theses on our research topics. You can either formulate your own initial proposals related to the general topics mentioned on our websites.

First, we ask students to contact professor Rothe or a research associate of the chair to ask for available capacities and narrow down a topic of interest. Once, a topic of interest has been found, students formulate a 2-page exposé on their topic.

How should the exposé look like?

Exposé's have a typical length of 1-2 pages, consisting research motivation (either problematization or research gap), research question, and research methodology. Writing and iterating an exposé may take 2-6 weeks. 

How to write a thesis?

The formal requirements for the structure and design of qualification theses are set out in a Leitfaden zur Erstellung wissenschaftlicher Arbeiten in der Wirtschaftsinformatik (German, English version follows). Around half time of their thesis editing time, we expect students to hand-in a structure of their work (main headlines with approximated page numbers) to have a half time consultation with their supervisor. 

Please, consider the formal requirements for a thesis as laid out here: https://www.uni-due.de/verwaltung/pruefungswesen/e_wirtschinf_startseite.php 

Where do you find literature?

In general, we suggest that you conduct a fair literature review on the topic of interest. Ideally, students find central articles while producing their exposé, and engage in a representative literature search during their thesis development.

Conducting a literature review is easier than it sounds. We shed light on how to do this, in a short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NmDlsy_Igw (German, English follows)

Moreover, literature can be found in various databases. Either way, we strongly advise students to make sure that their literature search covers leading journals. This includes journals in information systems (AIS Senior Scholars' Basket of Journals), and management journals, including but not limited to:

• European Journal of Information Systems
• Information Systems Journal
• Information Systems Research
• Journal of AIS
• Journal of Information Technology
• Journal of MIS
• Journal of Strategic Information Systems
• MIS Quarterly
• Information & Organization
• Organization Science
• Strategic Management Journal
• Administrative Science Quarterly
• Management Science

Literature can be found in the following databases: