Faculty of Economics and Management

Research Activities at the Faculty

Management Science

Of central importance for research in Management Science are the two focuses Accounting and Taxation and Service Management.

The research focus Accounting is primarily served by the Institute of Accounting and Taxation that enfolds the subjects Financial and Management Accounting, Auditing, Controlling and Taxation. It is further supplemented by the professorship of Corporate Finance. Besides, two honorary professorships of International Management and Tax Legislation are included.

Furthermore objects of research within the subject Management Accounting and Controlling cover a wide area of topics from accounting for regulated industries and economics of coordination about aspects of behavioural accounting or performance measurement under incomplete information up to semi-subjective enterprise valuation. In Taxation a variety of economic analyses regarding the impact of tax rules has been continued and partly published. In 2007, the conference “Sächsische Steuertagung” (Saxonian Conference on Accounting and Taxation) was again organized by the Institute of Accounting and Taxation. Main topics were the economic impact of the German tax reform and the upcoming revision of the German capital transfer tax. Further publications in Financial Accounting and Auditing pertain to economic analyses of IFRS reporting aspects, the regulation of financial reporting within the EU and new approaches in auditing regulation. The latest papers on the regulation of financial reporting within the EU are part of a research project where EU-funding was applied for in 2007. The subject Auditing further focuses on research projects within the following areas: compliance-management, corporate governance and the protection of minorities in business combinations.

The research focus Service Management studies the common and different features of service enterprises, in particular the management instruments used for directing such enterprises. The institution-oriented professorships of Banking, Distribution, Insurance Company Management and Financial Accounting and Auditing but also the professorships of Controlling, Finance, Real Estate Management, Marketing, Human Resource Management and Taxation as far as they deal with internal service, contribute to this research focus. Unfortunately, it was again not possible in 2007 to reoccupy the central professorship of Management Science, in particular Service Management. However, reoccupation is assumed to succeed surely in 2008. The faculty further strengthened the research focus through the filling of the founded professorship Administration Management/New Public Management and the advancement of Vattenfall Europe Founded Professorship Energy- and Sustainability Management as well as through the research area Communal Energyindustry, founded by the VNG-Verbundnetz Gas AG, Leipzig, and the Stadtwerken Leipzig.

On March 29^th of last year, the Institute of Insurance Sciences hosted the 7^th “Versicherungstag (Insurance Day) of the University of Leipzig”. Currently, this event is an established forum for the exchange of practice and theory, which takes place on the University’s premises annually. Around 250 members of the German speaking insurance industry and of insurance-related companies in the consulting-, auditing-, and IT-sectors participated in last year’s program. Several speeches were given by institute scientists and industry representatives regarding current professional topics. Additionally, there was an opportunity to have personal conversations with scientists, doctoral candidates, students, and guests.

Economics

Research in economics covers both the macro and the micro level, theory and policy as well as specific branches of economics such as public finance, money and currency, foreign trade and economic integration, evolutionary economics, empirical economic research and statistics. From this range the following topics are investigated at present:
The project “Economic integration” examines crucial questions of economic interaction within the EU-15 and EU-27 or the EMU. Among others the optimal institutional profile of the Central Bank’s governing council within a monetary union is studied as well as consequences of the political and economic integration of the ten EU acceding countries from Middle and Eastern Europe. Two other important fields of research are linked to the problem of economic integration.

Firstly, the Institute of Economic Policy and the Institute of Theoretical Economics study the development and competition of economic systems and regularly discuss them, apart from regular lectures of internal and external scientists and politicians, also on the Zermatt Symposium, an international and interdisciplinary forum. Secondly, the European debate on convergence and joint economic policy reveals the necessity of further research in regional economics and promotion of regional sustainable development. These projects are carried out by the professorship of Statistics at the Institute of Empirical Economic Research.

A new - more methodological - field of research is the development of complex regression models particularly for space time data. In a number of international collaborations the developed models are applied to questions in development economics, marketing research, labour market research.

Problems of analysis and forecasting of macroeconomic developments and the conduct of macroeconomic development are followed by several institutes. The Institute of Empirical Economic Research develops and examines macroeconomic models, macroeconomic forecasting and in continuation of a DFG (German Research Foundation)-project the nature of business cycles and their changes. Furthermore, projects concerning the German Unity and the Free State of Saxony have been carried out.

The Institute of Economic Policy and the professorships of Money and Currency and Public Finance also study, empirically too, the conduct and performance of German economic policy. A particular field of interest at the professorship of Public Finance are questions of fiscal equalization. The extended area based on regional economics and environmental economics.

Research on European Integration, convergence processes and regional development of Central and Eastern European Countries is realized in strong cooperation with the University Centre of International Economics (ZIW) and the Fraunhofer Zentrum Mittel- und Osteuropa Leipzig.

The Chair of Microeconomics conducts theoretical and applied research. The main focus is on cooperative game theory, where the theoretical part deals with the axiomatic foundation of solution concepts and the applied part concerns applications to interesting social phenomena. Second, concepts from non-cooperative game theory are applied to a variety of research fields such as industrial organization and behavioral economics, i.e., the theory of social preferences. Finally, the chair is also envolved in experimental economics; in a series of research projects funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) laboratory experiments are conducted, e.g., on the behavior of subjects in the provision of club goods.

The Research Seminar “Politics and Economy” has two focus points. The evolutionary approach is adopted by applying the Nelson-Winter-model to Germany. The second focus is the research program of the journal “Deliberation Knowledge Ethics” and its transformation into a teaching-framework.

Business Information Systems

The Information Systems Institute was founded in 2004 and combines education and research in the domains of business application systems, information management and software development. Three professors cover these areas and offer a dedicated bachelor and master degree in business information systems. The Institute’s research focuses on application systems in the service industries, in particular product lines and service-oriented application architectures in logistics, banking and software engineering. It comprises four areas:

The domain of Information Management is covered by Professor Dr. Bogdan Franczyk with a research focus on service-oriented applications (grid services), enterprise application integration and content management, semantic web technologies, XML databases and software system families. The professorship is currently involved in many third-party funded projects including the BMBF project ‘PESOA – Process Family Engineering in Service-Oriented Applications’, the FP6 EU project ‘ASG – Adaptive Services Grid’, the Saxony-funded project ‘Semi-automated Implementation of ERP systems in Small and Medium Enterprises’, Gkit – Individual Reading Device for Health-Card.

The professorship of Software Development for Business and Administration is headed by Professor Dr. Ulrich W. Eisenecker, who is also the incumbent director of the Information Systems Institute. His research is geared towards further automatisation of software development, especially with respect to customer-specific configuration. Directly connected with this are the fields of generative and model-driven software development, software system families and domain-specific languages, generation and components. Research activities concerning spatial-temporal and interactive metaphors in software engineering are starting right now.

The area of Application Systems in Business and Administration headed by Professor Dr. Rainer Alt pursues teaching and research in three fields of interest. The first emphasizes the technological fundamentals of application systems, in particular technological concepts such as service-oriented architectures and open source technologies. The second focuses on architectures and methodologies which enable the networking among companies, especially in the areas of customer relationship and supply chain management. Topics in the third field include decision support systems used in an interorganizational setting such as business intelligence systems. Among the externally funded projects is the competence center ‘Sourcing in the finance industry’, a joint project with the University of St.Gallen, Switzerland.

The fourth cornerstone of the institute is the operation of the Computer Centre of the Faculty. It provides a state-of-the-art research and teaching hard- and software infrastructure. Under the management of Dr. Röder the institute´s IT services wing provides modern information technology for professors, staff, students and for educating IT specialists.

In 2007 the Information Systems Institute was hosted the first international conference “SABRE - Software, Agents, and Services for Business, Research, and E-Sciences” including but not limited to the conference “Innovativen Logistik-IT-Systemen und Technologien in Mitteldeutschland innoLOGIST” and “Model-driven Development and Software Product Lines: Synergies and Experience”.

Civil Engineering / Industrial Engineering and Management

The main fields of its research are characterised by the combination of scientific theoretical and technical respective economic aspects.

In 2005 the Institute of Building Design and Management was founded under the leadership of Professor Burkhard Pahl. In a new structure it integrates the research fields of the former professorship for Structural Design and Detailing with the new orientation on build typological questions, questions of sustainable building renewal, strategies for brownfield areas and derelict buildings, management and monitoring tasks. Another focus is the interdisciplinary research and description of structural, economic and build cultural aspects of building.

The IIRM, Institute for Infrastructure and Resources Management, comprises the professorship of Environmental Technology and Environmental Management (Prof. Dr.-Ing. Robert Holländer), the professorship of Transportation System Design (Prof. Dr.-Ing. Wolfgang Kühn), the honorary professorship of Brownfield Remediation and Management (Prof. Dr.-Ing. Jens-Uwe Fischer) and the honorary professorship of Urban Water Management (Prof. Dr.-Ing. Olaf Selle). The Research Center for Municipal Energy Management (Dr. André Bleicher) is also part of the IIRM. Expertise in Energy Economics will be added to the IIRM in 2008 by establishing the Vattenfall endowment chair of Energy Management and Sustainability.

In research and teaching the IIRM follows an integrated approach for the management of resources on different levels such as a region, a community or an enterprise as well as for the sustainable planning and management of infrastructural systems. Particular emphasis is placed on the interdisciplinary approach to link technical and economic aspects while working on solutions regarding infrastructural systems of transportation, energy economy and environmental technology. Private companies and public institutions, state and federal authorities as well as the European Union are the main project partners and sponsors.

The Institute of Structural Concrete and Building Materials is headed by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Nguyen Viet Tue, who works in different research fields. Partners for the various research projects are public institutions (DGF, AiF) as well as private companies. The emphasis of the institute is the development and application of high strength concrete, novel hybrid structures, which are improving the sustainability of buildings as well as modelling of reinforced and prestressed concrete structures.

Following recent economic and social developments the research activities of the Institute of Urban Development and Construction Industry are characterised by three focal points ‘urban management’, ‘process management and virtual planning’ and ‘development and building within existing structures’. These three exploratory focuses under the particular direction of Professor Johannes Ringel, Professor Dr.-techn. Karl-Heinz Bruhnke, Professor Dr.-Ing. Thomas Bohn, Professor Dr.-Ing. Willfred Vedder as well as Junior-Professor Dr. Silke Weidner provide an interdisciplinary research platform which will generate scientific synergy effects. The studied research projects are marked by a high application-oriented approach. They are either publicly funded as e.g. “Objectives and transferable action strategies for sustainable regional land use management under depopulation tendencies in the region ‘Mitteldeutschland’ (KoReMi)” in the Research Program “Research for the Reduction of Land Consumption and for Sustainable Land Management (REFINA)” funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and by private enterprises, e.g. “Improvement of the Planning and Construction Process during the Lifecyle of Infrastructure Projects using Digital Planning Methods” (MAX BÖGL).

The Institute of Statics and Dynamics of Structures is working under the supervision of Prof. Dr.-Ing. Michael Kaliske in the field of analysis of structures subjected to static and dynamic loading. The realistic characterization of phenomena and the constitutive description of materials on different length scales is an important research area for the design process of products. The formulations are embedded in simulation approaches of a virtual description which results in further work fields like the improvement of numerical methods and especially the finite element technology. Basic research at the institute is supported by the German Research Foundation. Furthermore, co-operations exist with companies like Continental and DaimlerChrysler. Activities within the network with European research institutions are funded by the European Union. Additionally, research projects have been acquired from industry partners in the USA and India.

The personnel change at the professorship Geotechnics, Hydrology and Hydraulic Engineering has not influenced the successful research work. Compaction and effectiveness of different drum rollers have been investigated and rated in the field of soil mechanics. The survey of specific aspects of concrete and placing technology in the application of self compacting concrete is still covered by the Geotechnics section. The pre- and post-processing of hydrological data as well as the monitoring requirements are in the focus of hydraulic research.

The research fields of the professorship Structural Steel and Timber Engineering under the direction of Professor Dr.-Ing. Thorsten Wanzek focus on the extended field of structural steel such as the service strength, steel composite construction and glass structure. For example, new combinations of concrete and steel materials are to provide more efficient applications with optimized geometric structures in steel composite construction.

Business Education and Management Training

The professorship of Business Education and Management Training moved from the Faculty of Educational Science to the Faculty of Business Sciences in the summer term 2006. The research work of the professorship of Business Education and Management Training emphasises different subjects. One focus is put on learning and teaching with digital media. That includes the development of complex multi-media learning environments, the qualification of teletutors as well as the evaluation, quality management and certification of media-based teaching-learning-processes and learning arrangements. These research activities are carried out within the scope of a cooperation agreement with RWE Systems AG among other things and sponsored by the Federal Armed Forces and the Saxon State Ministry of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

Another research subject is knowledge management in companies. The professorship of Business Education and Management Training investigates how to design communication, cooperation and learning processes in order to secure an effective dealing with data, information and knowledge. Especially, decision-making processes in executive committees and the design of necessary documents (management summary, protocols) are considered. The research work was carried out on the basis of a cooperation agreement with BMW AG for the BMW plant Leipzig.

The third focus is put on the analysis of qualification and education requirements, the development of curricula and the didactic-methodic design of education and training processes. The main emphasis lies on the energy and water sector at the moment. In cooperation with the National Association of the German Gas and Water Works (Bundesverband der deutschen Gas- und Wasserwirtschaft e.V.), data of future qualification requirements on business people were collected in that branch. Furthermore, a curriculum for an additional qualification “clerk in the energy and water industry” was completed, verified by the German Association of Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Deutschen Industrie- und Handelskammertag) and some courses were held.

The analysis of costs and profits in the educational sector is at the core of research work with the German armed forces which aims at empirically valid results on pedagogic and economic effects of remote training compared to the traditional way of education. Besides it strives for developing manuals for the further elaboration of the concept of further education for the armed forces.