Bachelor Thesis, Master Thesis, IDP
📌 Key facts
Contents
- 💡 Background
- 🦾Who We Are
- 🎯 Goals
- 🧠 Topics of Interest
- 🎓 Profile
- 📚 Further Reading
- 📄 Requirements to any Work
- 📬 How to Apply
💡 Background
Humans are not as rational as we like to believe (e.g., Kahneman, 2003) and often they do not act in their own or society’s long-term interest. In regard to financial well-being (i.e., the perception of being able to sustain current and anticipated desired living standards and financial freedom) this is often manifested in financially destructive behavior such as overspending or not saving for emergencies and later life (Brüggen, Hogreve, Holmlund, Kabadayi, & Löfgren, 2017). In fact, as life expectancy and expected years in retirement rise (OECD, 2019), many countries are thought to face a retirement savings crisis (Benartzi & Thaler, 2013; Holmes, 2019). In the U.S. alone, Social Security benefits often constitute less than half of pre-retirement income, and roughly half of American households are currently at risk of not being able to maintain their present standards of living post-retirement, when solely reliant on governmental support (Social Security Administration, 2021). Moreover, amid a relative decline in governmental older age benefits, over 50% of individuals living in advanced economies1 do not save enough for retirement, and 20% do not have enough savings to cover six months of basic costs (McKinsey Global Institute, 2020; Statista, 2019a, 2019b). Taking this into account, the need for effective, evidence-based financial well-being interventions becomes evident.
Financial well-being interventions can be divided into two subordinate classes: (1) structural approaches, which attempt to change the conditions for financial planning; and (2) communication approaches, which focus on changing individuals’ knowledge or perceptions (Brüggen et al., 2017; Wiener & Doescher, 2008). In this thesis, we focus on communication approaches and, more specifically, examine how the strategic, simultaneous variation of language and framing can increase the effectiveness of a financial well-being intervention in fostering favorable emotions, cognitions and behavioral intentions towards saving.
We already conducted three experiments and collected data, which you can work with.
🦾Who We Are
The Chair for Strategy and Organization is focused on research with impact. This means we do not want to repeat old ideas and base our research solely on the research people did 10 years ago. Instead, we currently research topics that will shape the future. Topics such as Agile Organizations and Digital Disruption, Blockchain Technology, Creativity and Innovation, Digital Transformation and Business Model Innovation, Diversity, Education: Education Technology and Performance Management, HRTech, Leadership, and Teams. We are always early in noticing trends, technologies, strategies, and organizations that shape the future, which has its ups and downs.
🎯 Goals
- Explore the state-of-the-art of financial decision making, framing, regulatory focus, and gender
- Investigate the following questions:
- Are there gender differences in financial decision making, attitudes, and emotions towards saving and investing (e.g., do women experience more fear of losses whereas men experience more hope of gains)?
- How can we promote saving and investing behavior (e.g., via message framing)?
- Are gender-fitted messages more effective?
- Make your results visible
The scope of your thesis will be determined based on your background, type of thesis, and personal interests.
🧠 Topics of Interest
- Financial Decision Making
- Gender
- (Gain vs. Loss) Framing
- Regulatory Focus
- Saving & Investing
🎓 Profile
- Strong analytical and statistical skills
- Reliable and self-driven
- Ability to do sophisticated internet and desk research, and connect with practitioners
- Passionate to learn more about the future and do research with impact
📚 Further Reading
📄 Requirements to any Work
We do not want your research to gather dust in some corner of bookshelf but make it accessible to the world. Thus, we warmly encourage you to create some or all of the following:
- Infograph - visually represent some of your work (find examples here)
- Slide Deck - summarise your research and possibly present it
- Extract most important sequences from podcasts, videos, and other media
- 3-4 Tweets about the most important findings and summarizing the topic
- optional: Medium Article - let people outside the university know about your research and start your personal brand
📬 How to Apply
If you are interested, please contact Nadja Born (e-mail below) by submitting your CV and grade report. Please also briefly outline your tentative research idea (research question, data and methods, possible outcomes with a tentative outline all in word as *.docx)
We're greatly looking forward to hearing more about you!
👉 Nadja: nadja.born@tum.de