Bachelor or Master Thesis or Project Study
📌 Key facts
Contents
💡 Background
Both the revenue of the consulting industry and criticism of it are growing. Despite this seemingly contradictory statement consulting is forecasted to change fundamentally. New approaches, new requirements from clients, and new decision-making processes also require consulting to adapt. Firstly, there is the rising need for data science and the threat each industry faces when big tech takes on their business. Secondly, there is the ongoing criticism that consultant do not make real impact and scandals on consultancies overcharging public institutions. Thirdly, COVID has also shown potential changes to the profession, meaning fewer flights and more digital work.
These are just a few trends, you might want to examine. There are many more influences that you should collect and analyze. Write and visualize an outlook for the consulting industry in general or how consulting companies can adapt to certain pressures and client expectations. For example, in the form of a scenario analysis.
🦾Who we are
The Chair for Strategy and Organization is focussed on doing 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 want to always be early in noticing trends, technologies, strategies and organizations that shape the future.
🎯 Goals
- Identify the current trends, changes, and challenges of the consulting industry
- Identify newcomers in the consulting inndustry, e.g. by scraping VC portolios worldwide for startups aimed at disrupting the consulting industry
- Identify new business models of consulting
- Interview or survey consultant on the changes they see in their profession
- Analyze/Evaluate the different impacts, and discuss potential measures consulting companies can take
- Write and visualize a comprehensive outlook
🎓 Profile
- Reliable and self-driven
- Interest in Consulting / Business / Trend Research / Digital Transformation
- Passion to get understand the consulting profession better, how it will develop, and do research with impact
📚 Further Reading
Digital Transformation of the Consulting Industry (2019), Volkar Nissen, Springer International PU, https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-319-70491-3
Strategy Consulting Needs to Change: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeroenkraaijenbrink/2020/02/13/strategy-consulting-needs-to-change-and-this-is-how/#5757e7328675
AI and the Future of Strategy Consulting: https://towardsdatascience.com/ai-the-future-of-consulting-will-data-scientists-become-consultants-f6938ab14bcc
📄 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 - summarize 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 university know about your research and start your personal brand
📬 How to apply
If you are interested, please contact Prof. Dr. Isabell Welpe (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!