Chair of Accounting

Master Theses

1. Application and Procedure

  • Applications are possible via Olat  approximately one month before the start of lectures until the start of lectures.
  • At the beginning of the lecture period you will then receive the acceptance notification
  • Within the first two weeks of the semester, there is a joint kick-off meeting for admitted students, which provides the basics for the thesis and clarifies questions
  • After the kick-off, there is an initial meeting to identify the topic with the supervisor
  • Approximately 4 weeks after the kick-off, students submit their exposé - if this is accepted, official registration takes place soon after and thus the start of the processing period
  • Towards the end of the lecture period of the semester an interim presentation takes place
  • Duration and deadline are determined by the examination regulations and the registration date - as a rule, the processing time is at least 6 months, since empirical papers are regularly written.
  • After submission, the final presentation takes place at the start of the following semester.

2. General Conditions

  • Final theses at the chair have to be written in English language
  • Only empirical theses are regularly assigned
  • Theses in connection with practice partners are possible in principle. However, our experience with past collaborations has shown that certain conditions must be met for a successful collaboration:
    • Only master's theses (no bachelor's theses) with practice partners are supervised. The reason for this is that a thesis supervised by a practice partner is usually associated with special effort. Therefore, it is unfortunately not possible to supervise theses with a processing time of less than 6 months (e.g. Bachelor theses).
    • It has to be agreed at an early stage and before applying for a master thesis together with the practice partner and the chair supervisor of the desired subject area:
      • what role the practice partner will play in the work, what expectations s/he has; and in particular what promises of support and data access s/he will provide,
      • what research question will be addressed that meets the expectations of all parties and satisfies the examination requirements for an academic paper.
    • The partner unconditionally agrees that the results of the thesis may be published, if necessary in anonymous form. As a matter of principle, we do not supervise theses with a so-called blocking notice (Sperrvermerk), according to which the work is not publicly accessible.
    • Why do these requirements exist? The academic expectations of high-quality theses and the expectations of practice partners can sometimes differ significantly. This can lead to a tension between the different expectations for students and therefore to significant additional work in order to fulfill the expectations for all sides and at the same time to clarify legal issues under time pressure. Therefore, we have decided to communicate these regulations transparently and to support all parties involved.

3. Topics

When applying, you can indicate a preference order of the following topic areas:

  • Digital Entrepreneurship, Business Models, and Performance
  • Artificial Intelligence in Entrepreneurship and Strategy
  • Entrepreneurial Finance, Crowdfunding, and ICOs
  • Digital Transformation, Platforms, and Analytics
  • Digital User Behavior and Social Media Strategy

4. Interim and Final Presentations

As part of a colloquium, all students present their thesis project twice.

  • Around the middle of the official processing time (towards the end of the semester's lecture period), an interim presentation takes place in which all students present the status of their own thesis, exchange experiences already made and, if necessary, work out solutions to problems and challenges of a thesis through discussions.
  • After timely and complete submission of the Master's thesis, each student will be given a date for the final presentation in order to present results with fellow students and to defend the thesis. The presentation usually takes place at the beginning of the following semester. At this point, students just starting their Master's thesis will also participate in the colloquium to gain insights into the further process and best practices.

5. Submission

Within or on time for the end of the official processing period, each student will turn in the following material:

  • By email: Send the thesis as PDF and DOC(X) in advance to advisor
  • Two hardcopy / physical copies of the final paper to the responsible examination office
  • One of the hardcopy copies must contain a CD-ROM or USB stick
  • USB stick or CD-ROM containing:
    • Your thesis in a “normal“ (with name) version (PDF and Word)
    • Your thesis in an anonymous version (PDF and Word)
    • All Excel, SPSS, Stata, Atlas.ti, or other raw data used as the basis for calculations referenced in the final paper
    • All open data and document files (xls, doc, pdf) and export from Zotero resources as Zotero RDF with PDF-files
    • All documents taken from the Internet (esp. web pages) in PDF format
    • All other documents (e.g. articles from scientific journals) that are available in electronic form
    • The CD-ROM should be attached to the last cover page of one of the hard cover copies in an appropriate envelope
    • All remaining (paper) documents must be kept and made available as needed until the grade has been officially communicated
  • E-Mail containing:
    • 2 PDF files of your thesis in a “normal” (with name) and an anonymous version
    • Use following syntax (where XX are the initials of your supervisor):
    • MA_2020SoSe_XX_LastName_Titleofyourthesis.pdf (“normal” version)
    • MA_2020SoSe_XX_LastName_Titleofyourthesis_anonymous.pdf (anonymous version)
  • Example:
    • MA_2020SoSe_DS_Mueller_Evolution of TAM.pdf
    • MA_2020SoSe_DS_Mueller_Evolution of TAM_ anonymous.pdf

6. Templates

  • Word format templates, citation templates as well as further instructions for theses will be made available via OLAT.
  • We strongly suggest that you use the free bibliography software Zotero: https://www.zotero.org/