Dear WiSo professors, WiSo staff and student representatives,

besides having another interesting WiSo Alumni Interview ready for you, we would like to offer you some interesting WiSo value events in this newsletter. We also want to welcome some new faces to the WiSo while sadly saying goodbye to others. See for yourself!

Contents

• News from the Faculty Meeting
• Introduction of the WiSo Values
• The WiSo Values – Authenticity
• Eugen Schmalenbach – Pioneer of modern business administration 
• News from the Business School
• PUMA-Mails of the WiSo Faculty
• WiSo Personalia: New Arrivals and Other
• PARTicipate at our new WiSo Value Events
• WiSo Alumni Interview: Clara Pfeffer
• WiSo-Workplace-Video: Prof. Loebbecke
• WiSo in the Media – February 2023 until April 2023

At the faculty council meeting on 6 March 2023, the elections for the Vice Dean offices were held for the term of 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2027. The following persons were elected to the positions:

• Professor Nicole Naeve-Stoß was unanimously elected as Vice Dean.
• Professor Michael Overesch was unanimously elected as Vice Dean of Studies.
• Professor Marita Jacob was unanimously elected as Vice Dean of Academic Career.
• Professor Michael Krause was unanimously elected as Vice Dean of Research.

The faculty council has re-elected programme directors and, across membership groups, members for the WiSo committees with terms ending on 31 March 2024 at the earliest. Elections for vacant positions were held at the faculty meeting on 24 April 2023. At the faculty meeting on 24 April 2023, the new faculty council met for the first time.

Please note that invitations and minutes for the public faculty council session will be available on the public server.

A chair steeped in history at the WiSo.

Nowadays it is rather unusual in economics for young people to choose their field of study (and impose this choice) against the will of their parents. 125 years ago, it was different, as the case of Eugen Schmalenbach shows. Born in Halver in 1873, the merchant’s son had already been keeping the books in his father’s small iron business for four years after completing his commercial apprenticeship when he enrolled in the newly founded private commercial college (Handelshochschule) in Leipzig as one of the first students to study commercial engineering in 1898.

From today’s point of view, this was undoubtedly a good decision, because he graduated only two years later and went on to study national economics. Without completing his doctorate, however, he moved to Cologne in 1903 as a lecturer at the commercial college, which was founded in 1901. He completed his Habilitation in the same year and worked here as a full professor of “private economics” from 1906 onwards.

In 1919 the commercial college was one of the central institutions of higher education when the University of Cologne was re-established and Eugen Schmalenbach became a professor (Ordinarius) of the “Business Administration Seminar” (1920 - 1926) of the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences. Then in 1926, he founded the Seminar for General Business Administration and Auditing, the so-called “Treuhandseminar”, which is now the Chair of Financial Accounting.

But the Chair of Financial Accounting at the WiSo faculty is not only steeped in the history of Cologne’s higher education landscape. And this too is largely due to the work of Eugen Schmalenbach. Today, he is considered one of the founders of modern business administration (in part as the inventor of the term “business administration”) and the "father of accountants”.

Eugen Schmalenbach saw “business administration” as practically oriented “art instruction”, in contrast to colleagues who wanted to establish it as a pure science. His own research interests lay primarily in accounting, especially the areas of balance sheet theory, cost accounting and company valuation. Whereas before Schmalenbach the sensible management of individual companies was virtually not a subject of economics, the number of business administration professorships in Germany rose to 70 by the Second World War and totals around 1000 today.

Eugen Schmalenbach himself formulated his understanding of research as follows: "I first tackle the problems that seem to me to be the most important in reality.” In addition to his academic work, he also audited financial statements and was an entrepreneur. Even today, the theoretical penetration of practically relevant issues is integrated in the philosophy of the professorship and the entire faculty, which is partly embraced by our faculty motto “Today's Ideas. Tomorrow's Impact.”

Despite numerous offers from German and European universities, Eugen Schmalenbach remained loyal to the WiSo faculty throughout his life. In 1933 he avoided forced retirement by applying for emeritus status. While his marriage to Marianne Sachs was initially tolerated by the National Socialists as a “privileged mixed marriage”, the wife of his former colleague Ludwig Feist hid the couple in Bonn from October 1944 onwards. After the end of the war, Eugen Schmalenbach returned to the University of Cologne. In 1951, four years before his death, he became professor emeritus at the age of 78. His successor at the Seminar for Business Organisation, Erich Gutenberg, founder of German business administration after the Second World War, is also one of the outstanding WiSo minds.

Eugen Schmalenbach is remembered with gratitude by the WiSo faculty and the entire professional world. Last but not least, the Journal of Business Research, which he founded in 1906, is now known as the Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research (SBUR), the joint official journal of the Schmalenbach Association for Business Administration and the Association of University Lecturers in Business Administration (Schmalenbach-Gesellschaft für Betriebswirtschaft and the Verband der Hochschullehrer für Betriebswirtschaft, VHB). Eugen Schmalenbach’s fifth successor at the chair, Prof. Dr Maximilan Müller (since 2022), now has big shoes to fill. As a promising researcher and committed university lecturer who cultivates the link between theory and practice, the chances are good that he will also be able to make his own mark.

• Chair of Financial Accounting

The last steps for our "EMBA Class of 2023”

Our Cologne-Rotterdam Executive MBA students Class of 2023 began their journey in September 2021 and have now (almost) finished it! The programme is slowly coming to an end. In March, participants had their last day of classes on the campus in Cologne. Over the next few months, students will focus on their Master’s thesis. In this “In-Company Thesis”, they have the opportunity to relate what they have learned in their studies to their current professional life. The process is accompanied by an academic supervisor.

After submitting their Master’s thesis, the cohort takes part in a week-long “Leadership Expedition” in Norway, where our students put into practice the knowledge and skills they have learned in the “Personal Leadership Development Programme”.

In September, the graduation ceremony will be held, and the students will receive their Master’s degrees.

We wish our EMBA 23 students a very instructive time in Norway and all the best for their Master’s theses!

Our corporate programmes

The Business School has also been very successful in the area of customised programmes this year. We are currently running programmes for Henkel, Zurich, KPMG and Provinzial. We work with our clients to plan the content, which is geared towards the needs and processes of the companies, so their employees enjoy professional development and reach their potential. Through our cooperation with companies from a wide range of industries, we have gained a lot of experience and can offer a variety of professional development solutions.

In cooperation with Henkel, we developed and implemented the “Digital Upskilling Executive Programme”. Over a period of three months, executives from various international companies learn about current trends and gain deep insights into the topic of digitalisation in order to become key players in the transformation process of their companies. The modules are delivered by CEMS partners – The Global Alliance in Management Education network, including Ivey Business School at Western University, HEC Paris, Stockholm School of Economics, University of Cologne and others.

Our certificate programmes

Another new feature is our Leading Insurance Transformation programme, which we will start offering in May 2023. In cooperation with InsurLab Germany e.V., executives from the insurance industry will be prepared for the transformation in the insurance industry through three modules. Future competencies are strengthened through a customised course offering. At the same time, the programme offers the perfect opportunity to exchange ideas with executives from other companies.

About the University of Cologne Business School

The University of Cologne Business School has been offering English- and German-language executive programmes and management seminars since 2015. In addition, the Business School promotes the further education of executives through certificate programmes and develops customised programmes for companies. It is affiliated with the WiSo Faculty of the University of Cologne.

Dear professors, dear academic staff, dear administrative staff, dear support staff,

the WiSo Faculty has started to regularly send internal information and announcements via PUMA ("PersonalUniMailAnwendung"). It is planned to send out the messages collectively via the WiSo Dean's Office every Tuesday after the 1st and 15th of the month, starting at two-week intervals.

The advantage of PUMA compared to the distribution lists used so far is mainly that different groups of staff members can be contacted in a more targeted way:

• Academic staff
• Emeriti
• Visiting academics
• Associate lecturers
• Technical and administrative staff (TuV)
• Professors
• Secretariats at the WiSo Faculty (listing maintained manually in the WiSo Dean's Office)
• Student assistants
• Research assistants

To ensure that the mail also reaches you, please make sure that an email forwarding from your "...@uni-koeln.de" to your WiSo email account "...@wiso.uni-koeln.de" is set up.

I also invite you to use the PUMA service instead of the usual distribution lists. Announcements and notices on the following topics are particularly suitable for this purpose:

• Information that is basically addressed to all or above-mentioned faculty member groups.
• Announcements of events to which all stakeholder groups of the faculty are invited
• Internal notices that are generally of interest to the entire faculty.

They are sent out centrally via the Dean's Office on Tuesdays after the 01st and 15th of each month. Please use the form provided here and submit it by the Thursday before the respective mailing date at the latest.

After a transition phase with parallel operation of PUMA and distribution lists until probably September this year, it is planned to deactivate the distribution lists with the exception of the wiso-wissma distribution list. Communication to internal stakeholder groups should then take place via the PUMA service. For more individual groups, other tools such as Rocket Chat can be used. If you have any queries about the process, please feel free to contact mailto:dscheuwiso.uni-koeln.de.

Sincerely,

Ulrich Thonemann

Your Dean of the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences

We congratulate Jun. Prof. Dr Arno Apffelstaedt.

We are pleased to "welcome" Dr. Arno Apffelstaedt as Junior Professor for Organizational Behavior/Organizational Economics at the WiSo Faculty in March this year! Jun. Prof. Dr. Apffelstaedt has already been working with us since 2018 as a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Corporate Development and Business Ethics. At the WiSo Faculty, he is also an Associated Member of the Cluster of Excellence "ECONtribute: Markets & Public Policy".

He completed his doctorate in economics at the University of Hamburg. He spent part of his doctoral studies as a visiting doctoral student at the Berlin Doctoral Program of Economics and Management Science, as a visiting researcher at the London School of Economics and as a visiting scholar at Harvard University. He is a trained aeronautical engineer and, before switching to economics, worked as a research engineer at the German Aerospace Center (DLR).

Professor Apfelstaedt's previous research focuses on behavioural economics, experimental economics, industrial organisation and political economy. He has published his work in renowned journals such as Management Science. Last year, he was a Fellow of the Hamburg Institute of Advanced Study (HIAS) for 4 months by invitation of the Academy of Sciences. We look forward to him continuing his successful work.

We are very pleased to welcome Jun. Prof. Dr. Apffelstaedt to continue to work with us!

We welcome junior professor Dr Florian Sachs!

Since 1 March, Florian Sachs is Junior Professor for Supply Chain Analytics. With Florian Sachs the first doctoral student of the Center for Digital Transformation at the Heilbronn Campus of the Technical University of Munich now joins us.

2017 Florian Sachs had completed his studies in mathematics (majoring in business mathematics) at the Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, where he also gained experience as a research assistant at the Chair of Economic Policy and the Chair of Operations Management. Between 2016 and 2020, he headed the Magdeburg Experimental Laboratory of Economic Research. In Heilbronn he completed his doctorate in Operations Management

We join Professor Jacob. We are very pleased to welcome  Professor Sachs, a young and respected researcher at the Supply Chain Management Area, whose experience will also benefit the teaching in our Master's programme Business Administration - Supply Chain Management. We wish him all the best for his start at the WiSo!

Back to WiSo: Jun. Prof. Dr Sven Otto

Since April 1, 2023, Dr Sven Otto has been Junior Professor at the Chair of Econometrics in the Department of Economics and Statistics at the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Cologne. He already completed his doctorate with us, as well as working as a stand-in professor (W2 chair substitute) and as a lecturer at the Institute of Econometrics and Statistics.

After completing his PhD in Economics and Social Sciences at the WiSo Faculty, Dr Otto worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of Finance and Statistics at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms University in Bonn. This was followed by his work as a stand-in professor (W2 chair substitute) at the Institute of Econometrics and Statistics of the WiSo-Faculty. Finally, until the end of March, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Mathematical Institute of the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf.

Also in the area of lecturing, Jun. Prof. Dr Otto is also very committed to teaching. Besides teaching at all three universities in the past, he received the Lecturer Award for Outstanding Teaching from the Department of Economics at the University of Bonn for his course "Time Series Econometrics" in 2021. He has also given lectures worldwide, for example at the (EC)2 Conference in Rome, at the IAAE Conference in Sapporo and at the SNDE Annual Symposium in Paris.

Professor Otto's previous research interests are in the area of econometric theory and statistics and focus on time series econometrics and functional data analysis. He has published his work in prestigious journals such as Econometric Theory and Journal of Time Series Analysis. We look forward to him continuing a successful body of work. 

We have succeeded in attracting a committed and already renowned colleague to the faculty once again and are very pleased that we can continue to welcome Jun. Prof. Dr Otto.

Welcome Jun. Prof. Dr Henrik Franke!

We welcome our new member in the Supply Chain Management Area at the Department of Strategy and Innovation.

Jun. Prof. Dr Henrik Franke started his service at the WiSo Faculty on 01.04.2023. Previously, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) at the Chair of Production and Operation Management. Before he was active at the German Graduate School of Management and Law in Heilbronn and visited the Kelley School of Business in the fields of supply chain management and logistics.

Henrik Franke began his studies at Bergische Universität Wuppertal, where he graduated in Electrical Industrial Engineering in 2013. This was followed by a Master's degree at EBS University of Business and Law in Wiesbaden with a focus on management and the automotive industry. He also wrote his master's thesis at Robert Bosch GmbH on the topic of using SAP logistics data to identify structural inefficiencies. A stay abroad at the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands was followed by obtaining his doctorate at the EBS University of Business and Law at the Institute for Supply Chain Management, where he graduated summa cum laude.

In recent years, Henrik Frankes work has appeared in leading journals like Production and Operations Management and Decision Sciences and he has received various prizes and awards for his research. In the spirit of our motto "Today's Ideas. Tomorrow's Impact", we look forward to welcoming a promising young researcher and wish Professor Franke all the best as he embarks on his new career path with us!

Welcome @WiSo 2023

Alike "authenticity", we also live "togetherness“. In practice for example with the Welcome@WiSo event for the newly appointed lecturers, where our new professors got to know their colleagues and spent time together. They were welcomed by Prof. Dr. Marita Jacob (ISS & Associate Dean for Academic Careers). We hope the workshop has helped them to find their way around at the Faculty and that it has provided them with some initial ideas on how to use the interdisciplinary structure of WiSo for their own work.

On-site from left to right: Marita Jacob, Stefan Seidel (Information Systems), Sven Otto (Econometrics), Florian Sachs (Supply Chain Analytics), Thomas Scholdra (Marketing Area), Henrik Franke (Supply Chain Management) and Arno Apffelstaedt (Organizational Behaviour/Organizational Economics). 

(Unfortunately unable to attend were Annabelle Hofer (Organizational Behavior), Anne Burmeister, Sebastian Siegloch (Economics) and Maximilian A. Müller (Financial Accounting).)

Retirement of Christel Schäfer

So that our well-deserving colleague can peacefully pursue her hobby of long-distance running, which she has engaged in for 30 years, the Chair of Economics, Energy and Sustainability is saying goodbye to its secretary Christel Schäfer. To head into her well-earned retirement gently after 47 years, Christel Schäfer will nevertheless remain at the WiSo as a part-time employee in the Chair of Business Informatics.

Farewell to Joel Binckli

After almost 14 years in the executive management of the ISS, Joel Binckli is leaving the WiSo. We are pleased that our colleague has accepted the appointment to a W2 Professorship for Work and Organisational Psychology at the Municipal School of Management (Kommunale Hochschule für Verwaltung) in Hannover. We thank him for the constructive and trusting cooperation in recent years and wish him all the best!

A warm welcome to Nadine Kölble

We also welcome our new colleague, Ms. Nadine Kölble, to the WiSo Library and Campus Service. Nadine Kölble is an interior designer and interior decorator and will strengthen the campus area as Equipment Manager. Her tasks include contributing to the design of buildings and rooms, operational support for construction and furnishing projects, as well as supervision and operation of the buildings and rooms. A warm welcome!

Do you already know our WiSo Values?

The aim was to specify and implement the values from the 2019 Faculty Development Plan naturally. This process produced a lot of fruitful input from all relevant stakeholders.

These values largely reflect how we already work, but they are also intended to introduce new members of the WiSo community to our way of thinking and working.

More about the WiSo values:

https://wiso.uni-koeln.de/en/faculty/wiso-values-participate 

Above all, we want to fill our values ​​with life and there will be different event formats this year. Invitations will be sent straight to your inbox via PUMA Mail.

PARTicipate: We value togetherness – collegiality and cooperation

Regular coffee chat in the WiSo coffee bar

The first coffee chat will take place on 4 May 2023 (and every first Thursday of the month from then on)

LOCATION: Wiso Café Bar on the ground floor (Building 101), Universitätsstr.24

TIME: 12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.

All your questions and comments on a wide range of topics are welcome at this meeting.

In the relaxed atmosphere of the café bar, open matters can be addressed in an uncomplicated manner. Discussion and getting to know new colleagues is also very important to us.

A fixed place will be provided for the first 10 colleagues.

If you do not get a seat by this date, there will be additional event dates for this series.

P.S.: Your first hot drink is covered!

Lunch with the dean

The first lunch will take place on Wednesday, 3 May 2023 in the cafeteria on Zülpicher street & on Tuesday, 23 May, in the cafeteria on Sibille-Hartmann street.

LOCATION: Cafeteria on Zülpicher street or cafeteria on Sibille-Hartmann street

TIME: Various dates in 2023 - 12:30 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.

Here you can enjoy a direct one-to-one exchange with our dean.

Bring your openness and curiosity to this appointment. All your questions on various topics are welcome. Prof. Thonemann personally invites you to lunch.

A fixed place will be reserved for the first colleague(s). More details on registration will follow soon. If you do not get a place for the first date, there will be additional dates for this series of events throughout the year.

WiSo lunch lottery

LOCATION: To be chosen

TIME: End of May

Get to know colleagues over lunch and gain an insight into the diversity of our faculty, where so many people work together in research, teaching and the necessary services, e.g., in technology, administration and the libraries.

The lunch lottery puts you in touch. More details on registration will follow soon.

How the lunch lottery will work:

After registration, groups of four people each are formed from among all participants by a random number generator.

We will inform you in time about the colleagues in your group and provide you with their work email addresses within this group.

You clarify the place and the exact time for your lunch together and use your lunch break for the lunch lottery. However, so that you have enough time for your conversations, half an hour of working time counts as an extension of the break for all participants in the lunch lottery.

You meet nice colleagues and get to know new sides of the faculty.

Keep an eye on your mailbox over the next few days!

We look forward to your registration and the associated interest.

Call: Sustainability Days

Last year, various campaigns were pursued under the motto of the “WiSo Sustainability Days”. We, the employees at the WiSo, not only took responsibility for our immediate environment, but also created sustainable food supplies for insects and bees.

This year the Sustainability Days will be held again in autumn and include not only successful joint campaigns such as “Kölle putzmunter”, but also our wildflower bed or the green library. We are particularly interested in what sustainable things you, dear faculty members and employees, do in your free time.

For example, are you socially involved? Do you regularly do something for the environment, other people or society? Are you part of a project that deserves even more support?

Tell us about it! Send your information or story to us at sustainability@wiso.uni-koeln.de. We are happy to hear from you!

Our alumna Clara Pfeffer (B.Sc. Economics and Political Science) works as a journalist and presenter in the Berlin office of RTL/ntv. The focus of her journalistic work is on sustainability issues and informing about climate policy. In this alumni interview she tells us why she finds these topics important, what she thinks each of us can do to stop climate change and how her studies prepared her for work as a journalist.

Dear Clara, you already worked for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung during your WiSo studies and then started a voluntary internship at n-tv. Did you always want to be a journalist?

I definitely became interested in it very early on. It all started as a children’s reporter for logo! But I wasn’t sure for a long time because I was interested in so many things, and the media industry has a dubious reputation. Especially as an economist, you wonder if you can earn more money somewhere else. But after an internship in marketing, it quickly became clear to me that I absolutely had to try journalism. Today I look forward to work (almost) every day, a luxury that is worth more to me than a consultant’s salary.

Why did you decide to study at the WiSo back then and how did your studies prepare you for your career in journalism?

I liked math and simply found the course descriptions interesting. Actually, everyone had warned me about economics. They said it was far removed from reality and dry. I found it super exciting to think about why certain countries are richer than others and how we present social problems in such a way that they become calculable. In combination with political science and a few courses on economic psychology, the degree gave me a good foundation for reporting on politics and economics and precisely these intersections today. Nowhere can you live out your curiosity as well as at university. The statistics courses are also valuable for me today, because only in this way can I classify the many numbers and statistics that we receive every day from press offices.

You currently work as a correspondent for RTL in Berlin. You focus on sustainability issues and provide information on climate policy in your journalistic work. How do you place these topics and where does your interest in them come from?

My interest was twofold: On the one hand, as a business journalist and economist, I have long observed that the market and companies are increasingly concerned about the topic of sustainability and the costs of the climate crisis. On the other hand, I have my roots in Brazil, where the destruction of the Amazon has taken on enormous proportions since the election of Bolsonaro. And although this also massively affects us in Germany, the interest was rather moderate. I was determined to change that. Today, together with a great team, I am always looking for topics that directly affect our viewers, but by no means leave them alone with bad news. Our aim is to show what the respective scope for action is.

What do you think each of us can do to stop the advance of climate change?

Talk about it! We need to create a general awareness that this crisis is happening here and now. But this is not about pointing fingers at others. Instead, we should show each other what is possible. The big levers, in my opinion, are in politics and business. And that is where we can exert pressure. Does the company where I work have a plan to reduce CO2? Which party has the best answers to the heat in our cities? We need to discuss this with each other – the more, the better.

What are the first three websites you open in the morning?

None at all – I start the morning by trying to do without my smartphone & co. for half an hour.

Later, of course, I look at ntv.de, RTL.de and listen to podcasts like “Was jetzt?” and Deutschlandfunk. After that, I have to stay on top of the latest developments anyway in order to keep up in our conferences.

Please complete the sentence: When I think back to my student days in Cologne, I recall...

wonderful friendships, long nights and “dat Jeföhl”!

Finally, what would you like to share with our students? What are your three tips?

Don’t focus so much on whether this course will “help you later”. Nowhere else can you absorb as much knowledge as at university. Discussing, questioning, working independently (and memorising) – for me, these were the most important skills I learned at university. You can also learn Excel skills and the like later. Take the time to find out what really interests you and what you enjoy. And don’t stress yourself out! I don’t know anyone who wishes they had started working earlier.

WiSo Marketing regularly checks the press review of the University of Cologne for articles and mentions of the WiSo Faculty and its professors in the national and international media. These press clippings are constantly reviewed and collected after WiSo reports. Here we would like to give you an overview of the publications in the national media in which WiSo professors serve as experts or which publish articles written by them. If the article is available online, you will find a link to it below. Press articles that are only available in print media are mostly available via the electronic journals database of the University and City Library.

The list is compiled according to available data. If an article is missing, please send us an email.