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Fachbereich Wirtschaftswissenschaften

Business News Volume 35

Department of Management Sciences, Rheinbach Campus and Sankt Augustin Campus
Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences
Business News Volume 35 - Winter Semester 2021/2022

 

Dear Readers, 

We are pleased to present our newsletter of the Department of Management Sciences for the two locations Rheinbach and Sankt Augustin for the 2021/22 winter semester. It contains plenty of information about campus life and our department. If you have any suggestions, wishes or improvements, please don't hesitate to contact us. We appreciate your opinions.

We wish you a Merry Christmas and every success and, above all, good health for the coming year 22.

Dipl.-Betriebswirtin (FH) Anne Schaefer, Rheinbach Campus

Dipl.-Betriebswirtin (FH) Sonja Atai, Sankt Augustin Campus

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Tour de Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) - swapping the lecture theatre for two wheels in 2021

The idea of students taking to their bikes to visit companies and talk about their corporate social responsibility was born out of a passion for cycling back in 2019. The pandemic put a spoke in the wheel for any keen cyclists at H-BRS hoping to go on tour in 2020, but the third Tour de Corporate Social Responsibility got under way on Monday, 16 August this year – although still without any actual company visits due to the coronavirus situation.

The Tour de CSR took place from 16 to 20 August 2021 as a joint event involving the Department of Management Sciences and the Centre for Ethics and Responsibility (ZEV), with 20 Management Sciences students taking part. The tour was supervised by Stefan Freitag, Viktor Gornus, Professor Norbert Seeger (all from the Department of Management Sciences) and Holger Willing from the ZEV.

The cycle route

Starting from Sankt Augustin, the cyclists travelled through the Eifel region and Nideggen to Aachen and then on to Maastricht in the Netherlands, before coming back through Aachen and Nideggen again to Sankt Augustin.

An educational experience

Company visits may have been forced off the itinerary again this year, but the students still had the chance to learn something. At the stopping points along the way and during their communal evenings together, the supervisors told the participants about important links to European (economic) history and discussed the idea of European and the European Union with them. The organisers were also keen to raise awareness of corporate social responsibility and the impact of humankind on the environment – by visiting a lignite open-cast mine, for example, or by examining the latest flooding disaster and the consequences of this for both people and nature. The climate crisis was also discussed in this context.

Team building

The tour more or less turned itself into a team-building event for the students. Given that their studies had been conducted online between spring 2020 and the end of the 2021 summer semester, the importance of this aspect of the tour experience could not be overstated.

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First international Codeshare Teaching and Learning Summer School

A four-week digital Codeshare Teaching and Learning Summer School was held in July and August 2021 as part of the international Codeshare Teaching and Learning Project funded by the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD – the German Academic Exchange Service).

Following the principle of codesharing in the aviation industry, where several airlines offer joint flights and incorporate them into their flight schedules, courses from the curricula of H-BRS and other partners were made available collectively to students from the various institutions involved. The summer school programme featured eight different courses on the topics of “International Finance”, “Digitization in Business” and “International Career Building”, taught by professors and teaching staff from Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences (Xamk), the University of Cape Coast in Ghana and Koblenz University of Applied Sciences’ RheinAhrCampus, and opened up to students at the partner universities and other international cooperation partners. The courses were made up of compulsory online sessions run on five consecutive days. In these interactive sessions, the participants discussed issues and worked on them in international teams. For many students, this was their first opportunity to forge international links and try making use of this in an intercultural context. In addition to the synchronous course units, the students were given various preparatory and follow-up tasks to do.

Planning for the summer school got under way back in the 2020 winter semester. H-BRS worked with international cooperation partners involved in the Codeshare Teaching and Learning Project to coordinate the main course topics, the timings and the teaching concept for the summer school programme. Each partner university brought its own specialisms and teaching strengths, complementing the other partners’ curricula in a useful and effective way.

The project team, led by project manager Prof. Dr. Ralf Meyer and made up of project coordinator Jana Kohl and student  assistants Eva Detsch and Soyun Park, also organised an intercultural fringe programme with various online events alongside the specialist courses themselves. Participants were invited to join a virtual get-together, a digital games night and a virtual street art tour and encouraged to use online platforms to network and interact.

Over 180 interested students from the partner universities in Ghana, Finland, the US and Germany and other international institutions partnered with H-BRS signed up for the eight summer school courses.

The feedback from the participants has been very positive. Many of the students really appreciated the range of courses on current and fascinating topics, which ventured beyond their usual study programmes, and also enjoyed the opportunity to engage with others in an international exchange. Some of them would have liked the courses to be longer so they could have studied the content in even greater depth and had more chances to network with their international peers.

More than 90 students were awarded a certificate for successfully completing courses at the end of the summer school, including 30 from Bachelor’s degree programmes in the Department of Management Sciences. The students from Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg were even able to count the summer school courses as an elective.

The Codeshare Teaching and Learning project has carried on into the current 2021 winter semester with four more project courses. Prof. Dr. Ralf Meyer is offering courses on two electives – “Crypto Assets and the Bitcoin ‘Rush’” and “Social Impact Investing” (the latter in collaboration with Dr Tafadzwa Mlambo). Students have also been given the opportunity to sign up for a course on “Economics of Tourism” at Coastal Carolina University, a partner institution in the US. Meanwhile, Andreas Faulstich from Koblenz University of Applied Sciences’ RheinAhrCampus is re-running his course on “International Career Building”, with international exchange students across a range of departments also invited to take part.

Planning for a 2022 summer school based on a similar format has already begun.

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Digital International General Studies - DISG

The Digital International General Studies (DISG) programme at H-BRS was launched in June 2021. As part of the “internationalisation and diversity” measures in the 2021-2015 University Development Plan (HEP3), the aim of DISG is to offer all students at H-BRS the opportunity to develop international skills and expertise with a low entry threshold.

International students taking part in digital courses offered by H-BRS and H-BRS students participating in courses at partner universities can gain international experience right from their own homes without necessarily having to complete a study or internship (key word: internationalisation@home). This is particularly designed for students who are unable to take up opportunities to study abroad due to financial constraints, illness, childcare responsibilities or caregiving relatives, for example. Through this scheme, they now have the chance to gain international experience and cultivate networks.

To appeal to a wide range of students, Digital International General Studies aims to offer a transdisciplinary programme of elective courses, exploring areas such as key skills, soft skills, interdisciplinary competences and various general studies topics (politics, ethics, philosophy, social sciences, etc.). It is designed, as far as possible, to tie in with a variety of study programme curricula so that students can acquire ECTS points. Starting with just a small selection of courses, the scheme will gradually be expanded to create a comprehensive general studies programme.

In the current 2021/2022 winter semester, courses on “World Politics on Campus” and “Sustainability and Innovation in a Connected World” (in partnership with Shenzhen Technology University (SZTU) in China) have already been offered to students across all departments at H-BRS via DISG. The courses, which are run jointly with SZTU, are being taught 50% by staff at H-BRS and 50% by SZTU staff, with students from both universities taking part virtually. More detailed information about the elective course on “Sustainability and Innovation in a Connected World” can be found on the following H-BRS web pages (in German): https://www.h-brs.de/de/news/vorlesungsreihe-nachhaltigkeit-und-innovation.

The plan is to offer more courses in collaboration with H-BRS partner universities via DISG in the upcoming 2022 summer semester.

If you are interested in having your course included in the DISG course catalogue, please contact the project manager Christine Freitag.

More information about the Digital International General Studies programme is available on the following H-BRS web pages: https://www.h-brs.de/en/general-studies

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Digital Consumption Forum

Protecting consumer data – technology and regulations for safeguarding individuals

The first forum for consumer informatics took place at Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg on Thursday, 23 September 2021. During the one-day online event, more than 30 participants discussed topics and ideas relating to the issue of consumer data protection. This included contributions from the fields of computer science and consumer and social sciences as well as input from a regulatory perspective. The event was organised by the Institute for Digital Consumption at H-BRS (Dr Timo Jakobi, Prof. Dr. Alexander Boden), the Chair of IT Security at the University of Siegen (Prof. Dr. Gunnar Stevens) and the North Rhine-Westphalia Competence Centre of Consumer Research (Dr Christian Bala).

The programme kicked off with a word of welcome from Wolfgang Schuldzinski, Chairman of the Consumer Association of North Rhine-Westphalia (Verbraucherzentrale Nordrhein-Westfalen e.V.). The highlight of the forum where the two keynotes: in the morning, Nadine Nagel, Head of the Cyber Security for the Private Sector and Society Division of the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), talked about the new consumer protection tasks facing her organisation.  Then, in the afternoon, Prof. Ulrich Kelber, Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, presented his views on the challenges for data and consumer protection in the digital age.

Further talks on areas of application, technical bases and legal and ethical considerations regarding consumer protection outlined topics being examined within this newly emerging field of research.

The morning programme got under way with an item from Prof. Dr. Kerstin Lemke-Rust and colleagues from H-BRS on consumer involvement in blockchain applications and a presentation by Elias Grünewald (TU Berlin) on artificial intelligence-based procedures for improving transparency in data protection regulations. This was followed by a session focusing on selected areas of application, in which Prof. Dr. Steffen Kroschwald from the Centre for Consumer Research and Sustainable Consumption at Pforzheim University set out the challenges relating to data protection in intelligent vehicles. The morning was rounded off with an item on data protection in schools from Prof. Dr. Franco Rau and colleagues from the University of Vechta.

After a lunch break and the two keynotes, the programme continued with contributions from Dominik Pins (Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology, FIT) on voice assistants in private households and a talk on ethical and legal implications. At this point, Prof. Monika Büscher and colleagues from Lancaster University presented their work on the topic of disaster capitalism. Prof. Max von Grafenstein (Berlin University of the Arts) then finished off with an item on privacy icon design.

The programme closed with in-depth discussions amongst the participants on the topics presented, along with a final debate on hypothetical future topics and tasks facing digital consumption, particularly involving the representatives from consumer protection organisations taking part in the event.   The presentations will be published in the autumn under a free open access licence as a conference transcript on the H-BRS publication server.

The forum was funded by the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection and the German Consumer Research Network.

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Virtual get-together with graduates from the Department of Management Sciences

Part of the fun of graduating is having the chance to meet up again with the lecturers and fellow students who were part of your successful academic journey. Although it would have been much more preferable for everyone from the Department of Management Sciences to see each other in person, the pandemic situation unfortunately meant this was still not possible this year. In spite of this, the Department of Management Sciences managed to give graduates from the last two years the chance to see one another again and celebrate their success by inviting them to a VIRTUAL GET-TOGETHER. This event took place on 23 October 2021 before the university-wide digital graduation ceremony.

Department lecturers from the Rheinbach and Sankt Augustin campuses used the “wonder.me” virtual platform to offer their congratulations to successful graduates from the Bachelors degree programmes in Business Management, International Business, and Business Psychology and the Master’s degree programmes in Management Accounting and Management Control, CSR & NGO Management, Innovation and Information Management, and Marketing.

This was followed by the university’s grand graduation ceremony, shown in a varied live stream broadcast involving an effective mix of talks, music and personal reflections on study experiences, with the audience following the graduates from our department live on camera during a joint cooking session.

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Berlin excursion - news from the CSR and NGO Management MBA programme

This year’s Berlin excursion as part of the CSR and NGO Management MBA programme took place virtually due to the coronavirus situation.

Under the guiding theme “Lobby and Advocacy of NGOs in the Capital – Protagonists, Instruments and Methods”, the traditional MBA excursion was held virtually this winter semester in light of the situation with the coronavirus. From 24 September to 3 December 2021, international students and graduates from the CSR and NGO Management programme were given the opportunity to improve their knowledge of lobbying. High-calibre figures, such as members of parliament, NGO lobbyists and representatives from civil society organisations, were on hand to answer questions from the participants during weekly online events, giving them an insight into what their lobbying activities and strategies involve.

NGOs and civil society organisations are important players in a pluralistic society. They are able to contribute analyses, knowledge and empirical expertise to the political debate and the shaping of political ideas. They influence political decision-making for the benefit of their field of work and their target groups. Lobbying and advocacy are part and parcel of the activities and strategies of NGOs. In order to be successful, NGOs need a certain set of professional skills and a clear lobbying and advocacy strategy.

Methodology and learning objectives
The excursion combined two different methods: Prof. Claudia Warning got things started on 24 September with her introductory event outlining the theoretical basis of the excursion. This then paved the way for a series of 60-minute talks over the course of the semester. The excursion programme was scheduled to end with a final session on 3 December, giving the participants a chance to reflect on what they had learned and draw conclusions from this. The programme thus gave students the opportunity to build on the skills and expertise they have acquired during their MBA studies and improve their specialist knowledge. In view of the excursion’s international participant structure, the events were conducted in English.

Special thanks to Prof. Dr. Claudia Warning
We would like to take this opportunity to extend a heartfelt thanks to our host, who is also a professor on the CSR and NGO Management programme, Prof. Dr. Claudia Warning. Once again, Professor Dr. Warning has drawn on her excellent network of high-calibre contacts to allow MBA students from our university access to exclusive information and contact.

Right Livelihood Award winner makes guest appearance on 3 November 2021
At 17:30 on Wednesday, 3 November, we were joined by Colin Consalves, human rights activist and winner of a Right Livelihood Award – also known as the alternative Nobel Prize – for a one-hour online event (via Webex) under the title “Making law work for the marginalized”.

Further details, the programme and information about the speaker are available on our website: https://www.h-brs.de/en/wiwi/virtual-berlin-excursion-2021

Impressions from the last Berlin excursion in 2018 can be found online on the following web page:
https://www.h-brs.de/en/wiwi/news/mba-students-lobby-excursion-berlin

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Profile of Prof. Daniel Agyapong, visiting professor 

Prof. Dr. Daniel Agyapong started working at Hochschule Bonn-Rhein Sieg as a visiting professor under the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)’s guest lecturer scheme (Gastdozentenprogramm) back in the 2021 summer semester. In the 2021 winter semester, he has also been able to work on site on the Sankt Augustin Campus and will be assisting the Department of Management Sciences in person until January 2022.

Prof. Dr. Daniel Agyapong is a professor of finance and entrepreneurship at the University of Cape Coast School of Business in Ghana, where he also leads the Marketing and Supply Chain Management Department.

Having been involved in various cooperation projects between Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg and the University of Cape Coast over a number of years, Professor Dr. Agyapong will already be a familiar face for many of our colleagues and students. He has also been a regular visitor to H-BRS since 2012.

One of the longstanding and successful cooperation projects with which Professor Dr. Agyapong has been associated is “Building Bridges Across Continents: an Intercultural Student Project”, led by Regina Brautlacht. This involves students from various countries, including Ghana and Germany, developing their intercultural skills and expertise through joint online project work.

Prof. Dr. Agyapong is leading the University of Cape Coast’s contribution to the BET Ghana project, a transdisciplinary research and transfer initiative involving Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, the University of Cape Coast and partners from the consumer goods and processing industries in Germany/Europe and Ghana. The project’s overall goal is to enhance the employability of and self-employment opportunities for students and graduates, specifically in the Ghanaian consumer goods and food processing industry.

Since October 2019, Prof. Dr. Agyapong has been supporting the international Codeshare Teaching and Learning project, which was initiated in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Ralf Meyer. This digital learning project is designed to enable students to participate in virtual mobility. The courses it offers, such as “Current Topics in Global Finance”, and the digital Codeshare Teaching and Learning Summer School in 2021 have already attracted numerous students and enabled them to gain some initial international experience in the process.

During the 2021/22 winter semester, Prof. Dr. Agyapong is focusing mainly on teaching courses on “Finance”, “Research Methods and “Theory of Science”, along with the elective “Presentations and Rhetorical Skills”, as part of the Bachelor’s degree programme in International Business, as well as taking part in international cooperation projects on site.

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Practical Projects

The Department of Management Sciences once again has some interesting projects on offer in the 2021/22 winter semester, including some being conducted in collaboration with companies and institutions. The practical project topics vary each semester to help maintain a high quality standard and ensure that the topics are up to date. The topics for the current round of practical projects are as follows:

  • Digitalising customer relationships with MS cloud solutions 
  • Digital Social Innovation Lab 
  • Lean method training/factory simulation
  • Marketing and branding in European association work 
  • Obstkäppchen (organisation aimed at helping elderly and lonely people) 
  • Linking sectors. Evaluating potential for the business areas of Stadtwerke Bonn (SWB)
  • Strengthening the social sector through pro bono projects at universities, based on the example of H-BRS 
  • Start-up zero waste shop 

Click here for details on the practical projects.

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New publications of our department

Members of our department produced new publications in 2020 and 2021 and will produce more publications in 2022.

Click here to read more about current publications.

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News and events

Latest information about dates and events for the 2021/22 winter semester and a preview of the 2022 summer semester.

Read more about the current dates and the outlook for the 2022 summer semester here.

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Contact and site information

Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg
Department of Management Sciences, Sankt Augustin Campus
Grantham-Allee 20
D-53757 Sankt Augustin
Germany

Department of Management Sciences, Rheinbach Campus
von-Liebig-Str. 20
D-53359 Rheinbach
Germany

Editorial staff:
Diplom-Betriebswirtin (FH) Sonja Atai
Phone: +49 2241 865 106
Fax: +49 2241 865 8106
E-Mail Sonja Atai(link sends e-mail)

Diplom-Betriebswirtin (FH) Anne Schaefer
Phone: +49 2241 865 427
Fax: +49 2241 865 8427
E-Mail Anne Schaefer(link sends e-mail)

Lisa Nolden 

Student Assistant

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Frequency of publication: twice a year

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