Resarch Projects

Among the 45 submissions, our "Innofarm" application was selected for funding by the BMBF in the "Working Worlds of the Future" program. A total of approximately EUR 1.4 million in funding can be accessed, with a start date of April 1, 2021.

The majority of scientific works on the topic of organisational identity deal with its development. However, the question of the specific building blocks of an organizational identity has so far been the subject of relatively little research. In our research project we want to deal with this research area. Our project is both qualitatively and quantitatively empirically oriented and is based on the data of all companies from two company clusters, the watch clusters in the Black Forest and in Glashütte, to which a total of 30 companies belong. Our research project is characterized by a high degree of novelty, as it will extend previous research on organizational identity in two areas: (1) We use a multi-level approach to analyze elements of organizational identity, which includes the perspective of the employees, the organization, and also the level of the organizational field. In this way, our project provides a unique understanding of the elements that define organizational identity. Following previous findings on scripted identities research, we examine how the elements of organizational identity differ and are used differently based on the levels of the organizational members, the organization as an actor in its own right, and the organizational field. In doing so, we also analyze how the organization deals with differences in identity elements among the three levels. (2) We explicitly consider the role of corporate, cluster, and regional history, a field of research that has been insufficiently considered in the context of organizational identity. Moreover, by comparing firms and clusters in West and East Germany, we are able to investigate the role of radical institutional change on organizational identity. The expected results of our project will contribute to theory building in organizational identity research and are relevant for practice, as the role of identity formation in the context of organizational insistence and the establishment of clusters in regional economies plays a high role.

(official project description of the DFG)

The Lorentz force anemometer (Lofometer for short) is a non-contact measuring device for determining flow in high-temperature melts, which was developed and patented at TU Ilmenau. The aim of the EXIST project, which is funded by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi), is to further develop the measuring device to market maturity and to develop an exploitation strategy for the product in order to transfer the invention to industry. To this end, engineers (Department of Thermo- and Magnetofluid Dynamics) and business economists (Department of Corporate Management/Organization) are working closely together. The EXIST project was preceded by a ForMaT project funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, in which the two disciplines had already worked together successfully.

Since the SGOFoundation was established in 2000, more than 50 research projects have been completed. The SGO Foundation supports research projects in the following areas:

1. Organization (Organizational Design, Organizational Sciences, Organizational Structures etc.)
2. Process Management / Value Creation
3. Corporate development (business models, innovation, etc.)
4. Transformation and change management
5. Leadership (leadership, leadership models, leadership instruments, personnel management, culture, etc.)

In this series, the Department of Corporate Management, together with Prof. em. Wilfried Krüger, Emeritus of the Justus-Liebig-University Giessen and doctoral supervisor of Prof. Bach, has carried out the 5th edition of the Excellence in Change project.