Thesis Writing

To identify a research question, you can either work on a topic selected by us or make your own topic suggestion. You can find advertised topics, if available, under the heading News.

If you would like to propose a topic yourself, you can choose two ways. Either you identify an exciting question from the literature or you have a practical phenomenon that raises an important question and why you have the opportunity to collect data. In both cases, you must be able to answer the so-called “5-W-questions” to apply for a thesis and later to write the thesis:

• What is the research gap? (it is not enough to state that this has not yet been investigated)
• Why is that relevant?
• Who is it relevant to?
• What changes the answer to your research question? For whom are these changes relevant?
• To what extent are you expanding your previous knowledge in the area you are working on?

Also, to identify a good research question, please read this article, which provides very practical guidance:

Davis, M. S. (1971). That's interesting! Towards a phenomenology of sociology and a sociology of phenomenology. Philosophy of the social sciences, 1(2), 309-344.

In addition, please read these articles, which provide an overview of the state of the literature:

Saebi, T., Foss, N. J., & Linder, S. (2019). Social entrepreneurship research: Past achievements and future promises. Journal of Management, 45(1), 70-95.
Gupta, P., Chauhan, S., Paul, J., & Jaiswal, M. P. (2020). Social entrepreneurship research: A review and future research agenda. Journal of Business Research, 113, 209-229.

We supervise topics that deal with social/sustainable/impact entrepreneurship. This means that a thesis can be written from different perspectives (e.g. psychology, HR, marketing or law) on how the emergence of companies with social/ecological goals can be promoted.

Previously supervised theses have dealt with the following topics, for example:
​

• Understanding Hiring Decisions in Social Startups
  - A qualitative and experimental study on the criteria used by young social enterprises to select future employees
• Team Training in the context of Social Entrepreneurship
  - Experimental study to investigate how trust can be fostered in social entrepreneurial teams
• Eliciting Consumer Reactions - How consumers react to Mission Crises in Sustainable Ventures?
  - Experimental study to investigate how customers react to a mission crisis in a sustainable venture compared to a traditional venture
• Sustainable Development in and through Outdoor Sports: How to foster Systems Thinking
  - Experimental study on how sustainability training in the context of outdoor sports can contribute to the promotion of systems thinking and thus to an important component of sustainable entrepreneurial competences
• The Role of Leadership in Social Entrepreneurship: A Literature Review
  ​- Literature review to explore what we know so far about the role of leadership in social entrepreneurship

The list of topics is indicative. Please feel free to contact us with your own ideas or requests for topic suggestions.

To ease the start into writing a thesis, in your bachelor’s thesis you will write a Specific information for writing a bachelor’s thesis with a quantitative part (e.g., frequency evaluation of theories, journals, authors, etc.). It is also possible to do a meta-analysis or, in exceptional cases, to accompany a data collection as part of the work. The reason for a common method done by all bachelor’s students is that they have the opportunity to receive a brief introduction to the methodology and that they are being able to support each other with methodological questions.

For writing a bachelor’s thesis, please note the requirements of the examination office. You work independently on a specific topic from a scientific point of view (self-study). The processing effort is given as 360 hours. The time from the topic to the submission of the bachelor thesis is 12 weeks. The thesis must be written in English. Three copies of the bachelor thesis must be typed, bound and paginated. An additional copy must be submitted in electronic form. In addition, all documents, data, literature references, overview tables and the like necessary for the preparation of the thesis must also be submitted to the professorship in electronic form. The scope of the thesis depends on the respective topic. Basically: write as little as possible and as much as necessary. Use other articles from scientific journals as a guide for your structure and length.

Master theses should use an empirical method. This means that data for answering a given or self-selected question must be collected/procured and analyzed. Different methods can be used. The following data sets/methods are to be targeted: experiments, third-party data, questionnaire study to be analyzed with, for example, regressions, structural equation models, cluster analysis. The learning of the study design and the methodology takes place either through a course taken before the thesis or must be done in self-study while working on the thesis.

For writing a master’s thesis, please note the requirements of the examination office. You work independently on a specific topic from a scientific point of view (self-study). The processing time is given as 900 hours and with a time frame of 24 weeks. The thesis must be written in English. Three copies of the master's thesis are to be typed, bound and paginated. An additional copy must be submitted in electronic form. In addition, all documents, data, literature references, overview tables, and the like necessary for the preparation of the thesis must also be submitted to the professorship in electronic form. The scope of the thesis depends on the respective topic. Basically: write as little as possible and as much as necessary. Use other articles from scientific journals as a guide for your structure and length.

The application for the final theses at the Chair of Social Entrepreneurship is centrally organized through the Institute for Entrepreneurship & Innovation. Please refer to the following link for details regarding the application deadlines and the application process: https://www.iei.uni-bayreuth.de/en/students/Allocation-of-final-theses/index.html.

The supervision has two components:
(a) joint supervision elements at the Institute for Entrepreneurship & Innovation
​(https://www.iei.uni-bayreuth.de/en/students/Allocation-of-final-theses/index.html), and
(b) individual supervision.