We welcome undergraduate students from all WU degree programs to write their bachelor’s theses at the Institute for Strategic Organizational Communication. We offer a range of topics in the fields of business communication, strategic communication, and communication management that you can explore in your projects. You will be supervised by an experienced member of staff from the institute, who will guide you through the process of composing a thesis and provide assistance with regard to academic concerns along the way.

In order to write your bachelor’s thesis at our institute, you should meet the following requirements:

• You need to attend or have already passed the course on basic academic writing ("Standards of academic writing and citation"), preferably at our Department.

• Additionally, you should demonstrate a high level of language competence in German or English.

If you are interested in writing your bachelor’s thesis at our institute, we encourage you to get in touch with us. You can find a list of potential thesis supervisors and the respective topics on which they supervise bachelor’s theses below.

After making contact, you will then make further arrangements with your supervisor. This will involve discussing possible topic ideas as well as specific requirements relating to the structure, approach or methodology used in your thesis. You will also have to prepare a proposal on your chosen topic and formulate a research question. The proposal should be no longer than two pages (A4, Times New Roman, font size 12, line spacing 1.5, recommended citations format: APA 7th version or Chicago) and should include: a short description of the issue or the topic; the possible research question; the proposed approach or method; and a rough overview of existing research on the topic. Only after your supervisor has approved the topic and proposal will you be given the go-ahead to write your thesis. In general, a bachelor’s thesis will consist of a body of around 8,000-10,000 words, plus a list of references/a bibliography and potential appendices.

You can find the style guide to be used for theses here

Potential supervisors and their areas of supervision:

Andreas Enzminger

• Media effect studies,

• Persuasion,

• Crisis communication,

• Misinformation / fake news,

• Online radicalisation.

Ursula Lutzky

• Communicating with customers,

• Corporate apologies,

• Crisis communication through various online media,

• Digital business communication.

Jens Seiffert-Brockmann

• Strategic communication,

• Gamification and internet memes,

• Trust in organizational communication,

• Sports communication,

• Costly signaling,

• Financial communication,

• Crisis communication.

Julia Stranzl

• Employee communication,

• Appreciation at work,

• Crisis communication.

Franzisca Weder

• Sustainability communication,

• CSR communication,

• Environmental communication,

• Organizational communication,

• Internal communication,

• Public Relations,

• Energy communication.