Theses

We offer supervision for your Bachelor or Master thesis at the University of Münster; they are usually related to our main research areas. We prefer research projects with a focus on empirical studies. On this page, we offer suggestions for specific research questions which are in line with our main research interests. We are happy to receive further ideas from you and are open to cooperate with practitioners to conduct your thesis project.

In particular, we offer supervision for theses concerning these topics:

• Student Start-Up Monitor
• Cybervetting
• Selection & Assessment
• Entrepreneurship
• Digitization
• Diversity Management
• Employer Branding
• Personality Assessment

Student Start-up Monitor

We are conducting this year's Student Start-Up Monitor as a snaphot of the student start-up ecosystem at German universities.

The focus of a thesis would be on implementation and evaluation of the monitor; with supervision. We are open to your research ideas, based on the variables surveyed in the monitor (e.g. well-being, social and sustainable entrepreneurship, student initiatives).

Your supervisors will be Jun.-Prof. Dr. Philipp Schäpers and Max Weldert, M.Sc. or Henrik Heinemann, M.Sc. Please contact us if you are interested in the Student Start-up Monitor!

Cybervetting

In recent years, cybervetting became a common practice for HR professionals: Latest studies estimate that two of three recruiters look up applicant's social media to gather information on the applicant's hireability. Specifically, they search professional (e.g., LinkedIn, Xing) and private social networks (e.g., Facebook, Twitter) for cues on the applicant's skills, values, and personality.

While Cybervetting is very popular in HR departments, its psychometric validity is debated controversially in IO-psychology. Do social media profiles offer job-related cues to future employers? Can one assess the applicant's future performance and skills from a social media profile? Studies on this question are rare; and, moreover, present contradictory results. Also, many authors point out that cybervetting might harbor dangers of biased decisions and stereotype use. 

Currently, we are planning empirical studies to address questions such as:

• The "who": Recruiter's attitudes in cybervetting (e.g., trust, preferences, perceptions)
• The "what": Social media profile features in cybervetting (e.g., irrelevant information, relative importance of profile features)
• Thinking, fast and wrong: Biases in cybervetting (e.g., similarity-attraction, sexism, racism, halo, attractiveness)
• Who, when, what, where, and how? Cybervetting practices in Germany

Supervision for theses that focus on cybervetting is provided by Prof. Dr. Philipp Schäpers und Franz Mönke, M.Sc. Please feel free to contact us if you are interested in cybervetting!

Entrepreneurs' well-being

Being an entrepreneur can be a potential source of self-fullfillment and personal growth; and therefore contribute to an individual's well-being. Being a successful entrepreneur no longer means just making high profits, but also having a fulfilled life. Numerous studies have shown that founders' well-being is above-average; despite a significantly higher workload. However, current studies in the German start-up ecosystem showed that, at the same time, a remarkable number of founders are also "very dissatisfied" with their lives.

However, low well-being has hardly received any attention in recent studies so far. Since many startups fail or never scale, several authors criticized the focus on the positive aspects of entrepreneurship and call for a more nuanceful investigation of entrepreneurial well-being.

Currently, we are planning empirical studies to address questions such as:

• Is there a casual relationship between well-being and (long-term) firm performance?
• Why are so many founders very satisfied, but others also very unhappy with their lives? (explanatory model)
• Does low well-being motivate short-term focused behavior?
• How does the well-being of peak-performing entrepreneurs differ from low-performing entrepreneurs?
• Does entrepreneurs‘ well-being have spill-over effects on coworkers, employees and families?
• Is there a self-selection of happier people into entrepreneurship?

Supervision is provided by Prof. Dr. Philipp Schäpers and Max Weldert, M.Sc. Please contact us if you are interested in entrepreneurs' well-being!

Responsible entrepreneurship

More and more newly founded companies no longer have profit as their main purpose, but strive to make a social or ecological contribution to our society. However, very few of these start-ups are classic social enterprises whose main motive is non-profit - but rather companies that want to combine profit and social benefit. We aim to investigate this new form of start-ups and want to take a look at the impact of social and environmental responsibility from the different perspectives of the people involed in an start up (e.g., entrepreneurs, employees, applicants, clients and investors).

Currently, we are planning empirical studies to address questions such as:

• Purpose attracts? Social responsibility and employer attractiveness
• Differentiating responsible and commercial entrepreneurs (values, motivation, personality)
• Come for the job, stay for the impact: Effects of social responsibility on job satisfaction and turnover intentions
• Feeling good and doing great: Subjective and objective entrepreneurial success factors
• Not all shiny things are green: When is a company perceived as socially responsible?

We provide supervision by Prof. Dr. Philipp Schäpers and Henrik Heinemann, M.Sc. Please feel free to contact us if you are interested in responsible entrepreneurship!