Syllabus

Title
5298 Course III - Business Project Part I
Instructors
Konstantin Grün, M.A., Ass.Prof. Dr. Otto Janschek, Saam Benjamin Mahmoodian, MSc.
Type
PI
Weekly hours
2
Language of instruction
Englisch
Registration
02/19/24 to 02/20/24
Registration via LPIS
Notes to the course
Dates
Day Date Time Room
Monday 03/04/24 02:00 PM - 05:00 PM TC.3.10
Monday 03/11/24 02:00 PM - 05:00 PM TC.3.10
Wednesday 03/13/24 08:00 AM - 05:00 PM Extern
Thursday 03/14/24 09:00 AM - 02:00 PM Extern
Monday 03/18/24 02:00 PM - 05:00 PM TC.3.10
Monday 04/08/24 02:00 PM - 05:00 PM TC.3.10
Contents

This time, the IfU Business Project will be held in collaboration with ACP, a large Austrian IT firm with customers mainly in Austria and Germany. The topic will be “Renovating the ACP Management Control System". The intermediate and final results of the project will presented to and discussed with ACP’s management team. 

This is a real-life consulting course that blends research and practice. This award-winning (WU Excellence in Teaching, Ars Docendi State Prize) course is unique, as participants will be both WU’s SIMC master and IfU bachelor students. The master students will act as team leaders.

 

LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES FOR STUDENTS:

This is a real-life consulting course that blends research and practice. Students will learn about current challenges in business practice and develop tailor-made solutions. They will gain consulting experience in research-focused consulting project and learn how to do a practically relevant research study. Students will gain unique real-world insights into the IT industry and will have the opportunity to learn empirical research methods, such as expert interviews and survey study.

Students will be able to develop and train their team-working and leadership skills. According to the “IfU Business Project Approach“ which has been awarded the Austrian State Prize for teaching (Ars Docendi) in 2016, up to five Master Students will take the role of team leaders and lead small teams of Bachelor students. The experienced challenges of leadership will be discussed in class and all students (Bachelor and Master students) will have the opportunity to get invaluable „learning by doing“ leadership experience for their future career.

Learning outcomes

After completing this class students will be able to:

  • conduct an in-depth analysis of an organization's management control system
  • critically read and make sense of research articles
  • structure complex business problems
  • design and implement practice-oriented research projects

Apart from that, completing this course will contribute to students' abilities to:

  • organize and manage a large-scale project in the field of strategic management and management accounting
  • pursue the project management (PM) activities and master the use of various PM tools
  • structure complex and ill-defined problems
  • apply theoretical knowledge from different fields to find creative hands-on solutions to real-life business problems.

 

    Attendance requirements

    Attendance: In order to successfully pass this course, your absence is limited to 20% of our appointments.

    The kickoff session, workshops and midterm presentation are compulsory! More information will follow at the first meeting.

    Teaching/learning method(s)
    • Coachings
    • Group discussions about research papers
    • Group assignments
    • Individual (in-group) assignments
    • Practitioner feedback
    • Peer coaching

    The course uses a collaborative project- and problem-based learning approach. This implies that students will need to develop solutions to complex questions on an individual and/or group level. To support this process, a mix of instruments will be used: Input lectures/training sessions will provide basic concepts for the next steps, coaching sessions will provide early feedback, and workshops and presentations will demonstrate the ability of students to successfully structure problems and provide meaningful answers. Practitioner input will give students guidance and feedback on their progress.

      Assessment

      The course grading system is based on:

      • Workshop presentation, incl. peer evaluation: 30% 
      • Midterm presentation, incl. peer and project partner evaluations: 60%
      • Participation: 10%

      Grading scheme

      • Excellent ≥87,5%
      • Good ≥75,0%
      • Satisfactory ≥62,5%
      • Passing ≥50,0%
      • Fail <50,0%
      Prerequisites for participation and waiting lists

      Required: Course 1 (Introduction)

      Recommended: Course 2, AMC III

      Readings

      Please log in with your WU account to use all functionalities of read!t. For off-campus access to our licensed electronic resources, remember to activate your VPN connection connection. In case you encounter any technical problems or have questions regarding read!t, please feel free to contact the library at readinglists@wu.ac.at.

      Availability of lecturer(s)

      contact hours: by appointment

      Other

      The kickoff session (28.02.2022), workshops (13-14.03.2023) and midterm presentation (25.04.2022) are compulsory! More information will follow at the first meeting.

      Last edited: 2024-01-15



      Back