Good theses are not only complex and time-consuming, they also come from the intellectual property of the author. Many students underestimate the importance of the unique item, which a thesis must be in accordance with mandatory requirements, and accordingly forego a plagiarism check. One fact that students tend to ignore: Before a lecturer even takes a closer look at your thesis, he will first subvert it with the help of a special program of an examination. This determines whether your thesis is plagiarized. If the program finds reasonable doubts about the uniqueness, this can immediately lead to the failure of your thesis. Although this procedure has been the norm at colleges and universities for years, many students still do not know exactly what to consider when writing a thesis. This article therefore clarifies the question “What is plagiarism anyway?” and also refers to the advantages and disadvantages of the exam.…

Are you in the middle of searching for literature for your thesis and you have the feeling that you are slowly but surely losing the overview? Are you looking for a way of better reference management to make your collection of important books, internet sources, articles and PDFS clearer and more efficient? You are certainly not alone in this. Students are constantly faced with precisely this problem of chaotic reference management. After all, organizing it yourself is often hardly profitable, especially for extensive work. What many don’t use or don’t even know: There are special programs that can help you manage your sources. Many universities and colleges even make some of them available to their students. But there are also many different options for orderly reference management that can be found and used on the Internet. In this context, this article will not only help you understand how a reference…

For many students, the thesis marks the last important milestone before they successfully complete their studies. Even if writing a bachelor’s, master’s or doctoral thesis usually does not have a significant influence on the final overall grade of the degree, many prospective graduates still want to achieve a good performance. In this context, many students wonder whether editing is worthwhile. As a symbolic end of the course, the thesis is often of great importance. It is not only followed by many important steps, such as the graduation ceremony and the ceremonial handover of the diploma, but it is also often used as a business card when looking for a job. Ultimately, your work shows how you express yourself, how well you explain, and how efficiently you can work independently. What is proofreading? Editing is about checking, adapting and improving a text with regard to aspects such as content or writing…

I often get calls from students who are just starting a bachelor thesis and absolutely do not know: How should I proceed? What should I do? I have written numerous articles on this and would now like to give an overview of what you should read in which order. The standard case – you’d better not deviate In my experience, 90% of theses in business administration or business informatics use the same procedure. This is: Read something (literature analysis)ask practitioners how relevant this is (survey or interviews) andderive something from it (evaluation). Although this procedure is quite standard, it is well suited for starting research, as there are numerous examples. It is almost always special cases that put students in completely stressful situations. Never forget: unlike researchers such as PhD students, you are not trained in research methods. I took examples from a 10-day seminar before I did my first…

At the beginning of their thesis, many students look for a scientific classification of the research. That sounds complicated at first, but after a lot of work it is actually not at all. I would like to present a model for this and also three scientific views. Method portfolio of business informatics Each of you will use different quantitative and qualitative methods to answer the research question. Quantitative research is the standardized and structured collection of data. So it represents real-world problems in a numerical representation. Qualitative research collects soft data that needs to be interpreted and therefore can be used dynamically for multiple contexts. Master theses often use both types. This is what is known as a mixed method approach. In a bachelor thesis, one of the two approaches is sufficient for me. Reading tip: More about both types of research There are also constructive and behavioral approaches. Constructive…

In spite of a dedicated literature analysis, it is often not easy to find suitable literature. For this reason I would like to give some pointers. This serves as an initial orientation and also shows at least the literature that I used more and more in my doctorate. The sources in bold are papers, which I particularly recommend. Reading tip: Find literature Digital transformation Auth, G., Meyer, P., & Porst, G. (2017). Recognition and use of technological innovations for the digital workplace of Deutsche Telekom. HMD Praxis der Wirtschaftsinformatik , 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1365/s40702-017-0365-7 Bley, K., & Leyh, C. (2016). Status Quo of the Digitization of German Industrial Companies – A Study of Selected Companies. In MKWI 2016 (pp. 1652-1664). Köffer, S., & Urbach, N. (2016). The digitization of knowledge work – recommendations for action from business informatics research. HMD Praxis der Wirtschaftsinformatik , 53 (1), 5-15. Urbach, N., & Ahlemann, F.…