Topics for bachelor and master theses
I supervise theses that related to 1) platforms and ecosystems; 2) digital transformation; 3) knowledge outsourcing. Students can look at the ideas sketched here below to develop their theses.
Topic 1: Platforms and ecosystems
Platforms have become ubiquitous organizational forms to coordinate market transactions. Platforms are nested in an ecosystem and, more broadly, in a societal context. The ecosystem and society can influence the platform’s activity. The ecosystem affects the number of connections available on a platform and its density. Specific cultural values and social beliefs can drive users’ behavior on a platform. For example, the pandemic offered spectacular reasons for users - medical practitioners and patients- to join a telemedicine platform. Still, platforms’ diffusion might have faced the resistance of those users who rely on traditional medicine. Furthermore, the spreading of telemedicine platforms had to discount the role of suppliers and their effort in developing supportive technologies to the specialists to undergo an online diagnosis.
Students interested in the topic could study which societal dimensions are relevant drivers for platforms' adoption and what is the role of the surrounding ecosystem.
Topic 2: Digital transformation and organizational design
Although middle managers do not contribute directly to strategic decision-making, they actively engage and provide information to the upper layers of the organization with sets of solutions. Individuals’ risk preferences can influence how middle managers shape and frame data. Following prospect theory, middle managers who are risk lovers provide a set of solutions that will increase variability in outcomes and, hence, the errors of commission. Middle managers who are risk-averse are more likely to offer conservative solutions. In this case, middle managers might face the challenge of missing profitable opportunities (error of omission). The use of digital tools to pass information and ground decisions might affect the overall process. As the digitization of organizational decision-making is a recent phenomenon, we still have a limited understanding of its consequences on middle managers’ actions. What is the role of digital tools in individuals’ searching capabilities? Do digital tools extend or limit individual cognition? Do we observe any effect on cognition and framing at the organizational level? What are the implications of artificial intelligence and digital technologies on creativity, imagination, and intuition? How should organizations overcome resistance in using digital technologies and AI?
Interested students could consider developing quantitative studies and on-line experiments to study this fascinating field.
Topic 3: Knowledge outsourcing
In the knowledge economy, external know-how and skills complementing the in-house resources have become critical in the strategy design. Think, for example, to a pharmaceutical company that needs the partner’s knowledge to develop a molecule that will be part of a more complex medical treatment. While there is a general understanding of the partners’ characteristics that make the sourcing more successful, we know little on the boundary conditions. The degree of competition, the complexity of the sourcing knowledge, and the presence of limitations posed by institutions may facilitate or hinder success.
Students interested in the topic could collect data from the FDA database and match with a proprietary outsourcing dataset from the pharmaceutical industry.
Giulia Solinas
Data Scientist | Strategy & Innovation Expert | Researcher
I work on NLP and LLM models in production. I am a former academic with research contributions related to organizational design and the digital transformation of organizations and platforms.