PLEASE NOTE: We expect you to write your thesis in English. However, the underlying data may be in German. We indicate whether specific language proficiency is required for each topic. 
If you are interested in a topic, please contact the respective advisor and send a brief motivation statement and your CV. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Role switching in repeated negotiations (1 master thesis) - already assigned!

This project examines behavioral adaptation in repeated negotiations. In a structured training setting, participants negotiate the same case across multiple rounds with changing partners and then switch to the counterpart’s role. Using preparation reports, audio recordings, and economic and subjective outcomes, the project analyzes how planned strategies translate into actual behavior and how switching roles shapes later interactions. The project is suitable for students interested in negotiation, interpersonal interaction, and applied quantitative research. 

Further requirements: High German proficiency

Advisors: Jan Engel & Prof. Dr. Nale Lehmann-Willenbrock

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The secret life of teams – What do team interactions tell us about how teams collaborate? (1 bachelor or master thesis) 

As team members coordinate their knowledge, skills, and effort to accomplish task demands, their collaborative and interdependent integration of individual resources gives rise to team processes. These are central for team functioning and critical to organizational success. Team processes imply interactions amongst team members. This project aims at understanding how the verbal interactions of team members shape team processes over a team’s life.

Students will develop their own research questions (within the limits of the project). This may include all types of team processes observable from verbal interactions (e.g., problem-solving, emergent leadership) as well as those collected via the survey (e.g., shared mental models, entitativity). Note that research question may also address how these processes shape over time (across three meetings spread across a couple of weeks).

Students will be involved in coding team interactions at the utterance-level from video recordings that have already been collected. This will require working in a team with other students in order to distribute the amount of work equally. Therefore, a prerequisite is that all of the students start mutually (see below for further details). Coding will take place intensively at the beginning of the project. To allow for smooth data coding, students will be required to spend at least 20 hours per week in the coding period and be available in person during this time. All other parts of the thesis (literature research, data analysis, and writing) do not need to be completed in this period!

Further requirements: High German proficiency, interest in fine-grained verbal interactions

Advisor: Dr. Clara Hemshorn de Sanchez

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Paths Are Made by Talking? Career-Oriented Communication in Doctoral Supervision Meetings (1 master thesis)

Why do people stay or leave the academic career path?

One possible explanation is found in the way early career researchers (ECRs) communicate with their supervisor about career-related issues. As part of a larger research project, you will investigate how exactly this communication unfolds in one-on-one meetings between ECRs and their supervisor.

You will recruit participants and collect data from approximately 5-10 one-to-one supervision meetings. Based on a systematic reading of relevant literature and the analysis of the collected interaction data, the thesis will explore and systematically develop the original construct of career-oriented voice in doctoral supervision meetings.

Previous experience with participant recruitment (particularly proactive outreach) and qualitative data analysis would be an advantage but is not required.

Advisor: Martina Engel

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Emotions in workplace coaching (2 master theses) 

Emotions have become a central topic in workplace coaching psychology because they are both a key object of change (e.g., managing conflict) and a crucial mechanism through which change is achieved. Effective coaching engages with emotions at multiple functional levels, ranging from signaling motivational conflicts to shaping relational quality and enabling self-regulatory change.

Kuhl’s (2001) Personality Systems Interaction (PSI-) Theory provides a differentiated account of how emotional modulation underpins self-regulation. PSI-informed interventions shift the focus from cognitive problem-solving toward helping people regulate and integrate emotions in ways that feel compatible with the self. 

In these master theses, you will investigate the hypotheses that coachees’ (verbally expressed) positive and negative emotions help themselves in their self-regulation competences during workplace coaching. 

Further requirements: High German proficiency; interest in fine-grained verbal interactions 

Advisor: Dr. Christine Busch 

 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How AI use changes psychosocial work conditions of software developers (1 master thesis) 

AI affects key job characteristics and working conditions. In cooperation with a software development company, you will examine how the increasing use of AI changes psychosocial work conditions of software developers, in particular their challenging and hindering demands and resources, for example by altering workload, task complexity, autonomy, or opportunities for learning and support. 

This will help to adapt the Joint German Occupational Safety and Health Strategy framework for assessing psychological workload and associated working conditions as part of occupational risk assessments.  

Further requirements: High German proficiency; interest in qualitative research (interviews, focus group) 

Advisor: Dr. Christine Busch 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Interaction Behavior in VR Team Simulation Reflection Sessions (2 bachelor theses)

Virtual Reality (VR) is increasingly discussed as a medium for the future of virtual team collaboration, representing a new interaction setting (e.g., Grabowski et al., 2024; Hennig-Thurau et al., 2023).

As organizations explore VR-based simulations for team training, it becomes crucial to understand not only what happens during the simulation itself, but also how teams make sense of their experience afterward. Recordings and transcripts of face-to-face reflection sessions, conducted after teams completed a collaborative task within an immersive VR simulation, will be provided in cooperation with a practice partner who professionally delivers such VR workshops to real work teams. Part of the data has already been collected; further data collection is currently ongoing. Students will develop their own research questions within the scope of the project, based on their own interests and within the limits of the available data. Note: No prior VR experience is necessary.

A core component of both theses is coding these reflection sessions at the level of individual utterances. Students will receive thorough coding training in advance and are expected to engage intensively with the method using Interact software (Mangold, 2018): coding takes place at the beginning of the project and requires close coordination between both students. A joint start date is therefore a prerequisite, and students should spend at least 20 hours per week during the coding period.

This is a joint project between University of Hamburg and Technical University of Applied Science Augsburg.

Further requirements: High German proficiency, interest in fine-grained verbal interactions

Start date: January 2027; students will attend the colloquium during the summer semester 2027

Advisor: Marvin Grabowski

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Who Trains the Trainer? A Review of Best Practices for Training Behavioral Coders (1 master thesis)

Behavioral interactions are at the core of social phenomena in organizations. Thus, behavioral coding of video recordings to systematically capture and analyze social interaction is one of the key research methods to address research questions in this area. However, the quality and reliability of behavioral coding depend heavily on how coders are trained, and guidance for those responsible for coder training is dispersed across the literature. This thesis will systematically review existing research to identify and synthesize guidelines, criteria, and recommended practices for training behavioral coders who code video-recorded behavioral interactions. In a second phase, expert interviews will be conducted with researchers experienced in behavioral coding and coder training to evaluate, extend, and contextualize the findings from the literature. The project will integrate both sources of evidence to develop a practical, evidence-informed framework for researchers responsible for preparing behavioral coders and promoting reliable, high-quality coding.

Further requirements: Interest in behavioral interaction coding and a systematic literature review, high level English proficiency.

Start date: As soon as possible.

Advisor: Dr. Clara S. Hemshorn de Sanchez

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Abschlusskolloquium A&O
Wenn Sie Ihre Abschlussarbeit im Arbeitsbereich A&O schreiben möchten, sollten Sie begleitend das Abschlusskolloquium zur A&O besuchen.  In diesen Kolloquien wird die Erstellung der Abschlussarbeiten begleitet.

Im Abschlusskolloquium erhalten Sie im Rahmen unterschiedlicher Übungen das Handwerkszeug für das Verfassen einer wissenschaftlichen Abschlussarbeit. Im weiteren Verlauf stellen Sie dann den Aufbau und die Ergebnisse Ihrer Abschlussarbeit im Plenum vor. Bitte beachten Sie bei der Planung daher, dass Ihre Abschlussarbeit im Verlauf des Semesters einen entsprechenden Arbeitsstand erreichen sollte.

Darüber hinaus bieten wir ein Forschungskolloquium an, in dem unsere Doktorand:innen, aber auch externe Wissenschaftler:innen und unsere Post-docs Forschungsarbeiten vorstellen und zur Diskussion stellen.

Richtlinien zur Anfertigung einer Abschlussarbeit in der Arbeits- und Organisationspsychologie

Leitfaden zur Erstellung einer Abschlussarbeit

Statement zur Nutzung von KI

Regelungen und Hinweise zum Umgang mit generativer KI finden Sie unter dem folgenden Link.

BACHELOR (letzte aktuelle Arbeiten)

The Role of Backchannelling in Negotiation

Don’t Make Negative Emotions Great Again! Emotional Strategies and Their Effect on Agreement Versus Impasse in Real-World Business Negotiations

Gender Dynamics in Negotiations: a comparative study of gender-homogeneous and gender-heterogeneous teams

Between Avatars and Webcams: Entitativity in Two-Dimensional Video Conferences and Three-Dimensional Virtual Reality Meetings

From Faces on Screens to Bodies in Virtual Spaces: Problem-focused Communication, Speaker Changes, and Meeting Satisfaction in 2D Video Conferences and 3D Virtual Reality Meetings

Can Solutions or Initiatives be Triggered by Socio-Emotional Communication? A Sequential Analysis

The Influence of Socio-Emotional Behavior, Problem-Focused Behavior, and Entitativity on Meeting Effectiveness

The Role of Active Listening in Task- and Relationship-Oriented Leadership

The Effect of the Form and Timing of Meeting Structuring Behavior on Perceived Group Entitativity

Appreciation in Hybrid Work Settings

Linking Team Communication and Transactive Memory Systems: A Dual Approach with Act4Teams and Computer-Aided Text Analysis

From Team Talk to Shared Knowledge: A Temporal Lens on Transactive Memory Systems

The Role of Verbal Behaviours in the Development of Shared Mental Models: A Longitudinal Study of Zero-History Teams

From Talk to Team: How Relational Communication Influences Team Entitativity

---------------------------------------------

MASTER (letzte aktuelle Arbeiten)

The Art of Balance: Investigating Work-Life Balance Crafting Intentions and their Diversity in Copreneur Coaching

Key Factors in Stress Management Coaching: Investigating Coaches’ Empathic & Intervention Delivery Behavior and Clients’ Resource Activation

Online Coaching. The Role of Empathy, Intervention Delivery, and Goal-oriented Self-Reflection in Goal Attainment

The Impact of Coaches‘ Empathy and Intervention Fidelity on Clients’ Affects and Goal Attainment

Exploring Leader Inquiry: A Taxonomy of Leader Questions