The chair’s research focuses on the organization, structures, and processes on the upper echelons or management level of firms. Topics include in particular:

• The design of organizational structures and processes at the upper echelons level and their impact on the role of organizations in society, e.g. fairness and social acceptance of top management compensation or the organization of an effective control and advisory function of supervisory boards. This subject area speaks for example to the current political and social discussion on capping executive salaries.
• Decision-making behavior, use of power and social influence within and between the institutions of corporate management, e.g. the relationship and interaction between top managers and supervisory boards, the admission of new members into the management elite, or diversity of company leadership and management misconduct. This topic addresses for example current questions about the proportion of women in management positions or the lack of independence between top managers and supervisory boards.
• The impact of organization-theoretical aspects of management on different employee groups, e.g. satisfaction, willingness to innovate, or identity development. This subject area includes for example questions about meaning in organizational forms or the connection between sustainable management culture and effective organization.

The research of the professorship is based on behavioral theories and, therefore, deals primarily with cognitive, emotional, and social aspects of the subject organization, e.g. the social behavior of individuals in organizations or the irrationality of decision-making. This so-called "behavioral approach" often allows insights from psychology and sociology to be incorporated into existing business models and thus examines and predicts the actual behavior of economic actors.