Doctorate

A number of new standards affecting doctorates involving Florian Siems as first supervisor have been introduced in the sub-department since Florian Siems assumed the Chair:

•A common umbrella topic of all doctoral projects is the sub-department's research focus: relationship marketing.

•Doctorates are gained only cumulatively, i.e. publications in (well-respected) journals constitute a central part of the doctoral project.

•Doctoral projects in our sub-department are usually linked to an appointment as a "research associate" (equivalent to a 75% post as standard).

•All research associates are active not only in research, but also in teaching and assume administrative tasks in addition.

•Only in exceptional cases – specifically, when a candidate is well versed in all the sub-department's teaching and research priorities, has very good knowledge of statistics and, ideally, already has his or her own initial publication successes / experiences with review processes in specialist journals – is an external doctorate under the supervision of Florian Siems, in principle, also possible. In order not to put supervision quality at risk, places for an external doctorate are, however, limited. Currently we do not accept any new external doctoral candidates.

•To ensure that external doctoral candidates have good links to the sub-department, they are also expected to be present in the sub-department for at least four weeks a year.

•Both internal and external doctoral candidates regularly attend the faculty's classes for doctoral candidates. At the same time, a marketing-specific and sub-department-specific seminar is held at least once a year for all doctoral candidates who are being supervised by Florian Siems for the first time.

•Four years have been allocated as the duration of the doctorate, calculated internally from the commencement of employment and externally from the point at which the detailed topic is defined.