Thomas Niemand appointed to TU Clausthal
When did you decide that you wanted to pursue an academic career path leading to a university professorship?
That's a question of desire and ability. I would say that the desire arose only with the relief after the defense in January 2014. The ability arose even before that, when Florian Siems offered me to stay with him as a postdoc in the fall of 2013. I still thank him very much for that.
How did you experience the path from PhD at the TU Dresden to junior professorship and finally to lifetime professorship?
To be honest, it was rocky, stressful, and full of hard work. But that was by no means due to my colleagues and friends. I have been fortunate and experienced a lot of support from them. But the circumstances were never such that I could be sure. So sometimes I got involved in too many projects at the same time, a paper here, an extra event there. At peak times, I believe I had 20 paper projects going at the same time. In order to manage that and write papers, a lot of things came at the expense of my private life, including vacations.
When you look back on your time at the TU Dresden: What do you remember most positively, and what did you learn that brought you success on your way to professorship?
There has always been a very collegial and friendly atmosphere among the staff at the faculty. That is not the case everywhere. I also really appreciate that many professors here play a very constructive and active role in doctoral studies and research. I think that this collegial and constructive spirit had an imprint on me and enabled me to have many successful collaborations, for instance with Sascha Kraus, Robert Mai and Fabian Eggers.
Quite a few at the faculty have remembered you as a researcher with very strong methodological expertise. And not a few doctoral students have participated in your course on structural equation analysis. Can we hope that you will offer the course again as part of our Saxon Doctoral Program in Management Research (once the new chair is established, of course)?
Yes, but 2022 will be hard though, due to the reasons mentioned.
What awaits you in Clausthal? What will be the focus in research and teaching?
Anyone who knows me, knows that I'm very open to topics related to digitization and technology. It was no different back in my home department of marketing at the TU. Through my other positions in Liechtenstein and Clausthal-Zellerfeld, I have gained other thematic perspectives, entrepreneurship and innovation management, but the core has always revolved around technology. That's exactly what the teaching and research will continue to revolve around now. Along the way, one or another methodological paper (I love R) will develop, and I'm sure I'll do another wacky seminar like IKEA or Netflix, but I'd rather would this as hobbies.