Research interests

•     Voluntary and statutory sustainability requirements of stakeholders (e.g. SDGs, EU CSR Directive)
•     Sustainable management systems and reporting standards (e.g. GRI standards)
•     External audit of sustainability reports
•     Implementation of company-wide guidelines and processes in the area of sustainability
•     Influence of sustainability activities on company value

Doctoral projects in the field of expertise

• Florian Habermann (2022): Unternehmerische Leistungsfähigkeit, das Konzept der Wesentlichkeit und Auswirkungen auf die finanzielle Leistungsfähigkeit
• Carolin Baier (2021): Challenges in the implementation of responsible business conduct
• Tobias Steindl (2018): Accounting and Society: A Holistic Perspective on Corporate Social Responsibility
• Simon Gietl (2013): Accounting, value relevanc and corporate social responsibility

Prizes and awards

• We congratulate Mr. Deniz Göktürk on receiving the Sustainability Award 2020 for his bachelor thesis entitled “The Implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals in Accounting”.
• We congratulate our former employee, Dr. Tobias Steindl, on being awarded the 2018 University Prize of the KU Eichstätt-Ingolstadt and VR Bank Bayern Mitte eG for the best dissertation entitled “Accounting and Society: Corporate Social Responsibility”. Dr. Tobias Steindl also received an award from the WFI for his outstanding dissertation. In 2018, Dr. Tobias Steindl received the Matthäus Schwarz Award for the best dissertation.
• We congratulate our former employee Ms. Anna Lyashenko on receiving the KU Sustainability Award in 2017 for her thesis on “The Role of Corporate Social Responsibility in Corporate Strategy”. In 2017, Ms. Anna Lyashenko also received the Matthäus Schwarz Award for the best Master's thesis.

Activities of the chair

• Annual Congress of the European Accounting Association (EAA) 2022: The research paper “Tax disclosure in non-financial reports and materiality” written by Max Göttsche, Florian Habermann and Sebastian Sieber has been accepted for presentation in a parallel session at the 44th Annual Congress of the European Accounting Association (EAA). The conference will take place from May 11-13 at the NHH Norwegian School of Economics in Bergen (Norway).
• Deniz Göktürk receives the prize of the Förderstiftung der Brauerei Fritz Gutmann for final theses on the topic of sustainability 2020. The bachelor thesis supervised by our chair is entitled “The implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals in the field of accounting”. Mr. Göktürk summarizes his results in a short video.
• The chair took part in the KU's Sustainability Week from 30.11-04.12.2020 with a lecture and subsequent discussion. Our research assistant Carolin Baier gave a lecture on “Sustainability in global supply chains - current discussion on a supply chain law”.
• We congratulate our research associate Carolin Baier on her admission to the 13th Annual Ivey/ARCS PhD Sustainability Academy. The workshops organized by the Ivey Business School (London, Canada) and the Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability (ARCS) took place this year from November 11-15 in a virtual format. The selected young researchers deal with various aspects of sustainability and represent a wide range of management disciplines and different methodological approaches.
• The Chair participated in the virtual Sustainability Days 2020 of the City of Ingolstadt with a presentation on the topic of “Sustainability in global supply chains”. Our research assistant Carolin Baier gave an insight into the current discussion on a supply chain law in Germany.
• On Saturday, November 9th 2020 the future forum “Climate & Sustainability” of the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt (KU) and the Technical University of Ingolstadt (THI) took place as part of the Days of Sustainability. The Chair participated with a poster on current research projects in the context of sustainable development.
• Carolin Baier presented the project “The Role of Assurance in Sustainability Reporting” at the Doctoral Colloquium as part of the Experimental Research in Management Accounting Conference (EXRIMA) 2019 in Bayreuth from July 8-12, 2019.

Linking teaching & research

using the example of the Sustainability @ Leading Companies course in the summer semester 2020

Due diligence obligations in the supply chain were the focus of the virtual bachelor's seminar Sustainability @ Leading Companies at the KU's Faculty of Business Administration and Economics in the summer semester 2020. The COVID-19 crisis has urgently exposed the precarious situation of global supply chains and at the same time brought corporate responsibility into focus.

Led by Carolin Baier from the Chair of Business Administration, Controlling and Auditing, the seminar provided a basic understanding of sustainability in business practice. Students discussed how leading companies in Germany can identify, minimize and prevent negative impacts on human rights and the environment resulting from their business activities. Particular attention was paid to sustainability reporting. The seminar encourages critical questioning of information and enables students to independently analyze the sustainability reports of various DAX companies.

The course is also an example of a successful combination of the fields of teaching and research. As the lecturer also deals with the topic of responsible corporate action in her research projects, she placed particular emphasis on highlighting interdisciplinary connections and diverse opinions and establishing a strong link to practice, for example through a virtual presentation by the Sustainability Services department of PwC.