Annual Report 2020

Thanks to our City of Vienna Competence Team for the Digitalization of Communication and our prior experience in the field of e-learning, the transition to distance learning was a highly innovative one. The trendsetting nature of our teaching was also underlined by the award of the FHWien der WKW Prize for Innovative Teaching. Elisabeth Gräf and Roman Kellner (our teaching team) received the Teaching Award in the “Individual Innovative Elements” category for a completely different kind of text workshop where texts are brought to life using elements from improvisational theater..

Our events were also implemented in an online format. In May, we successfully held „Digital Marketing Monday“ with over one hundred participants, as well as the digital Keynote about Integrated Marketing Communications by Vijay Viswanathan, an international expert from Northwestern University, Chicago.

Our alumni notched up a special success. Clara Wimmer’s and Philipp Wamprechtsamer’s Master’s theses were awarded the Franz-Bogner-Wissenschaftspreis für PR, while Kosima Kovar (our Bachelor’s graduate) was listed in the „FORBES 30 under 30“ for her commitment to green marketing.

Our researchers also set themselves apart with their outstanding achievements. Take our study on distance learning that was published in the FNMA magazine, for example, and Uta Rußmann, who was interviewed on Donald Trump’s media behavior on “Dok 1”, an ORF (Austrian Broadcasting Corporation) program, as an expert on the topic of the US Presidential Elections. What is more, her research work was published in an anthology entitled “Vernetzte Bilder. Visuelle Kommunikation in Sozialen Medien” (“Networked Images. Visual Communication in Social Media”).

Work in the Digital Economy department was focused on three primary tasks in 2020:

Building the Bachelor’s study program. For 25 years, FHWien der WKW has been known for its Management programs, and for the past 20 years for its Communications programs. Now we are expanding our offerings with the Digital Business Bachelor’s study program, launched in the fall of 2019, which is now training professionals at the interface between digital technology, management, and communications – and with an almost perfectly equal balance of women and men, at that. We will be celebrating our first graduations in 2022.

Developing a team. Without the right colleagues, it is hard to get anything done – especially in teaching and applied research. At the same time, practically every field and every industry is looking for digital transformation professionals. We are therefore pleased that we have managed to recruit not only a number of excellent adjunct professors to join our team, but also four new colleagues with scientific, educational, and hands-on professional qualifications in this area.

Designing a new Master’s study program. In 2020, the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research granted funding for an additional 330 places at universities of applied sciences in a competitive procedure. Applications were submitted for over 1,400 places. We can now report, with a certain amount of pride, that our proposal for the “Digital Innovation Engineering Master’s Program” was successful, and that funding has been approved that will allow us to welcome 20 new students. The new study program will focus on the creative use of digital technology for economically successful and ethically responsible innovation. The new program is scheduled to launch in the fall of 2022.

In 2020, digitalization remained a key focus area of the Financial Management study programs as nowadays it plays an important role in finance, accounting, and taxation as well as in financial management and controlling. Our science-based academic program that nevertheless has a strong practical focus systematically integrates this development into our teaching and thus provides ideal preparation for a successful career in financial management.

The internationalization of our teaching activities also continued to be an important area of work, with students reaping the benefits in courses such as “Special Issues in International Accounting” and “Economics”.

In the area of Project Management and Corporate Projects existing partnerships were continued, and new and exciting projects added in the field of tax law in cooperation with an international consulting firm and in the field of accounting in cooperation with a real estate company.

Collaboration with the Competence Center for Business Controlling and Accounting at our university was further intensified. One fruit of this cooperation is the joint research on financial management and controlling. Thus, the January 2020 issue of “CFO aktuell” published an article analyzing the effects of IFRS on controlling in the form of a case study of an Austrian publicly listed company.

Of course, it goes without saying that the Corona crisis also had an impact. From one day to the next, classes had to be switched to distance learning – a big additional challenge for the study program team. Student surveys, however, show that on the whole this has been successful, not least of all thanks to the untiring efforts of all our teaching staff.

2020 was all about distance learning. In March, teachers, students and administrators were asked to transition to online mode quickly and with a minimum of complications in response to the COVID-19 crisis. Thanks to our teaching staff’s know-how, the flexibility of our students, our strong team spirit and support from the Competence Center for E-Learning, we were able to get the situation under control.

But that’s not all: Many innovations were developed over the course of the year, in the form of new approaches to teaching that integrate new collaboration tools (Zoom, Mirro, Mentimeter, etc.). A number of these creative approaches were presented at the Teaching Innovation Award ceremony, where Steffi Bärmann and Felicia Fuchs won the “Innovative Teaching Approach for an Entire Course” category for their course on “Coaching Fundamentals”.

Our international teaching projects with other universities also continued successfully in the virtual realm: In the Bachelor’s program, there was virtual collaboration with teachers and students from the De Haagse Hogeschool in the Netherlands. In the Master’s program, some 600 students from 22 universities in 14 different countries worked together virtually as part of the “Global Case Study Challenge”. A virtual organization lab was even successfully implemented for the first time, in cooperation with TH Köln. In short, this year brought us a number of virtual highlights and important new paths for development in the field of distance learning.

The year actually got off to a rather promising start: Anna Muhr, editor and presenter of the inhouse radio station Radio NJOY 91.3., was awarded the Radio Prize for Adult Education in the Culture Category. The International School of Multimedia Journalism (ISMJ) took place in February for the sixth time in Vienna and we were very much looking forward to the continuation in July in Lviv in Ukraine, as well as to many other international collaborative projects: the radio project EU On Air, the annual conference of the European Journalism Training Association, hosted by FHWien der WKW, and to the journalism festival in Perugia in cooperation with Der Standard.

In fact, 2020 turned out to be a digitalization stress test in terms of both teaching and practical work. Even the radio station was forced to broadcast from homes sometimes. It was only thanks to the untiring efforts of the study program team, the dedication of our teaching staff and the endurance of our students that teaching activities could continue, and we were able to realize our many practical projects despite the difficult circumstances.

However, it all called for creativity: TV recordings by mobile phone, interviews via video-conferencing tools, and radio recordings made under a blanket or in a cupboard. The fact that this all went smoothly in the end is down to the work that has gone on in recent years. The level of quality that was achieved is reflected not only in the many recent publications of researchers from the department, but also the journalistic work of our students, who again won accolades in the FHWien der WKW Journalism Young Talent Award.

At the end of the year, we could say we had learned several lessons and had found pleasure and satisfaction in everything we were able to achieve in 2020 that will stand us in good stead in 2021.

Both the Bachelor’s and the Master’s study programs in Management & Entrepreneurship prepare students for future management tasks on a number of levels. The most challenging aspect of these tasks is arguably professional crisis management. 2020 was proof of just how unexpectedly companies and other organizations can be hit by a crisis – often through no fault of their own, at that.

While the coronavirus crisis initially required study courses to be adapted, the crisis itself actually became a topic that was dealt with in teaching. So, for the students, the continuing global crisis dovetailed rather nicely with the content of their courses. COVID-19 did more than just have a negative impact on everyone’s daily lives; from a teaching standpoint, it was the ultimate real-world situation and was viewed as an unexpected training opportunity for crisis analysis and crisis management involving manageable risk.

Responsible management, taking into account the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), was examined in even greater detail, especially in the higher semesters and in the case study modules. The extent to which social and economic points of view pervade economically successful corporate management was also demonstrated in projects with our partner companies, whose tasks increasingly incorporate sustainable development or a social and ecological rethink.

Digitalization is an ever-present factor in Marketing and Sales study programs, and it takes constant effort to stay abreast of developments in the field. Thanks to the immense dedication of our teaching and research staff, students and administrators, the switch to digital (teaching) settings happily produced a further upsurge in innovation.

We therefore take great pleasure in the success of our students and graduates. The results of Jakob Staudinger’s Master’s thesis on Online Buying Habits in Food Retailing During the COVID-19 Pandemic were published in RETAIL magazine, a trade journal for the Austrian retail industry. Elisabeth Putz (Bachelor’s program) and Dominik Dunkler (Master’s program), who were coached by Marina Prem and Christoph Haudek, reached the semifinals of the European Sales Competition.

Our researchers were especially productive. Senior Researcher Ilona Pezenka published her Study of Online Restaurant Ratings in the International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management. In a program about Emotion Tracking on Ö1 she was interviewed about her work with the Web Analytics Lab. David Bourdin, Teaching & Research Associate at the Competence Center for Marketing, presented the results of his research on Emotions and Accents in Sales Conversations at the EMAC, which took place this time in a digital setting. The international team of researchers conducting the Chatbot Study presented their literature review online at the “AINL: Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Conference”.

The online keynote by Christian Graf, Sales Director Austria at ratiopharm Arzneimittel Vertriebs-GmbH, on “Current Challenges and Trends in Pharmaceutical Sales” attracted great attention – also from a specialist audience.

2020 was a year that posed unprecedented challenges to Austria’s real estate industry and our study programs. In March last year, all of our teaching staff and students had to get to grips with distance learning in a matter of days. Adapting to this new situation took some time, but it has now become standard practice to use learning platforms like Moodle, to communicate over Zoom, and look into and make the most of digital solutions. There was some respite from remote learning in September and October, when classroom-based teaching and exams, and therefore direct communication, were allowed.

IMMQ (the Association for Quality Promotion in the Real Estate Industry) honored the best Master’s thesis written by students at Austria’s five universities offering study programs relating to the real estate industry and the best Master’s students. The FHWien der WKW cohort was among the award-winners: Ms Eder, BA, MA, received an accolade for her thesis on crowdfunding, and Mr Radda was crowned the best student.

The third edition of “Handbuch Immobilienbewirtschaftung” – edited by Braunisch, Fuhrmann and Ledl and published by Linde – was produced. This extensive work also contains an article on Martina Hoffmann’s and Susanne Geissler’s research into energy performance certificates.

Following on from the first lockdown in the spring of 2020, people have been looking for new accommodation in Vienna’s commuter belt that offers more usable floor space and wide-open spaces in their droves. Demand for condominiums is high, causing the continuing rise in prices. Meanwhile, rents for apartments, offices and commercial premises are dropping depending on the location. Trade (shopping malls, retail parks) and hotels have been particularly badly affected by the crisis – especially those in urban areas. Both the residential and logistics segments are booming. On the whole, the real estate industry has pulled through the crisis as robust and resilient as ever.

After such a defining year, taking stock with a balanced mindset can admittedly be difficult. After all, we naturally give more weight to certain events with the benefit of hindsight.

We watched the tourism sector come to a complete standstill around the world. All of a sudden, unrestricted travel was no longer something we could take for granted, and tourism was no longer a source of secure jobs. Our practical training that thrives from the fact that we allow our students to experience the sheer breadth of the tourism sector was suddenly no longer feasible in its existing form.

Something else we should consider in that balanced evaluation was that young people do not give up on their dreams so easily. Critics who had been questioning the historical developments in tourism more than ever now seized the opportunity to do their bit to make tourism sustainable. Guest lectures made up for the lack of field trips and factory tours – and thanks to digitalization they had never been quite as international.

One of our key projects in 2020 was overhauling the Master’s study program for a fresh start in fall 2021. Business field projects (including those implemented with the Hotel Sacher and Wiener Schnecken Manufaktur e.U.) were also successfully realized thanks to the virtual solutions on offer. We hosted the sixth Gastronomy Founders Day and the Austrian Convention Bureau awarded Belinda Vollmann, one of our graduates, an accolade for “Best Meeting Thesis”.

It remains to be seen whether 2020 will go down as a key year in terms of significant and lasting change in the tourism sector. But for the study programs, it was a year where the course was set for forward-looking tourism training.

With 850 active students on 17 different programs and by now almost 1,700 graduates, FHWien der WKW again confirmed its strong position in the field of academic continuing education in the “Year of COVID” 2020. The content, quality and format of the part-time study programs are making them increasingly attractive for graduates of Bachelor’s programs.

The reorganization of the Center for Academic Continuing Education was successfully concluded with the appointment of a Head of Organization and Services and new appointments in program management and among program heads. This provides a solid basis for the implementation of new strategies.

The challenges arising from COVID-19 were dealt with brilliantly by all concerned – even though distance learning was new territory for most students, teachers, and program administrators. For the first time ever, Master’s examinations were held online at all locations. Thus, 2020 was a year in which digital competences were taken to the next level.

2020 was also the year in which we successfully pressed ahead with establishing new programs on the market. The MSc program in Premium Banking is the first academic program to be carried out as an in-house corporate training scheme, in this case in cooperation with Raiffeisen Campus.

A completely new approach was successfully adopted for the further development of the MSc Digital Communication and Marketing program. The first two semesters of this course are mainly conducted on a distance learning basis and at the request of FHWien der WKW faculty members redesigned the course content. C-Book, a modern and respected platform from an external e-learning agency was chosen for the didactic implementation of this remote learning content. The same approach will be used in 2021 for other program developments.