Holistic Selling – this is the future concept for B2B sales described by Prof. Dr. Manfred Krafft, Director of the Institute of Marketing, together with Tim Kalwey, Murali Mantrala, and Yeji Lim in their new study "Holistic Selling – An Emerging Paradigm in B2B Markets." The article has just been published in the Journal of Marketing, an A+ publication and one of the top journals in marketing science.

Holistic Selling - so lautet das Konzept der Zukunft für den B2B-Verkauf, das Prof. Dr. Manfred Krafft, Direktor des Instituts für Marketing, Tim Kalwey, Murali Mantrala und Yeji Lim in ihrer neuen Studie "Holistic Selling – An Emerging Paradigm in B2B Markets" beschreiben. Diese wurde jetzt im Journal of Marketing, A+ Publikation und eines der Top Journals der Marketingwissenschaft, veröffentlicht. 

Professor Dr. Jan vom Brocke from the University of Münster has been elected the next president of the Association for Information Systems (AIS), the global association for Information Systems research and education. He will take up the honorary position on July 1, 2025, leading the international association for a three-year term as its 32nd president – and only the third representative from a German university to hold this office.

Jan vom Brocke holds the Chair of Information Systems and Business Process Management and is Director of the Institute of Information Systems at the University of Münster. He also serves as Academic Director of the European Research Center for Information Systems (ERCIS). He is considered one of the pioneers in the fields of Information Systems, design-oriented research, and sustainability, and as a founder of the Process Science discipline, which uses digital traces to analyze and improve business processes.

"I am truly honored by the trust placed in me and excited to help shape the future of the AIS," said Jan vom Brocke. "As president, I am particularly committed to strengthening the economic and societal impact and recognition of our discipline." His candidacy was based on a strategic agenda, which includes the proposal of an AIS Impact Agenda – a collaborative initiative to identify key questions and challenges together with stakeholders from business and society and to develop innovative solutions. He also plans to introduce new formats of science communication, such as AI-powered media services, to enhance the dialogue between academia and practice.

Founded in 1994, the Association for Information Systems is a nonprofit organization with members in over 100 countries. It publishes leading academic journals, hosts international conferences, and fosters collaboration between individuals and institutions engaged in the study, teaching, and practice of Information Systems worldwide.

All AIS members across the three strategic regions – the Americas, Europe/Middle East/Africa, and Asia-Pacific – were eligible to vote in the election. Jan vom Brocke will succeed Andrew Burton-Jones (University of Queensland, Australia, 30th president) and Dorothy Leidner (University of Virginia, USA, 31st president). Previous presidents from Germany include Claudia Loebbecke (University of Cologne, 11th president) and Helmut Krcmar (Technical University of Munich, 20th president).

Jan vom Brocke has been actively involved with AIS for many years, serving as Vice President for Education and being named an AIS Fellow in recognition of his academic contributions. He brings extensive international experience to his new role: he is Vice Dean for Internationalization at the School of Business and Economics at the University of Münster, Academic Research Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Honorary Distinguished Professor at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, and Visiting Professor at the University of Liechtenstein. He is regularly listed among the most influential scholars in Information Systems, as recognized by rankings such as the WirtschaftsWoche and the Stanford study of the world’s most cited researchers.

Links:

You can find the AIS announcement here.

Find out more about Jan vom Brocke here.

Prof. Dr. Jan vom Brocke von der Universität Münster ist von den Mitgliedern der Association for Information Systems (AIS), dem Weltverband für Forschung und Lehre in der Wirtschaftsinformatik, zum nächsten Präsidenten gewählt worden. Der renommierte Wissenschaftler tritt sein Ehrenamt am 1. Juli 2025 an und wird die internationale Vereinigung drei Jahre lang führen – als 32. Präsident und erst dritter Vertreter einer deutschen Universität in dieser Position.

Professor Dr. Jan vom Brocke from the University of Münster has been elected the next president of the Association for Information Systems (AIS), the global association for Information Systems research and education. He will take up the honorary position on July 1, 2025, leading the international association for a three-year term as its 32nd president – and only the third representative from a German university to hold this office.

Bei BBHT sind wir überzeugt, dass jede:r Mitarbeitende aktiv an der Gestaltung des eigenen beruflichen Wegs mitwirken sollte. Anstatt starrer Karrieremuster schaffen wir ein Umfeld, in dem persönliche Entwicklung gefördert wird und individuelle Karrierewege frei entfaltet werden können. Durch regelmäßige Gespräche und eine Unternehmenskultur, die Platz für individuelle Ideen und ehrliches Feedback lässt, unterstützen wir unsere Mitarbeitenden dabei, ihre Stärken zu entdecken und ihre Ziele zu erreichen. Wie genau dabei einzelne Karrierewege gestaltet werden können, präsentieren wir in unserer BBHT-Karrierewege-Reihe. 

Weiterlesen …

The 2025 Design Thinking Seminar successfully launched with its first virtual session. Students from the University of Münster and Georgia College met online for the first time, laying the foundation for a transatlantic, interdisciplinary academic collaboration.

Special thanks go to SAP facilitators Julie Bartholic, Brandi Starks, and Rebecca Reagan-Thieme for delivering an interactive  webinar that combined methodological depth with interactive elements centered around Design Thinking.

Appreciation is also extended to the faculty members who make this international seminar possible year after year: Joy Godin and Jeannie Pridmore from Georgia College, as well as Armin Stein and Katrin Bergener from the Department of Information Systems.

The seminar will continue in May with the visit of the U.S. students to Münster.

Auch im Sommersemester 2025 verleihen die Wirtschaftsjunioren Nord Westfalen und der FB4-Ehemaligenverein AlumniUM erneut den „Preis der jungen Wirtschaft“.  Ausgezeichnet werden je eine Bachelor- und eine Masterarbeit, die sich mit den Themenbereichen Entrepreneurship, Unternehmensführung, KMU, oder weitere für „junge Wirtschaft“ relevante Themen befassen. Bewerben können sich für diese Auszeichnung alle Studierenden, deren Abschlussarbeiten mit der Note 2,0 oder besser bewertet wurden. Die Einsendefrist ist der 01. Juni 2025.

In der aktuellen Folge des Podcasts „Born & Kepler“ diskutieren Andreas Deptolla und Prof. Benedikt Berger (Juniorprofessur für Digitale Transformation und Gesellschaft) über die realen Herausforderungen und Chancen des Einsatzes von Künstlicher Intelligenz (KI) in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Prof. Berger teilt Einblicke aus seiner akademischen Laufbahn und beleuchtet aktuelle Entwicklungen in der Medienlandschaft – darunter den Einfluss von Influencern, neuen Plattformen und aktuellen Trends. Auch der Einsatz von KI-Tools wie ChatGPT und DeepL in der Lehre sowie die Vorbereitung von Studierenden auf eine zunehmend KI-geprägte Arbeitswelt sind zentral Themen.

In the latest episode of the “Born & Kepler” podcast, Andreas Deptolla speaks with Prof. Benedikt Berger (Junior Professorship for Digital Transformation and Society) about the real-world challenges and opportunities of using artificial intelligence (AI) in business and society.

Prof. Berger shares insights from his academic career and discusses current developments in the media landscape – including the influence of influencers, emerging platforms, and ongoing digital trends. Key topics also include the use of AI tools like ChatGPT and DeepL in teaching, as well as preparing students for a job market increasingly shaped by AI.

The conversation further explores responsible data management and governance, human-AI interaction, ethical questions surrounding predictive policing, and broader legal and societal implications.

The episode is now available on Spotify and all major podcast platforms.

Am 03. April 2025 nahmen 12 Schülerinnen am Girls’Day am Institut für Wirtschaftsinformatik teil und begaben sich auf eine Reise durch die Welt der Wirtschaftsinformatik. Mitarbeitende aus verschiedenen Bereichen des Instituts hatten für die Schülerinnen ein spannendes Programm zusammengestellt. Der Girls’Day – Mädchen-Zukunftstag ist eine bundesweite Aktion, bei der Mädchen ab der 5. Klasse Berufe und Studienfächer kennenlernen können, in denen Frauen bisher eher selten vertreten sind – vor allem in Technik, IT, Handwerk und Naturwissenschaften. Ziel ist es, geschlechterbezogene Berufswahlklischees aufzubrechen und neue Perspektiven für die Zukunft zu eröffnen.  

On April 1, 2025, the Department of Information Systems welcomed Dr. Johannes Sedlmeir as Acting Professor for Statistics, Security & Trust.

After completing his master’s degree in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics, he did  his doctorate at the University of Bayreuth and the Branch Business & Information Systems Engineering  of the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technologie FIT, focusing on the challenges and potential of using blockchain technology in organizations. Since October 2022, he has been conducting research in the FINATRAX (Digital Financial Services and Cross-Organisational Digital Transformations) research group at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) at the University of Luxembourg. There, he investigated both economic and technical aspects of new digital technologies, particularly in the field of applied cryptography. In addition to blockchain technology, a particular focus of his research lies in digital wallets (the underlying paradigm is also known as ‘self-sovereign identity’). Dr. Sedlmeir is also a lecturer at the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH), where he holds block seminars on blockchain technology and digital identity management twice a year.

We would like to welcome Dr Johannes Sedlmeir to the Department of Information Systems and asked him a few questions at the beginning of his work:

Dear Dr. Sedlmeir, after your time in Luxembourg, you are continuing your academic career at the University of Münster. What motivated you to return to Germany and teach and research at the University of Münster?

Firstly, the University of Münster in general and the Deparment of Information Systems in particular enjoy an excellent reputation, and I am sure that the university and the European Research Center for Information Systems (ERCIS) founded there offer the perfect environment for my interdisciplinary research. In addition, there are many points of contact with my new colleagues' areas of focus, both in terms of methodology (e.g. design science research) and content (e.g. new mobility concepts, the detection and combating of disinformation and the management of cross-organisational processes), which I would like to discuss with them. I would also like to contribute to establishing the topics of digital identity management and applications of modern cryptography in the areas of security, data protection and trust in data at a new location and to bring them into teaching and research projects.

I am also very much looking forward to being able to give large and, for a Information Systems  degree program, highly technically-oriented basic lectures at the University of Münster, as my previous work had a stronger focus on industry cooperation and specialised seminars and I was therefore limited to smaller and more specialized courses. I have enjoyed teaching since I was a student and I hope that I can inspire the students in the lectures for my research topics and at the same time emphasize the relevance of basic education for current challenges in society and the economy.

One of your main areas of research is digital identities. What exactly is this about and what fascinates you most about this topic?

Digital identity management is one of the basic prerequisites for successful digital transformation, both in terms of IT security and the efficiency of processes based on data exchange and access rights. Today's identity management is extremely fragmented – both for end users as well as for organizations and networked devices. This inevitably leads to low user-friendliness, security gaps, high costs and lock-in effects for providers of solutions for IAM systems. These challenges can be addressed with a unified, user-centric system that uses modern cryptography and stores machine-verifiable proof of identity locally. At the same time, an approach based on ‘digital wallets’ increases users' control over which data they pass on to which organizations, which can largely address the usual criticism of a lack of data protection in the digital space. Furthermore, reducing the dependencies of digital identity ecosystems is also a key to greater European digital sovereignty, for example as an alternative or supplement to single sign-on solutions from large technology platforms and web PKI. Last but not least, secure digital identities also enable machine-verifiable transaction data, on the basis of which the creation of many digital proofs becomes possible in the first place, especially in cross-organisational processes.

On the other hand, many projects to improve digital identity management have also failed in the past due to various technical and non-technical hurdles. In this respect, I find it very exciting to learn from these attempts and to actively support the hopefully successful implementation this time, both as a scientific observer and by developing innovative solutions for and based on digital identities. I also appreciate the combination of cryptographic and economic aspects in the successful implementation of digital wallets, which make interdisciplinary research necessary and provide a holistic perspective that can also offer valuable insights in other areas of digital transformation.

What research projects are you currently working on?

Similar to the German Fraunhofer Institutes, the SnT is characterised by a very strong industry focus, where research projects are strongly demand-oriented and interdisciplinary. My current favorite projects deal with potential security issues of Bitcoin induced by the quadrennial “halving”, the controversy around qualified website certificates and European digital sovereignty between browser providers, the European Commission and European trust service providers in the context of the amendment of the eIDAS regulation, as well as applications of digital wallets in organizations and general security and privacy challenges arising from the current implementation plan of European digital wallets (EUDI wallets). In addition, I am also working on the development of verifiable data-driven processes between financial institutions and the privacy-oriented tokenization of artworks on public blockchains - the latter is a public research project funded by the Luxembourg Fonds National de la Recherche, which I was able to acquire in collaboration with the APSIA research group for applied cryptography at the SnT and which ultimately attracted me to Luxembourg.

What courses will you be offering students in the future?

I will be offering two lectures and two seminars in the  summer semester 2025. In the bachelor's lecture ‘Security of Distributed Systems’, I will first introduce the general basics of distributed systems and then use this preliminary work to provide an insight into both classic (e.g. security of email and web PKI) and highly topical security-related issues in the context of distributed systems, such as challenges for the security of cryptocurrencies and blockchains as well as digital wallets, where both cryptographic and economic design aspects are crucial. In the master's lecture ‘Trust and Security in Data Science’, I will first highlight challenges regarding access control in cross-organizational data exchange and the verification of the origin and trustworthiness of data.

We will then look at typical problems and paradoxes in data analysis and statistical and cryptographic approaches to solving them. The seminars then delve deeper into more general current issues in European digital wallets and a critical examination of perspectives on the potential and challenges of blockchain technology that are often one-sided or driven by business interests. To give one example: Proponents of bitcoin mining often argue that mining hardware can easily be switched off, thereby stabilizing power grids, promoting the expansion of renewables or using waste heat for heating. However, counter-arguments are sometimes ignored, such as the fact that mining is initially an additional consumer from a grid perspective, that the high investments in mining hardware make grid-friendly behavior with volatile generation economically difficult and that heating with waste heat makes little sense in summer and has major efficiency disadvantages compared to a heat pump in winter. So, you can see that I approach passionately controversial topics with a high degree of interdisciplinarity from the perspective of business informatics in order to provide a balanced perspective that can then inform the broader discourse.

In the coming winter semester, I will be giving the introductory lecture on data and probabilities for business IT specialists, which I am particularly looking forward to as a former mathematical physicist.

Is there a course that you are particularly interested in and would like to take yourself?

This is probably the most difficult of the questions because there are simply too many topics that interest me. As an enthusiastic supporter of electromobility, for example, I would be interested in courses on battery management or the quantitative evaluation of data on battery health during operation, the coordination of charging processes in a more system or grid-friendly way and more user-friendly charging planning and payment. On the other hand, I find the mathematical foundations of the latest generation of artificial intelligence (large language models) very exciting and would like to delve even deeper into the unfortunately often underestimated challenges and possibilities of supplementing these with fundamentally different (e.g. neuro-symbolic) approaches.

Am 29. März 2025 fand der erste Hochschultag für Alumni statt. Der Ehemaligenverein der Wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Fakultät, AlumniUM, hieß Alumni und Studieninteressierte willkommen und berichtete über die Entwicklungen der letzten Jahre, die aktuellen Herausforderungen und die Fortschritte unserer Studienprogramme. Ein weiterer Höhepunkt war die Führung durch das Juridicum/Oeconomicum, insbesondere durch das Ende 2023 wieder eröffnete, neu gestaltete Forum Oeconomicum, die Fachbereichsbibliothek der Wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Fakultät.

As of April 1, 2025, God’sgift Okoebor (M.Sc.) has joined the Junior Professorship for Digital Transformation and Societey as a research assistant and doctoral candidate.

She holds a Master of Science in Information Systems from the University of Münster, where she specialized in Information Management and Business Networks, and a Bachelor of Science in Management Information Systems from Covenant University, Nigeria.

God’sgift brings both academic and practical experience to her role. Her master’s research explored the integration of Generative AI in academic work, highlighting her interest in the intersection of technology and organizational processes. Professionally, she has supported strategic initiatives in digital transformation and data management at BASF Coatings, and has held roles in project management, IT support, and business development across Nigeria and Germany.

Her research interests lie in digital transformation, AI-driven business innovation, and the evolving role of information systems in organizational change.

We wish her the very best and are looking forward to working together!

Im Institut für Wirtschaftsinformatik, Forschungsgruppe Computational Social Science and Systems Analysis (Prof. Dr.-Ing. Christian Grimme) der Universität Münster ist ab dem 01.09.2025 eine Stelle als

On April 7, 2025, the School of Business and Economics and the Department of Information Systems bid farewell to Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Jörg Becker during his “last” lecture. Since 1990, Jörg Becker has significantly shaped the department and the field of Information Systems. His research has left a lasting impression in the areas of process management, data management, e-government, information modeling, retail information systems and hybrid value creation.

Am 7. April 2025 verabschiedeten die Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät und das Institut für Wirtschaftsinformatik Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Jörg Becker im Rahmen seiner „letzten“ Vorlesung.  Seit 1990 hat Jörg Becker das Institut und den Bereich Wirtschaftsinformatik maßgeblich geprägt. Seine Forschung hinterließ in den Bereichen Prozessmanagement, Datenmanagement, E-Government, Informationsmodellierung, Handelsinformationssysteme und hybride Wertschöpfung einen bleibenden Eindruck.

In the new ranking of the online platform research.com, the University of Münster is ranked 8th among the ‘Best Business and Management Universities in Germany 2025’ (267th worldwide). With Prof Dr Jan vom Brocke in 12th place and Prof Dr Thorsten Hennig-Thurau in 26th place, two of our professors are among the top 30 ‘Best Business and Management Scientists in Germany’.

Im neuen Ranking der Online-Plattform research.com wird die Universität Münster auf Rang 8 der "Best Business and Management Universities in Germany 2025" gelistet (weltweit Rang 267). Mit Prof. Dr. Jan vom Brocke auf Rang 12 und Prof. Dr. Thorsten Hennig-Thurau auf Rang 26 zählen gleich zwei unserer Professor:innen zu den Top 30 der "Best Business and Management Scientists in Germany".

On April 7, 2025, the Department of Information Systems bid farewell to Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Jörg Becker during his “last” lecture.

Since 1990, Jörg Becker has significantly shaped the department and the field of Information Systems. His research has left a lasting impression in the areas of process management, data management, e-government, information modeling, retail information systems and hybrid value creation.

He is also the founder of the European Research Center for Information Systems (ERCIS) and currently heads the research group “Digital Mittelstadt of the Future”, which researches innovative solutions for the digital transformation of municipalities and local administrations.

As part of the farewell, colleagues, long-time companions and former and current doctoral students looked back on three decades of academic excellence, leadership and mentorship - all wrapped up in a creative and inspiring program.

Fortunately, this is not really a farewell, as Jörg Becker will remain with the department as a senior professor. We would like to thank him warmly and look forward to the next chapter!