In the preliminary study, the dissertation project in the form of a research plan as well as the methodical approach are to be described (see Regulatory Statutes for the Doctoral Degree Programme).

In the colloquium on the preliminary study the doctoral students present their dissertation project and justify their approach.

The advisor and the co-advisor make a decision about accepting the preliminary study and recommend a grade assignment.

The preliminary study and the colloquium on the preliminary study are passed if the grade assignment is at least a 4.0.

Just as the doctoral consortium, the summer school serves multiple purposes in the educational programme of the students: Whereas the doctoral consortium aims at presenting the own work in an international frame, the summer school intends to deepen methodological skills in a specific field of choice relevant to the PhD theses of the students. In addition, working together with professors and PhD-students from abroad also contributes to social and communicative skills of the students in an international and intercultural environment.

Doctorate information systems students participating in an international Ph.D. summer school study contemporary issues in information systems research design and/or methodology.

Students will be assisted by lecturers of the Institute of Information Systems at the University of Liechtenstein in preparing their proposal and application for the summer school. Accepted students will take part in the summer school. Also a reflection of the lessons learned at the summer school together with the lecturers at Liechtenstein is part of the module.

The primary objective of the summer school is to get further insights into the research methods applied by the PhD students and to discuss evolving questions with other young scientists.

The students will be assessed in this module through:

• competitive selection process of the summer school
• specific mechanisms of the summer school

Module availability:
On application at an internationally renown summer school, such as organised e. g. by the European Research Center for Information Systems (ERCIS).

This course is designed to give first year PhD Students an aid for their academic endeavour. Just like in Research Design, the focus lies on methodological competences. At the same time, however, this course also aims at techniques rather than design strategies. The objective is to provide core compentences on how to craft a scientific text properly. Due to the concept of peer-monitoring applied in this course also social competencies will be trained.

During the first year students will be working on their academic writing style, they will be made familiar with normative writing styles and ways to publish tackling various kinds of genres, and they will help and learn from each other through peer-monitoring activities. As a base sample texts will be used and the texts students will be producing will be worked on. The course is built on four pillars:

• Text Coaching:
  How to write academically: spelling, grammar, academic vocabulary, numbers, abbreviations, tables, figures, etc.
• Knowledge Management:
  Working with databases, literature management softwares, etc.
• Publishing:
  How to write and publish various genres: abstracts, research papers, articles, data commentaries, reviews, project proposals, formatting, etc.
• Peer-Mentoring:
  Giving and receiving feed-back, presenting and reviewing, considering peer-feedback, joint writing activities, etc.

During the course, students will maintain a blog which they will be feeding with weekly entries about their research activities and they will comment on two other PhD Students' blogs. This way, they will structure their thoughts and ideas and it will stimulate transparency and exchange about what they individually and what peer-students are working on. This will help learning how to give and receive feed-back, and it will be monitored by supervisors helping in giving individualised feed-back.

At the end of the course students will hand in a portfolio containing all the texts they have written and the blog entries and comments they will have made.

During the course, plenary speakers will be invited from various fields organising a workshop with students on particular issues of academic writing in genre-specific areas.

Workshops, one-on-one and think-pair-share sessions, individual and guided e-learning.

Students will be acquainted with principles of academic writing, normative writing, publishing, and peer-mentoring.

By the end of the course they will be able to make use of academic vocabulary, they will be able to discuss texts, tables, charts, and figures, and they will be sensitised about their personal and academic command of the English language.

They will be familiar with reference management systems, working with databases, formatting written texts, and academic values.

They will know principles of certain academic genres, like abstracts, research papers, articles, data commentaries, reviews, project proposals, etc.

They will be able to give and consider peer-feed-back, present and review, and they will be able to carry out joint writing activities, etc.

Assessment modalities split up into the three parts "Text Discussion" (1), "Participation in Discussions" (2), "Regular Blog Updates" (3).

The parts are specified as follows:

1. Text Discussion:
Each participant engages actively into a 45-minute-text-discussion-phase about a text of a fellow student; Each participant delivers a text to be discussed jointly.

2. Each participant must at least take part into the discussion of five texts.

3. Each participant must blog once a week and deliver at least two peer-feedbacks on other fellow students' blogs once a week.

Just as the doctoral consortium, the summer school serves multiple purposes in the educational programme of the students: Whereas the doctoral consortium aims at presenting the own work in an international frame, the summer school intends to deepen methodological skills in a specific field of choice relevant to the PhD theses of the students. In addition, working together with professors and PhD-students from abroad also contributes to social and communicative skills of the students in an international and intercultural environment.

Doctorate entrepreneurship and management students participating in an international Ph.D. summer school study contemporary issues in research design and/or methodology.

The primary objective of the summer school is to get further insights into the research methods applied by the PhD students and to discuss evolving questions with other young scientists and leading experts in the field.

The students will be assessed in this module through:

• competitive selection process of the summer school
• specific mechanisms of the summer school

Module availability:
On application at an internationally renown summer school, such as organised e. g. by the Swiss National Science Foundation or Essex Summer School in Social Science Data Analysis and Collection.

Research Methods in International Financial Services can be very different, depending on the specific research area of Banking, Finance and Taxation. This module description is developed for a student with a need for advanced methods in econometrics. For students with different needs appropriate courses will be choosen and credited.

• Principles of Estimation and Testing
• Limited Dependent Variable Methods
• Longitudinal Data Models
• Stationary Time Series Models
• Stochastic Trends and Co-Integration

Lecture and self-study; presentation and paper by students is possible.

The module "Research Methods in International Financial Services " aims at deepening the students' competences regarding knowledge in their research design.

• This course should help - based on research methods offered on the master's level - to apply advanced econometric research methods, currently used by the research community.
• This course helps the student to independently develop a research concept for specific research questions.
• This course helps students to discuss methodological issues with colleagues working in the same area.

Students will be able to:

• Have an advanced overview of econometric principles for cross-sectional, panel, and time-series data sets.
• Apply econometric techniques in the area of microeconomics, macroeconomics and finance.

The students will be assessed in this module through:

• Written exam or presentation and paper (about 4000 - 5000 words)

The module "Research Methods in Information and Process Management Science" aims at deepening the students' skills in research design. It focuses on pivotal issues of conducting and structuring research activities as part of information and process management research.

Subjects dealt with in the model comprise (but are not limited to):

• Introduction into design science
• Design science vs. behavioural science
• Rigour vs. relevance
• Design science in information systems research
• The design science research process
• Reviewing the literature
• Design science examples
• Design science challenges
• Theorizing in design science
• Publishing design science

• Lecture
• Self-study
• Presentation by students

Students successfully participating in the module will

• know how to explain the design science approach as related to 'traditional' approaches in research,
• be able to differentiate between major constructs and issues in information systems research, such as relevance, rigour, truth, and utility,
• know about the major contributions on design science published in information systems research,
• be able to structure the design science research process,
• be capable of conducting rigorous literature reviews as part of design science research,
• know about major evaluation methods,
• be aware of the role of theories in design science research, and
• know the major information systems outlets for publishing design science research.

The students will be assessed in this module through:

• Presentations
• Discussions

Besides a more in-depth knowledge in epistemology doctoral students in entrepeneurship and management research require an applicable base of research methods and tools. The course will cover the following topics:

• Epistemology in entrepreneurship and management research
• Research design and the use of theory
• Research questions and hypotheses
• Quantitative methods
• Qualitative methods
• Mixed method procedures
• Transdisciplinary research
• Research projects with industrial partners

Participant centered learning approach consisting of cases, best practices, self-study, presentation as well as paper by students

The students will be able to

• clearly understand and communicate the epistemological underpinning of their research work
• differentiate between different schools of thought
• design research processes corresponding to their research questions
• select suitable qualitative and quantitative research methods
• evaluate their own research with respect to validity, reliability and generalisability

The students will be assessed in this module through:

• Presentation

For all organizational details please get in touch with Claudia Brunner (claudia.brunner@uni.li).

The primary objective of the doctoral consortium or the International Conference Participation is to present and defend the PhD students' research in a competitive and international scientific environment.
Since successful applications are invited to be discussed by a selective academic committee this module also serves to further develop the communicative and social competences of the students.
Students' participating in this module arranged in the context of an internationally well-regarded doctoral consortium or a conference in International Financial Services receive critical comments and feedback on their research project by experienced faculty members and student participants. Moreover, they benefit from listening to the other students' experiences and results.

Preparation of paper and presentation

This module helps to enable the student

• to further intensify the existing knowledge and methodology needed for the dissertation project;
• to independently develop a research concept for specific research questions;
• to develop, analyze and synthesize new complex ideas;
• to develop a social, scientific and/or cultural progress for an academic or non-academic environment;
• to discuss methodological issues with colleagues working in the same area and also with laymen.

Students will be able to:

• Have an advanced and intensified overview on specific topics needed for the dissertation project;
• Develop their own research project;
• Apply the methodological structures of these specific topics for their dissertation project;
• Present, discuss and defend their research results to academics and make it understandable for laymen.

The students will be assessed in this module through:

• competitive selection process

Module availability:
On application at an internationally renown doctoral consortium or conference on International Financial Services.

• Distribution
• Basic terms of hypothesis testing
• Criteria for the determination of the sample size
• Testing procedures and their appliances
• Simple linear regression
• Twofold linear regression
• Multiple linear regression
• Model selection

The module "Business statistics" deepens various concepts on decision taking in uncertain problematic business situations that were already subject in the bachelor program. They are core competencies for decision support for business process engineering students have to acquire in order to be responsible.
In this central models and methods of statistics are tackled. The qualifying goals of the module as well as the acquired competences of the students are as follows:

The students are acquainted with the terminology, the ways of argumentation, the constraints of statistical methods as a central concept for the solution of uncertain issues in business related problems. They are able to point out both tasks and goals of the various approaches as well as they are able to explain the appropriate ways of calculation. They can define the scope of the different methods on a conceptional level and explain these regarding their individual specific employability in a business context. In order to train their methodological skills in practical situations, real life examples and applications will be tackled using statistics software. Students interprete their outputs correctly and they know about the constraints of their interpretations.

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Further information for writing the master thesis

Information about deadlines: All necessary information regarding dates and deadlines are given in this module description and the adhering componentes "Kolloquium" and "Präsentation/Verteidigung". The already scheduled dates of the commencement ceremony are found in the menu bar on the left.

Please note the following deadlines:
-Submission of thesis proposal (Disposition) until 1st of Nov. (winter term) / 1st of April (summer term)
-Presentation in the Kolloquium until the 15th of Dec. (winter term) /1st of June (summer term)
-The deadline for submission of the final version of the thesis is given in the course "presentation and defence" which is part of the module.

In case of any questions please contact the person responsible for the module.

Language of the master thesis
Preferred language for the master thesis is English. In accordance with the supervisor the thesis could also be written in German.

Necessary steps for writing a master thesis:

>Writing the thesis proposal (Exposé)
>Submission of the thesis proposal (Disposition) signed by the student (handed in to the secretary at Institute of Information Systems)
>The signed proposal is sent out to the supervisors via email by the institute
>Master thesis writing (max. editing time 22 weeks)
>Registration for the Kolloquium
>Presentation in the Kolloquium
>Submission of the master thesis (central service counter, main building)
>Evaluation of the thesis (information about grade)
>Final presentation and defense (German: "Präsentation und Verteidigung")
>Commencement ceremony

The Study and Examination Regulations and the Guidelines for Academic Work contain the necessary regulations. >>Link

Please consider especially the following aspects:

>The thesis proposal is written in accordance with the supervisor and the co-supervisor. Both should be team members of the institute of information systems. External supervisors (e.g. of the student's employer) are usually integrated as an additional practical supervisor. In this case there are a supervisor, co-supervisor and a practical supervisor involved in a thesis project. An external co-supervisor can be agreed in exceptional cases only (please check with the administration office of the institute if a personal data sheet is necessary for this person).

>The signature of the program director can be given by the supervisor with the appendix "i.V." (German for "by proxy") - the signature of the program director himself is not necessary.

>The official editing time is defined on the thesis proposal and may not exceed 22 weeks. A shorter editing time is possible.

>While editing the master thesis a colloquium with the supervisor must be held. The research colloquium of the institute of information systems is held Wednesday from 6.00 pm to 8.00 pm. Please contact the secretary of the institute of information systems for arranging a presentation date (wirtschaftsinformatik@hochschule.li). The presentation in the colloquium is initiated by the student.

>The dates and deadlines given in this module description are the last possible dates for the adhering presentation and defensio. Thesis submission made after these deadlines are presented at the following date for presentation and defensio.

>The registration for the commencement ceremony is handled by the study administration. Dates of the commencement ceremony are given in the menu bar located on the left / topic commencement ceremony

The evaluation of the master thesis will be published a few days before the final presentation.