Page 45 - VIA Broschüre

VEIT

WOHLGEMUTH

I hear very often that a PhD is a lonely Furthermore, our fellow members repre-
endeavor. Many of my academic friends sented a benchmark for our progress. Dur- DISSERTATION TOPIC
and colleagues told me their PhD stories of ing a development process, you do not only Microfoundations of Dynamic
social isolation in dark basement rooms. One need someone that points you in the right Capabilities: Employee
Involvement, Managerial Trust,
benefit of being part of the DCR community direction, but you need a benchmark to Control, and Routinization
is that I cannot confirm this experience. know the amount of progress which is
possible to close the gap between you and PERIOD OF STAY
A main reason that causes this feeling of the experts. The community was therefore 04/2011 – 09/2014
loneliness is the degree of specialization. a strong motivator during my PhD. CURRENT POSITION
The deeper you dive into your topic the Professor of Corporate Finance
smaller the number of people that can be The tight connections during our PhD cre- at Hochschule für Technik und
of help in dealing with it. Usually, you meet ated a very strong network. Although my Wirtschaft (HTW) Berlin
some of them once or twice a year at aca- teaching and research focus shifted I still
demic conferences, but that is about it. At publish a lot in cooperation with other
DCR, we always had someone close by to DCR members, we interact to improve our
challenge our thoughts and discuss ideas. teaching and we support each other in
Instead of being lonely, we created a know- administrative processes. Such strong rela-
ledge cluster around dynamic capabilities. tionships are rare in academia. Many of us
work in different fields and institutions
At the beginning of my PhD, I was not that now. This also allows me to tap their devel-
specialized. However, as with every new oped networks. It is quite surprising to see
position, I faced typical beginner’s prob- how widely our network spread based on
lems. The solutions are obvious if you have the seeds we planted at DCR. Members of
some experience, but they can create a lot the DCR community work in many fields
of frustration until then. Within our cohort, and institutions and not only at GGS and
we helped each other, by sharing what we the Viadrina. The living community created
knew. Therefore, we probably got those not only good memories, but is still
challenges out of the way more quickly than supporting my progress.
many other first year PhDs.

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