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University of Hamburg Business School
University of HamburgBusiness School

Photo: MCM Sciences

Business School research

The Business School focuses on quantitative and empirical research. Researchers typically use real world (big) data and data science approaches to solve important management problems. 

It was third in Germany in the Wirtschaftswoche Ranking 2024, the most important national ranking for business research, and sixth in the overall ranking in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Contents

Research groups, centers and cooperations

Key research areas

Research in the key areas is interdisciplinary, is conducted in collaboration with practice, and focuses on important areas for society and the economy. Each area is associated with a research center and aligned with City of Hamburg clusters.

Health Economics

Areas of focus:

  • Funding the health care sector
  • Outpatient and inpatient care
  • Pharmaceutical markets
  • Economic evaluation of health care
  • Public health
  • Big Data & Digital Health

The interdisciplinary Hamburg Center for Health Economics brings together staff from the University of Hamburg Business School; the WiSo Faculty; and the Faculty of Medicine. With over 70 researchers, it is one of the leading centers for integrating business, economics and medicine in Europe. HCHE has a strong international network and has been extremely successful in transferring research into policy and practice.

Associated city clusters: Life Science North, Health Industries 

Marketing and Communication

Areas of focus:

  • Media and social networks
  • Automated communication

Media and social networks: The DFG research group “How Social Media is Changing Marketing” brings together researchers from Universität Hamburg, the University of Münster, the University of Cologne, and Kühne Logistics University to focus on the marketing of hedonic media products such as movies, books, games, and music in the context of social media.

Automated communication: Researchers from the Business School collaborate closely with colleagues from information systems, media research, sociology, and politics.

The Center for Marketing and Media serves as a platform to bring together the Business School’s marketing professors with companies and leading marketing researchers from around the world.

Associated city clusters: Media, Creativity

Logistics and Digital Services

Areas of focus:

  • Complex, “real world” systems in logistics and digital services in seaports
  • Digital logistics in megacities

The area brings together Faculty researchers from logistics, operations research, finance, information systems, and maritime economics.

In the seaport field, the focus is on information networks, and strategic and operative planning. The Maritime Economics Research Center has a particular focus on the economic analysis of global logistics and international freight flows, especially with policy, digitalization, and sustainability implications. Contemporary topics include the impacts of Brexit on port traffic, of the One-Belt-One-Road Policy on logistics route competition, and of the COVID-19 pandemic on international freight shipments.

Associated city clusters: Logistics, Maritime, Aviation, Renewable Energy

Research groups, centers and cooperations

Research centers

Hamburger Zentrum für Versicherungswissenschaft (HZV)

Hamburg Center for Insurance Research (HZV): Interdisciplinary center for empirical research, teaching and cooperative projects together with the insurance industry.

Labour Standards for Improved Well-Being

Labour Standards for Improved Well-Being: The research consortium investigates how “labour standards for improved well-being”: How do they come and about and how are they developing under the current conditions? What effect do they have on the potential working population and their supply of labour?

Research groups, centers and cooperations

Disciplinary groups

The Business School has 29 professors across eight disciplinary groups, as well as two cross-disciplinary professorships.

Recent top publications

Recent articles in leading journals, either in the Financial Times Research Rank list or listed as A or A+ journals in VHB-JOURQUAL3, the standard journal rating system used in Business Administration and Economics in Germany.

Each year, researchers also publish more than 20 articles related to the UN Development Program’s Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs). 

Full list of faculty publications

Research news

RSS-Feed
Auf einer Weide stehen Kühe, im Hintergrund sieht mache rauchende Schornsteine einer Fabrik oder eines Kraftwerks.

Photo: Peggychoucair/Pixabay

26 June 2023|Research Examples

Study with University Participation: Companies should reduce, not compensate for, emissions

For greater sustainability, companies can reduce emissions when manufacturing their products or compensate for emissions. Both...

View of a computer screen showing stock market prices

Photo: Pixabay PIX1861

5 April 2023|Research Examples

Doing the Research series: Can Algorithms Create the Perfect Portfolio?

What conditions do capital markets require and which instruments can make them more predictable? These are a few of the research...

Contribution from the university's newsroom
Sophia Bock steht vor dem Gebäude der St. John's University

Photo: privat

23 March 2023|Research Examples

Research visit at Peter J. Tobin College of Business at St. John’s University

Being currently enrolled as PhD student at Hamburg Business School, Sophia Bock recently started a joint research project with her...

Binnenschiff

Photo: pixabay/dendoktoor

5 January 2023|Research

Doing the Research: Model for autonomous vessels used for inland waterway shipping

Researchers are not only developing technologies for autonomous cars, but also for vessels used for inland waterway shipping. But...

Contribution from the university's newsroom
Blick in einen Raum im Haus der Betriebswirtschaft, in dem viele Wissenschaftler im Gespräch sind

Photo: BWL/Achenbach

22 December 2022|Research

Business economists second in Germany for research

Universität Hamburg has been ranked second in Germany for business economics research in the prestigious WirtschaftsWoche ranking...

Einheitlich blauer Hintergrund. Davor ist ein dunkelblauer Pappbecher mit einem weißen Plastikdeckel zu sehen.

Photo: HBR Staff/Kseniya Ovchinnikova/amtitus/Getty Images

21 November 2022|Research

How One Company Used Data to Create Sustainable Take-out Food Packaging

Digital technology has made it commercially possible for companies to offer an alternative, more sustainable, and deposit-free...

Contribution from the news channel News MTL
Johannssen und Chukhrova

Photo: UHH/Schöttmer

20 October 2022|Research

DFG funds project to improve risk management at insurance providers

In the indemnity insurance industry, particularly loss reserves often represent one of the largest actuarial liabilities on the...

FitnesspilotKidz

Photo: Diventio/stock.adobe.com

12 September 2022|Research

FitnesspilotKIDZ project receives support from transfer funds

15% of all children and adolescents in Germany are overweight and 5.9% suffer from obesity. In addition to physical and...

Contribution from the news channel HCHEen
Container terminal in Hamburg

Photo: EUROGATE/Vielmo

25 August 2022|Research

Doing the Research: A Digital Twin for Hamburg’s Port

Hamburg’s harbor is the largest sea port in Germany and the third largest in Europe. Increasing costs and competition alongside...

Contribution from the university's newsroom
Archive of current news

Faculty research in numbers

  • 29 professors, 10 assistant professors, 10 lecturers, and around 140 doctoral researchers
  • 3 Key Research Areas
  • 8 Disciplinary Groups
  • Around 70 articles published in leading peer-reviewed journals each year
  • 2nd in Germany for research: WirtschaftsWoche Ranking 2022