Teaching faculty in the MA.IB
As the FH Mainz – University of Applied Sciences focuses on applied studies and research, professors and lecturers are required to provide proof of their own management experience from outside the university environment. As a prerequisite for teaching in the Master of Arts International Business Programme, they are also required to have studied and/or worked in an English speaking country abroad. Their experiences range from expatriate status to independent business and government consulting. Furthermore, all of them are experienced in teaching classes in English to a culturally diverse audience. Their teaching styles encourage students to develop their own points of view.
In addition, professors and lecturers from partner universities regularly teach in the MA.IB classes. In recent years, visiting professors from various European countries and the United States have contributed to the international learning environment at the FH Mainz.
Prof. Dr. Ulrich Schüle
Programme Director MA.IB
Professor of International Economics and Business
Dr. Ulrich Schüle, professor of International Economics at the University of Applied Sciences Mainz, studied Economics and Business Administration at Augsburg University and graduated as “Diplomökonom Univ” (M.A.) in 1982 and “Dr. rer. pol.” (PhD) in 1987.
From 1982 to 1988, he worked as an economist at Augsburg University and at the “Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft” and from 1988 to 1990 was a personal assistant to the president and CEO of TRUMPF, Germany’s largest machine tool manufacturer. Since 1990, he has been professor of International Economics in Mainz. As course director of the Mainz International Business programme he implemented several double degree programmes with partner universities in Europe and overseas. From 2002 to 2010, he was also President of CIDD, the world’s largest consortium of double degree programmes.
Since 2007, Dr. Schüle has been Dean of the School of Business. Apart from university teaching, Dr. Schüle has continually engaged in teaching, research and consultancy projects in several EU countries, Argentina, Azerbaijan, China, Colombia, India, Russia, and the USA.
Prof. Dr. Matthias Eickhoff
Professor of Marketing, Innovation and EntrepreneurshipDr. Matthias Eickhoff is professor of Marketing and Innovation Management at the University of Applied Sciences Mainz. After studies in Business Administration and Business Teaching he received a doctoral degree from Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University, Frankfurt. He started his professional career as assistant to the CEO of a pharmaceutical company and gathered experience in project management, marketing and innovation management in the consumer power tools industry and as an account executive in an advertising agency.
Dr. Eickhoff had been chairman of the German section of the Action Européenne pour l’Éducation, l’Invention et l’Innovation from 1997-2000 before taking over an endowed chair of Entrepreneurship and heading the Institute of Entrepreneurial Behaviour (IUH) 2000-2005. Since 2002, he has also been director of the Institute for Innovation Transfer and Consulting (ITB). He was one of the founders of COEUR (Competence in EuroPreneurship) providing a platform for intercultural learning in the field of business creativity.
Furthermore, Dr. Eickhoff is working as a consultant in the fields of marketing and management for companies of different industries and sizes: technology-oriented start-up companies as well as Global Players like Motorola, Lufthansa Cargo, Kikkoman-Daitokai, Braas-Lafarge and others.
Prof. Dr. Werner Hillebrand
Professor of International AccountingDr. Werner Hillebrand is professor at the University of Applied Sciences Mainz. His teaching fields include financial accounting by national and international standards, cost and management accounting, rating and valuation of enterprises, corporate governance, risk management and auditing.
After his studies of Economics and Business Administration at the universities of Regensburg and Colorado (USA) and postgraduate studies at the German Development Institute in Berlin and Shanghai, Dr. Hillebrand received his doctoral degree from Georg-August University Göttingen. He does research in the field of corporate governance, risk management and auditing.
Practical experience he gained at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Dr. Hillebrand is Wirtschaftsprüfer (German Chartered Accountant) and has managed major international auditing and consulting assignments in Europe, Africa and Asia. Some of the assignments have resulted in comprehensive studies, e.g. on the risk management of projects in developing countries financed by KfW or a large World Bank microfinance program in Sri Lanka.
Prof. Dr. Herbert Paul
Professor of Strategic Management and International ManagementDr. Herbert Paul was appointed professor of Strategic Management and Business Policy at the University of Applied Sciences Mainz in September 1998. Dr. Paul teaches Strategic Management for the Tias-Nimbas MBA programme in Utrecht, The Netherlands. He is also a visiting professor at the Graduate School of Business at Assumption University in Bangkok, Thailand. He holds a BA honours degree from the School of Business in Mainz, an MBA degree from Indiana University, Bloomington, USA and a doctorate from Justus-Liebig University of Giessen, Germany.
After his academic training Dr. Paul worked for Roche, a global pharmaceuticals company, at their headquarters in Switzerland where he was responsible for various venture capital and acquisition projects. Later he joined McKinsey & Company, Inc. as a management consultant in their Düsseldorf and Stockholm offices. His consulting practice covered a wide range of projects related to strategy development and international management. Later he worked for Egmont, a leading European media group based in Copenhagen, responsible for several general management functions.
During the period February 2005 to February 2007 Dr. Paul was on leave of absence from his university duties and worked as Senior Vice President of Business Development at dz card (International) Ltd. in Bangkok, one of the leading suppliers of credit cards in South-East Asia. Dr. Paul’s research interests focus on international business issues, corporate growth and development processes as well as related strategic issues.
Prof. Dr. Daniel Porath
Professor of Quantitative Methods in BusinessDr. Daniel Porath is professor of Quantitative Methods in Business at the University of Applied Sciences Mainz. He received his doctoral degree from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and is specialised in statistical methods for credit risk assessment.
Dr. Daniel Porath was a senior project manager at Fair / Isaac INFORMA consulting company and worked in the Banking Supervision Department of the Deutsche Bundesbank. He has carried out consulting projects with several German banks and has worked in international banking supervision projects with the ECB and the IMF. At the Deutsche Bundesbank he has developed a hazard model for the risk-monitoring of German credit cooperatives and savings banks.
Apart from his teaching activities Dr. Porath is engaged in empirical research projects with a focus on the banking market structure, Basel II and rating systems.
Prof. Dr. Susanne Rank
Professor of Human Resources Management, Change Management, Intercultural Communication and Management and Strategic ManagementDr. Susanne Rank is professor of Business Administration and Human Resource Management at the School of Business Mainz. She received her doctoral degree in Social Psychology from University of Heidelberg. Dr. Rank worked as a researcher in a DFG project on social cognition at the University of Mannheim. She is specialised in Human Resource Management, Organizational Development and Change Management. Furthermore, she has published work on social psychology, strategic HR management and change management.
Dr. Rank has international comprehensive business and consulting experience of many years as she worked with SAP AG, as a HR consultant and later as a senior business consultant. She led a change management team within a one-year international software implementation project in Mexico-City.
In addition to teaching and researching Dr. Rank now consults and trains international companies in change management and human resource management.
Prof. Dr. Stefanie Swartz-Janat Makan
Professor of Business English, English and US-American culture and Qualitative Analytical MethodsDr. Stephanie Swartz-Janat Makan is professor of English and US-American culture at the University of Applied Sciences Mainz. Before emigrating to Germany, she completed her BA at Juniata College, Pennsylvania in the areas of English and Philosophy. She received her MA at Philipps-University Marburg, Germany and PhD at University of Paderborn, Germany in US-American Studies and Education.
During her studies Dr. Swartz taught English at all levels and in-house Business English courses at a variety of institutions and companies. Her primary concern at university is providing students with the language skills necessary for academic performance and later professional life.
Research within International Business
Prof. Dr. Ulrich Schüle
Internationalisation of SME
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) are limited in financing their activities as neither stock markets nor own assets are available. In particular, SME face severe difficulties when they react to the globalisation process and internationalise their activities. In a variety of sectors, even smaller companies cooperate with business partners abroad, open subsidiaries and licence their knowledge to companies in foreign markets.
This internationalisation process of SME has not yet systematically been investigated. In his current research project, Prof. Dr. Schüle analyses the approaches of SME towards internationalisation with a special focus on financial issues.
Prof. Dr. Daniel Porath
Efficiency and Bank Performance
Improving efficiency is considered a standard means of strengthening the performance and lowering the default risk of a company. Recently, banks in particular have been making considerable efforts to increase their cost and/or profit efficiency as a way out of the deteriorating market conditions observed in the last years. The quantitative effects of an increasing efficiency, however, often remain unclear. Specifically, there is no empirical evidence about the magnitude and the dynamics of the impact of efficiency on banks’ returns and default risk.
Prof. Dr. Porath and Dr. Koetter (University of Groningen) have initiated a research project which has the objective of assessing the impact of efficiency on bank performance. The Deutsche Bundesbank has provided data for all German banks from 1993 to 2004. The datasets will be used to estimate cost and profit efficiency for individual banks by means of stochastic frontier analysis. Bank-level default probabilities will be generated with a hazard model. The shock transmission, finally, will be estimated with the help of a vector auto regression model.