Congratulations from corsus to Dr Verena Timmer on her successful doctorate

Verena Timmer joined the corsus team in autumn 2023 as a senior consultant with her expertise in advising companies on sustainability strategies and sustainability reporting. After successfully completing her dissertation on organisational practices and algorithm design, she has now received her doctorate. We would like to congratulate Dr Verena Timmer on this milestone!

Verena Timmer collected the data for her doctoral thesis by accompanying an IT consultancy for five years. Her findings have already been presented at international conferences and are a good basis for further publications. “When we deal with algorithms, we must not view them as opaque, isolated entities. To understand algorithms and the organisational phenomena associated with them, it is crucial to look at the processes and context in which the algorithms are designed. This also includes examining the different roles of people in entrepreneurial contexts and finding out what influence they have in the design of algorithms,” explains Dr Verena Timmer. As digitalisation and sustainability are increasingly falling under the catchphrase “twin transition”, Verena Timmer is certain that corsus customers will benefit from the knowledge gained from her dissertation: “It’s similar to algorithms with other (sustainability) approaches: They have to fit the context, i.e. the respective company.”

The dissertation was supervised by Prof. Dr Erik Strauß, Dean of the Faculty of Business & Society and holder of the Dr Werner Jackstädt Endowed Chair of Controlling and Corporate Management at the University of Witten/Herdecke. The second assessor was Prof. Dr. Hendrik Wilhelm, Professor of Strategic Organisation at the Reinhard Mohn Institute at Witten/Herdecke University. Dr Verena Timmer is also head of research at the Centre for Sustainable Leadership – ZNU, where she is also involved in the transdisciplinary BioVal research project on biodiversity along product life cycles. She feeds this experience and expertise into the consulting processes for corsus.