For Students | Applied Disability | CDI-HSG

In teaching, the findings of the research unit Applied Disability are presented.

This is intended to introduce students from various disciplines to the different facets of the professional inclusion of people with and without disabilities.

The personal background as well as the experience of Prof. Dr. Nils Jent will be made accessible through the pedagogical method of "storytelling". This makes teaching a lasting experience in both professional and personal terms.

General Information

We offer students the opportunity to write a Bachelor or Master thesis within the field of Applied Disability Research. If you are interested, please contact us. We would be happy to discuss the main topics of the theses with you personally. Generally, we recommend including an empirical part in your thesis.

Suggested Areas of Research

The following topics are available:

In which Swiss industries do people with disabilities work?
Do people with disabilities work in the professions they have learned and does their position correspond to their educational level?
Which Swiss industry is particularly attractive for employees with disabilities?
How is the employment situation of people with disabilities evolving in Switzerland?
Do companies exploit loaned workers with disabilities in terms of wages and non-wage labor costs?
Psychological mechanisms (opportunities and risks) of experiential learning between disabled and non-disabled employees
Systematic overview of the scientific literature on experiential learning and learning by model
Psychological mechanisms of co-disability (e.g. how and why are siblings, work colleagues, partners, superiors etc. co-disabled by people with disabilities?)

Prof. Dr. Nils Jent or Philip Bootz will gladly provide further information on request.

Basics of Diversity Management (Bachelor Level; exclusively taught in German)

Diversity management is becoming more and more important for our business world due to globalization and increasing interconnection of economic and political processes, the increasing heterogenization of our workforces and the change in social values and structures in order to develop and utilize important potentials. Diversity characteristics such as gender, cultural-ethnic affiliation, age, disability, etc. influence economic interrelationships and how we operate in the business environment.

This gives rise to new tasks for organizations in both the profit and non-profit sectors, which require corresponding competencies. The underlying idea of the seminar is that an environment of consciously experienced diversity has to be created, managed (managing diversity), led (leading diversity) and lived (living diversity) in order to generate and use economic advantages by taking into account the diversity and heterogeneity of people.

Lecturers: Prof. Dr. Nils Jent and Dr. Gian Carlo Sciuchetti; 4 ECTS; Course number: 4,154,1.00

Ability Management (Bachelor Level; exclusively taught in German)

In light of demographic change and Switzerland's commitment to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 2014 and the associated social challenges with regard to social structures, Ability Management is becoming increasingly important, particularly in companies. Students will gain an overview of how inclusion of employees with a disability can be achieved successfully. The focus is on the necessary paradigm shift in (dis)ability management. This change requires a consistent resource orientation, which removes the obstructive link between equality and sameness and combines social and economic goals.

Lecturers: Prof. Dr. Nils Jent and Dr. Regula Dietsche; 2 ECTS; Course number: 3,670,1.00

At the CDI-HSG's Department of Applied Disability, PhD students work on various topics within our research areas on a regular basis. Vacant PhD positions are advertised in the Jobs section and on the HSG job portal. Below, we briefly introduce the doctoral candidates and their respective dissertation topics.

Name	(Working) Title of the Dissertation	Graduation
Philip Bootz	Which best practices of Swiss SMEs in the primary labor market are suitable for the inclusion of employees with disabilities in work processes? Analysis of the success path of inclusion prize winners in the canton of Zurich	in progress
Dr. Bijan D. Khezri	Free-Energy Governance: Sensing, Sensemaking, and Strategic Renewal. Surprise-Minimization and Firm Survival.	Completed (2020)
Dr. Lena Pescia	Inclusion of employees with disabilities in the hotel industry – A practice-oriented concept for Swiss hotels	Completed (2019)
Dr. Michael Hathorn	New HR Governance – An Empirical Study on Gender Diversity and Board Recruitment Practices in Switzerland	Completed (2017)
Dr. Regula Dietsche	Optimization measures of the study conditions at German-speaking Swiss universities for people with disabilities	Completed (2014)