Major award for Dr. phil. Lina Nagel Wilkening: she was awarded the Systemic Research Prize for her dissertation.
The thesis was written at the Endowed Chair for Organization and Development of Business Families at the Witten Institute for Family Business (WIFU) at Witten/Herdecke University. Her research focuses on the question of how business families can be better understood - especially where the different requirements of family and business meet.
To this end, Lina Nagel Wilkening has developed her own theoretical perspective on business families. She draws on second-order cybernetics, an important approach in systemic research, and develops it further for the analysis of business families. In this way, she succeeds in taking a new look at typical tensions, conflicts and communication patterns in these complex systems and making them comprehensible.
The combination of scientific originality and practical relevance was particularly praised. The dissertation not only provides new theoretical insights, but also opens up concrete impulses for advising, coaching and supporting business families.
The jury also emphasized the conceptual clarity, methodological depth and innovative strength of the work. With her research, Lina Nagel Wilkening enriches both the systemic discourse and research on family businesses and business families.
We warmly congratulate Dr. Lina Nagel Wilkening on this outstanding award and are delighted that her academic work has been recognized.
Background information
The Systemic Society (SG) and the German Society for Systemic Therapy, Counseling and Family Therapy (DGSF) annually award the Systemic Research Prize to outstanding scientific work by young researchers. The prize is awarded to research projects that combine systemic approaches with high practical relevance. The prize, which is endowed with 3,000 euros, is intended to highlight the importance of systemic thinking for therapy, counselling and organizational development and to promote the further scientific development of the field.
Further information can be found on the website of the Systemic Society (SG).