‘The HSG Institute of Management was once the largest management consultancy in Switzerland’

Caption: The HSG's Central Institute Building (ZIG), into which the IfB-HSG also moved in 2004.

Games that try to predict the outcomes of events, such as the European Football Championships, can also be used in research: HSG professor J. Peter Murmann pits representatives of the automotive industry against consultants in events similar to football pools. In these competitions, participants answer a list of questions. “For example, how the prices of raw materials for automotive production will develop, which software will prevail or which brands will grow in which markets,” says Murmann.

After a set period of time, the accuracy of the predictions is checked. “What interests me is how the successful “guessers” arrived at their assumptions,” says Murmann. This, in turn, provides general insight into decision-making that can be of interest to managers in a wide range of industries.

From two rooms at the train station to a nationally important consulting institution

Murmann is co-director of the Institute of Business Administration (IfB-HSG), which will be 70 years old in 2024 and celebrated its anniversary with former and current employees last June. Murmann's research project is current, but it also builds on the history of the IfB. Since its beginning, it has been characterised by practical research.

Founded in December 1954, the institute was intended to work on issues from companies with scientific methods “based on the American model,” as stated in the anniversary publication published by the IfB. It is one of the oldest and largest of the 36 institutes that significantly shape HSG today. The first IfB staff included the economist Hans Ulrich, who researched and taught at HSG for 30 years starting in 1954.

The beginnings were modest: after its foundation, the IfB moved into two rooms at Bahnhofsplatz, which the city of St.Gallen provided free of charge – but by the end of the 1950s, it had already become the “largest management consultancy in Switzerland,” as Murmann says. Parallel to the consultancy, the institute published short publications whose content was intended to be directly implementable in the professional world. At that time, so-called “Breviers” were published, i.e. manuals on the topics of organisation, accounting and work simplification.

The IfB prospered and by 1964 it had around 40 employees. Because a financial cushion had been created through external consulting and publications, the institute strengthened its research activities from the mid-1960s onwards.

One of the key results of this research was the publication of the St.Gallen Management Model by Hans Ulrich and Walter Krieg in 1972, which received a great deal of attention in German-speaking countries. It broadened managers' view beyond the company and emphasised that a functioning exchange with different environments and stakeholders is essential. “For me, this is a paradox – the very practically oriented IfB gave rise to a highly complex theory of management,” says the strategy expert Murmann. This shows that diversity is embodied at the HSG institutes.

Management theory with a holistic approach

However, the IfB has also had to weather some stormy periods in its history: in 1979, the management consultancy department split off and 17 employees left the institute to found a private company. And in the 1980s, the IfB lecturers – like all HSG lecturers – were particularly challenged by the sharp increase in student numbers.

In research, the further development of a management theory with a holistic approach dominated. Management, according to the basic claim, had to apply a view of society as a whole – and the manager's effectiveness was ultimately limited in this complex system. ‘The manager is actually a gardener – he can plant seeds, but he can only marginally influence the development of the actual plant,’ says Murmann, explaining the understanding of management applied in IfB research.

Since the 1990s, the IfB has undergone another major transformation: the institute has shifted its focus to continuing education. “Today, we do little management consulting or contract research,” says Murmann. The focus is on continuing education or our own research. Today, the IfB offers CAS, DAS and individual courses in the areas of strategy, general management, finance and leadership. “Thanks to continuing education, we remain in close contact with professionals. This gives us practical input for our research,” says Murmann. Demand is high: in the last five years, the number of course participants has doubled.
Award-winning Master's programme launched

For the IfB teaching at the university itself, the launch of the Master's programme in Strategy and International Management (SIM) in 2004 was a defining moment, and Tomi Laamanen has been head of the programme since 2017. With this highly internationally oriented programme, HSG regularly achieves top positions in international rankings. The IfB also became more internationally oriented and, from 2018, was called the ‘Institute of Management and Strategy’ in English, while the German name was retained. Another degree programme based at the IfB is the Master in General Management (MGM), which was newly reformed in 2022 under the direction of Christoph Lechner. In this Master's programme, students learn the management skills to meet the economic and social challenges of our time.

Researchers in six competence centres

In addition to Peter Murmann and Tomi Laamanen's research on strategy and the predictability of corporate success, researchers at the IfB today work in six thematically divided competence centres. These include, for example, the Circular Economy centre, led by Karolin Frankenberger and Fabian Takacs. One of their projects is the Circular Lab. In this project, six universities and 30 companies are researching and developing concepts for the circular economy.

Another team under Björn Ambos focuses in particular on innovation in multinational companies. And Christoph Lechner and his team conduct research in the areas of digital platforms, ecosystems and corporate strategy.
The anniversary publication states: “Throughout its history, the IfB has always striven to combine research, teaching and continuing education.” In addition, the employees have always tried to find a balance between basic and applied research. “On the one hand, this is to contribute to science, which has become highly globalised over the last three decades, and on the other hand, to help practitioners solve their problems. In the future, too, it will be important to find this balance again and again.”