Academia — a love in detour

HNU Doktorandenkolloqium, 6. Mai 2022

Andy Weeger

Neu-Ulm University of Applied Sciences

Introduction

Figure 1: My career (so far)

Research question

Why did I end up back in academia (after all)?

Theory

Job characteristics theroy (Hackman & Oldham, 1976)

Motivation Potential Score =
(SkillVariety * TaskIdentity * TaskSignificance)/3
* Autonomy * Feedback

Findings

Industry MPS

Industry
SkillVariety strong**
TaskIdentity rather strong*
TaskSignificance it depends**
Autonomy partially*
Feedback often monetary**
Table 1: Industry (* significant at 0.01%, ** significant at 1%)

## Industry and academia MPS

Industry Academia
SkillVariety strong** strong*
TaskIdentity rather strong* strong*
TaskSignificance it depends** hopefully
Autonomy partially* strong*
Feedback often monetary** depends on you
MPS strong stronger
Table 2: Conmparison of findings (* significant at 0.01%, ** significant at 1%)

Discussion

Learnings

The gras is sometimes greener on the other side

However, for me

  • significance and autonomy beats money,
  • a job in academia gives the freedom to think things through,
  • freedom comes with responsibilities (learn, share, change), but
  • acting responsibly motivates.

Thus, academia was the place to return to.

Conclusions

Doing a PhD is a great learning journey

Thus, …

  • don’t do it just for the money.
  • Get feedback regularly (work on peer-reviewed articles early on),
  • embrace challenges, persist through obstacles, and learn from criticism, and
  • don’t work on your own, build a network (research is teamwork).
  • The HNU is a lovely place to be (value that), I returned with pleasure.
  • If your academia MPS is high, stay in touch with research and teaching.

Literature

Hackman, J. R., & Oldham, G. R. (1976). Motivation through the design of work: Test of a theory. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 16(2), 250–279.

Thx. Let’s discuss.