Markus Wabnegg

About the person

Markus Wabnegg is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Management and Economics at the Danube-University Krems. Earlier in his academic career, he worked as an Assistant Professor (NTT) at WU Vienna, as a Postdoctoral Researcher at AAU Klagenfurt and as a Research and Teaching Associate at WU Vienna. Markus was a visiting researcher at VU Amsterdam (The Netherlands) and, during his studies, spent semesters at Rotterdam School of Management (The Netherlands) and Bentley University (USA). Before joining academia, he worked as a strategy consultant at Boston Consulting Group, where he gained experience in the high-​tech and financial industries on a diverse set of international projects.

Markus’ principal research interest lies at the intersection of management accounting and control systems and innovation. In his publications and ongoing projects, he focuses, among others, on the role that incentive systems play in guiding R&D-​employees’ behavior, how management controls may help translate innovation capability into performance, how unintended consequences of innovation-​related measures for performance evaluation may be alleviated, and how target setting may mitigate the loss of creative R&D employees. Methodologically, most studies combine survey data with archival (e.g., patent-​based) elements.

The results of Markus’ research are regularly presented at leading international conferences and have been published in highly-ranked international journals like Accounting, Organizations and Society and the Journal of Management Accounting Research. For his work, Markus has received WU’s Stephan-​Koren-Award, the “Péter-​Horváth-​Controllingpreis 2019” for the best management control-​related dissertation in German-​speaking countries, as well as two WU awards for outstanding research achievements.

Markus has both developed and taught a wide variety of courses on the undergraduate and graduate level, covering fields like data analytics, strategic management, consulting, project management, management accounting and control, business analysis and forecasting, and academic writing. The course settings ranged from lecture-style classes to problem-based learning, simulation-based business games, and real-life consulting projects. For his teaching, Markus received a student-nominated “Excellence in Teaching”-award in 2021.

Publications (Extract Research Database)

Grabner, I.; Seiter, M.; Wabnegg, M.; Wirth, H. (2024). The role of target difficulty and career tournaments in retaining creative R&D employees. Contemporary Accounting Research, in press: https://doi.org/10.1111/1911-3846.12931

Wabnegg, M. (2024). Fostering ambidexterity among R&D employees: The dilemma of performance measures and how to overcome it. Management Accounting Research, forthcoming: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mar.2024.100891

Grabner, I.; Schiffner, T.; Wabnegg, M. (2023). Talente binden mit den "New Ways of Working": Chancen und Herausforderungen. CFOaktuell, 5: 191-194, Linde

Wabnegg, M. (2022). Steuerung von Innovation - ein Widerspruch? Controlling - Zeitschrift für erfolgsorientierte Unternehmenssteuerung, 34(1): 46-50

Speckbacher, G., Wabnegg, M. (2020). Incentivizing innovation: The role of knowledge exchange and distal search behavior. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 86: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aos.2020.101142

Grabner, I.; Posch, A.; Wabnegg, M. (2018). Materializing Innovation Capability: A Management Control Perspective. Journal of Management Accounting Research, 30(2): 163-185

Lectures (Extract Research Database)

Monitoring Matters: The Effects of Supervisor Monitoring and Peer Monitoring on Employees’ Innovative Work Behavior

European Accounting Association Annual Congress, 15/05/2024

Monitoring Matters: The Effects of Supervisor Monitoring and Peer Monitoring on Employees’ Innovative Work Behavior

Management Accounting Section Midyear Meeting, 05/01/2024

Managing Knowledge Creation in R&D Alliances – Survey insights

ASAP European Alliance Summit, 22/09/2023

Innovation Performance Measure Tension and Absorptive Capacity: Unintended Consequences and How to Overcome Them

Academy of Management Annual Meeting, 05/08/2022

Innovation Performance Measure Tension and Absorptive Capacity: Unintended Consequences and How to Overcome Them

American Accounting Association Annual Meeting, 01/08/2022

Target Ratcheting and Retention Concerns in Financially Distressed Firms

American Accounting Association Annual Meeting, 01/08/2022

Innovation Performance Measure Tension and Absorptive Capacity

Management Accounting Section Midyear Meeting, 07/01/2022

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