University Assistant

Research Group Leadership & Strategy | Institute of Management Science

Biography

Melanie Rainer holds a trilingual Bachelor's degree in Economics and Management from the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano and a Master's degree in Strategic Management from the University of Innsbruck. She has contributed to several research projects, including the Josef Ressel Center for Collective Action and Responsible Partnerships, the “Supply Chain Responsibility in Austria” initiative, and the ReKep project on reusable packaging systems in parcel logistics, funded by Austrian ministries and the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG). She also teaches courses in sustainable business, academic writing, and qualitative research methods. Moreover, she serves as an associated researcher at the Institute for Strategic and International Management at the Hamburg University of Technology.

In addition, she served as Managing Editor of the open-access journal Junior Management Science, where she promoted open science and supported the journal’s inclusion in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) through collaborations with institutions such as LMU Munich, the Witten Institute for Family Business and the German National Library of Economics (ZBW).

Her research focuses on organizational change within and across organizations. Drawing on process-oriented and practice-based perspectives, she examines how actors shape and navigate change processes, with particular attention to identity work and translation theory.

Research

• Change in and of Organizations
• Identity Work
• Strategy Work
• Leadership