Team > Prof. Dr. Anna Oberländer

Faculty of Law and Economics
Information Systems and Digital Transformation

Portrait

Prof. Dr. Anna Maria Oberländer is Full Professor of Information Systems and Digital Transformation at the University of Bayreuth, where she previously served as a junior professor from 2023 to 2026. In addition, she is Director at the FIM Research Center for Information Management and holds a leadership position in the Branch Business & Information Systems Engineering of Fraunhofer FIT. She is also a co-founder and the managing director of the Digital Innovation Lab.

Her predominantly empirical-qualitative, design-oriented research aims to understand and actively shape the digital transformation of established organizations. She studies the topic from organizational, innovation and technology perspectives. From an organizational point of view she focuses on transformation processes, the tensions they create, and the interactions between the digital transformation of individual organizations and digital ecosystems. From an innovation perspective she develops and designs digital innovation methods for established companies with a data-, service- or resource-centered focus. From a technological perspective her main interest is the socio-technical and economic impact of new digital technologies such as the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence.

Against the backdrop of current geopolitical, economic and social challenges, Prof. Oberländer is particularly committed to a sustainable and human-centered digital transformation. One area of note is her work on “Twin Transformation”, i.e., the integration of digital transformation with sustainability transformation. Together with co-authors she was among the first to investigate and help establish this concept within the Information Systems community (see Christmann, AS., Crome, C., Graf-Drasch, V. et al. The Twin Transformation Butterfly. Bus Inf Syst Eng 66, 489–505 (2024)). She advocates understanding digitalization as a lever to achieve sustainability goals, while also treating sustainability as a purpose and design objective for digitalization.

In addition, Prof. Oberländer also applies her research and experience to promote human-centered digital transformation in public administration. Her overarching goal is to strengthen citizens’ trust in the state through forward-looking, citizen-oriented digital public services. In this context she was named a “Change! Fellow” by the Volkswagen Foundation for the project “Bridging the Gap: Human-Centric Digital Transformation in Public Administration”. This generously funded award underlines both the societal relevance of her work and her commitment to central social and democratic issues of our time.

Prof. Oberländer publishes in internationally recognized journals such as Information Systems Journal, European Journal of Information Systems, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, Information & Management, Business & Information Systems Engineering, MIS Quarterly Executive, Technological Forecasting and Social Change and Journal of Business Research, and she presents her research at leading conferences including the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS), the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) and the Academy of Management Annual Meeting. She is active in the international Information Systems community as a Track Chair, Associate Editor and reviewer – particularly at the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), where she has organized the “Business Process Management and Digital Innovation” track for several years. She is also a member of the Early Career Editorial Board of the Journal of Strategic Information Systems.

Prof. Oberländer works extensively on publicly funded, applied research projects with industry partners to address practice-relevant problems in digital transformation and innovation. Her collaboration partners include the Bavarian Agency for Digital Affairs, EY, KUKA, the District of Hof, mantro product studio, Rational, REHAU, SCHOTT, the City of Bayreuth and WashTec. Her work has been supported by, among others, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the Federal Ministry for Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR), the R&D program Information and Communication Technology Bavaria (IUK-Bayern), the Stifterverband and the Volkswagen Foundation.

In 2015 she completed the elite network master’s program in Finance and Information Management (Master of Science with honors) offered jointly by the Technical University of Munich and the University of Augsburg, including a research stay at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane. In spring 2014 she was admitted to the 16th cohort of the Bavarian Elite Academy, where she studied value-oriented leadership in Germany, Belgium, China and Vietnam. During her studies she gained practical experience at home and abroad with organizations including Siemens, Siemens Financial Services and Allianz. From 2015 to 2018 she worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Company, primarily supporting clients in the industrial and financial sectors on digital transformation, process digitization and innovation management.

Awards

2025    Best Paper of the Year 2024, Business & Information Systems Engineering (BISE)

2024    Best Paper in Track and Best Paper nomination, ICIS 2024

2024    BayFid Role Model, Bavaria’s Women in Digital Professions

2023    Best Associate Editor Award, ECIS 2023

2022    Best Reviewer Awards, ICIS and ECIS 2022

2021    Nomination for the Best Theory Development Paper Award, ICIS 2021

2021    Nomination for the Best Paper Award, BPM Conference 2021

2020    Science Prize 2020 of the University Association Bayreuth e.V.

Faculty of Law and Economics
Information Systems and Digital Transformation

Publications

Hinweis
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Faculty of Law and Economics
Information Systems and Digital Transformation

Prof. Dr. Anna Oberländer
Professor

Wittelsbacherring 10
D-95444 Bayreuth

Phone: +49 921 55-4710
E-mail: anna.oberlaender@uni-bayreuth.de