Acquisition and cancellation of membership

Full membership may be applied for by
a. anyone who has a postdoctoral qualification in business studies or who holds or has held a professorship in business studies at an academic university that confers doctoral degrees;
b. anyone who holds or has held an honorary professorship in business administration at an academic university that is entitled to award doctoral degrees;
c. anyone who holds a “Habilitation” in business administration, is employed as a postdoctoral research assistant or holds a junior professorship in business administration;
d. any person who holds a doctoral degree, is academically active in the field of Business Administration and whose academic qualifications have been determined by the Membership Committee at the time of admission,
e. anyone who acquires an academic qualification in a non-German-speaking country equivalent to that mentioned in c. above.

If you are applying under letter c), you must submit either a copy of your letter of appointment (junior professorship, research assistant) or, for example, in the case of “Akademischer Rat” or similar, a copy of your doctoral certificate together with a statement that you intend to do a “Habiliation”.

As a PostDoc, you must also submit an informal declaration that you are employed.

By "academically active" we mean that you are involved in business research beyond your doctorate and document this in academic publications. This can be done, for example, by publishing a single paper in a peer-reviewed journal and by publishing further papers in peer-reviewed journals, either as sole author or as co-author. If your work is still under review by a journal, please make this clear in your list of publications.

In line with standard practice, we do not normally count working and discussion papers, reviews, short articles and similar works as scientific publications in the sense mentioned above. However, we do not consider it possible to make an exact distinction due to the wide range of publication options and publication organs. The Membership Committee decides on admission according to 2 d) of the VHB Statutes and will contact you if necessary.

You can become a junior member if you can prove that you are studying for a doctorate in business studies at an academic university with the right to award doctoral degrees.

If your intention to pursue a doctorate cannot be verified, e.g. through an entry on your supervisor's website, please send us evidence of your doctoral project (e.g. a letter from your supervisor confirming the doctoral project or your doctoral application to the Doctoral Committee).

Section 2 [...] Junior Membership shall be limited to five years. In duly justified cases, this period may be extended by decision of the Board of Directors after consideration by the Membership Committee. The provisions of Section 5 (2) shall apply to conversion to Ordinary Membership [...].

Section 6 [...] Membership shall end [...] on the basis of the member's own written resignation, which must be given three months' notice to the end of the financial year [...].

Other provisions of the Association's Statutes can be found here (in German language).