The Department was founded under the name 'Institute for Corporate Management' in the early 1970s as part of the founding of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Economics. Since 1991, the Department has been headed by Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Alfred Wagenhofer. Since then, the Department's core competencies have been in the areas of

• management incentives,
• value-oriented management,
• corporate governance and
• international accounting.