Prof. Dr. Lydia Bals successfully completed her external postdoctoral qualification at the EBS University of Business and Law in Oestrich-Winkel on Thursday, June 13, 2024. Lydia Bals, who has been a Professor of Supply Chain & Operations Management at Mainz University of Applied Sciences since 2014, decided to start an external habilitation in 2019. “I like to do a lot of research as it is, and I did not want to miss out on this opportunity,” says the 41-year-old.
She completed her doctorate in 2008 and then initially worked as a consultant and project manager in internal consulting at the Bayer Group. She then worked as a department head in Purchasing at Bayer and was responsible for ten employees as Head of Global Procurement Solutions. In 2014, she was appointed professor at Mainz University of Applied Sciences. Now, ten years later, including two periods of parental leave, she has also reached this final academic milestone.
Lydia Bals conducts successful international research in four subject areas: Reshoring (reshoring of value creation processes), Sustainable/Circular Supply Chain Management, Purchasing & Supply Organization, and Social Entrepreneurship. Her presentation last week was entitled “Resiliency and Reshoring –- State of the Art and Outlook”, a research area that she has been developing since 2015.
Publications of hers that were relevant for the postdoctoral qualification as of 2020 have been published in the Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Business Research, Journal of International Management, International Business Review, International Journal of Operations & Production Management, and Journal of Purchasing & Supply Management. The next piece of good news came the day after the lecture: Another article on the development of supply chains in terms of a circular economy was accepted by the journal Resources, Conservation & Recycling.
