Students on the Master's degree program are taught key interdisciplinary knowledge and skills in the field of social change and its management.
On the one hand, this includes the appropriation of fields, forms, mechanisms, actors and (unintended) consequences of current social change processes in all their breadth and levels. Forms such as reform, revolution, transformation or innovation, modernization, globalization and individualization processes as well as technical-economic, political or cultural change processes at the micro level of society (families, households, social groups), at the meso level (institutions, organizations) and at the macro level (from the nation state to global society) are therefore dealt with. On the other hand, great attention is paid to the actors of change processes, their goals, resources for action, the conditions and consequences of action as well as (social) patterns of action. This focus is the prerequisite for the exploration and scientific clarification of management processes in the face of social change. In essence, graduates should have acquired important guiding principles, concepts and techniques of change management - such as change management, innovation management, sustainability management or transformation management - and be able to apply them in various professional fields. The aim is for graduates to be able to initiate, shape and - as far as possible - control social change processes and recognize the dynamic consequences.
The course is designed to be research and application-oriented. It is therefore possible to gain further qualifications or work in the academic sector as well as - and primarily - a subsequent career outside academia.
Following accreditation, the Master's degree course in "Management of Social Change" at the Zittau/Görlitz University of Applied Sciences is recognized as an entry qualification for the higher civil service in Saxony and entitles students to a doctorate.