Asst. Professor Irina Heimbach

Short biography:

Irina Heimbach is Assistant Professor of Digitalization at WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management. She received her PhD in Information Systems from TU Darmstadt in 2016, and her research centers on digital services, chatbots and generative AI, algorithmic decision-making, information privacy, the dark side of digital technologies, and data analytics. Irina applies econometric methods as well as field and online experiments. She highly appreciates working inter- and multidisciplinary, bridging various academic disciplines, academia, and practice. Her research has been published in several titles, including in Information Systems Research, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Electronic Markets, and Journal of Business Economics, as well as international conferences in Information Systems, Marketing, and Computer Science. Her research won the Claudio Ciborra Award of the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) in 2013 and saw widespread media coverage. In 2017, Irina was a visiting researcher at USC Marshal Business School in Los Angeles and, in 2023, at Weizenbaum Institute for Networked Society in Berlin. Irina is an Associate Editor for the European Journal of Information Systems and Business Information Systems and Engineering (BISE). She has served as a reviewer, associate editor, and track chair for international conferences in Information Systems for many years. At WHU, Irina teaches Business Information Systems Analysis & Design, Data & Information Management, and Decision Support & Analytics courses.

Peer-reviewed conference contribution with proceedings

• Tsekouras, D., Heimbach, I., Gutt, D., Goeken, T. (2020): “The Rise of robo-reviews - the effects of chatbot-mediated review elicitation on review valence”, 28^th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), Marrakesh (Morocco).
• Chehrazi, G., Heimbach, I., Hinz, O. (2016): “The Impact of Security by Design on the Success of Open Source Software Development Projects”, 24^th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), Istanbul (Turkey). 
• Heimbach, I., Hinz, O., Schiller, B., Strufe, T. (2015): “Content Sharing on Online Social Networks – Empirical Evidence from Twitter, Facebook, and Google+”, 26^th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media (Hypertext), Cyprus.
• Heimbach, I., Kraus, C., Hinz, O. (2015): “On the Design of Sales Support Systems for Online Apparel Stores”, 12^th International Conference on Wirtschaftsinformatik (WI), Osnabrück (Germany).
• Bank, M., Heimbach, I., Hinz, O. (2014): „Entwicklung eines Entscheidungsunterstützungssystems zur Bestimmung möglicher Kooperationspartner in der Suchmaschinenoptimierung“, Multikonferenz Wirtschaftsinformatik (MKWI), Paderborn (Germany).
• Gottschlich, J., Heimbach, I., Hinz, O. (2013): “The Value of Users’ Facebook Profile Data – Generating Product Recommendations for Online Social Shopping Sites”, 21^st European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), Utrecht (Netherlands).

*Winner of the Claudio Ciborra-Award 2013

• Nikolaeva, I., Hinz, O. (2012): “How Smartphone Apps can help predicting Music Sales”, 20^th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), Barcelona (Spain).