SPeace should return south of Lake Constance. That is why the University of St. Gallen is ending its collaboration with Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Stölzle as full professor and director of the Institute for Supply Chain Management (ISCM). In addition, the collaboration with an adjunct professor who also works at the ISCM will be stopped. He is accused of breaches of scientific integrity. “In order to avoid lengthy and costly legal disputes, the parties involved have agreed on agreements to withdraw the balance of all claims,” says Switzerland. The adjunct professor will leave the university on April 30, 2024, Stölzle on July 31, 2024. Until then, both professors will be on leave. The problems have plagued the university since 2022.
The responsible President of the University Council, Education Director Stefan Kölliker, announced to the FAZ in December 2022 that things would now be “cleaned up”. The decision announced today is one of the results. The allegations were discussed for years, and not just in Switzerland. For the “Neue Zürcher Zeitung” even “the scientific excellence of the University of St. Gallen was at stake.” The Salzburg plagiarism expert Stefan Weber helped get the investigation rolling, who kept finding new places of plagiarism.
The two cases must be separated: Stölzle's case is about leadership culture, while the titular professor's case is about plagiarism.
Serious damage
In October 2022, the university commissioned a commission to investigate Stölzle's management at the ISCM. In its final report in 2023, the commission found that there was a problematic leadership culture at the institute. According to the commission, Stölzle found himself in multiple conflicts of interest between official and private financial interests. In addition, he was repeatedly guilty of misconduct. “Based on the commission report, further clarifications were made, discussions were held and an overall assessment was made. “In the university’s opinion, Stölzle is seriously damaging the reputation of the university as a whole,” it says. Stölzle classifies the allegations made against him anonymously by employees as unfounded and points out that the commission report also claims that the university needs to take action.
The second person affected is an adjunct professor. It has now been found that he “several times used parts of the text from student work for his own publications without appropriate references to the source.” From the university's perspective, this confirmed the allegations of plagiarism in several cases. The titular professor disputes the commission's findings. In his opinion, today's integrity guidelines cannot apply to the publications in question given the historical context and the practice of the time. In addition, he claims “close and consensual cooperation with the individual students”.
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