Willy C. Kriz

Background

About Willy C. Kriz

Willy Christian Kriz (*1968), MSc, PhD, is a psychologist. He was a research assistant at the Vienna International Future Conference, research assistant in the Department of Social and Economic Psychology at the University of Linz, project manager at the Institute for Personnel and Organizational Consulting Linz (ipo) and he was assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. He has been professor of leadership and organizational development at Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences since 2005. He wrote his master diploma thesis in 1993 on "Attractors in the dynamics of construction of meaning". In the thesis, psychological concepts related to the emergence of mental models were explained from the perspective of chaos theory and the self-organization theory of synergetics derived from physics. His PhD dissertation "Training of System Competence with Simulation Games", which also received an award, was dedicated in to the question of whether and how simulation game methods can serve for competence developmentHe has extensive international teaching experience with excellent evaluation results (also in English, in presence and distance learning, and with blended learning). He has developed university didactics at FH Vorarlberg, co-developed academic continuing education courses and modules, including the academic course "Psychology in the Workplace" – which he also leads – and the course "Effective Leadership" – in which he also teaches. He is the author/editor of 15 books and around 250 articles (book chapters and scientific journals), has given around 300 lectures and keynotes worldwide, was editor in chief and is currently associate editor of the journal Simulation & Gaming (Sage Publishers), winner of four best paper awards. He is a juror of the German Simulation Game Award.In research, he is mainly active in the development and evaluation of simulation games. He has already supervised several funded projects at national and EU level as scientific director (e.g. Leonardo Programme of the EU for "Simulation-based Training of Decision Making in Management", Ministry of Economics and Technology Germany for simulation game‐based "Entrepreneurship competitions in the Exist programme", Finnish Technology Foundation for "Decentralized Virtual Working Environment", Ministry of Economy Baden‐Württemberg for "Realtime Business Simulation Games", Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training BiBB for "Simulation Games and Serious Gaming in Vocational Education and Training" etc.).