Matthias Heinz, Professor at the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Cologne and spokesperson of the Cluster of Excellence ECONtribute: Markets & Public Policy, receives the prestigious ERC Starting Grant for his project “Managing People – How Employees’ Social Preferences Shape the Returns to Management Practices”. The aim of the “Managing People” project is to analyse how employees’ social preferences affect the effectiveness of management practices and thus the productivity of companies. Excellent young researchers are funded with the Starting Grant for a period of five years with up to 1.5 million euros. Matthias Heinz completed his doctorate in business administration at Goethe University in Frankfurt in 2014. He has already received several awards for his teaching and research, including the Quality of Teaching Award of the University of Cologne 2019, the Joachim Herz Prize for Economics 2016, and the Roman Herzog Research Prize 2015.