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In order to be innovative, an organisation has to utilise the skills of all its employees. Implementing the potential of women, older staff members as well as people with different backgrounds leads to more creative ideas, new approaches and results in more innovative products. But how can a company use the innovative potential of its diverse workforce? And how can customer diversity be used to create innovations?
This book answers these questions as well as many more related to the topic of diversity management and innovation. Special emphasis is put on the role of women in the innovation system. Therefore, the language and effects of pictures used in job advertisements are addressed. Moreover, measures to advocate highly innovative women are identified including their demands regarding workplace requirements.
In addition, the book deals with diversity management in both publicly traded companies and public institutions. The involvement of children as Lead Users along the product development process is addressed as well. Given the fact that innovation does not only comprise products, but also services, a separate chapter focusing on the effect of Diversity on service innovations is included.
Relationship marketing is an important issue in every business. Knowing the customers and establishing, maintaining and enhancing long-term customer relationships is a key component of long-term business success. Considering that sport is such big business today, it is surprising that this crucial approach to marketing has yet to be fully recognised either in literature or in the sports business itself. Relationship Marketing in Sports aims to fill this void by discussing and reformulating the principles of relationship marketing and by demonstrating how relationship marketing can be successfully applied in practice within a sports context. Written by a unique author team of academic and practitioner experience, the book provides the reader with: the first book to apply the principles of relationship marketing specifically to a sports context case studies from around the world to provide a uniquely global approach applicable worldwide strong pedagogical features including learning outcomes, overviews, discussion questions, glossary, guided reading and web links practical advice for professional, semi-professional and non-professional sporting organisations a companion website providing web links, case studies and PowerPoint slides for lecturers. Relationship Marketing in Sports is crucial reading for both students and professionals alike and marks a turning point in the marketing of sports.
Behavioral economics links social, cognitive and emotional elements to help understand and explain the economic decision-making of individuals and institutions. The focus of research in behavioral economics is on individual choice and the motives underlying that choice. This study booklet introduces the key features and ideas of behavioral economics.
This is the first copy of JIEBS. The papers it presents are the result of a call for papers CEBS made in 2011. We actually received far more interesting papers and research reports than expected.They all passed a double blind review and the papers naturally are the original work of the named authors. The choice we finally made was also influenced by the topic of the CEBS annual conference 2011, namely the influence of infrastructure and skilled labour on Indo-European Business. The papers analyse structure and explain many issues related to this, they raise questions and point towards areas for further research and they form the nucleus of this new and currently only scientific platform for Indo-European business studies.
Since 2000, Indian special economic zones were established with the intention to attract foreign direct investment. We present a first empirical assessment with new data from 1980 to 2010 and evaluate the outcome after 10 years. In general, our empirical results confirm that special economic zones attract FDI statistical significantly. Another finding of the study is that open economies with stable inflation attract more FDI than small and closed economies.
India’s growth: perspectives for Indo-European business “Skilled labour in India: bridging the gap”
(2011)
The following paper is based on a survey conducted for ESB Business School and will show how German companies perceive India’s labour market. Besides existing geographical and sectoral gaps we will reveal gaps in the required qualification profile. Thinking merely of hard qualification factors like education levels, skills etc., though, would be short-sighted. Often cited intercultural qualifications also play an important role.
What can be done? What should be done to bridge these gaps? These will be the leading questions of this chapter. We will discuss some solutions – not forgetting that the problems German companies face are complex and knowing there is no ideal way. However, we will see that some of the most urgent problems can be solved or reduced by Indo-European or Indo-German co operation models in the field of vocational training and institutions of higher education.
This study analyses the impact of Basel III on the fair pricing of bank guarantee facilities.Guarantees are an important risk mitigation instrument between exporters and importers in international trade and regularly a prerequisite for cross border sales contracts to be closed. Basel III – which shall be introduced from 2013 onwards - is a new regulation stipulating higher capital requirements for banks compared to the predecessor Basel II. It will therefore have an impact on the pricing of guarantee facilities which banks provide to exporting companies, making it also a crucial regulation for the cost of exportation overall. The study compares those contents of Basel III and Basel II which are particularly relevant for guarantees in order to identify and crystallize pricing-relevant changes in the regulations and their respective impact potential. The Basel frameworks are analyzed part by part and reviewed in terms of relevance for guarantees. In case of ambiguity the analysis is verified by complementary expert interviews. References and examples are mainly focusing on the German banking system but the basic conclusions can be generalized for those countries adopting Basel III.1 As the result, a case study expresses the quantitative outcomes of different scenarios and the impact of the different price determining factors on the overall fair pricing of bank guarantee facilities.
The intention of this paper is to show that the statistical approach to risk is not enough to explain the behavior of investors. It furthermore proposes ideas and alternative approaches on how to deal with risk. Psychological findings are of particular interest as they might enhance our understanding of risk perception and assessment. The chapter “From the normal distribution to fat tails” starts with the rejection of the normal distribution as a simplifying basis for risk and return. This rejection is supported by several empirical observations like clustering of volatility and fat tails. This leads to a two-step approach for modeling risk and return based on the distinction of conditional and un-conditional changes. Conditional time series models (ARMA, ARCH, GARCH) and alternative distributions are presented (Stable Paretian, Student’s T, EVT) as a way to improve the art of risk and return modeling beyond the normal distribution assumption. The chapter ends with the conclusion that each model is only a statistical approximation and never encompasses the unpredictability of black swans and the nature of human behavior in the financial markets. After having discussed the limitations of the purely statistical approach to risk and return this paper goes beyond the standard theory of finance for two purposes. Firstly, behavioral finance provides some arguments for the limitation of statistics in assessing risk. Secondly, an alternative approach to risk perception is presented. This alternative is called Prospect Theory, a rather psychology-based approach using preferences to explain investors’ actions by human behavior in decision making processes. Starting point is the utility function and the value function followed by a description of the two phases: framing and evaluation. The value function is then clearly distinguished from the utility function by elaborating certain effects like reference points, loss aversion or the weighting function. In this section the paper enters the arena of human risk perception which is far from being monetarily rational in the sense of the homo oeconomicus. With Cumulative Prospect Theory there exists an extension to multiple outcome scenarios where risk does not necessarily have to be known. In such a situation, besides risk, there also exists immeasurable uncertainty. Current research confirms and rejects parts of (Cumulative) Prospect Theory which is not necessarily a bad sign as human behavior is rarely exactly replicable and the complexity does not really allow generalizations. Therefore, even if the theory is not completely correct it still enhances our understanding of risk perception and human decision making which can be a very valuable input for agent-based models. The next chapter analyses in more detail possible distortions from psychological biases in the assessment of risk. In this context the law of small numbers, overconfidence and feelings/experience are discussed. Knowing these biases complicates the idea of developing a risk model even further. However, this is again another step to better understand the underlying processes and motives of decision making in the context of financial markets. The last chapter is an attempt to link the different aspects to get a holistic view on risk behavior. Two possibilities are discussed: Hedonic psychology, with the distinction between blow up and bleeding strategy, and heuristic-based explanations for real observations like clustering of expectations and trust in experts. This leaves space for further research as we do not have a tool that is based on current findings and can actually help us in explaining and predicting behavior in financial markets. One possibility would be to link all these aspects in the approach of computational finance to develop agent-based models in which market observations, psychological findings and the situational context can be integrated.
Game theory is the study of how people behave in strategic situatons. By "strategic" we mean a situation in which each person, when deciding what actions to take, must consider how others might respond to that action. Like other fields in economics, game theory consists of a collection of models. The understanding that game-theoretic models give is particularly relevant in the social, political, and economic areas.
The Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes (DJSI) track the performance of companies that lead in corporate sustainability in their respective sectors or in the geographies they operate. The Sustainable Asset Management (SAM) Indexes GmbH publishes and markets the indexes, the so-called Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes in collaboration with SAM. All indexes of the DJSI family are assessed according to SAM’s Corporate Sustainability AssessmentTM methodology.
Ambush marketing in sports
(2013)
Ambush marketing is a strategy by which a company or organisation uses their marketing communications to associate themselves with an event without being an official sponsor or authorised partner or licensee. It has become a particular concern in the marketing of major sports events, with international sponsorship and branding properties worth many millions of dollars. Ambush Marketing in Sports is the first book to offer comprehensive analysis of the theoretical and practical implications of ambush marketing.
Drawing on cutting-edge empirical research data, the book outlines an innovative model for understanding ambush marketing and offers practical advice for all stakeholders, from sponsors and event organisers to media organisations. The book examines the opportunities and the risks of ambush marketing, assesses the legal, ethical and business dimensions, and offers advice for preventing ambush marketing in a range of contexts. Fully supported throughout with examples and cases from major international sports events, such as the FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Games, this book is important reading for any student, researcher or practitioner with an interest in sport marketing, sport business or event management.
Unraveling the double-edged sword : effects of cultural diversity on creativity and innovativeness
(2014)
Cultural diversity is considered a “double-edged sword” (Kravitz, 2005) as research on its effects on teams’ performance regularly delivers inconsistent and contradictory results. This paper makes an attempt to unravel the double-edged sword by discerning different forms of cultural diversity: separation and variety (Harrison & Klein, 2007). Based on a review of the literature, a conceptual model is developed hypothesizing that cultural variety yields positive, while cultural separation yields negative effects on team creativity and innovativeness. In addition the effects of national diversity are contrasted to proof whether national diversity can serve as a proxy for cultural diversity as is often practiced. The model is tested on a sample of 113 student teams of Entrepreneurship modules at 4 European universities. Cultural diversity is measured directly on the basis of individual team members’ cultural value orientations by means of the CPQ4 (Maznevski, DiStefano, Gomez, Noorderhaven & Wu, 2002). Data is analyzed using the PLS structural equation modeling technique. The results confirm the hypothesized impacts of cultural variety and separation on creativity but do not deliver evidence for impacts on innovativeness. Same is true for national diversity. Interestingly, national diversity does not show any relation to neither form of cultural diversity.
Marketing of and with sports is as international as sports itself. While this impression may be intuitively evident during global events such as the Olympic Games, internationalisation also takes place in the daily routines of our increasingly globalised domestic leagues and sports events. In this book, edited by André Bühler and Gerd Nufer, leading sports economists and marketing experts from around the world provide detailed insights into current issues and future challenges of sports marketing from an international perspective. An inspiring reading and an essential book to gain a better understanding of today’s status quo and developmental stages of sports marketing in the various regions of this world.
Today 40 Gbps is in development at IEEE 802.3bq over four pair balanced cabling. In this paper, we describe a transmission experiment of 25 Gbps enabling either a single pair transmission of 25 Gbps over a 30 meter balanced cabling channel, or a 100 Gbps transmission via a four-pair balanced channel. A scalable matrix modeling tool is introduced which allows the prediction of transmission characteristics of a channel taking mode conversion into account . We applied this tool to characterize PCB-channels including the magnetics and PCB for a four-pair 100 Gbps transmission. We evaluated prototype cables and connecting hardware for frequencies up to 2 GHz and beyond. Finally we investigated possible line encoding schemes and provide measurement results of a transmission over 30 m with a data rate of 25 Gbps per twisted pair.
In this paper, research projects with 30 meter balanced cabling and data rates up to 25 Gbps over one single pair are described. The project aim is to achieve 100 Gbps via a four pair balanced cabling channel. In the following, spectral characteristics of the used prototype twisted pair are presented. Therefore, the insertion loss of the single cable in comparison to the insertion loss of the cable in combination with an equalizing amplifier, as well as the group delay of the cable and the cable connected to the equalizing amplifier is shown. Furthermore, a carrierless Pulse Amplitude Modulation with 32 different levels (PAM-32) as an approach for a possible line encoding is presented. Finally, research measurements of the data transmission with a data rate up to 25 Gbps via shielded twisted pair is shown.
This introductory chapter starts with a brief discussion about the differences between the long-standing perspective of sports marketing and more modern sports marketing approach. The discussion leads to the ultimate question whether sports marketing can be seen as a new and independent marketing discipline rather than a normal form of marketing. In addition, a coherent definition of sports marketing will be presented which serves as the underlining definition of this edition volumen. Then the most important characteristics of sports of a marketing perspective will be explained using some real-life examples. The structure as well as the individual chapters of this book will be introduced in the following. This first chapter concludes with the introduction of the German Institute for Sports Marketing which has been founded by the editors of this book.
Marketing in sports
(2014)
In this chapter the principals of marketing will be explained an transferred to the contex of sports. Following a brief introduction the principles of marketing will be outlined and explained in further detail. Then the subject of sports marketing will be introduced from different perspectives using various definitions and approaches. Afterwards the focus is on the unique characteristics of sports marketing before a model of sports marketing will be presented. Then it will be shown how professional sporting organisations might market their products an themselves. The chapter concludes with a detailed case study using the example of FC St. Pauli which is one of only few real brands in German sports.
This chapter presents the diverse facets of sports marketing in Western Europe. It showcases the most important types of sports, most significant leagues, bestknown clubs, most popular athletes and the biggest sporting events in Western Europe while elaborating on the relevant aspects of sports marketing. We examine European sportsconsumers, characterise the sports marketing market in Western Europe an explain the current scientific/academic status of sports marketing. Moreover, we illustrate the motives for the internationalisation taking place in sports marketing. In conclusion, this chapter includes an international case study on the entry of the NFL into the European market.
Although sports is generally defined as motor activity, it has always been much more than that. Since management and sports follow the same objective of achieving highest performance, correlation between these two fields nowadays become increasingly interesting in terms of corporate strategy. This chapter aims to point out how organisations as well as individuals can benefit from the general and psychological values and strategies of sports, by first looking at the general framework of professional sports an futher applying approaches from various types of sports directly to certain business functions like general management, human resource management and marketing management. The chapter concludes with an international case study and brief outlook.
This concluding chapter summarises and discusses the different parts and findings of the anthology on hand. The main statements and conclusions of each chapter are presented. Following up, the editors try to look into the future of the sports business and sports management in general and the future of sports marketing in particular and draw a final conclusion.
The internationalisation of sports is clearly recognisable whenever athletes from different countries around the world compete with each other at the Olympic Games or various World Cups or World Championships. But internationalisation also takes place in the daily routine of top leagues such as the English Premier League or the NFL where teams are comprised of players from different national and cultural backgrounds. Not only is sports itself internationalised, but also the marketing of and with sports as the example of Lionel Messi – arguably the best football (or in order to avoid any misunderstandings: soccer) player of our time – shows. The Argentinean international plays for the Catalan club and Spanish champion FC Barcelona in US-American Nike-shirts (with Qatar Airways on the front and the logo of UNICEF at the back) and advertises privately for the German sporting-goods manufacturer adidas as well as Turkish Airlines. Sports marketing is as international as sports itself. However, the status quo and developmental stage of sports marketing differs from country to country, region to region and continent to continent. For example, the sports marketing approaches in Europe and the USA differ significantly in view of different league systems (open vs. closed system) and therefore different circumstances. German basketball clubs, for example, not only have sponsors on their shirts but also in their club names – whereas clubs (or better: franchises) of the NBA present themselves nearly ad-free. To gain a better understanding of the status quo of sports marketing in the various regions of this world is the main aim of this book and the very reason why it has been written.
Global acting rating agencies were held responsible for the latest financial market crisis. False estimations in rating, non-transparent methods, processes and systems as well as a lack of qualification of rating analysts have been points of criticism. The level of the tightened regulation of the agencies in the USA and in Europe is pointed out in this article. All relevant institutions and norms as well as the international and national standards from the German point of view are presented and exhaustively analyzed. In doing so it is illustrated, that in this olio-political market one can definitely speak about protection with regard to the admission and accreditation of the agencies.
Prior studies ascribed people’s poor performance in dealing with basic systems concepts to different causes. While results indicate that, among other things, domain specific experience and familiarity with the problem context play a role in this stock-flow-(SF-)performance, this has not yet been fully clarified. In this article, we present an experiment that examines the role of educational background in SF-performance. We hypothesize that SF-performance increases when the problem context is embedded in the problem solver’s knowledge domain, indicated by educational background. Using the square wave pattern and the sawtooth pattern tasks from the initial study by Booth Sweeney and Sterman (2000), we design two additional cover stories for the former, the Vehicle story from the engineering domain and the Application story from the business domain, next to the original Bathtub story. We then test the three sets of questions on business students. Results mainly support our hypothesis. Interestingly, participants even do better on a more complex behavioral pattern from their knowledge domain than on a simpler pattern from more distant domains. Although these findings have to be confirmed by further studies, they contribute both to the methodology of future surveys and the context familiarity discussion.
Whither the german council of economic experts? The past and future of public economic advice
(2014)
The article discusses the development and impact of the German Council of Economic Experts (GCEE). Firstly, the author studies the historical origins and the institutional setup of the GCEE. In the second step, an analyse of the impact of the annual reports of the German Council is given, along with the international comparison with other advisory boards. Finally, the paper discusses the current economic challenges and the need of modernization of the GCEE in special and political advisory boards in general.
This paper is a brief review on the book ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’ by the French scholar Thomas Piketty. The book has started a new debate about inequality and capital taxation in Europe. It provides interesting empirical facts and develops a theory of the functioning of capitalist economies. However, I personally think the book is less convincing than recognized in the public debate. The demonstrated theory of economic growth in the book is elusive and lacks a psychological and behavioral underpinning. In fact, I do think that the increasing inequality and economic divergence are caused by capitalism but the psychological and behavioral aspects of humans are of similar or greater significance. Therefore, Piketty’s argument does not stimulate an open and scientifically founded debate in all aspects.
This article focuses on potential economic implications of a free trade agreement (FTA) between the European Union (EU) and the Indian Federation. The economic implications are evaluated by estimating an Extended gravity model for all existing FTAs with the Indian Federation. Moreover, we control for the trade contribution of EU member countries in our econometric model during the period from 1990 until 2008. The results show a significant increase in trade, if there is a free trade agreement between India and another country. Interestingly, we find that India has the largest positive impact from FTAs with more advanced economies. Thus, we reaffirm the potential benefits of trade relationships between the EU and India.
This paper provides a quantitative approach to measuring the effectiveness of ambush marketing by using Google data. To our knowledge, it is one of the first studies that develop an empirical approach that directly measures the attention effect of ambush marketing in sports. The new data consists of 14 ambushers (treatment group) and 26 official sponsors (control group) and covers the time period of 2004 to 2012. These firms conducted marketing activities during the past football World Cups and European Championships. The innovation in our paper is the measurement method of attention by means of Google. The results are as follows: First ambush marketing increases product attention significantly. Second the product awareness of ambushers is greater or the same to that of official sponsors. Finally, we demonstrate that ambush marketing has positive impacts on the company's performance. Overall, we conclude that Google provide new insights for the analysis of ambush marketing.
Strategy to adjust people’s performance capabilities to new requirements and grantee employability in the world of work. Good examples for this are the current changes in the logistics environment. Regularly, new services and processes close to production were taken into the portfolio of logistics enterprises, so the daily Tasks are changing continuously for the skilled works.
LOPEC aims in developing and offering special-tailored training for Lean Logistics and required basic skills for skilled workers on shopfloor level. Needed know-how for today’s challenges in logistics will be transferred. Another aspect of LOPEC is the development and use of a personal excellence self-assessment that allows a Person to assess and thus improve his/her own level of maturity in employability skills. Thus, LOPEC is aiming at People ehancement as entry ticket to lifelong continuous learning by increasing the maturity level of personal logistic excellence. A common European view for “Logistics personal excellence” for skilled workers will ensure that the final product is an open product, using international, pan European validated standards. As results LOPEC will provide training modules for post-secondary education in the area of Lean Logistics, required basics skills and offers transparency of personal excellence with a personal self-assessment Software solution, regarding the personal maturity Level of hard and soft skills at any time. It can be used as an innovative tool for monitoring personal lifelong learning routes as well as within companies as a strategic tool within Human Resource Development.
This paper studies the impact of governmental transparency on the political business cycle. The literature on electoral cycles finds evidence that cycles depend on the stage of the economy. However, we show a reliance of the cycle on transparency. We use data for G7 countries and compare it with less developed OECD countries. Our theory states that transparency reduces the political cycles due to peer pressure and by voting outs. We confirm the theory with an econometric assessment of 34 countries from 1970 to 2012. We discover smaller cycles in countries with a higher transparency, especially in G7-countries.
The article discusses how drama can support language learning at the university level and how drama can also support learners in acquiring professional competences. In the first part, the article will briefly outline forms of drama in language teaching. It will discuss its benefits, such as putting language in context, making learning holistic and memorable, improving learners’ social and personal competences. The second part describes aspects of drama beneficial for language learning in a professional context and gives a concrete teaching example: theatre projects with a focus on business English.
This paper examines the relationship of asset Price determination via Google data. To capture this relation, I create a model and estimate several time series’ regressions. I use weekly data from 2004 to 2010 from 30 international banks. To my knowledge this is the first study which differentiates between Google’s search volume and Google’s search clicks. I show that asset prices are positively related to the rate of change in Google’s search volume, trading volume and the level of Google search clicks. Secondly, I demonstrate that the absolute level of Google’s search volume and Google’s search clicks
behave differently regarding the asset price dynamics. Google’s search volume, which measures long-run searches, is negatively related while Google’s search clicks have a positive relationship to asset prices. Hence, Google’s data offer new insights on both measuring attention and pricing financial assets.
This paper develops a new governance scheme for a stable and lasting European Monetary Union (EMU). I demonstrate that existing economic governance is based on flawed incentives especially due to insufficient macroeconomic coordination, failures of institutional enforcement and animal spirit in financial markets. All this caused the European sovereign debt crisis in 2010. Consequently, the EMU crisis is not a conundrum at all rather a failure of national and supranational governance. To tackle this problem, I propose a return to flexible but compulsory rules driven by market forces. The new governance principles shall promote the compliance and effective enforcement of rules.
This white paper builds a new financial theory of euro area sovereign bond markets under stress. The theory explains the abnormal bond pricing and increasing spreads during the recent market turmoil. We find that the strong disconnect of bond spreads from the respective bonds’ underlying fundamental values in 2010 was triggered by an increase in asymmetric information and weak reputation of government policies. Both factors cause a normal bond market to switch into a crisis mode. Finally, those markets are prone to self-fulfilling bubbles in which the economic effects are amplified by herding behaviour arising from animal spirits. Altogether, this produces contagious effects and multiple equilibria. Thus, we argue that government bond markets in a monetary union are more fragile and vulnerable to liquidity and solvency crises. Consequently, the systemic mispricing of sovereign debt creates more macroeconomic instability and bubbles in the euro area than in a single country. In other words, financial markets are partly blind to national default risks in a currency union. Therefore, the current European institutional framework puts the wrong incentives in place and needs structural changes soon. To tackle the root causes we suggest more market incentives via consistent rules, pre-emptive austerity measures in good economic times, and a resolution scheme for heavily indebted countries. In summary, our paper enhances the bond market theory and provides new insights into the recent bond market turmoil in Europe.
Applied mathematical theory for monetary-fiscal interaction in a supranational monetary union
(2014)
I utilize a differentiable dynamical system á la Lotka-Voletrra and explain monetary and fiscal interaction in a supranational monetary union. The paper demonstrates an applied mathematical approach that provides useful insights about the interaction mechanisms in theoretical economics in general and a monetary union in particular. I find that a common central bank is necessary but not sufficient to tackle the new interaction problems in a supranational monetary union, such as the free-riding behaviour of fiscal policies. Moreover, I show that upranational institutions, rules or laws are essential to mitigate violations of decentralized fiscal policies.
Industry 4.0 predicts that industrial processes, technological infrastructure and all corresponding Business processes, with the help of information and communication technology (ICT), will advance to integrated, ad-hoc interconnected and decentralized Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPS) with real-time capabilities of selfoptimization and adaptability. Considering this change, the human being will remain in a dominant role, because it is not expected that the human factor with its characteristics and capabilities will be substituted entirely by autonomously acting technology in the foreseeable future. The mechanical intelligence, for instance, is limited to the selection of predefined options, while human creativity, flexibility, the ability to learn and to improve are required to design and configure systems, processes and products. Humans have the expertise and experience to analyze, assess and solve - even in exceptional situations. However, the amount of purely manual tasks for shop floor workers will decrease. Their role will change from a manually executing to a proactive preconceiving worker with increased responsibility. Due to the growing degree of digitalization and interconnectedness, also the tasks and responsibilities for planning and design personnel will continuously expand and become more complex. The work in versatile ad-hoc networks with advanced ICT-Tools and assistance systems will lead to increased requirements regarding the knowledge, capability and capacity of the respective employees. The on-going pervasion of IT and emergence of systems with unprecedented complexity specifically require significantly improved capabilities in analysis, abstraction, problem solving and decision making from future labour. Accordingly, the industry is asking for graduates that are educated interdisciplinary and practice-oriented. Some universities already meet these expectations, using learning factories for realistic, action-oriented classes and trainings. Lecturers are confronted with the challenge to identify future job profiles and correlated qualification requirements, especially regarding the conceptualization and implementation of CPPS, and to adapt and enhance their education concepts and methods adequately and consequently. For the new, virtual world of manufacturing a proper understanding of engineering as well as Computer sciences is essential. Industry 4.0 implies this interdisciplinary split. Integrated competencies for product and process planning and design, methodological competencies for systematical idea and innovation management as well as a holistic system and Interface competence will be crucial to achieve interconnection of physical and digital processes and machines. The Vienna University of Technology and the ESB Reutlingen committed to integrate key aspects of Industry 4.0 into their respective learning factories successively. Thus, the students will act as the coordinators of the CPPS and thereby remain in the center of all learning and implementation activities.
As businesses grow and diversify, they almost inevitably make their range of offerings more complex. Complexity brings costs - but smart use of today’s digital technologies can help companies finesse the trade-offs between complexity´s costs and benefits. Imagine a retailer that has 10 million products and hundreds of variations for each product yet keeps it simple for customers to make a choice. Impossible? Not today. Amazon.com Inc. creates value from its product complexity with simple customer-facing processes, such as search, ratings, reviews and suggestions. Now imagine a diversified high-tech company with locally differentiated products in 60 categories in more than 100 different countries. A mess of internal processes and systems? Not necessarily. Royal Philips creates value by providing locally relevant products to different markets, while keeping the vast majority of its processes standardized on digitized platforms. Until now, managing business complexity has usually involved a trade-off. This trade-off forced companies to compromise between creating value from complexity and benefiting from the efficiencies of simplicity. As businesses entered new geographies, developed new products, opened new channels and added more granular customer segments, they made their offerings more complex with the intention of adding value. But, as an almost inevitable consequence, companies also made it more difficult for customers to interact with the company and more unwieldy for employees to get things done. However, with today´s increased digitization, companies can finesse this trade-off; they can increase valueadding complexity in their product offerings while keeping processes for customers and employees simple. Our research suggests that companies operating in this "complexity sweet spot" outperform their competitors on profitability. In this article, we explain how companies achieve this breakthrough in the digital world.
At Reutlingen University in Germany students from different countries and disciplines can learn business English within the framework of a theatre production. In the "Business English Theatre" they work in an international project team staging a play with a business focus and thus improve both their language, social and professional skills.
This booklet will give you an overview of the development of CSR from a (brief) historic point of view and will examine the underlying concepts and research. Furthermore, examples of contemporary CSR management will be explored to show how companies Interpret the issue and how they face the challenges of managing the new demands placed upon them. Business, in the end, comes down to figures and numbers which give management, shareholders and stakeholders a chance to measure a company’s success. Therefore, modern methods and approaches for measuring, rating and ranking a company’s CSR management will be presented. Finally, an attempt will be made to evaluate CSR as a tool for increasing global welfare and as a business and management strategy for companies and entrepreneurs.
Ambush marketing in sports
(2014)
A sports event organizer sells exclusive marketing rights for his event to official sponsors, who, in return, acquire exclusive options to utilize the event for their own advertising purposes. Ambush marketing is the practice by companies of using their own marketing, particularly marketing communications activities, to create an impression of an association with the event to the event audience, although the companies in question have no legal or only underprivileged or non-exclusive marketing rights for this event sponsored by third parties. So, the objective of ambush marketing is to benefit from the success of sports sponsorship without having the duties of an official sponsor.
It is fine line between creative marketing communication and infringing on sponsorship rights. From the perspective of the event organizers and sports sponsors ambush marketing represents an understandable threat, while from the perspective of the ambushers it offers the opportunity to reach the target audience in an attractive environment and at affordable cost. The paper defines and structures the phenomenon of ambush marketing and analyses the impacts of ambush marketing in sports. The results of an empirical study on the effects of ambush marketing in the frame of the FIFA Soccer World cup are presented and discussed.
Increasing concerns regarding the world´s natural resources and sustainability continue to be a major issue for global development. As a result several political initiatives and strategies for green or resource-efficient growth both on national and international levels have been proposed. A core element of these initiatives is the promotion of an increase of resource or material productivity. This dissertation examines material productivity developments in the OECD and BRICS countries between 1980 and 2008. By applying the concept of convergence stemming from economic growth theory to material productivity the analysis provides insights into both aspects: material productivity developments in general as well potentials for accelerated improvements in material productivity which consequently may allow a reduction of material use globally. The results of the convergence analysis underline the importance of policy-making with regard to technology and innovation policy enabling the production of resource-efficient products and services as well as technology transfer and diffusion.
Quest 3C : an integrative simulation game used to encourage cross-disciplinary thinking and action
(2014)
Interdisciplinary, complex problem-solving and the necessity to communicate effectively in global Teams characterise today’s rapidly changing Business environment. Employers consistently stress the need for business engineering graduates to demonstrate technical expertise, methodological competences and diverse soft skills. The "silo effect" in higher education has partially created a gap between what industry wants and what academia provides. Here we examine how interdisciplinary team teaching and shared ICT might be more effective in bringing higher education teaching in sync with industry and its demands.
This article briefly describes reasons for dramatising poetry in the language classroom and then gives practical descriptions of how poetry can be taken ‘from page to stage’. It focusses on the aspects content, form and context of poems and how they can be dramatised. A special focus is on working with Shakespearean sonnets but the ideas can be transferred to other types of poetry as well.
Started as a mono-line focused purely on savings, in late 2012 ING Direct Spain was becoming a full-service bank. To this end, the bank had substantially increased its product- and channel-portfolio. ING Direct Spain originally provided "simple", "good value for money" products in an "easy to deal with" way at low cost supported by a direct model. But with the growth in its product portfolio during the previous decade and the ambitious goal of becoming a full-service bank, an increase in complexity seemed inevitable. Like many businesses in the global, digital economy, ING Direct Spain found it needed to decide which complexity created value for its customers and which one not. It also learned that IT can contribute to complexity and/or help manage complexity.
This case offers a close look at challenges of growing a company by increasing product complexity to provide comprehensive yet simple services.
As "the most international company on earth", DHL Express promised to deliver packages between almost any pair of countries within a defined time-frame. To fulfill this promise, the company had introduced a set of global business and technology standards. While standardization had many advantages (improving service for multinational customers, faster response to changes in import/export regulations, sharing of best practices etc.), it created impediments to local innovation and responsiveness in DHL Express' network of 220 countries/territories. Reconciling standardization-innovation tradeoffs is a critical management issue for global companies in the digital economy.
This case describes one large, successful company's approach to the tradeoff of standardization versus innovation.
Executive education in IS is under the scrutiny of many institution for the potential to bring in financial revenues. However teaching executives can be a very challenging task because of the previous experiences, variation in their previous education, and multiplicity of motivations for pursuing a continuous education. The panel aims at sharing successful experiences and highlighting challenges of dealing with executive audiences. The panel will present the results of a large survey among executive students and identify the three most significant elements emerged from the survey: the importance of theory that is actionable, the importance of varied pedagogical tools and practices, and the importance of relevance beyond practical tools. Based on a survey that will be distributed to the audience at the beginning of the panel, the audience will be actively engaged in sharing their experiences on the three topics aiming at capitalize and sum up the collective knowledge of the room.
The automotive industry faces three major challenges – shortage of fossil fuels, politics of global warming and rising competition from new markets. In order to remain competitive companies have to develop more efficient and alternative fuel vehicles that meet the individual requirements of the customers. Functional Integration combined with new Technologies and materials are the key to stable success in this industry. The sustaining upward trend to system innovations within the last ten years confirms this. The development of complex products like automobiles claim skills of various disciplines e.g. engineering, chemistry. Furthermore, these skills are spread all over the supply chain. Hence the only way to stay successful in the automotive industry is cooperation and collaborative innovation. Interdisciplinary and interorganizational development has high demands on cooperation models especially in the automotive industry. In this case study cooperation models are analyzed and evaluated according to their applicability to interdisciplinary, interorganizational development projects in the automotive industry. Following, the research campus ARENA2036 is analyzed. ARENA2036 is an interdisciplinary, interorganizational development project housing automobile manufacturers, suppliers, research establishments and university institutes. Finally, based on interviews with the partners and the precede analyses of cooperation models, suggestions for implementation are given to ARENA2036.
In this paper it is first identified the trade-off among costs, flexibility and performances of autonomous robotic solutions for material handling processes, where adding value with automation is not as trivial as in production processes: hence the requirement for automated solutions to be simple, lean and efficient becomes even stricter. Then a method for modelling and comparing differential performances and costs of manual and autonomous solutions is developed. As a result of the method, a smart man-machine collaborative interface is designed and its impact evaluated on a specific case of study. Results are then generalized and prove the strong conclusions that in unconstrained environments, where full standardization cannot be achieved, the risk of investing in autonomous solutions can only be mitigated by creating a fast and smart man-machine collaborative interface.
According to a recent survey the great majority of players in logistics are planning to adopt one or more robotic solutions until 2019. Technical solutions for automation of processes in logistics are often available as a market-ready product, but the lack of standardization and skepticism towards long term investments are often the reasons why these solutions are not implemented on a large scale. This paper is set to bridge the gap between the world of technologies and the one of applications in order to help investors, robot producers and system integrators to decide on which branch of logistics to set their focus. The three main branches Courier Express Parcel (CEP), contract logistics and production logistics are briefly defined and distinguished through their characteristic factors and parameters. Then a method based on the analysis of three parameters (operative costs, required performance and flexibility) in the three branches is set to identify the most convenient branch of logistics for investing in new technologies, namely the one in which the risk of investment is lower, the return is higher and faster. The conclusion of the method shows that higher labor costs, strict regulations and higher standardization make the production logistics the most suitable branch for investments in emerging automation solutions.
The EU funded project RobLog recently developed a system able to autonomously unload coffee sacks from a standard container. Being the first of its kind, a further development is needed in order for the system to be competitive against manual labor. Financing this development entails a risk, hence a justified skepticism, which can be overcome by the longsighted view of the existing market potential. This paper presents a method to estimate the market potential of autonomous unloading systems for heavy deformable goods. Starting from the analysis of the coffee trade, first the current coffee traffic is investigated in order to calculate the number of autonomous systems needed to handle the imported sacks; Results are validated and the method is extended for the calculation of the potential of other market segments, where the same unloading technology can be applied.
Success in human resource management (HRM) depends on the question of whether applied practices of HRM meet specific contingency factors and are appropriately configured. Using this argument, the present article examines HRM in professional service firms (PSFs) in pursuit of three objectives. First, we introduce a conceptual framework that illustrates how the constitutive characteristics of PSFs, as contingency factors, influence HRM practices and research. Second, based on this framework, we summarize key findings of research on HRM in PSFs and open up potential avenues for further research. Third, we reflect on the argument that HRM in PSFs can contribute to an understanding of HRM practices in other organizational settings, leading to the question of the mutual transferability of HRM practices. Aside from these three primary objectives, we also introduce the contents of the special issue.
By integrating its previously separate insurance, banking and investment products around customer life events (e.g., buying a car, getting married or buying a house), USAA is able to deliver a superior customer experience. To achieve the integration, USAA had to re-architect its business by redesigning structures, roles, incentives, processes and IT systems. The USAA case provides four principles for architecting a business to provide superior customer experience, which will become increasingly important in the digital economy.
This paper provides new evidence on the formation and anchoring of inflation expectations. I conduct a game experiment and analyze the adjustment as well as the impact of credible targets on expectations. In addition, I evaluate the idiosyncratic determinants on the formation of expectations. The analysis reveals six results: First, I find evidence that long-term inflation expectations are firmly anchored to a credible target. Second, a temporary deviation due to unexpected monetary policy might trigger a decline in credibility, and third a de-anchoring of expectations due to uncertainty. Fourth, I find that people change their expectations little if a credible target exists. Fifth, expectations exhibit a large degree of time-variance only in environments without a target. Sixth, the dynamic adjustment to an ‘incomplete’ equilibrium, which is theoretically unstable, is nevertheless rapid and persistent in case of credible targets. All in all, I demonstrate a unique game setup with contributions to both experimental and monetary economics.
A major lesson of the recent financial crisis is that money market freezes have major macroeconomic implications. This paper develops a tractable model in which we analyze the microeconomic and macroeconomic implications of a systemic banking crisis. In particular, we consider how the systemic crisis affects the optimal allocation of funding for businesses. We show that a central bank should reduce the interest rate to manage a systemic shock and hence smooth the macroeconomic consequences. Moreover, the analysis offers insight on the rational of bank behavior and the role of markets in a systemic crisis. We find that the failure to adopt the optimal policy can lead to economic fragility.
Creating an image transfer through event marketing : principles, requirements and consequences
(2015)
Event marketing is primarily implemented to emotionalize the target group. So, the most important objective of marketing events is to improve the image of a brand or a company. In this paper an image transfer model for event marketing is introduced. As a basis, the principles of event marketing are presented. After that, the state of the art in attitude and image research is discussed. Based on current research, an image transfer model for event marketing is developed and the conditions required for an image transfer to take place from an event to a brand or a company are explained. Depending on which conditions are met, there are different consequences with regard to the image transfer from the event to the brand or company that are structured and characterized in detail.
Few unfocused factories outperform competitors, but Focus is elusive because the environment is constantly evolving and this requires changes to a factory’s key tasks. So how can focus be achieved and sustained? We present insights derived from an historical analysis of the German Hewlett-Packard server plant which went through a series of Focus changes over the years. Using this example, we provide clues for the right timing of Focus changes and discuss critical structural and infrastructural changes required during the Focus transitions, as well as cross-functional coordination and leadership challenges. Our assertion is that production operations constitute a system that can adapt to disruptive Change by using the levers of manufacturing policies to stay focused on a limited but absolutely essential task which creates a strategic advantage.
Marketing channels are among the most important elements of any value chain. This is because the bulk of a nation´s manufacturing output flows through them. The intermediaries (e.g., distributors, wholesalers, retailers) constituting marketing channels perform specific distribution functions,such as transportation, storage, sales, financing, and relationship building, better than most manufacturers. Over his distinguished career, Louis P. Bucklin investigated many questions about the structuring and functioning of marketing channels using conceptual, empirical, and microeconomics model-based methodologies. Today, the academic marketing literature contains hundreds of articles that have employed these three broad classes of methodologies to investigate issues of channel intermediaries´ interorganizational relationships, for example, power-dependence, relational outcomes, conflict and negotiations, and manufacturing firms´ channel strategy, for example, channel structure, selection, coordination and control. So far, however, there has been no review of how the three different methodologies have contributed to advancing knowledge across this set of channels research domains.
Usually financial crises go along with bubbles in asset prices, such as the housing bubble in the US in 2007. This paper attempts to build a mathematical model of financial bubbles from an econophysics, and thus a new perspective. I find that agents identify bubbles only with a time delay. Furthermore, I demonstrate that the detection of bubbles is different on either the individual or collective point of view. Second, I utilize the findings for a new definition of asset bubbles in finance. Finally, I extend the model to the study of asset price dynamics with news. In conclusion, the model provides unique insights into the properties and developments of financial bubbles.
The paper designs a quantum model of decision-making (QMDM) that utilizes neuroscientific evidence. The new model provides both normative and positive implications to economics. First, it enhances the study of decision-making which is an extension of the expected utility theory (EUT) in mathematical economics. Second, we demonstrate how the quantum model mitigates drawbacks of the expected utility theory of today.
This paper analyzes governance mechanisms for different group sizes. The European sovereign debt crisis has demonstrated the need of efficient governance for different group sizes. I find that self-governance only works for sufficiently homogenous and small neighbourhoods. Second, as long as the union expands, the effect of credible self-governance decreases. Third, spill-over effects amplify the size effect. Fourth, I show that sufficiently large monetary unions, are better off with costly but external governance or a free market mechanism. Finally, intermediate-size unions are most difficult to govern efficiently.
This paper develops a linear and tractable model of financial bubbles. I demonstrate the application of the linear model and study the root causes of financial bubbles. Moreover, I derive leading properties of bubbles. This model enables investors and regulators to react to market dynamics in a timely manner. In conclusion, the linear model is helpful for the empirical verification and detection of financial bubbles.
This paper examines the determinants of Google search in the banking area. The weekly Google data from 2004 to 2013 used for this study consists of the 30 largest banks, the Federal Reserve, and the European Central Bank. To my knowledge, this is the first study on the determinants of Google data. Firstly the paper shows that Google searches are correlated with several performance variables and market data, such as asset prices and trading volume. Secondly it demonstrates that banks´ internal performance data has a major influence whereas market data is rather insignificant. Moreover it is shown that Google search for central banks is largely determined by the level of interest rates as well as the inflation and output gap. This is evidence that central bank attention is primarily driven by the policy targets. Accordingly Google data can be applied to analyze the timely impact of monetary policy.
This paper is a review about the book "Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises" by Timothy Geithner. The book mainly discusses the policy decisions and implications of T. Geithner during his job as New York FED president and US-Treasury secretary under president Obama. The book reveals some hidden information about the decision-making process in both institutions. But it lacks a scientific foundation in order to explain the financial crisis in more detail. Hence, I think the book is less convincing than recognized in public. No doubt, Geithner crisis response deserves appreciation especially the "Stress Test". However, the overall book does not demonstrate that the response is sustainable in the long run and scientifically sound. Consequently, it is more a book on public policy and governance than economics.
Venture capital and the innovative power of a state : econometric study including Google data
(2015)
This article focuses on venture capital investments and the innovative power of a state defined by its public infrastructure. The economic implications are evaluated by estimating several panel regression models. The novelty is twofold: on the one hand the research approach and on the other hand the new data set. The data ranges from 1995 to 2014 and consists of 10 European countries plus the US and Canada. For the first time we include Google search data on Venture Capital. The results show a significant increase in Venture Capital is mainly determined by economic conditions such as real GDP growth. The impact of the innovative power of a state is not significant. We find that Google data is positively related and significant in respect to Venture Capital investments too. Consequently, we confirm that private business investments cannot be created by government policy alone rather via solid macroeconomic conditions.
We investigate public debt sustainability in Europe and leading industrialised countries. The recent debate about the debt ceiling in the US and the sovereign debt crisis in Europe demonstrate the urgency of the topic. We measure debt sustainability of public finance with a standard and alternative methodology and compare both results. We use panel data of 205 OECD countries from 1970 to 2014. The paper finds unsustainable public debt levels for almost all countries in the past decades. Furthermore, given the low economic growth and demographic challenge ahead, debt levels may upsurge even more. There is a huge looming ‘debt meltdown’ on the horizon if countries do not change public policy soon.
In the last decade, numerous learning factories for education, training, and research have been built up in industry and academia. In recent years learning factory initiatives were elevated from a local to a European and then to a worldwide level. In 2014 the CIRP Collaborative Working Group (CWG) on Learning Factories enables a lively exchange on the topic "Learning Factories for future oriented research and education in manufacturing". In this paper results of discussions inside the CWG are presented. First, what is meant by the term Learning Factory is outlined. Second, based on the definition a description model (morphology) for learning factories is presented. The morphology covers the most relevant characteristics and features of learning factories in seven dimensions. Third, following the morphology the actual variance of learning factory manifestations is shown in six learning factory application scenarios from industrial training over education to research. Finally, future prospects of the learning factory concept are presented.
Shorter product life cycles and emerging technologies in the field of industrial equipment are changing the prerequisites and circumstances under which the design of assembly and logistics systems take place. Planners have to adapt the production in accordance with the underlying product at a higher pace, oversee a more complex system and - most importantly - find the ideal solution for functional as well as social interaction between humans and machines in a cyber-physical system. Such collaborative work systems consider the individual capabilities and potentials of humans and machines to combine them in a manner that assists the operator during his daily work routine towards more productive, less burdening work. To be able to design work systems which act on that maxim, specific competences such as the ability of integrated process and product planning as well as systems and interface competence are required. The ESB Logistics Learning Factory trains students as well as professionals to gain such qualification by providing a close-to-reality learning environment based on a didactical concept which covers all relevant methods for ergonomic work system design and a state-of-the-art infrastructure composed of a manual assembly system, service robots, visual assistance systems, sensor-based work load monitoring and logistical resources. Group-based, activity oriented scenarios enable the participants to put the learnings into practice within their professional environments. By this, learning factories have an indirect impact on the transfer of proven best practices to the industry and thereby on the diffusion of the idea of human-centric working environment.
In academia and industry learning factories are established as close-to-reality learning environments for education and training in the manufacturing domain. Although the approach and concept of existing learning factories is often similar, orientation and design of individual facilities are diverse. So far, there is no structured framework to describe learning factory approaches. In the paper a multidimensional description model is presented in form of a morphology which can be used as a starting point for the structuring and classification of existing learning factory application scenarios as well as a support for the development and improvement of learning factory approaches.
This paper establishes a unique linkage between economic and sociological theories. I study the root causes of the euro crisis from both perspectives. I find that resolving the euro crisis requires economic and sociological insights, particularly in respect to the design of European institutions, rules, and regulations. I develop a new paradigm in attempt to tackle the euro crisis. This paper demonstrates the importance of an interdisciplinary dialogue and how this may safeguard the future of the Economic and Monetary Union.
Since its early beginnings in the form of correspondence schools, e-learning has generally sought to provide flexibility and high quality education. While these are indeed noble intentions, the reality of today's connected world demands that such programs focus on a different purpose. As the main purpose of e-learning shifts, so must be the design approaches.
Rethinking e-learning requires open-mindedness on the part of academies, designers, cyber educators, legislators, IT and administrators, but also the learners themselves. All who are involved in or impacted by e-learning programs must speak up and finally share their perspectives, but who will be listening? The key to rethinking e-learning lies in the ability of the stakeholders to listen to each other and make decisions which are in the best interest of the learner.
This chapter will propose a new purpose for e-learning and explore promising possibilities for learner-centered design. The future of e-learning can be shaped by the decisions made today, but before any decisions can be made, one must acknowledge e-learning's successes as well as its shortcomings. The purpose of this chapter is to encourage those who are impacted by e-learning to think about the future.
SF-failure, the inability of people to correctly determine the behavior of simple stock and flow structures is subject of a long research stream. Reasons for SF-failure can be attributed to different reasons, one of them being lacking domain specific experience, thus familiarity with the problem context. In this article we present a continuation of an experiment to examine the role of educational background in SF-performance. We base the question set on the Bathtub Dynamics tasks introduced by Booth Sweeney and Sterman (2000) and vary the cover stories. In this paper we describe how we developed and tested a new cover story for the engineering domain and implemented the recommendations from a prior study. We test three sets of questions with engineering students which enables us to compare the results to a previous study in which we tested the questions with business students. Results mainly support our hypothesis that context familiarity increases SF-performance. With our findings we further develop the methodology of the research on SF-failure.
This paper describes the design and outcomes of an experimental study that addresses stock-and-flow-failure from a cognitive perspective. It is based on the assumption that holistic (global) and analytic (local) processing are important cognitive mechanisms underlying the ability to infer the behavior of dynamic systems. In a stock-and-flow task that is structurally equivalent to the department store task, we varied the format in which participants are primed to think about an environmental system, in particular whether they are primed to concentrate on lower-level (local) or higher-level (global) system elements. 148 psychology, geography and business students participated in our study. Students’ answers support our hypothesis that global processing increases participants’ ability to infer the overall system behavior. The beneficial influence of global presentation is even stronger when data are presented numerically rather than in the form of a graph. Our results suggest presenting complex dynamic systems in a way that facilitates global processing. This is particularly important as policy-designers and decision makers deal with complex issues in their everyday and professional life.
Throughout the past decade the rapid proliferation and widespread adoption of social media for marketing purposes can be observed across all technological and digital touch points. This paper focuses on the implementation of social media marketing during mega sports events. We examine impacts by analyzing Adidas’ and Nike’s social media campaigns in the frame of the FIFA World Cup 2014 in Brazil. What impact did the social media activities of Nike and Adidas have on their Twitter and Facebook presence? Which additional value did the social media activities contribute to their respective targets of the entire marketing campaign? In order to answer these questions an empirical study was conducted. Several hypotheses were formulated and tested.
Competing logics in evaluating employee performance : building compromises through conventions
(2015)
Current research argues that competing institutional logistics1 can co-exist enduringly and investigates how organizations cope with such institutional complexity (Greenwood et al. 2011). Thereby, the role of practices for handling competing logics has been overlooked and it is currently only to limited extent understood how organizations establish compromises between competing logics. Therefore, we investigated the recent performance appraisal reform of a German public sector organization that occurred in 2008 (see also Kozica, Brandl 2015). BAND (the pseudonym for our organization) has been using performance appraisals for several decades, and performance appraisals have already become entrenched instruments (Zeitz, Mittal, McAulay 1999) for handling staff promotion decisions. While BAND accepted the accountability logic of the performance appraisal, the professional logic (which is based on trust and comradeship as a high value of being professional in our organization) is accepted too and BAND has established a fine-grained compromise between the different logics. During the recent reform of the performance appraisal system, however, this compromise has broken up and challenged organizational members to (re-)arrange a compromise. By using French convention school of thinking (Boltanski, Thévenot 2006) we address how BAND copes with conflicting logics by forming compromises in organizational practices. Thereby, we show that the concept of convention is particularly promising for understanding of how organizations deal with institutional complexity. More broadly, our argument contributes to the elaboration of an organizational theory for the institutional logics discussion that explains how organizational and individual actions are interlinked.
Mastering of complex systems and interfaces, idea and innovation management as well as virtually integrated product and process planning are essential competences to be developed and fostered to cope with the changing role of the workforce in a future industry 4.0 work system. Learning factories, like the Logistics Learning Factory at Reutlingen University, which are equipped with state-of-the-art infrastructure, offer a high potential to decidedly address these competences.
The German automotive industry succeeds by technological leadership. Several circumstances like politics of global warming or increased global competition force the whole industry to break new ground for new kinds of collaborative research and development. ARENA2036 represents such a new cooperation form that hosts diverse scientific and industrial partners in one campus in order to research innovative production and light-weight construction topics. The diversity of the partners in ARENA2036 challenges the new product development process (NPDP). In this case study the individual processes of the partners are analysed and a NPDP system is developed. The analysis bases on interviews covering all partners. The NPDP system supports the needs of the interdisciplinary and cross-company partners. It is characterized by a layered structure in order to preserve flexibility for research topics combined with institutionalized parts to manage interfaces. The final NPDP system is evaluated by the partners.
It has been recognized that to increase the competetitiveness of international higher education institutions in the global education market, their international graduates' employability must be enhanced. The present paper investigates, from the employers' perspective, the possibilities of international graduates with domestic degrees in Russia and Germany to find jobs in the Russian and German labor market. It uses qualitative open-ended interviews at 12 companies in St. Petersburg, Russia and Germany, which are engaged with International Business activities. The investigation concentrates on the employment opportunities and barriers of international graduates from an individual, organizational and an institutional perspective.
The research highlighted the main differences and similarities in the perception of the HR managers in both countries. In the German labor market, companies have a high demand for international graduates, especially those operating internationally, highly demand international graduates, emphasizing the existence of international trainee programs and the need to reflect the diversity of their business in the diversity of their staff. In contrast, Russian companies showed a positive predisposition for international graduates but no demand. Domestic firms focus their efforts on expatriate programs and/or highly-qualified specialists rather than trainee programs to hire internationals. On the other hand, insitutional barriers exist, as well as a lack of support with regards to regulations and requirements for entering both Russian and German markets. The national language requirement was stressed as the major barrier towards hiring internationals in both countries. The investigation from an organizational point of view revealed that interviewers showed a positive predisposition towards international graduates in both countries, focusing on the graduate's skill set rather than their nationality. This research explores the opportunities and barriers and discusses the implications for students and universities.
IOS 2.0 : new aspects on inter-organizational integration through enterprise 2.0 technologies
(2015)
This special theme of „Electronic Markets“ focuses on research concerned with the use of social technologies and "2.0" principles in the interaction between organization (i.e., with "inter-organizational systems (IOS) 2.0"). This theme falls within the larger space of Enterprise 2.0 research, but focuses in particular on inter-organizational use (between enterprises), not intra-organizational use (in a single enterprise). While there is great interest in practice regarding the use of 2.0 technologies to support intra-organizational communication, collaboration and interaction, information systems (IS) research has largely been oblivious to this important use of social technologies.
Internet of things innovations and the industrial internet these days become more and more decisive factors of future success for companies. Especially manufacturing oriented SME will face the challenge to develop innovative technology driven business models alongside technology innovations in this field which will be essential for future competitiveness. Failing in developing these technology driven business models in an internationally highly competitive environment will have a serious impact both on companies and on the society. Hence, securing economic stability and success of these technology driven business models is an indispensable task. To identify challenges for innovative industrial internet business models first it is necessary to understand what the industrial internet means to the leading parties and applying companies and start-ups in the field. Second, challenges from general business model development will be outlined. In a third step risks and challenges in business model development will be discussed with regard to the special characteristics of technology driven business models in the context of the industrial internet and the important role of the technological key component of the business model. Especially the capability to deal with an integrated consideration of the indivisible linked dimensions of economic and technological aspects of these business models is questioned. In the fourth place the specific challenges for industrial internet business models are derived. On the basis of these results it is also discussed what might be done to handle these challenges successfully with the goal to turn them into chances. The need for future research on the integration of the risk management perspective into the development of these technology driven business models is derived. This will help established companies and start-ups to realize great technological innovations for the industrial internet in sound and successful innovative business models.
Shorter product life cycles and emerging technologies are changing the circumstances under which the design of assembly and logistics systems has to be carried out. Engineers are in charge of adapting the production in accordance with the underlying product at a higher pace, oversee a more complex system and find the ideal solution for a functional work system design as well as social interactions between humans and machines in cyber-physical systems. Such collaborative work systems consider the individual capabilities and potentials of humans and machines to combine them in a manner that assists the operator during his daily work routine. To be able to design such work systems, specific competences such as the ability of integrated process and product planning as well as systems and interface competence are required. Learning factories train students as well as professionals to gain such qualifications by providing a close-to-reality learning environment based on a didactical concept which covers all relevant methods for ergonomic work system design and a state-of-the-art infrastructure. Group-based, activity oriented scenarios enable the participants to put the learnings into their everyday work life. Thereby, learning factories have an indirect impact on the transfer of proven best practices to the industry.
Energy efficiency is an important issue, especially following the introduction of new energy services legislation in Germany. One thing that is often overlooked is the biggest cost driver in the processing industry: material expenditures. To make full use of any potential cost savings and raise competitiveness, companies have to look very carefully at all material flows. This raises the important question of how to organize resource efficiency projects strategically and in terms of operational implementation. The Steinbeis Transfer Center for Energy and Environmental Process Technology, Eco-Management is demonstrating the different options open to manufacturing companies when it comes to resource efficiency – showing that it really is worth subjecting the issue to closer scrutiny.
In 2013, Royal Philips was two years into a daunting transformation. Following declining financial performance, CEO Frans van Houten aimed to turn the Dutch icon into a "high-performing Company" by 2017. This case study examines the challenges of the business-driven IT transformation at Royal Philips, a diversified technology company. The case discusses three crucial issues. First, the case reflects on Philips’ aim at creating value from combining locally relevant products and services while also leveraging its global scale and scope. Rewarded and unrewarded business complexity is analyzed. Second, the case identifies the need to design and align multiple elements of an enterprise (organizational, cultural, technical) to balance local responsiveness with global scale. Third, the case explains the role of IT (as an asset instead of a liability) in Philips’ transformation and discusses the new IT landscape with its digital platforms, and the new practices to create effective business-IT partnerships.
Quality-oriented selection of university partnerships : ESB Business School’s selection matrix
(2015)
Ein wichtiges Qualifikationsziel von heutigen Wirtschaftsingenieurstudien-programmen ist, Studierende dazu zu befähigen, vernetzt, ganzheitlich, interkulturell und interdisziplinär zu denken und zu handeln. Die Lehr- und Lerninnovation Quest 3C fördert durch ein integratives Blended-Learning Format sowohl die Vermittlung von grundlegendem Fachwissen als auch von berufsqualifizierenden Schlüsselkompetenzen.
In this paper, we investigate how conventions enable organisational actors to cope with paradoxical tensions in performance appraisal systems. Building on a case study of a performance appraisal system reform in a public sector organisation, we analyse how this organisation enabled superiors to take into account both accountability and professional logic. When new appraisal rules required superiors to rank their employees according to their qualifications but also to show collegiate solidarity, superiors negotiated an organisation-wide understanding of the rules that enabled them to address both logics simultaneously. The study underlines the importance of collective understandings for individual responses to paradoxical tensions and reveals how performance appraisal systems can be operated according to different logics.
Previous studies have reported changes in organizational identities as a result of external or internal triggers. In contrast, we highlight how the paradoxical nature of an organizational identity can influence stability and change that identity. Using the example of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, we show how a "stable state of instability" of the organization´s collective identity is constantly being reproduced. We contribute to the literature on organizational identity by first analyzing a case in which identity change is not triggered by a disruptive event. Second, we show how the paradoxical nature of identity triggers attempts to reconcile contradictions of the paradox, culminating in permanent state of gradual changes of organizational identity. Finally, we exemplify how, as a form of partial organization where volunteers take part in the identity formation process, Wikipedia copes with the tensions that ensue from its collective identity.
For many companies, it is major international sporting events (in particular the Football World Cup or the Olympic Games) that constitute the ideal platform for the integration of their target group-specific marketing communication into an attractive sports environment. Sports event organizers sell exclusive marketing rights for their events to official sponsors, who, in return, acquire exclusive options to utilize the event for their own advertising purposes. Ambush marketing is the method used by companies that do not hold marketin rights to an event, but still use their marketing activities in diverse ways to establish a connection to it. There is still whidespread debate and confusion about the topic. Ambush marketing is often defined in different ways, by different people, according to their position as either supporters of opponents of the practice.
As long as there have been professional sports, there have been relationships on different levels. For example, sponsorship (or patronage as it was called in the early days) was mostly based on personal relations between the local benefactors and their favourite sports club. Regarding media, clubs always maintained special relationships with selected journalists. The bond between fans and their clubs was always a close and mutually beneficial one. All these relationships existed from the start of the sports business. Therefore, relationship marketing is nothing new in the context of sports. Many sporting organisations always knew to value a deep and good relationship with their stakeholders and practised relationship marketing without being aware of it. Successful sports managers, however, take the old wisdom and turn it into a modern relationship marketing approach by structuring the various relationships in order to make them more effective and profitable for the own sporting organisation and the various stakeholders. This chapter ... illustrates the many facets of relationship marketing and the possibilities it offers in the context of the sports business.
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss the applicability of current benchmarking proposals for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and to suggest a condensed process for logistics benchmarking in SMEs.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper starts by outlining why the logistics function is of increasing importance for SMEs. It discusses the benefit of logistics benchmarking and typical SME restrictions in benchmarking. Available approaches to benchmarking are discussed and their weaknesses when applied to SME logistics benchmarking are analyzed. The paper develops a new benchmarking process framework for SME logistics benchmarking and reports findings of a case application in three German SMEs.
The increasing emergence of cyber-physical systems (CPS) and a global crosslinking of these CPS to cyber-physical production systems (CPPS) are leading to fundamental changes of future work and logistic systems requiring innovative methods to plan, control and monitor changeable production systems and new forms of human-machine-collaboration. Particularly logistic systems have to obey the versatility of CPPS and will be transferred to so-called cyber physical logistic systems, since the logistical networks will underlie the requirements of constant changes initiated by changeable production systems. This development is driven and enhanced by increasingly volatile and globalized market and manufacturing environments combined with a high demand for individualized products and services. Also nowadays mainly used centralized control systems are pushed to their limits regarding their abilities to deal with the arising complexity to plan, control and monitor changeable work and logistic systems. Decentralized control systems bear the potential to cope with these challenges by distributing the required operations on various nodes of the resulting decentralized control system.
Learning factories, like the ESB Logistics Learning Factory at ESB Business School (Reutlingen University), provide a wide range of possibilities to develop new methods and innovative technical solutions in a risk-free and close-to-reality factory environment and to transfer knowledge as well as specific competences into the training of students and professionals. To intensify the research and training activities in the field of future work and logistics systems, ESB Business School is transferring its existing production system into a CPPS involving decentralized planning, control and monitoring methods and systems, human-machine-collaboration as well as technical assistance systems for changeable work and logistics systems.
A seamless convergence of the digital and physical factory aiming in personalized Product Emergence Process (PPEP) for smart products within ESB Logistics Learning Factory at Reutlingen University.
A completely new business model with reference to Industrie4.0 and facilitated by 3D experience software in today's networked society in which customers expect immediate responses, delightful experience and simple solutions is one of the mission scenarios in the ESB Logistics Learning Factory at ESB Business School (Reutlingen University).
The business experience platform provides software solutions for every organization in the company respectively in the factory. An interface with dashboards, project management apps, 3D - design and construction apps with high end visualization, manufacturing and simulation apps as well as intelligence and social network apps in a collaborative interactive environment help the user to learn the creation of a value end to end process for a personalized virtual and later real produced product.
Instead of traditional ways of working and a conventional operating factory real workers and robots work semi-intuitive together. Centerpiece in the self-planned interim factory is the smart personalized product, uniquely identifiable and locatable at all times during the production process – a scooter with an individual colored mobile phone – holder for any smart phone produced with a 3D printer in lot size one. Smart products have in the future solutions incorporated internet based services – designed and manufactured - at the costs of mass products. Additionally the scooter is equipped with a retrievable declarative product memory. Monitoring and control is handled by sensor tags and a raspberry positioned on the product. The engineering design and implementation of a changeable production system is guided by a self-execution system that independently find amongst others esplanade workplaces.
The imparted competences to students and professionals are project management method SCRUM, customization of workflows by Industrie4.0 principles, the enhancements of products with new personalized intelligent parts, electrical and electronic selfprogrammed components and the control of access of the product memory information, to plan in a digital engineering environment and set up of the physical factory to produce customer orders. The gained action-orientated experience refers to the chances and requirements for holistic digital and physical systems.
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to comprehensively characterise the interdisciplinary phenomenon of ambush marketing in sports, structure its manifestations, illustrate the consequences associated with ambush marketing and provide a critical evaluation from an objective perspective.
Design/methodology/approach: Various approaches to the definition of ambush marketing are presented and the objectives pursued with ambush marketing are identified. In this paper a new approach has been developed to structure the strategies and manifestations of ambush marketing.
Findings: It is a fine line between creative marketing and infringing on sponsorship rights. So the interdisciplinary phenomenon ambush marketing is discussed controversially. Ambush marketing is situated at the intersection of two opposing spheres of interest conducting a battle for shares of the marketing potential of a sports event. On one side there is the disparaging view of ambush marketing founded on legal and/or ethical considerations. On the other, the author has the respectful assessment of ambushers characterised by their innovative, creative marketing.
Practical implications: The analysis conducted in this paper leads to the conclusion that a general evaluation or condemnation of ambush marketing is not feasible. A four-field matrix emerges from the combination of a legal statutory consideration on one hand and an ethical-moral assessment on the other.
Originality/value: The paper describes and structures ambush marketing in a novel form and discusses illustrating examples from major sporting events. Ambush marketing is evaluated from a neutral perspective by summarising the opportunities and threats of ambush marketing which leads to a nuanced contemplation of ambush marketing.
Systemic Constellation describes an approach that enables practitioners to examine and address typical issues in diversity management from a different, relational perspective. Systemic Constellation utilizes the human ability to recognize the qualities of relationships between two or more people from their spatial alignment to each other (transverbal language) and the capability to illustrate inner pictures by placing humans or objects in a room as representatives (representative perception). Systemic Constellation originated in the field of family therapy and counseling, but through research, guidance work, and teaching activities over the last two decades, it has developed into a generic, structural, constellation logic with multiple methods of application. It has been adapted to a variety of topics and issues, and a number of constellation formats. This article serves as a starting point for the transfer of Systemic Constellation into diversity management. It appears that conventional approaches taught in traditional management classes (such as focusing on tools, setting targets, planning measures, and offering incentives) are of limited use when trying to deal with problematic situations in diversity management. Preliminary trials show that new solutions and insights into deeper underlying dynamics can be gained on personal and institutional levels when applying Systemic Constellation. Participants find the application of the model as very beneficial. Systemic Constellation is grounded in personal experience and particularly in a person’s own experience of the consistency of representative perception. This viewpoint can only be conveyed rudimentarily in a scientific article. Readers should feel encouraged to apply Systemic Constellations themselves and use it in their work, experimentally and professionally. To harness the full potential of Systemic Constellations in diversity management, further research needs to be done.
The paper studies liquidity management in the banking sector at the zero lower bound implemented by central banks. The new era of monetary policy with interest rates at zero and quantitative easing programs raise questions about the effectiveness of central banking policy and their impact on the banking sector. I find that the zero lower bound reduces liquidity reserves of banks and thus creates less credit supply. The T-LTRO program, developed by the European Central Bank, has helped to tackle this problem. However, the recently expanded asset purchase program reveals the opposite effect. Hence, the recent liquidity provisions by central banks have put incentives rather on de-leveraging than bank lending.
This article analyses and compares the performance of regulators in the fields of finance and sport, especially cycling. I hypothesize that the courses of crises or scandals is the best time to study the lessons of regulatory response. First, I take into account the differences in both finance and cycling by looking at the nature of the rules and institutions governing the field. Second, I estimate the attention effect on new regulation in response to crises or scandals. The interest of the paper is in the alignment of incentives to prevent regulatory capture and to ensure accountability and enforceability. The paper concludes that the differences hold important lessons that call for the reform of rules and institutions governing finance and cycling alike.
This paper analyzes different government debt relief programs in the European Monetary Union. I build a model and study different options ranging from debt relief to the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). The analysis reveals the following: First, patient countries repay debt, while impatient countries more likely consume and default. Second, without ESM loans, indebted countries default anyway. Third, if the probability to be an impatient government is high, then the supply of loans is constrained. In general, sustainable and unsustainable governments should be incentivized differently especially in a supranational monetary union. Finally, I develop policy recommendations for the ongoing debate in the Eurozone.
This paper is a commentary on the book ‘Probability and stochastic processes’ from Ionut Florescu. The book is an excellent introduction to both probability theory and stochastic processes. It provides a comprehensive discussion of the main statistical concepts including the theorems and proofs. The introduction to probability theory is easy accessible and a perfect starting point for undergraduate students even with majors in other subjects than science, such as business or engineering. The book is also up-to-date because it includes programming code for simulations. However, the book has some weaknesses. It is less convincing in more advanced topics of stochastic theory and it does not include solutions to excises and recent research trends.