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Lexikon der Betriebswirtschaft : 3000 grundlegende und aktuelle Begriffe für Studium und Beruf
(2015)
Was ist Strategische Planung, welche Steueränderungen gibt es, was versteht man unter Break-Even-Analyse, Cashflow, Prozesskostenrechnung oder Balanced Scorecard und wo liegen die Besonderheiten der Konzernrechnungslegung? Ein aktuelles Nachschlagewerk mit zahlreichen Verweisen für Studierende und Praktiker.
Unternehmen benötigen heutzutage im globalen Wettbewerb ein effektives und effizientes Leistungsmanagement, um ihren Erfolg langfristig absichern zu können. Ein solches ganzheitliches und langfristiges Performance Managment kann nur dann die Erwartungen erfüllen, wenn alle erfolgskritischen Management-Disziplinen im Rahmen eines integrativen Managementsystems optimal aufeinander abgestimmt sind.
Der Beitrag zeigt, welche grundlegenden Managementmethoden und -instrumente sich identifizieren lassen, um den Unterschied zwischen dauerhaft erfolgreichen und nicht erfolgreichen Unternehmen zu erklären. In diesem Kontext wird ein Ansatz für einen Leistungsmanagement-Gesamtprozess entwickelt, in dem die zentralen Problemquellen bei der Einführung von Performance Management eingeordnet und erläutert werden.
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.
The possibility to bring the interference source, close to the potential target is characterized by the property of the source as stationary, portable, mobile, very mobile and highly mobile [3]. Starting from the existing and well-known IEME interference or IEMI (Intentional Electromagnetic Interference) and the already existing classifications an analysis of methods based on a comparative study of the methods used to classify the intentional EM environment is carried out, which takes into account the frequency, the cost, the amplitude of the noise signal, the radiated power and the energy of a pulse of radiation.
This paper evaluates experimentally the susceptibility of IT-networks under influences and the threats of HPEM (High Power Electromagnetic) and IEMI (Intentional Electromagnetic Interferences). As HPEM source a PBG 5 (Pulse Burst Generator) adapted to a TEM (Transversal Electromagnetic) Horn type antenna and a 90 cm IRA (Impulse Radiating Antenna) type antenna is used. Different network cable types and categories with different lengths are used. The immunity of the IT network is examined and the breakdown failure rate of the system is defined for a PRF (Pulse Repetition Frequency) of 500 s-1 in duration of 10 seconds. Series of measurements were carried out and disturbances of keyboards, mouse, switches, distortions on monitors and failures of the IT network and, even crash of PCs were observed. It is shown amongst other that by increasing the pulse repetition rate or frequency, generic test IT-networks are more susceptible to interference. Obtained results provide another view of the susceptibility analysis of modern generic IT-networks against UWB-Threats.
An experimental study of a zero voltage switching SiC boost converter with an active snubber network
(2015)
This paper presents a quasi-resonant, zero voltage switching (ZVS) SiC boost converter for an output power of up to 10 kW. The converter is realized with an easily controllable active snubber network that allows a reduction of switching losses by minimizing the voltage stress applied to the active switch. With this approach, an increase of the switching frequency is possible, allowing a reduction of the system size. Experiments show a maximum converter efficiency up to 99.2% for a switching frequency of 100 kHz. A second version of the converter enables a further size reduction by increasing the switching frequency to 300 kHz while still reaching a high efficiency up to 98.4 %.
DMOS transistors in integrated smart power technologies are often subject to cyclic power dissipation with substantial selfheating. This leads to repetitive thermo mechanical stress, causing fatigue of the on-chip metallization and limiting the lifetime. Hence, most designs use large devices for lower peak temperatures and thus reduced stress to avoid premature failures.
However, significantly smaller DMOS transistors are acceptable if the system reverts to a safer operating condition with lower stress when a failure is expected to occur in the near future. Hence, suitable early-warning sensors are required. This paper proposes a floating metal meander embedded between DMOS source and drain to detect an impending metallization failure. Measurement results of several variants will be presented and discussed, investigating their suitability as early warning indicators.
Large power semiconductors are complex structures, their metallization usually containing many thousands of contacts or vias. Because of this, detailed FEM simulations of the whole device are nowadays not possible because of excessive simulation time.
This paper introduces a simulation approach which allows quick identification of critical regions with respect to lifetime by a simplified simulation. For this, the complex layers are replaced by a much simpler equivalent layer, allowing a simulation of the whole device even including its package. In a second step, precise simulations taking all details of the structure into account are carried out, but only for the critical regions of interest. Thus, this approach gives detailed results where required with consideration of the whole structure including packaging. Further, the simulation time requirements are very moderate.
The experimental characterization of the thermal impedance Zth of large power MOSFETs is commonly done by measuring the junction temperature Tj in the cooling phase after the device has been heated, preferably to a high junction temperature for increased accuracy. However, turning off a large heating current (as required by modern MOSFETs with low on-state resistances) takes some time because of parasitic inductances in the measurement system. Thus, most setups do not allow the characterization of the junction temperature in the time range below several tens of μs.
In this paper, an optimized measurement setup is presented which allows accurate Tj characterization already 3 μs after turn-off of heating. With this, it becomes possible to experimentally investigate the influence of thermal capacitances close to the active region of the device. Measurement results will be presented for advanced power MOSFETs with very large heating currents up to 220 A. Three bonding variants are investigated and the observed differences will be explained.
This paper presents a concurrency control mechanism that does not follow a "one concurrency control mechanism fits all needs" strategy. With the presented mechanism a transaction runs under several concurrency control mechanisms and the appropriate one is chosen based on the accessed data. For this purpose, the data is divided into four classes based on its access type and usage (semantics). Class O (the optimistic class) implements a first-committer-wins strategy, class R (the reconciliation class) implements a first-n-committers-win strategy, class P (the pessimistic class) implements a first-reader-wins strategy, and class E (the escrow class) implements a first-n-readers-win strategy. Accordingly, the model is called OjRjPjE. The selected concurrency control mechanism may be automatically adapted at run-time according to the current load or a known usage profile. This run-time adaptation allows OjRjPjE to balance the commit rate and the response time even under changing conditions. OjRjPjE outperforms the Snapshot Isolation concurrency control in terms of response time by a factor of approximately 4.5 under heavy transactional load (4000 concurrent transactions). As consequence, the degree of concurrency is 3.2 times higher.
In this article feedback linearization for control-affine nonlinear systems is extended to systems where linearization is not feasible in the complete state space by combining state feedback linearization and homotopy numerical continuation in subspaces of the phase space where feedback linearization fails. Starting from the conceptual simplicity of feedback linearization, this new method expands the scope of their applicability to irregular systems with poorly expressed relative degree. The method is illustrated on a simple SISO–system and by controlling the speed and the rotor flux linkage in a three phase induction machine.
Im Kundenbeziehungsmanagement besteht ein großes Interesse an der Nutzung von Social Media. Allerdings finden sich aktuell kaum konzeptionell durchdachte und empirisch überprüfte Lösungen für Social CRM.
Social Media bieten innovative Perspektiven für das Management der Kundenbeziehung. Die Nutzung dieser Möglichkeiten ist jedoch mit hohen Anforderungen an die Marketingstrategie verbunden, was zuweilen vernachlässigt wird.
Contemporary theory and practice of organizations. - Part 2: Leading and changing the organization
(2016)
Organizations are the business world´s central actors, employing multiple people who pursue collective goals while linked to an external environment. The text is filled with contributions by alumni of the ESB Business School at Reutlingen University. Part II provides a detailed overview of key themes in modern leadership and coaching, as well as organizational intervention.
Organizations are the business world´s central actors, employing multiple people who pursue collective goals while linked to an external environment. This volume is the first of two books dedicated to defining current theories of organizations and their practices. The text is filled with contributions by alumni of the ESB Business School at Reutlingen University. Part I discusses contemporary organizational forms and properties, including team aspects.
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.
Das Thema Energieeffizienz ist speziell durch das neue Energiedienstleistungsgesetz in den Vordergrund gerückt. Dabei wird oft übersehen, dass der größte Kostenblock im verarbeitenden Gewerbe Ausgaben für Materialien darstellen. Um Kostensenkungspotenziale zu nutzen und die Wettbewerbsfähigkeit zu erhöhen, müssen Unternehmen daher konsequent auch alle Materialströme betrachten. Dabei stellt sich die Frage, wie ein Ressourceneffizienzprojekt strategisch und operativ angegangen werden kann. Das Steinbeis-Transferzentrum Energie und Umweltverfahrenstechnik, Eco-Management zeigt, welche Möglichkeiten im Bereich Ressourceneffizienz im produzierenden Gewerbe bestehen und dass es sich lohnt, hier genauer hinzusehen.
From raw ion mobility measurements to disease classification : a comparison of analysis processes
(2015)
Ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) is a technology for the detection of volatile compounds in the air of exhaled breath that is increasingly used in medical applications. One major goal is to classify patients into disease groups, for example diseased versus healthy, from simple breath samples. Raw IMS measurements are data matrices in which peak regions representing the compounds have to be identified and quantified. A typical analysis process consists of pre-processing and peak detection in single experiments, peak clustering to obtain consensus peaks across several experiments, and classification of samples based on the resulting multivariate peak intensities. Recently several automated algorithms for peak detection and peak clustering have been introduced, in order to overcome the current need for human-based analysis that is slow, subjective and sometimes not reproducible. We present an unbiased comparison of a multitude of combinations of peak processing and multivariate classification algorithms on a disease dataset. The specific combination of the algorithms for the different analysis steps determines the classification accuracy, with the encouraging result that certain fully-automated combinations perform even better than current manual approaches.
A TLP system with a very low characteristic impedance of 1.5 Ω and a selectable pulse length from 0.5 to 6 μs is presented. It covers the entire operation region of many power semiconductors up to 700 V and 400 A. Ist applicability is demonstrated by determining the Output characteristics for two Cool MOS devices up to destruction.
This paper presents a measurement setup and an assembly technique suitable for characterization of power semiconductor devices under very high temperature conditions exceeding 500°C. An important application of this is the experimental investigation of wide bandgap semiconductors. Measurement results are shown for a 1200V SiC MOSFET and a 650V depletion mode GaN HEMT.
DMOS transistors often suffer from substantial self-heating during high power dissipation, which can lead to thermal destruction if the device temperature reaches excessive values. A successfully demonstrated method to reduce the peak temperature is the redistribution of power dissipation density from the hotter to the cooler device areas by careful layout modification. However, this is very tedious and time-consuming if complex-shaped devices as often found in industrial applications are considered.
This paper presents an approach for fully automatic layout optimization which requires only a few hours processing time. The approach is applied to complex shaped test structures which are investigated by measurements and electro-thermal simulations. Results show a significantly lower peak temperature and an energy capability gain of 84 %, offering potential for a 18 % size reduction of active area.
Flash SSDs are omnipresent as database storage. HDD replacement is seamless since Flash SSDs implement the same legacy hardware and software interfaces to enable backward compatibility. Yet, the price paid is high as backward compatibility masks the native behaviour, incurs significant complexity and decreases I/O performance, making it non-robust and unpredictable. Flash SSDs are black-boxes. Although DBMS have ample mechanisms to control hardware directly and utilize the performance potential of Flash memory, the legacy interfaces and black-box architecture of Flash devices prevent them from doing so.
In this paper we demonstrate NoFTL, an approach that enables native Flash access and integrates parts of the Flashmanagement functionality into the DBMS yielding significant performance increase and simplification of the I/O stack. NoFTL is implemented on real hardware based on the OpenSSD research platform. The contributions of this paper include: (i) a description of the NoFTL native Flash storage architecture; (ii) its integration in Shore-MT and (iii) performance evaluation of NoFTL on a real Flash SSD and on an on-line data-driven Flash emulator under TPCB, C,E and H workloads. The performance evaluation results indicate an improvement of at least 2.4x on real hardware over conventional Flash storage; as well as better utilisation of native Flash parallelism.
In the present tutorial we perform a cross-cut analysis of database systems from the perspective of modern storage technology, namely Flash memory. We argue that neither the design of modern DBMS, nor the architecture of flash storage technologies are aligned with each other. The result is needlessly suboptimal DBMS performance and inefficient flash utilisation as well as low flash storage endurance and reliability. We showcase new DBMS approaches with improved algorithms and leaner architectures, designed to leverage the properties of modern storage technologies. We cover the area of transaction management and multi-versioning, putting a special emphasis on: (i) version organisation models and invalidation mechanisms in multi-versioning DBMS; (ii) Flash storage management especially on append-based storage in tuple granularity; (iii) Flash-friendly buffer management; as well as (iv) improvements in the searching and indexing models. Furthermore, we present our NoFTL approach to native Flash access that integrates parts of the flash-management functionality into the DBMS yielding significant performance increase and simplification of the I/O stack. In addition, we cover the basics of building large Flash storage for DBMS and revisit some of the RAID techniques and principles.
Real Time Charging (RTC) applications that reside in the telecommunications domain have the need for extremely fast database transactions. Today´s providers rely mostly on in-memory databases for this kind of information processing. A flexible and modular benchmark suite specifically designed for this domain provides a valuable framework to test the performance of different DB candidates. Besides a data and a load generator, the suite also includes decoupled database connectors and use case components for convenient customization and extension. Such easily produced test results can be used as guidance for choosing a subset of candidates for further tuning/testing and finally evaluating the database most suited to the chosen use cases. This is why our benchmark suite can be of value for choosing databases for RTC use cases.
Das dynamische Verhalten von Werkzeugmaschinen beeinflusst in erheblichem Maße die Leistungsfähigkeit und Genauigkeit spanender Werkzeugmaschinen. Das Verständnis der das Rattern beeinflussenden Faktoren ist von entscheidender Bedeutung für die konstruktive Auslegung der Maschinen, Werkzeuge, Vorrichtungen und Prozesse. Das dynamische Verhalten kann durch eine gezielte Modifikation von Steifigkeit und Dämpfung erheblich verbessert werden. Es werden unterschiedliche Möglichkeiten im Bereich der Gestelle, Komponenten und Werkzeuge aufgezeigt, mit denen die dynamischen Eigenschaften optimiert werden.
Continuum physics modeling of tumor growth is a rich topic with room for rather sophisticated models of reaction-transport and mechanics. It also has the attraction of being able to pose and examine solutions to certain questions on tumor growth that are difficult to access using experimental methods alone. However, the imperative of experimental biophysical investigations cannot by understated.
A behavior marker for measuring non-technical skills of software professionals : an empirical study
(2015)
Managers recognize that software development teams need to be developed. Although technical skills are necessary, non-technical (NT) skills are equally, if not more, necessary for project success. Currently, there are no proven tools to measure the NT skills of software developers or software development teams. Behavioral markers (observable behaviors that have positive or negative impacts on individual or team performance) are successfully used by airline and medical industries to measure NT skill performance. This research developed and validated a behavior marker tool rated video clips of software development teams. The initial results show that the behavior marker tool can be reliably used with minimal training.
Automated stabilization of loading capacity of coal shearer screw with controlled cutting drive
(2015)
A solution of topical scientific problem of coal shearer output increase providing minimum specific power supply for coal cutting, transportation, and loading in terms of thin seams has been proposed. The solution is based on the use of earlier proposed criterion of screw gumming for optimum cutting velocity-coal shearer feed rate ratio in the context of increased screw rotation owing to phase voltage frequency increase. Simulation results of automated control system for coal shearer operations with frequency-controlled cutting drive within thin seams have confirmed the efficiency of the system using proposed algorithm of smart analysis of coal shearer power signal.
Distraction of the driver is one of the most frequent causes for car accidents. We aim for a computational cognitive model predicting the driver’s degree of distraction during driving while performing a secondary task, such as talking with co-passengers. The secondary task might cognitively involve the driver to differing degrees depending on the topic of the conversation or the number of co-passengers. In order to detect these subtle differences in everyday driving situations, we aim to analyse in-car audio signals and combine this information with head pose and face tracking information. In the first step, we will assess driving, video and audio parameters reliably predicting cognitive distraction of the driver. These parameters will be used to train the cognitive model in estimating the degree of the driver’s distraction. In the second step, we will train and test the cognitive model during conversations of the driver with co-passengers during active driving. This paper describes the work in progress of our first experiment with preliminary results concerning driving parameters corresponding to the driver’s degree of distraction. In addition, the technical implementation of our experiment combining driving, video and audio data and first methodological results concerning the auditory analysis will be presented. The overall aim for the application of the cognitive distraction model is the development of a mobile user profile computing the individual distraction degree and being applicable also to other systems.
Despite 30 years of Electronic Design Automation, analog IC layouts are still handcrafted in a laborious fashion today due to the complex challenge of considering all relevant design constraints. This paper presents Self-organized Wiring and Arrangement of Responsive Modules (SWARM), a novel approach addressing the problem with a multi-agent system: autonomous layout modules interact with each other to evoke the emergence of overall compact arrangements that fit within a given layout zone. SWARM´s unique advantage over conventional optimization-based and procedural approaches is its ability to consider crucial design constraints both explicitly and implicitly. Several given examples show that by inducing a synergistic flow of self-organization, remarkable layout results can emerge from SWARM’s decentralized decision-making model.
Das in Kundenforschungsprojekten häufig zu beobachtende Standardvorgehen liefert oftmals fehlerhafte Ergebnisse. Wir plädieren daher für einen "Schritt zurück", um einen ganzheitlichen Blick auf den Baukasten der Kundenforschungsinstrumente zu ermöglichen. Aufbauend auf dem ersten Beitrag in WiSt-Heft Nr. 4/2016, S. 188–193, in dem die Ausgangslage beschrieben und die ersten beiden Dimensionen der Kundenanalyse (Objekt der Forschung, und Forschungsdesign) diskutiert wurden, werden im vorliegenden zweiten Teil Aspekte der Datenanalyse thematisiert.
Kundenforschungsprojekte sind häufig durch einen beschränkten Fokus auf bestimmte Untersuchungsobjekte, Forschungsdesigns und Datenanalyseverfahren geprägt. Leider ist das häufig zu beobachtende Standardvorgehen nicht immer korrekt und liefert in vielen Fällen sogar fehlerhafte Ergebnisse. Die Diskussion des optimalen Untersuchungsobjekts und des geeigneten Untersuchungsdesigns sind Gegenstand des ersten Teils dieses Beitrages.
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.
Current techniques for chromosome analysis need to be improved for rapid, economical identification of complex chromosomal defects by sensitive and selective visualisation. In this paper, we present a straightforward method for characterising unstained human metaphase chromosomes. Backscatter imaging in a dark-field setup combined with visible and short near-infrared spectroscopy is used to monitor morphological differences in the distribution of the chromosomal fine structure in human metaphase chromosomes. The reasons for the scattering centres in the fine structure are explained. Changes in the scattering centres during preparation of the metaphases are discussed. FDTD simulations are presented to substantiate the experimental findings. We show that local scattering features consisting of underlying spectral modulations of higher frequencies associated with a high variety of densely packed chromatin can be represented by their scatter profiles even on a sub-microscopic level. The result is independent of the chromosome preparation and structure size. This analytical method constitutes a rapid, costeffective and label-free cytogenetic technique which can be used in a standard light microscope.
Virtuelle Kraftwerke bieten durch große Flexibilitätspotentiale die Chance, die Integration fluktuierender, erneuerbarer Energieerzeuger zu ermöglichen und dadurch die Netzstabilität positiv zu beeinflussen. Für einen wirtschaftlichen Betrieb virtueller Kraftwerke sind jedoch neue Geschäftsmodelle notwendig. Der folgende Artikel behandelt die Anforderung an Geschäftsmodelle für virtuelle Kraftwerke sowie konkrete Ausgestaltungsmöglichkeiten eines Marktes, der auf virtuelle Kraftwerke ausgerichtet ist. Die Untersuchungen wurden im Rahmen einer Projektarbeit im Masterstudiengang SENCE an der Hochschule Reutlingen im Forschungsprojekt „Virtuelles Kraftwerk Neckar- Alb“ durchgeführt. Das „Virtuelle Kraftwerk Neckar- Alb“ wird vom BMWi als Kooperationsnetzwerkprojekt im Rahmen der Förderlinie ZIM-KN unterstützt.
This book shows how the objectification orientated controlling approach can ensure the successful management of a company in a challenging and competitive environment, which is characterized by increasing complexity, dynamic, and uncertainty. The objectification orientated controlling approach outlined in this book is based on the philosophy of a service provider who supports managers and decision-makers. This idea is well-reflected in the term "business partner", which shows that only management and controlling together are able to ensure the success of a company. The author combines scientific and practical evidence to deduce the objectification orientated controlling approach. The challenges of globalization, a stringent alignment at company value, as well as the objectification approach are the main building blocks. Based on these criteria for success, the controlling approach can be individually shaped for each specific company. This book is aimed at students and practitioners who want to learn more about improving business using a state-of-the-art support function, controlling.
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to assess the state of the art concerning the information demand of the sustainable consumer focusing on the characterization of the sustainable customer, the demanded information content with regard to fashion products and the expected information frame.
Findings: Key findings of this paper are that sustainable consumers share certain psychographics such as sustainable knowledge and perceived customer effectiveness. So demanded information content is about general sustainable knowledge and the concrete impact of sustainable purchase behavior. Fashion product attributes demanded are details about production, material and the after-purchase use. Concerning the information frame, consumers expect information to be credible, transparent and comprehensible. Eco-labels play an important role within the information frame.
Purpose: This paper is to show what sustainable fashion is and how it has developed in recent years. Also the paper discusses which factors are important in order to be sustainable. Above all, it's about customers who show a lot interest in sustainable fashion. Child labor, working conditions, poor quality and poisonous substances are stricty rejected by these consumers. Amazingly, fashion companies that repeatedly hit the headlines with bad properties are very successful. It's about the sustainable oxymoron, the act and want of the consumer.
Findings: It is difficult to be sustainable. The reasons for that are the consumption, not much transparency in textile chains, fast fashion and much more. It's almost impossible for a product to achieve the 100 percent sustainability. On one hand the consumers want to have sustainable products, on the other hand they purchase for newness and cheap clothes. It has become clear that they buy in a conflict.
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the importance of word-of-mouth for fashion companies and to answer the research questions if fashion companies should integrate their customers actively in their marketing communication and if so, how can they approach the conversion of their customers into promoters?
Findings: The integraton of the customer into the marketing mix is inevitable in today's marketplace. Customers are heavily influencing the fashion industry escpecially the transmission of trends. Thereof, a redefinition and proactive integration of the customer as promoter is necessary.
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyse the main elements of successful customer loyalty programs in general and emotional components of the buying process in order to determine loyalty programs for fashion retailers.
Findings: The results of this study indicate that loyalty programs in fashion retail require considerable non-monetary benefits such as sense of exclusive membership and enhanced status to distinguish from competitors customer loyalty programs.
Purpose: This research paper deals with the question how the degree of transparency of a payment method influences the buying decision in fashion business. Therefore, consumer behavior and the decision-making process in fashion business are reviewed. Furthermore, the impact different degrees of payment transparency have on consumer behavior in general are compiled and evaluated.
Findings: It is assumed that the degree of transparency of a payment method has an impact on consumption in fashion business. Transparency relates positively to the pain of paying, which functions as a self-regulation tool by sending out signals about the conceivable consequences of spending money. Hence, the less transparent a payment is, the higher the willingness to spend will be. Moreover, it is assumed that transparency not only has an impact on consumption in fashion business, but the effect is also reinforced by consumer behavior.
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to elaborate if video marketing enhance emotional involvement. Therefore a literature research is done in two parts. Firstly there is a review on the development of marketing communication and video marketing. In the second part of the review the focus is set on emotions itself, how emotional involvement is generated and how emotions influence consumption behavior.
Findings: The key finding of this paper is that videos can enhance emotions through their multi-sensory character in an efficient way. Furthermore there could be identified that especially viral videos create emotional enhancement and meet the direct marketing approach.
Purpose: This research paper provides a general assessment and analysis of social media in digital marketing context and highlights its current use, risks, but also its enormous potential for companies to extent their customer reach by using such new channels, which has not been broadly established yet.
Findings: Key findings demonstrate the importance of social media engagement for companies and present respective difficulties in designing a social media strategy. Since marketers are under constant pressure to justify social media spending, measurement methods need to be established. Expressing the return on social media spending in actual numbers has so far represented major obstacle for firms.
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze if the practice of emotional fashion advertising has ethical dimensions, which must be considered by the companies using those advertising approaches in order to adhere to their general ethical and social responsibility.
Findings: First it was shown that companies have a social and hence ethical responsibility toward the society they operate in and that this responsibility includes their marketing and advertising activities. Furthermore it was examined how emotional advertising works in order to analyze this practice from an ethical point of view. It was shown that an emotional advertising approach can have negative effects on consumers and therefore could jeopardize a company's ethical responsibility.
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze if omni-channeling is a prerequisite for physical stores to create an emotional shopping experience.
Findings: Due to the technological developments an changes in consumer behavior, the retailer needs to adapt digital tools and to offer services that link on- and offline channels ensuring an emotional shopping experience. Multi-channel retailers need to integrate their channels to satisfy the customer.
Purpose: Emotions play a central role in approach-avoidance customer conflicts in retailing. The purpose of this paper is to assess the influence of emotions in the fashion retail environment, in particular to investigate how emotions can be best defined and clustered as well as how emotions affect the costumer behavior.
Findings: The conceptual paper reveals a framework explaining diverse theories of emotional models existing in literature. Moreover, the stimulus-organism-response model is applied to costumer behaviour in the fashion retail to explain the shopping experience under the influence of cognitive and affective emotional processes. Finally, it is concluded that point of sales have to be turned to point of emotions in order retailers are able to develop sustainable relationships with their customers.
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.
Die Entwicklung neuer Produkte findet nicht nur abteilungs-, sondern zunehmend organisationsübergreifend statt. Kooperationen in der Produktentstehung gewinnen folglich vermehrt an Bedeutung, was neue Anforderungen an den Produktentstehungsprozess (PEP) und die Zusammenarbeit in diesem schafft. Mit diesen Herausforderungen sieht sich auch der Forschungscampus ARENA2036 konfrontiert. Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit der Entwicklung eines für die interdisziplinäre, interorganisationale Zusammenarbeit geeigneten PEP-Modells. Dieses wird auf Basis von theoretischen Grundlagen, Experteninterviews und unter Berücksichtigung der praktischen Gegebenheiten in ARENA2036 modelliert. Der finale PEP untergliedert sich in einen übergeordneten Prozess, in den die individuellen PEPs der ARENA2036-Partner untergeordnet sind. Durch diese Struktur können die heterogenen PEPs der Partner vereint und die notwendige forscherische Freiheit und Flexibilität gewährleistet werden. Weiterhin wird der PEP durch geeignete Konzepte und Methoden der kooperativen Zusammenarbeit flankiert.
Die Automobilindustrie sieht sich seit Jahren rasant verändernden Markt-, Umwelt- und Wettbewerbsbedingungen ausgesetzt. Der Entwicklungsprozess in der Automobilindustrie wird dadurch zunehmend komplexer. Die Einbeziehung neuer Partner aus anderen Industriebereichen und der Wissenschaft stellt hierbei ein großes Innovationspotential dar, insbesondere Systeminnovationen können hierdurch gefördert werden. Die Herausforderungen solch interdisziplinärer, interorganisationaler Entwicklungsprojekte können nur im geeigneten Umfeld gemeistert werden. In der Literatur als auch in der Industrie lassen sich zahlreiche Kooperationsmodelle identifizieren. Die Eignung dieser Modelle für die interdisziplinäre, interorganisationale Entwicklung in der Automobilindustrie wird anhand geeigneter Kriterien bewertet. Abschließend werden die Ergebnisse der Analyse empirisch überprüft und für den praktischen Fall der ARENA2036 angewendet.
Dieser Beitrag beschreibt das Markenmanagement von Profifußballvereinen durch den Einsatz von Social Media. Um sich ein stückweit vom nichtplanbaren sportlichen Erfolg unabhängig zu machen, sollten sich Fußballvereine als Marke positionieren. Dazu steht ihnen allerdings traditionellerweise ein geringes Marketingbudget zur Verfügung. Social Media bietet Fußballvereinen die Möglichkeit, relativ kostengünstig und effektiv die eigene Marke aufzubauen und zu pflegen. Der Beitrag erläutert diesbezüglich die Notwendigkeit eines systematischen Markenmanagements, geht auf die Besonderheiten der Vermarktung eines Profifußballvereins ein und zeigt anhand von Beispielen, wie Social Media zum Markenaufbau respektive zur Markenpflege genutzt werden kann.
Facebook ist gegenwärtig das meist genutzte soziale Netzwerk weltweit. Es ist somit nicht verwunderlich, dass immer mehr Unternehmen Facebook im Rahmen ihres Marketings einsetzen. Die Integration von Facebook in das Markenmanagement avanciert zunehmend zum Erfolgsfaktor innovativer Unternehmen. Ein professionelles Markenmanagement mit diesem sozialen Netzwerk bietet die Möglichkeit, einen nachhaltigen Mehrwert zu generieren. In diesem Beitrag wird die Rolle von Facebook im Markenmanagement eruiert. Im Kontrast zum steigenden Bewusstsein der Vorteile von Marketing mit Facebook bleiben die Risiken einer inadäquaten Nutzung oftmals ungeachtet. Die übereilte und unsachgemäße Implementierung von Facebook in den Marketing-Mix kann sowohl in enormen ökonomischen Schäden als auch in einem Reputationsverlust für die Marke münden. Um dieses Risiko zu minimieren, werden im vorliegenden Beitrag Erfolgsfaktoren für den Einsatz von Facebook im Markenmanagement herausgearbeitet, die auf einer Analyse erfolgreicher Marketing-Kampagnen und Best-Practice-Beispielen basieren.
The sol-gel approach offers a new class of flame retardants with a high potential for textile applications. Pure inorganic sol-gel systems do, however, typically not provide an effect sufficient for a sel-fextinguishing behavior on its own. We therefore employed compounds with nitrogen and phosphorous containing groups. Especially the combination of compounds with both elements, using the synergism, is promising for the aim to find well-applicable, environmental friendly, halogen-free flame retardants. In our approach, the sol-gel network ensured on the one hand the link to the textile as nonflammable binder. On the other hand, the sol-gel-based networks modified with functional groups containing nitrogen groups provided flame retardancy. In this way, a flame retardant finishing for textiles could be obtained by simple finishing techniques as, e.g., padding. Besides a characterization with various flame tests (e.g., according to EN ISO 15025 e protective clothing), we used a combination of cone calorimetry, thermogravimetry coupled with infrared spectroscopy analysis and scanning electron microscopy to analyze the mechanism of flame retardancy. Thus, we could show that the main mechanism is based on the formation of a protection layer. This work provides a model system for sol-gel-based flame retardants and has the potential to show the principle feasibility of the sol-gel approach in flame retardancy of textiles. It therefore lays the groundwork for tailoring sol-gel layers from newly synthesized sol-gel precursors containing nitrogen and phosphorous groups.
Several ionic liquids are excellent solvents for cellulose. Starting from that finishing of PET fabrics with cellulose dissolved in ionic liquids like 1-ethyl 3-methyl imidazolium acetate, diethylphosphate and chloride, or the chloride of butyl-methyl imidazolium has been investigated. Finishing has been carried out from solutions of different concentrations, using microcrystalline cellulose or cotton and by employing different cross-linkers. Viscosity of solutions has been investigated for different ionic liquids,concentrations, cellulose sources, linkers and temperatures. Since ionic liquids exhibit no vapor pressure,simple pad-dry-cure processes are excluded. Before drying the ionic liquid has to be removed by a rinsing step. Accordingly rinsing with fresh ionic liquid followed by water or the direct rinsing with waterhave been tested. The amount of cellulose deposited has been investigated by gravimetry, zinc chlorideiodine test as well as reactive dyeing. Results concerning wettability, water up-take, surface resistance,wear-resistance or washing stability are presented.
Das Thema Energiewende ist in aller Munde. Sie soll eine sichere, umweltverträgliche und wirtschaftlich erfolgreiche Zukunft ermöglichen. Ein Ansatz dafür ist die dezentrale, also verbrauchernahe Energieversorgung. Der Trend geht weg vom konventionellen Kraftwerk und hin zur Kraft-Wärme-Koppelung und erneuerbaren Energien. Für einen absehbaren Zeitraum geht es auch darum, zentrale und dezentrale Elemente sinnvoll miteinander zu verknüpfen. Mit der Frage, wie Energiesysteme angepasst und kombiniert werden müssen, um den Energiehaushalt – den nationalen wie den von Unternehmen und Privatpersonen – optimieren zu können, beschäftigt sich das Reutlinger Energiezentrum für Dezentrale Energiesysteme und Energieeffizienz in Lehre und Forschung. Es ist die Kombination aus Technik und Betriebswirtschaft, aus einzelwirtschaftlicher Optimierung und aus Gesamtsicht, die das Reutlinger Energiezentrum ausmacht. Im Folgenden werden die Schwerpunkte des Forschungsteams dargestellt.
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.
Services Oriented Architectures (SOA) have emerged as a useful framework for developing interoperable, large-scale systems, typically implemented using the Web Services (WS) standards. However, the maintenance and evolution of SOA systems present many challenges. SmartLife applications are intelligent user-centered systems and a special class of SOA systems that present even greater challenges for a software maintainer. Ontologies and ontological modeling can be used to support the evolution of SOA systems. This paper describes the development of a SOA evolution ontology and its use to develop an ontological model of a SOA system. The ontology is based on a standard SOA ontology. The ontological model can be used to provide semantic and visual support for software maintainers during routine maintenance tasks. We discuss a case study to illustrate this approach, as well as the strengths and limitations.
The influence of turbidity on the Raman signal strengths of condensed matter is theoretically analyzed and measured with laboratory - scale equipment for remote sensing. The results show the quantitative dependence of back- and forward-scattered signals on the thickness and elastic-scattering properties of matter. In the extreme situation of thin, highly turbid layers, the measured Raman signal strengths exceed their transparent analogs by more than a factor of ten. The opposite behavior is found for thick layers of low turbidity, where the presence of a small amount of scatterers leads to a decrease of the measured signal. The wide range of turbidities appearing in nature is experimentally realized with stacked polymer layers and solid/liquid dispersions, and theoretically modeled by the equation of radiative transfer using the analytical diffusion approximation or random walk simulations.
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.
Managers recognize that software development project teams need to be developed and guided. Although technical skills are necessary, non-technical (NT) skills are equally, if not more, necessary for project success. Currently, there are no proven tools to measure the NT skills of software developers or software development teams. Behavioral markers (observable behaviors that have positive or negative impacts on individual or team performance) are beginning to be successfully used by airline and medical industries to measure NT skill performance. The purpose of this research is to develop and validate the behavior marker system tool that can be used by different managers or coaches to measure the NT skills of software development individuals and teams. This paper presents an empirical study conducted at the Software Factory where users of the behavior marker tool rated video clips of software development teams. The initial results show that the behavior marker tool can be reliably used with minimal training.
This article reviews the literature on Christmas economics. First, we present an overall picture of the debate on the potential welfare loss of gift-giving and we show strategies that reduce the potential welfare loss and might increase the number of presents received. Second, we discuss the effect of Christmas on prices and the business cycle. We provide evidence that at Christmas stock prices and airfares increase, while food prices decrease.
Redirected walking techniques allow people to walk in a larger virtual space than the physical extents of the laboratory. We describe two experiments conducted to investigate human sensitivity to walking on a curved path and to validate a new redirected walking technique. In a psychophysical experiment, we found that sensitivity to walking on a curved path was significantly lower for slower walking speeds (radius of 10 meters versus 22 meters). In an applied study, we investigated the influence of a velocity-dependent dynamic gain controller and an avatar controller on the average distance that participants were able to freely walk before needing to be reoriented. The mean walked distance was significantly greater in the dynamic gain controller condition, as compared to the static controller (22 meters versus 15 meters). Our results demonstrate that perceptually motivated dynamic redirected walking techniques, in combination with reorientation techniques, allow for unaided exploration of a large virtual city model.
Ethics matters! Diese Einsicht führt dazu, für Personalmanager zweierlei zu fordern: eine umfassende Managementkompetenz sowie eine hohe ethische Handlungskompetenz. Dies hat Auswirkungen auf das professionelle Selbstverständnis von Personalmanagern. Letztlich werden Personalmanager im Unternehmen nur dann nachhaltig Erfolg haben, wenn es ihnen gelingt, unter Beachtung der sozialen und gesellschaftlichen Auswirkungen personalwirtschaftlichen Handelns einen Wertschöpfungsbeitrag zu generieren.
Damit stellt die Interpretation eines unternehmerisch denkenden Personalmanagers, der als Business Partner den Wertschöpfungsbeitrag vor Augen hat und die Interessen des Unternehmens auch gegen Widerstände der Mitarbeiter durchsetzt, eine deutlich verkürzte dar. Zwar ist diese verkürzte Interpretation nicht die derzeit überall vorherrschende Auslegung der Rolle des Personalmanagements. Trotzdem sollten und könnten Personalmanager künftig - beispielsweise in Zeitschriften, auf Tagungen und Kongressen - wieder stärker über die ethischen Grundlagen der Profession streiten. Dies wäre ein wichtiger Beitrag zur Professionalisierung des Personalmanagements.
Bodenbeläge aus Feinsteinzeug und Naturstein werden poliert und zur Gewährleistung ausreichender Rutschfestigkeit im Innenbereich (Bewertungsgruppe der Rutschsicherheit R9 und R10) werden durch Laserbehandlung mikroskopischen Vertiefungen erzeugt. In Laborversuchen wurden bei einigen Materialien deutliche Vorteile bzgl. des Anschmutzverhaltens und Reinigung festgestellt. Es sollte untersucht werden, inwieweit dadurch in der Praxis tatsächlich eine Reduktion des Reinigungsaufwandes und der damit verbundenen Umweltbelastung möglich ist, im Gegensatz zu anderen Oberflächenbearbeitungen, die die Bewertungsgruppe "R9" erzielen. Die Oberflächenbehandlung und die damit verbundene Reinigung sollten optimiert werden hinsichtlich minimalem Aufwand und minimalem Einsatz von Reinigungsmittel für Unterhaltsreinigung und der dazugehörigen Grundreinigungs- und Zwischenreinigungsfrequenz. Ziel war eine Reduktion um bis zum Faktor 2. Dazu sollten für verschiedene typische und weit gebräuchliche Bodenplatten aus Feinsteinzeug und Naturstein Abstand und Größe der Vertiefungen optimiert und kontrolliert werden. Die Dosierungen der Reinigungsmittel sollten, ausgehend von der derzeitigen Herstellervorgabe, reduziert werden. Die Abstände zwischen den Grundreinigungen, die mit einer starken Umweltbelastung verbunden sind, sollten vergrößert werden. Begleitend sollte eine Methode für die Vorhersage und Messung der Verschmutzung entwickelt werden. Diese wird in der Entwicklung benutzt und soll nach dem Projekt für die Optimierungen an anderen Materialien, z. B. PVC oder Polyolefinböden nutzbar sein und auch als Vorarbeit für eine Zertifizierung der Böden nach LEED dienen. Bislang gab es zwar Hinweise für die Vorteile bzgl. Reinigung, die aber weder optimiert noch belegbar waren. Deshalb hatte sich dieses Verfahren noch nicht durchgesetzt. Der Marktanteil liegt bei Naturstein < 10%, im Bereich Feinsteinzeug weit niedriger.
Entrepreneurs and small and medium enterprises usually have issues on developing new prototypes, new ideas or testing new techniques. In order to help them, in the last years, academic Software Factories, a new concept of collaboration between universities and companies have been developed. Software Factories provide a unique environment for students and companies. Students benefit from the possibility of working in a real work environment learning how to apply the state of the art of the existing techniques and showing their skills to entrepreneurs. Companies benefit from the risk-free environment where they can develop new ideas, in a protected environment. Universities finally benefit from this setup as a perfect environment for empirical studies in industrial-like environment. In this paper, we present the network of academic Software Factories in Europe, showing how companies had already benefit from existing Software Factories and reporting success stories. The results of this paper can increase the network of the factories and help other universities and companies to setup similar environment to boost the local economy.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Background and purpose: Transapical aortic valve replacement (TAVR) is a recent minimally invasive surgical treatment technique for elderly and high-risk patients with severe aortic stenosis. In this paper,a simple and accurate image-based method is introduced to aid the intra-operative guidance of TAVR procedure under 2-D X-ray fluoroscopy.
Methods: The proposed method fuses a 3-D aortic mesh model and anatomical valve landmarks with live 2-D fluoroscopic images. The 3-D aortic mesh model and landmarks are reconstructed from interventional X-ray C-arm CT system, and a target area for valve implantation is automatically estimated using these aortic mesh models.Based on template-based tracking approach, the overlay of visualized 3-D aortic mesh model, land-marks and target area of implantation is updated onto fluoroscopic images by approximating the aortic root motion from a pigtail catheter motion without contrast agent. Also, a rigid intensity-based registration algorithm is used to track continuously the aortic root motion in the presence of contrast agent.Furthermore, a sensorless tracking of the aortic valve prosthesis is provided to guide the physician to perform the appropriate placement of prosthesis into the estimated target area of implantation.
Results: Retrospective experiments were carried out on fifteen patient datasets from the clinical routine of the TAVR. The maximum displacement errors were less than 2.0 mm for both the dynamic overlay of aortic mesh models and image-based tracking of the prosthesis, and within the clinically accepted ranges. Moreover, high success rates of the proposed method were obtained above 91.0% for all tested patient datasets.
Conclusion: The results showed that the proposed method for computer-aided TAVR is potentially a helpful tool for physicians by automatically defining the accurate placement position of the prosthesis during the surgical procedure.
Software process improvement (SPI) is around for decades: frameworks are proposed, success factors are studied, and experiences have been reported. However, the sheer mass of concepts, approaches, and standards published over the years overwhelms practitioners as well as researchers. What is out there? Are there new emerging approaches? What are open issues? Still, we struggle to answer the question for what is the current state of SPI and related research? In this paper, we present initial results from a systematic mapping study to shed light on the field of SPI and to draw conclusions for future research directions. An analysis of 635 publications draws a big picture of SPI-related research of the past 25 years. Our study shows a high number of solution proposals, experience reports, and secondary studies, but only few theories. In particular, standard SPI models like CMMI and ISO/IEC 15504 are analyzed, enhanced, and evaluated for applicability, whereas these standards are critically discussed from the perspective of SPI in small-to- medium-sized companies, which leads to new specialized frameworks. Furthermore, we find a growing interest in success factors to aid companies in conducting SPI.
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.
For years, agile methods are considered the most promising route toward successful software development, and a considerable number of published studies the (successful) use of agile methods and reports on the benefits companies have from adopting agile methods. Yet, since the world is not black or white, the question for what happened to the traditional models arises. Are traditional models replaced by agile methods? How is the transformation toward Agile managed, and, moreover, where did it start? With this paper we close a gap in literature by studying the general process use over time to investigate how traditional and agile methods are used. Is there coexistence or do agile methods accelerate the traditional processes’ extinction? The findings of our literature study comprise two major results: First, studies and reliable numbers on the general process model use are rare, i.e., we lack quantitative data on the actual process use and, thus, we often lack the ability to ground process-related research in practically relevant issues. Second, despite the assumed dominance of agile methods, our results clearly show that companies enact context-specific hybrid solutions in which traditional and agile development approaches are used in combination.
Innovative Antriebstechnik muss die aktuellen Anforderungen und die spezifischen Anwenderwünsche mit den verfügbaren technologischen Möglichkeiten in hocheffiziente Lösungen umsetzen. Dazu müssen Elektronik, Software und Mechanik von der Berechnung bis zur Ausführung passgenau integriert und optimiert sein, um auch die heutigen ökonomischen und ökologischen Ansprüche an moderne Antriebe zu erfüllen.
Rapid value delivery requires a company to utilize empirical evaluation of new features and products in order to avoid unnecessary product risks. This helps to make data-driven decisions and to ensure that the development is focused on features that provide real value for customers. Short feedback loops are a prerequisite as they allow for fast learning and reduced reaction times. Continuous experimentation is a development practice where the entire R&D process is guided by constantly conducting experiments and collecting feedback. Although principles of continuous experimentation have been successfully applied in domains such as game software or SAAS, it is not obvious how to transfer continuous experimentation to the business to-business domain. In this article, a case study from a medium-sized software company in the B2B domain is presented. The study objective is to analyze the challenges, benefits and organizational aspects of continuous experimentation in the B2B domain. The results suggest that technical challenges are only one part of the challenges a company encounters in this transition. The company also has to address challenges related to the customer and organizational culture. Unique properties in each customers business play a major role and need to be considered when designing experiments. Additionally, the speed by which experiments can be conducted is relative to the speed by which production deployments can be made. Finally, the article shows how the study results can be used to modify the development in the case company in a way that more feedback and data is used instead of opinions.
This is a report from a one-day fourth international workshop on "Information Systems in Distributed Environments" (ISDE), which was organized in conjunction with the OnTheMove Federated Conferences & Workshops (OTM 2014) October 29-30, 2014, Amantea, Calabria, Italy. The main focus of this event was to provide a venue for the discussion of challenges related to the development, operation, and maintenance of distributed information systems, and their creation in the context of global development projects. Further dissemination of research results will lead to an improvement of distributed information system development and deployment across the globe.
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.
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.
Software development as an experiment system : a qualitative survey on the state of the practice
(2015)
An experiment-driven approach to software product and service development is gaining increasing attention as a way to channel limited resources to the efficient creation of customer value. In this approach, software functionalities are developed incrementally and validated in continuous experiments with stakeholders such as customers and users. The experiments provide factual feedback for guiding subsequent development. Although case studies on experimentation in industry exist, the understanding of the state of the practice and the encountered obstacles is incomplete. This paper presents an interview-based qualitative survey exploring the experimentation experiences of ten software development companies. The study found that although the principles of continuous experimentation resonated with industry practitioners, the state of the practice is not yet mature. In particular, experimentation is rarely systematic and continuous. Key challenges relate to changing organizational culture, accelerating development cycle speed, and measuring customer value and product
success.
Delivering value to customers in real-time requires companies to utilize real-time deployment of software to expose features to users faster, and to shorten the feedback loop. This allows for faster reaction and helps to ensure that the development is focused on features providing real value. Continuous delivery is a development practice where the software functionality is deployed continuously to customer environment. Although this practice has been established in some domains such as B2C mobile software, the B2B domain imposes specific challenges. This article presents a case study that is conducted in a medium-sized software company operating in the B2B domain. The objective of this study is to analyze the challenges and benefits of continuous delivery in this domain. The results suggest that technical challenges are only one part of the challenges a company encounters in this transition. The company must also address challenges related to the customer and procedures. The core challenges are caused by having multiple customers with diverse environments and unique properties, whose business depends on the software product. Some customers require to perform manual acceptance testing, while some are reluctant towards new versions. By utilizing continuous delivery, it is possible for the case company to shorten the feedback cycles, increase the reliability of new versions, and reduce the amount of resources required for deploying and testing new releases.
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.
Planungsprozesse sind komplex und aufwendig. Damit Unternehmen ihre operative Planung schneller und effizienter erstellen können, sollten sie sich an 14 erfolgskritischen Faktoren orientieren. So stellen sie sicher, dass die Planung die strategischen Ziele widerspiegelt, der Aufwand im Rahmen bleibt und die Datenqualität zieladäquat ist.
To evaluate the quality of a person´s sleep it is essential to identify the sleep stages and their durations. Currently, the gold standard in terms of sleep analysis is overnight polysomnography (PSG), during which several techniques like EEG (eletroencephalogram), EOG (electrooculogram), EMG (electromyogram), ECG (electrocardiogram), SpO2 (blood oxygen saturation) and for example respiratory airflow and respiratory effort are recorded. These expensive and complex procedures, applied in sleep laboratories, are invasive and unfamiliar for the subjects and it is a reason why it might have an impact on the recorded data. These are the main reasons why low-cost home diagnostic systems are likely to be advantageous. Their aim is to reach a larger population by reducing the number of parameters recorded. Nowadays, many wearable devices promise to measure sleep quality using only the ECG and body-movement signals. This work presents an android application developed in order to proof the accuracy of an algorithm published in the sleep literature. The algorithm uses ECG and body movement recordings to estimate sleep stages. The pre-recorded signals fed into the algorithm have been taken from physionet1 online database. The obtained results have been compared with those of the standard method used in PSG. The mean agreement ratios between the sleep stages REM, Wake, NREM-1, NREM-2 and NREM-3 were 38.1%, 14%, 16%, 75% and 54.3%.
We investigated the influence of body shape and pose on the perception of physical strength and social power for male virtual characters. In the first experiment, participants judged the physical strength of varying body shapes, derived from a statistical 3D body model. Based on these ratings, we determined three body shapes (weak, average, and strong) and animated them with a set of power poses for the second experiment. Participants rated how strong or powerful they perceived virtual characters of varying body shapes that were displayed in different poses. Our results show that perception of physical strength was mainly driven by the shape of the body. However, the social attribute of power was influenced by an interaction between pose and shape. Specifically, the effect of pose on power ratings was greater for weak body shapes. These results demonstrate that a character with a weak shape can be perceived as more powerful when in a high-power pose.
Über mehrere Monate porträtierten sich Masterstudierende von drei Kontinenten gegenseitig über Skype. Mittels einer besonderen Zeichentechnik, der Blindzeichnung, sind zahlreiche Porträts entstanden, deren Wirkung im öffentlichen Raum und in sozialen Netzwerken untersucht wurden. Diese Porträts sind die Basis für künstlerische Arbeiten in allen Bereichen und Medien der Bildenden Kunst. Das Forschungsprojekt SkypeLab schafft so eine Verbindung der traditionellen künstlerischen Techniken mit aktuellen digitalen Technologien.
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.
Sunlight has various effects on human health. Several important metabolic processes are only enabled by sunlight. But longtime sun bathing and extended outdoor activities can cause skin irritation, inflammation or even skin cancer due to high radiation dose. We developed in vitro skin models of different complexity to investigate UV-light associated skin damage. Substances and their phototoxic, sun protective or photo-sensitizing potential can be analyzed to prevent white skin cancer.
Projektmanagement
(2015)
Komplexe Aufgaben erfordern geeignete Planungs- und Steuerungstechniken. Der Projektleiter muss kontinuierlich Termine, Kosten, Qualität im Griff behalten und sein Team anleiten und motivieren. Dieses Buch zeigt, wie Sie unterschiedliche Anforderungen meistern und Projekte erfolgreich zum Abschluss bringen.
Information systems, which support the workflow in the clinical area, are currently limited to organizational processes. This work shows a first approach of an information system supporting all actors in the perioperative area. The first prototype and proof of concept was a task manager, giving all actors information about their task and the task of all other actors during an intervention. Based on this initial task manager, we implemented an information system based on a workflow engine controlling all processes and all information necessary for the intervention. A second part was the development of a perioperative process visualization which was developed based on a user centered approach jointly with clinicians and OR members.
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play a fundamental role in the economic system of the European Union: SMEs represent over 99 percent of all companies and provide two-thirds of the jobs in the private sector. Their innovativeness and economic success have significant influence on growth, jobs and prosperity in Europe.
Information technologies are regarded as key drivers of innovation in small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). Modern information technologies (IT) offer SMEs today many opportunities to improve their competitiveness and market position. Thus, business processes can be designed efficiently, open up new market segments and strengthen the innovation capacity significantly. However, many SMEs still have difficulties in utilizing these new technologies efficiently in order to foster process and product innovation. This is partly due to the fact that many SMEs don’t use IT Service Management and waste resources in running basic IT-functions like the maintenance of printers, software or servers.
Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) is a discipline for managing IT systems centred on the customer’s perspective of IT’s contribution to the business. Thus, by strengthening the performance of SME’s IT departments, ITSM enables process innovation (e.g. eProcurement) and product innovations (e.g. client services) can be promoted. The EU-funded project "IT Service Management for small and medium-sized Enterprises of the Danube Region" (ITSM4SME) aims to make SMEs in the Danube Region aware of the potential of ITSM, to inspire SMEs about the use of information technology and to allow IT-enabled innovations. The aims of the project have been achieved inter alia through a simplified method for IT service management for small IT organisations, practical case studies, a "do-it-yourself" service management modelling tool, an eLearning portal and by training more than 300 participants from SMEs in pilot training courses in Bulgaria, Romania and Slovenia.
Big Data wird aktuell als einer der Haupttrends der IT-Industrie diskutiert. Big Data d. h. auf Basis großer Mengen unterschiedlich strukturierter Daten die Entscheidungen in Echtzeit oder prognostisch zu treffen. Von hochleistungsfähigen, schnell verfügbaren Prognoseverfahren erhofft man sich eine Risikominimierung für unternehmerische Entscheidungen in hochvolatilen Märkten.
In modern times markets are very dynamic. This situation requires agile enterprises to have the ability to react fast on market influences. Thereby an enterprise’ IT is especially affected, because new or changed business models have to be realized. However, enterprise architectures (EA) are complex structures consisting of many artifacts and relationships between them. Thus analyzing an EA becomes to a complex task for stakeholders. In addition, many stakeholders are involved in decision-making processes, because Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) targets providing a holistic view of the enterprise. In this article we use concepts of Adaptive Case Management (ACM) to design a decision-making case consisting of a combination of different analysis techniques to support stakeholders in decision-making. We exemplify the case with a scenario of a fictive enterprise.
New or adapted digital business models have huge impacts on Enterprise Architectures (EA) and require them to become more agile, flexible, and adaptable. All these changes are happening frequently and are currently not well documented. An EA consists of a lot of elements with manifold relationships between them. Thus changing the business model may have multiple impacts on other architectural elements. The EA engineering process deals with the development, change and optimization of architectural elements and their dependencies. Thus an EA provides a holistic view for both business and IT from the perspective of many stakeholders, which are involved in EA decision-making processes. Different stakeholders have specific concerns and are collaborating today in often unclear decision-making processes. In our research we are investigating information from collaborative decision-making processes to support stakeholders in taking current decisions. In addition we provide all information necessary to understand how and why decisions were taken. We are collecting the decision-related information automatically to minimize manual time intensive work as much as possible. The core contribution of our research extends a decisional metamodel, which links basic decisions with architectural elements and extends them with an associated decisional case context. Our aim is to support a new integral method for multi perspective and collaborative decision-making processes. We illustrate this by a practice-relevant decision-making scenario for Enterprise Architecture Engineering.