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Design thinking is inherently and invariably oriented towards the future in that all design is for products, services or events that will exist in the future, and be used by people in the future. This creates an overlap between the domains of design thinking and strategic foresight. A small but significant literature has grown up in the strategic foresight field as to how design thinking may be used to improve its processes. This paper considers the other side of the relationship: how methods from the strategic foresight field may advance design thinking, improving insight into the needs and preferences of users of tomorrow, including how contextual change may suddenly and fundamentally reshape these. A side-by-side comparison of representative models from each field is presented, and it is shown how these may be assembled together to create foresight-informed design-based innovation.
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.
Entrepreneurship plays a role both for the development of African countries and for foreign companies with market entry plans. The infrastructural and institutional conditions for entrepreneurship are still difficult, but the advancing digitization leads to an increasingly active start-up scene in many African countries. There is still a mismatch between the areas where start-ups are created and the areas where foreign companies are looking for partners for market entry. Thus, despite positive developments in entrepreneurship, it remains difficult to find suitable partners in the foreseeable future.
Since the beginning of the energy sector liberalization, the design of energy markets has become a prominent field of research. Markets nowadays facilitate efficient resource allocation in many fields of energy system operation, such as plant dispatch, control reserve provisioning, delimitation of related carbon emissions, grid congestion management, and, more recently, smart grid concepts and local energy trading. Therefore, good market designs play an important role in enabling the energy transition toward a more sustainable energy supply for all. In this chapter, we retrace how market engineering shaped the development of energy markets and how the research focus shifted from national wholesale markets to more decentralized and location-sensitive concepts.
Traditional communication of research on climate change fails to encourage individual, corporate, and political leaders to take appropriate action. We argue that this problem is based on an overly simplistic unidirectional model of science communication. Conversely, theory shows that active learning processes are better suited to initiate and mobilize engagement among all stakeholders. Here, we integrate theoretical insights on active learning with empirical evidence from serious gaming: communication should be understood as an integral design feature that relates active learning on climate change to tangible action.
5-hydroxymethyl-furfural (HMF) and furfural are interesting as potential platform chemicals for a bio-based chemical production economy. Within the scope of this work, the process routes under technical development for the production of these platform chemicals were investigated. For two selected processes, the material and energy flows, as well as the carbon footprint, were examined in detail. The possible production process optimizations, further development potentials, and the research demand against the background of the reduction of the primary energy expenditure were worked out.
In contrast to classical advertising, event marketing is a dynamic communication instrument that is constantly bringing trends and innovations. The diverse application possibilities and potentials of event marketing make it possible to reach relevant target groups according to the current zeitgeist, to generate brand-relevant realities and worlds of experience, to generate emotions and sympathy values and in this way to create a bond between brand or company and recipients. Enduring brand experience worlds can be seen as a consistent further development of event marketing. Unlike typical branding events, which are limited in time, enduring brand experience worlds create theme worlds that can be experienced, usually for an unlimited period of time. The research paper reflects the development and current state of brand experience worlds. On this basis a systematisation of enduring brand experience worlds is presented and discussed.
Similarities and differences of the various types of enduring brand experience worlds are elaborated and critically appraised.
Assuming that employment prospects in the country of education represent a pull factor for international students to enroll in higher education programs abroad and a selling proposition for higher education institutions campaigning for international students, this study aims at investigating the validity of these prospects. Using a qualitative research approach, in-depth interviews were conducted with recruiters of 12 companies in Germany and Russia. A content analysis was applied to identify and compare employment opportunities and barriers for international graduates with domestic degrees at individual, organizational, and institutional levels. Findings include that country-specific human capital components are highly valued by employers, that the organization’s stage of internationalization determines the valuation of human capital components as well as the availability of customized recruiting practices, and that the institutional framewor —particularly the law on labor migration—influences employers’ receptivity for international graduates as well as their international staffing strategies in general. Findings are interpreted on the background of pertinent theoretical perspectives. Conclusions are drawn and recommendations given for international students, higher education institutions, employers, and policy-makers.
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.
Based on social information processing theory, this research examines whether and how an employee’s proactive personality influences intrinsic and extrinsic career growth. It also examines the mediating effects of two types of proactive behaviors (voice behavior and taking charge) and the moderating effect of a leader’s proactive personality. A sample of 307 employee-leader dyads participated in this survey. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses, and the bootstrap procedure was used to test the indirect effects. Results show that an employee’s proactive personality has significant positive effects on both intrinsic and extrinsic career growth. The mediating effect of taking charge was confirmed, while the mediating effect of voice behavior was not. Leader proactive personality weakens the relationship between employee proactive personality and the two types of proactive behaviors. Employee proactive personality is more positively related to intrinsic and extrinsic career growth via proactive behaviors when a leader’s proactive personality is low. This study extends the literature on proactive personality, proactive behavior, and career development by examining the underlying determination, mediation, and moderation mechanisms.
This article studies the development of e-governance over time and across countries. We use a large data sample consisting of 99 developing and 34 OECD countries to study this notion. Firstly, we study the development of e-governance. Secondly, we estimate models to check the determining factors of e-governance over time and across countries. The study reveals that the level of e-governance is determined by the degree of e-participation, online access as well as GDP per capita.
Electronic word-of-mouth (eWoM) communication plays an increasingly important role in modern business. The underlying concept of word-of-mouth (WoM) communication is well researched and has proved highly significant in respect of its impact on customers purchase behavior. However, due to the advent of digital technologies, decision-making among customers is progressively shifting to the online world. Consequently, eWoM has received a lot of attention from the academic community. As multiple research papers focus on specific facets of eWoM, there is a need to integrate current research results systematically. Thus, this paper presents a scientific literature analysis in order to determine the current state-of-the-art in the field of eWoM. Five main research areas were analyzed, supporting the need for further eWoM studies and providing a structured overview of existing results.
Efficiency in supply chain risk management (SCRM) is a major topic in industries with serial production and a complex supply chain due to limited management and financial resources. A high number of possible risk situations and intertwined processes create a more challenging environment for resource allocation. Managers cannot perform SCRM in all possible supply chain areas and hence have to decide where available resources should be utilised for highest possible risk reduction. This makes it important to quickly and systematically evaluate input and output relationships among risk mitigation actions to determine which actions are deployed first for efficient risk level reduction. This paper introduces a new SCRM method based on the failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) in order to perform an efficiency-oriented risk action prioritisation. By considering the cost-benefit evaluation of identified risk mitigation actions for each assessed risk and by determining the implementation effort for risk mitigation actions, also considered as the cost for realising a specific risk action the method allows finding those risk and risk mitigation actions, which are most efficient for risk reduction and should be implemented first in the process of risk steering.
Customer orientation should be the core engine of every organisation. Information technology can be considered as the enabler to generate competitive advantages through customer processes in marketing, sales and service. The impact of information technologies is the biggest risk and at the same time a huge opportunity for any organisation. Research shows that Customer Relationship Management (CRM) enables organisations to perform better and focus more on their customers (e.g. market capitalisation of Amazon). While global enterprises are shaping the future of customer centricity and information technology, the question arises how German B2B organisations can shift their value contribution from product-centric to customer-centric. Therefore, these organisations are attempting to implement CRM software and putting their customers more into focus. However, the question remains, how organisations are approaching the implementation of CRM and if these attempts are paying off in terms of business performance.
Contributing to this highly topical discussion, this thesis contributes to the body of knowledge about the implementation of CRM in the German B2B sector and how it impacts their business performance. First, theoretical frameworks have been developed based on an extensive literature review. Hereby different aspects of CRM are worked-out and mapped against three dimensions of business performance, namely process efficiency, customer satisfaction and financial performance. Based on the theory, a conceptual framework was developed to test the relationships between CRM and Business Performance (BP). Therefore, a survey with 500 participants has been conducted. Based on this a measurement model was developed to test five main hypotheses.
The findings of these hypotheses suggest, that the implementation of CRM positively impacts business performance. In specific, the usage of analytical CRM and the establishment of a dedicated CRM success measurement correlate with the performance of German B2B organisations. In addition to these main findings, various key statements could be derived from the research and a measurement model was developed, which can be used for different organisational characteristics assessing BP. As a result, CRM implementations can be enhanced, and business performance can be improved.
Recently, practitioners have begun appraising an effective customer journey design (CJD) as an important source of customer value in increasingly complex and digitalized consumer markets. Research, however, has neither investigated what constitutes the effectiveness of CJD from a consumer perspective nor empirically tested how it affects important variables of consumer behavior. The authors define an effective CJD as the extent to which consumers perceive multiple brand-owned touchpoints as designed in a thematically cohesive, consistent, and context-sensitive way. Analyzing consumer data from studies in two countries (4814 consumers in total), they provide evidence of the positive influence of an effective CJD on customer loyalty through brand attitude — over and above the effects of brand experience. Importantly, an effective CJD more strongly influences utilitarian brand attitudes, while brand experience more strongly affects hedonic brand attitudes. These underlying mechanisms are also prevalent when testing for the contingency factors services versus goods, perceived switching costs, and brand involvement.
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.
In its 100+ years of company history, IBM reinvented itself multiple times. In the last 20 years, IBM had shifted from individual products to integrated solutions and moved to become a globally integrated enterprise with standardized processes. In 2014, the expanding adoption of social, mobile, analytics, and cloud (SMAC) technologies generated excitement in the industry. IBM believed these technologies presented a huge growth opportunity. Simultaneously, management viewed SMAC technologies as disruptive forces demanding transformative changes to how IBM worked. And introducing new ways of working to 400,000 employees in 175 countries was a daunting task.
Based on personal interviews with 17 IBM business and IT executives, the case illustrates organizational challenges of introducing current technologies that even providers of these technologies face – in other words, when they “eat their own cooking.” It demonstrates the difficulties large companies face when implementing technologies that students use daily and take for granted.
Early exposure makes the entrepreneur: how economics education in school influences entrepreneurship
(2022)
Many countries that seek to boost their economy share the goal of promoting entrepreneurship. Whereas there is ample research on the predictors of entrepreneurship during adulthood, we know little about how pre-adulthood experience influences entrepreneurship later in life. Using a natural experiment, this paper examines whether introducing economics classes in school enhances entrepreneurial behavior in adulthood. Our difference-in-differences approach exploits curricula reforms across German states that introduced compulsory economics education classes in secondary schools. Using information on school and labor market careers for more than 10,000 individuals from 1984 to 2019, we find that the reform increases students’ entrepreneurial activities by three percentage points. Examining gender differences, we find that economics classes equally benefit female and male students. Our results advance our understanding of how pre-adulthood experiences shape individuals’ entrepreneurial behavior.
Reacting to ever-changing business environments, in the last decade complex systems of systems accomplished giant leaps forward leading to great technological flexibility. However, this dimension of flexibility is often limited by the rigidity of super-ordinated planning systems. Especially when hybrid teams of automated and human resources are in place, the dynamic assignment of tasks taking into account ergonomics remains a challenge. After exposing a gap in the state of the art on the topic, this paper presents an approach to include ergonomics in dynamic resource allocation models. Combining and complementing existing approaches, the presented method monitors the actual ergonomic burden of the resources during a shift and it provides a linear optimization model to steer the resource allocation process.
The EAT–Lancet planetary health diet (PHD) provides guidelines on a global scale and calls for red meat consumption to be halved. Operational PHD guidelines at country level have yet to be determined. Here we argue that the biological link between milk and bovine-meat production must be considered when operationalizing the globally calculated PHD to national contexts. Using a stylized computer simulation model rooted in a food system approach, we explore the impact of dietary scenarios on milk and bovine-meat production and show that ignoring this biological link can lead to substantial imbalances between national dietary guidelines and production outcomes and potentially lead to food waste. Furthermore, we assess current national dietary guidelines in Europe and find that most disregard this biological link and are incompatible with the PHD, with implications for policymakers and consumers to consider when adapting the PHD in national contexts.