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The German automotive industry currently not only faces disruptions in the supply chain but also by new technologies and new competitors. In order to rise to these challenges, project management must be improved and partners along the supply chain must be integrated more tightly. Besides the adoption of more agile methods, another part in accomplishing this, is to provide an interorganizational project management service between all involved partners. In order to improve, we first have to understand the current implementation of project management services between the OEM and suppliers and examine what the different actors expect from these services. This working paper addresses this issue by conducting interviews with project management experts in the automotive industry.
In diesem Werk werden zwei Perspektiven vereint: Die Gestaltung einer Community of Practice zum Thema der Digitalisierung in der Hochschullehre. Ziel ist es, die Lehrenden miteinander zu vernetzen und einen kollegialen Austausch zum Thema der digitalen Lehre zwischen diesen zu fördern. Dazu müssen entsprechende Implementierungs- und Gestaltungsmaßnahmen ergriffen werden. Die Arbeit zeigt einerseits eine handlungspraktische Vorgehensweise auf, andererseits wird dieses Vorgehen forschungsmethodisch begleitet.
In economic theory, entrepreneurship is perceived as a driving force behind the process of creative destruction by introducing innovation to the market, crowding out inefficient businesses, and paving the way for economic growth. One central channel through which entrepreneurial activity can be realized is the founding a new firm (Carree & Thurik, 2003). Numerous empirical studies have investigated the causes of firm entry, the subsequent fate of these young businesses, and their impact on the economy (Geroski, 1995; Wagner, 2006). When assessing the importance of start-ups for economic development, their role in the creation and destruction of jobs is a key component. This thesis argues that start-ups’ role as employers should be evaluated not only by the quantity of jobs they create, but also by the quality of these jobs. If new firms differ from incumbents in terms of hiring patterns or employment conditions, this could have serious and long-lasting implications for the careers and personal lives of their employees. Against this background, the four essays of this thesis present new evidence on the hiring behavior of newly founded establishments, as well as on remuneration and employment prospects of workers joining a start-up.
Chapter 2 of this thesis, which is joint work with Daniel Fackler, Michaela Fuchs, and Claus Schnabel (Fackler et al., 2019), investigates whether risky start-ups’ low appeal to more advantaged job seekers impels them to offer employment opportunities to workers facing disadvantages on the labor market due to, e.g., old age, low qualification, foreign nationality, or previously unstable employment biographies. Results are derived by applying linear probability estimations to a large administrative employer-employee data set for Germany. Indeed, the findings suggest that start-ups are more likely than incumbents to hire several types of disadvantaged workers. Moreover, the study also reveals that start-up employment comes at a cost for workers with disadvantageous characteristics, since the wage penalties associated with these traits are more pronounced in young establishments.
Chapter 3 analyzes whether the previously detected hiring patterns change in times of economic distress, when incumbents’ hiring freeze blocks even advantaged workers from entry into stable, well-paying firms. Investigating employer-employee matches before, during, and after the Great Recession in Germany, the essay finds that workers with advantageous characteristics in terms of age and qualification are more likely to join a start-up during the crisis. Although this shift appears to be mainly driven by adjustments in labor supply on the workers’ side, the underlying incentives seem not in line with conventional theories of cyclical downgrading.
Chapter 4, which is joint work with Daniel Fackler, Claus Schnabel, and Antje Weyh (Fackler et al., 2022), focuses on the long-term consequences of joining a newly founded establishment vis-à-vis an incumbent for the individual worker. By following workers over ten years after their entry in the respective establishment and controlling for selection into start-ups by means of entropy balancing, the study finds large and persistent drawbacks from entering a new establishment in terms of wages and employment prospects. A closer look at worker subgroups and subsequent career paths does not reveal any exception from this pattern.
Chapter 5, a study conducted together with Daniel Fackler (Fackler & Rippe, 2017), presents a closer look at one potential consequence of entering a risky new firm, namely involuntary job loss. This essay uses survey data to examine the relationship between job loss and regional mobility. Although results indicate that job loss strongly increases regional mobility, they do not provide any confirmation for the conjecture that movers outperform stayers in their subsequent labor market careers, as both groups are unable to catch up with non-displaced workers. Hence, the findings emphasize the difficulties to cushion the negative consequences of job loss, a factor that might contribute to the persistently worse career perspectives of workers who joined a start-up.
Concluding, this thesis sheds new light on start-ups’ role as employers. While new businesses offer employment opportunities to disadvantaged workers (at least in times of economic booms), these jobs provide workers with less pay and less options for career advancement than employment at an incumbent establishment would. Thus, this thesis suggests a critical view not only on the quantity, but also on the quality of jobs created by newly founded firms. Concurrently, it leaves room for further research on less tangible dimensions of employment conditions, such as autonomy, responsibility, or the diversity of tasks, as well as on different career paths, such as joiner-to-founder-transitions, to allow for a more comprehensive view on the impact of start-up employment on the labor market as well as on the individual worker.
The social, environmental, and technological imperatives of the 21st century pose significant challenges to today's supply chain management (SCM). The accompanying uncertainties regarding digitalization, sustainability, and supply disruptions raise the question of suitable future supply chain (SC) designs and operations. The five essays of the underlying dissertation address these issues and contribute to rethinking SCM by exploring and connecting digital innovation in SCM, future SC resilience management, and the transition to SC circularity. Valuable insights were derived by applying explorative case study research, systematic literature reviews, and foresight-oriented Delphi techniques. The results provide decision-makers with essential guidance in defining operational, strategic, and digital measures to navigate their SCs within the uncertain and complex environment of technological disruptions, increasing SC risks, and resource efficiency needs.
The first research paper, „Potentials of Blockchain Technology in Supply Chain Management: Long-term Judgments of an International Expert Panel“, explores blockchain technology's utilization in future SC operations and its potential to shape future SC designs. For this purpose, 15 long-term application scenarios are developed based on scientific and practitioner literature and preliminary expert interviews. To validate these projections, a two-round Delphi method is applied to gather the judgments of 108 experts from academia, industry, and politics/associations. The projections address current concerns in SCM, such as establishing trust and end-to-end transparency between SC partners, data protection, smart contract-enabled automation, efficiency in transactions, or risk management. In addition to the projections' probability of occurrence and impact on SCM, their implementation barriers are evaluated. The analysis reveals that blockchain technology is expected to emerge from its niche and become a constituent part of SC digitalization, since current technological obstacles such as high power consumption or transaction times will be resolved in the future. The most probable and significant effects of blockchain technology are attributed to the establishment of SC transparency and efficiency improvements in SCs. Counterintuitively, the study also finds that not all blockchain-related potentials are directly transferable to SCs, such as the technology's feature to enable transactions between untrusted parties. The study concludes with prospective insights into which SCM-specific barriers require further research and solutions to enable the technologies' large-scale application in SCM. Furthermore, it provides businesses with a validated starting point for their blockchain strategies.
The second essay, „Industry 4.0 Technologies as Enablers of Collaboration in Circular Supply Chains: A Systematic Literature Review“, examines the capabilities of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies to enable and support collaboration in circular SCs. The research builds on two consecutive systematic literature reviews. The first review synthesizes research on SC collaboration and contextualizes the findings with circular economy-related publications. As a result, six relevant collaboration mechanisms for circular SCs are derived, which are presented in a newly developed „circular SC collaboration“ framework. The second review subsequently matches the framework's mechanisms with the potentials of I4.0 technologies, providing a holistic perspective on I4.0's power to enable collaboration in circular SCs. The review identifies information sharing as the most essential collaboration mechanism, as it builds the fundament for other mechanisms such as joint planning and decision-making or resource sharing. Furthermore, according to the review, current research mainly qualifies six technologies to enable collaboration in circular SCs, with the Internet of Things and blockchain technology being the most researched. By intersecting the different research streams, this study further derives three archetypes for I4.0-enabled circular SC collaboration, demonstrating the current „centers of gravity“ in research. For researchers, the study concludes with five actionable future research directions, and for practitioners, it offers valuable guidance on how to leverage I4.0 technologies to improve collaboration in their circular SCs.
The third article, „Closing the Material Loop: How Digital Technologies Revolutionize Reverse Supply Chain Management“, connects thematically to the circular economy and I4.0 topics of the previous essay, but focuses on the operational processes in circularity-enabling reverse supply chain management (RSCM). It explores empirically how digitalization and I4.0 technologies could solve the challenges in RSCM and offer support in closing the material loop. Particular emphasis is thus placed on digital technologies' empowering potential for RSCM's three sub-processes: „product acquisition management“, „disassembly and diagnostics“, and „recovery operations“. The application of an explorative multiple case study approach comprising eight pioneering companies from different industries allows for real-life insights into the article's research question, and the results illustrate the advantages of digital solutions in reducing the uncertainties and complexities inherent in RSCM. The application of sensors and Internet of Things devices to products facilitates product acquisition management, since they enable forecasts on the timing and condition of product returns. Additionally, web-based collection platforms are found to increase visibility and return rates and reduce search costs, thereby enhancing efficiency in RSCM. Furthermore, diagnostic operations gain in accuracy and speed by applying machine learning-enhanced sorting software, and the performance in recovery operations is revealed to be improved, as Internet of Things application increases knowledge regarding a product's characteristics. Apart from these benefits, the empirical investigation identifies 16 RSCM-related barriers that may hinder the technologies' implementation. In summary, this research offers decision-makers a set of design features to shape their digitalization efforts in their reverse SCs.
The fourth research paper, „The Future of Industry 4.0 and Supply Chain Resilience after the COVID-19 Pandemic: Empirical Evidence from a Delphi Study“, investigates how I4.0 solutions could strengthen supply chain resilience (SCRES), given the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic. To explore the future role of I4.0 technologies in SCRES, the Delphi method is applied to test 13 application scenarios, for which development preliminary workshops, literature search, and practitioner interviews served as sources. In two rounds, 64 digitalization experts quantitatively and qualitatively assess the scenarios, which focus on 2030, in terms of their probability of occurrence, impact on SCRES, and desirability. The resulting scenario discussion unveils the applicability of I4.0 solutions to strengthen SCRES. In this context, visibility-enabling data collection technologies and remote working capabilities are the most likely and impactful measures for SCRES improvements by 2030. Additionally, artificial intelligence, cross-company data platforms, and digital SC twins are identified as beneficial in SCRES management. However, their application appears to be fragile by 2030, as the prerequisite of full end-to-end SC transparency is unlikely to be achieved by then. In general, the study's results imply that, despite the proven benefits of I4.0 technologies in SCRES management, the human factor remains essential in 2030. At the same time, the study provides suggestions for further actions, such as teaching the relevant digital skills, to ensure workforces' empowerment for digital SCRES management of the future.
The fifth article, „Strengthening Supply Chain Resilience in a Pandemic: Empirical Evidence from Europe during COVID-19“, complements the long-term research horizon of the fourth paper by exploring the most effective short- and medium-term measures to increase SCRES in a pandemic. Therefore, 41 experts from nine European companies are interviewed utilizing a multiple case study approach. The real-world insights allow for an extensive analysis of the companies' SC challenges caused by COVID-19 and their respective mitigation measures. The key finding is that standard resilience measures may be unable to solve the challenges associated with a pandemic. In consequence, ten propositions for effective SC risk management, with an explicit focus on pandemics, are derived. The case study highlights these propositions by categorizing them into the four SCRES levers „SC (re)-engineering“, „SC risk management culture“, „SC collaboration“, and „SC agility“. The observations illustrate that a rapid adjustment of internal performance objectives lays the essential foundation for effective SCM during a pandemic. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that joint vertical procurement with suppliers and close collaboration with governments are dominant to secure scarce supply. In the same context, strengthening single existing suppliers could be more promising to secure supply and enhance SCRES during a pandemic than multiple sourcing. While this study is of a qualitative nature, the derived propositions offer both future research directions for researchers and guidance to practitioners on strengthening their SCs in ongoing or future pandemics.
An overview of this dissertation's underlying essays, including the applied research methods and posed research questions, is provided in Table A-1.
Spiele wie Candy Crush Saga gehören zu den derzeit populärsten Spielen weltweit. Trotz einfacher Aufmachung sowie monoton und repetitiv wirkender Aufgaben üben diese Spiele regelmäßig eine große motivationale Wirkung auf Menschen aus. Es ist daher nicht verwunderlich, dass ebenso außerhalb von Spielen regelmäßig Gestaltungselemente aus Spielen angewendet werden, um für unterschiedliche Zwecke eine ähnliche motivationale Wirkung bei Menschen hervorzurufen. Eine derartige Praktik wird üblicherweise als Gamification bezeichnet. Auch Unternehmen, die permanent nach neuen Möglichkeiten suchen, bestehende Prozesse zu unterstützen, haben in Gamification ein Potenzial für verschiedene Unternehmensbereiche erkannt. Ein vielversprechender Bereich ist dabei ein Wissensmanagement. Für ein systematisches Wissensmanagement ist ein kontinuierlicher Wissenstransfer zwischen Mitarbeitern eine wesentliche Voraussetzung. Eine oft fehlende Bereitschaft bei Mitarbeitern zum Wissenstransfer stellt für Unternehmen jedoch eine besondere Herausforderung dar. Diese fehlende Bereitschaft ist in vielen Fällen motivational bedingt und erscheint daher vielversprechend für einen Einsatz von Gamification. Üblicherweise werden in Unternehmen bereits Wissensmanagementsysteme zum softwaregestützten Wissensmanagement genutzt. Gamification ist dort in der Regel nicht eingebunden. Wie Gamification bei in Betrieb befindlichen Anwendungssystemen nachträglich verwendet werden kann und welche Auswirkungen eine Verwendung von Gamification dort hat, ist bisher weitestgehend unklar.
In der Arbeit wird daher grundlegend untersucht, wie Gamification im Wissensmanagement unter Zuhilfenahme von Wissensmanagementsystemen verwendet werden kann. Dazu werden vier Studien durchgeführt. Mit den Studien werden zwei zentrale Schwerpunkte betrachtet. Zum einen, wie Gamification in einem Wissensmanagementsystem im Unternehmenskontext nachträglich zielgerichtet eingesetzt und realisiert werden kann (Umsetzung von Gamification in einem Wissensmanagementsystem). Zum anderen, wie sich eine Nutzung von Gamification in einem Wissensmanagementsystem auf Anwender auswirkt (Wirkung von Gamification in einem Wissensmanagementsystem). Die Studien werden teilweise bei einem Technologiekonzern durchgeführt, bei dem ein individuell angepasstes Groupware-basiertes Wissensmanagementsystem auf der Basis von Microsoft SharePoint 2013 verwendet wird. Dieses vorhandene Wissensmanagementsystem stand für Untersuchungen zur Verfügung. Explizite Elemente von Gamification waren in diesem Wissensmanagementsystem zu Beginn der Arbeit nicht vorhanden.
Zunächst wird in Studie 1 (Literaturrecherche) untersucht, wie das Thema Gamification im Wissensmanagement in der wissenschaftlichen Literatur behandelt wird, um eine Grundlage für die nachfolgenden Studien zu bilden. Auf Basis der Ergebnisse aus der Literaturrecherche wird daraufhin ein konzeptionelles Modell entwickelt. Mit dem konzeptionellen Modell wird Gamification mit Formularen verknüpft, die üblicherweise als Methode zum Wissenstransfer in dem Groupware-basierten Wissensmanagementsystem des Technologiekonzerns eingesetzt werden. In Studie 2 (Softwaremarkt-Analyse) werden anschließend am Softwaremarkt angebotene Erweiterungen analysiert, die es unmittelbar ermöglichen, das Groupware-System SharePoint 2013 mit Gamification zu ergänzen. Mit der Softwaremarkt-Analyse wird ein Grundverständnis zu einem Einsatz von Gamification in einem Groupware-System geschaffen, um damit eine Prototypentwicklung in der nachfolgenden Studie vorzubereiten. Mit Studie 3 (Prototypentwicklung) wird anhand einer prototypischen Weiterentwicklung untersucht, wie sich Gamification nachträglich in dem Groupware-basierten Wissensmanagementsystem des Technologiekonzerns zielgerichtet umsetzen lässt. Dazu werden, auf Grundlage des entwickelten konzeptionellen Modells, Formulare in dem Groupware-basierten Wissensmanagementsystem mit Gamification erweitert. Insbesondere werden in der Studie wesentliche Entwicklungsaspekte für einen zielgerichteten Einsatz und eine Realisierung von Gamification in dem Groupware-basierten Wissensmanagementsystem untersucht. Dabei wird gleichfalls ein Verständnis zu den Anforderungen einer Umsetzung von Gamification in einem vorhandenen System gewonnen. Die Durchführung der prototypischen Weiterentwicklung folgt einem systematischen Entwicklungsprozess, der sich aus einer Analyse, einem Entwurf sowie einer iterativen Realisierung zusammensetzt. Die Realisierung von Gamification erfolgt in JavaScript mit dem Framework AngularJS und wird mit ausgewählten Anwendern des Groupware-basierten Wissensmanagementsystems evaluiert und angepasst. Aus dem Vorgehen resultiert ein (IT )Artefakt in Form eines Prototyps. In Studie 4 (Prototypevaluation) werden, basierend auf der prototypischen Weiterentwicklung aus Studie 3, die Auswirkungen auf die Akzeptanz der Mitarbeiter bei der Nutzung des um Gamification erweiterten Groupware-basierten Wissensmanagementsystems im Rahmen eines Feldexperiments evaluiert. Als Grundlage zur Evaluation wird ein Modell aufgestellt, das sich an dem Technologieakzeptanzmodell orientiert. Von dem Modell werden vermutete Ursache-Wirkungs-Beziehungen in Form von Hypothesen theoretisch fundiert abgeleitet und zusätzlich mögliche Einflussfaktoren auf Gamification (Alter, Geschlecht sowie Kultur) miteinbezogen. Zur Datenerhebung für das Modell wird das Feldexperiment bei dem multinationalen Technologiekonzern in China, Deutschland und den USA durchgeführt. Die Teilnehmer an dem Feldexperiment werden entweder einer Experimental- oder einer Kontrollgruppe zugeteilt. Teilnehmer der Experimentalgruppe setzen sich mit dem um Gamification erweiterten Groupware-basierten Wissensmanagementsystem auseinander. Teilnehmer der Kontrollgruppe setzen sich mit dem ursprünglichen Groupware-basierten Wissensmanagementsystem auseinander. Zu Beginn des Feldexperiments werden den Teilnehmern beider Gruppen mehrere identische Aufgaben gegeben, die mit dem zugeteilten System durchgeführt werden sollen. Nach Bearbeitung der Aufgaben werden die Teilnehmer zur Akzeptanz befragt. Als wesentlicher Erkenntnisgewinn wird eine signifikant höhere intrinsische Motivation bei der Experimentalgruppe festgestellt. Gamification hat demnach eine gesteigerte motivationale Wirkung hinsichtlich einer wahrgenommenen Freude im Umgang mit Formularen in dem Groupware-basierten Wissensmanagementsystem. Die Ergebnisse sind dabei abhängig von den Einflussfaktoren Alter und Kultur, die einen moderierenden Einfluss auf eine Wirkung von Gamification ausüben können.
Zusammenfassend trägt die vorliegende Arbeit zu einem besseren Verständnis einer Umsetzung und Wirkung von Gamification im Umfeld eines Wissensmanagements und im Speziellen zu einem Wissenstransfer bei. Gesammelte Erfahrungswerte und Erkenntnisse stellen sowohl Implikationen für Unternehmen als auch für die Forschung bereit.
This dissertation analyses a German training scheme called ‘Schemes for Activation and Integration’ (SAI) and its participation effects on the labour market performance of unemployed welfare recipients. As unemployment scars affected individuals (even in the long run) and perpetuates social inequality, overcoming unemployment and (re-)integrating unemployed individuals into the labour market is of urgent importance. In this dissertation, I focus on unemployed individuals in the German basic income support system as these individuals often face multiple labour market barriers and thus have a considerable need for active support. I find SAI to be rather adequate in supporting unemployed welfare recipients in their labour market integration, in particular if they are women or inhibit disadvantageous characteristics. Based on this dissertation’s findings, there are three policy advices: First, SAI should be even more precise in targeting vulnerable groups. Second, the support should really be close-meshed, and third, caseworkers should combine (classroom) training focusing on human capital accumulation with periods of practical experience within firms.
Increasing intranet usage through gamification – insights from an experiment in the banking industry
(2015)
This paper applies gamification to leverage the use of information for information-intensive business tasks in the context of corporate intranets. It presents the results of an online experiment, which was conducted in the banking industry with 68 advisors from different institutes using a prototype of a corporate intranet. They indicate that adding gamification elements, such as ranking lists and points, positively influences the quantitative (time spent, articles read) and qualitative (time per article, percentage of correct answers) usage of the intranet for knowledge acquisition.
Given the considerable success of companies such as Apple, Amazon or Airbnb, the term platform is on everyone’s lips today. Accordingly, platforms have long since also found their way into service science. However, mastering the transition from established product-sales-based offerings to platform-based services and business models comes with a multitude of challenges. In a B2B context, incumbent companies need to carefully evaluate how they can benefit from the establishment of platforms, especially in light of the effects on their existing business models and ties to other actors. Hence, we invited scholars with different backgrounds to provide viewpoints on the opportunities and challenges of the transition to platform-based services and business models in a B2B environment. The individual commentaries provide various insights on how to conduct this transition and benefit from it successfully. To do so, they contrast different approaches for establishing and governing ecosystems around platforms, discuss B2B-specific pitfalls and opportunities of platform business models, uncover the supporting role of platforms for smart service development, and stress the importance of platform and
ecosystem thinking as a necessary mindset.
Organizations deploy gamification in CSCW systems to enhance motivation and behavioral outcomes of users. However, gamification approaches often cause competition between users, which might be inappropriate for working environments that seek cooperation. Drawing on the social interdependence theory, this paper provides a classification for gamification features and insights about the design of cooperative gamification. Using the example of an innova-tion community of a German engineering company, we present the design of a cooperative gamification approach and results from a first experimental evaluation. The findings indicate that the developed gamification approach has positive effects on perceived enjoyment and the intention towards knowledge sharing in the considered innovation community. Besides our conceptual contribu-tion, our findings suggest that cooperative gamification may be beneficial for cooperative working environments and represents a promising field for future research.
This dissertation thesis consists of four essays in empirical labor economics that examine the German workforce’s adaption to digitalization from different angles. In this thesis, digitalization refers to technology that connects machines, products, and humans and conducts complex activities such as problem-solving without human intervention. The first essay sheds light on the diffusion process of the latest technologies within German firms. It examines the extent to which workers can give impulses and shape, via the representation through works councils, the implementation process of digitalization. The second essay explores workers’ employment adjustment to the first-time introduction of digital technologies in establishments. The third essay studies individuals’ wage and employment response to new technologies by focusing on differences between investments into 3.0-technology, e.g., industrial robots, and 4.0-technology, e.g., artificial intelligence. Finally, the fourth essay puts the spotlight on changes in the occupational composition of the workforce in Germany and investigates the role of digitalization for occupational specialization within workplaces. Overall, the present thesis aims to generate novel scientific data on the implementation of digital technologies, provide new empirical evidence on the labor market response of the German workforce, and thereby contribute to the objectification of debate about the future of work.
Predictive business process monitoring (PBPM) provides a set of techniques to perform different prediction tasks in running business processes, such as the next activity, the process outcome, or the remaining time. Nowadays, deep-learning-based techniques provide more accurate predictive models. However,
the explainability of these models has long been neglected. The predictive quality is essential for PBPM-based decision support systems, but also its explainability for human stakeholders needs to be considered. Explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) describes different approaches to make machine-learning-based techniques explainable. To examine the current state of explainable PBPM techniques, we perform a structured and descriptive literature review. We identify explainable PBPM techniques of the domain and classify them along with different XAI-related concepts: prediction purpose, intrinsically interpretable or posthoc, evaluation objective, and evaluation method. Based on our classification, we identify trends in the domain and remaining research gaps.
The increasing availability of process data retrieved from information systems has changed the nature of business process management in organisations. In particular, process analysis has moved from qualitative to evidence-based approaches. Process analytics has emerged as a paradigm for creating value from process data. It supports the mission of business process management to improve business processes by providing, amongst other things, enhanced decision support. To improve a business process, information about its status quo is required, which is provided by descriptive process analytics technologies, such as process mining. More importantly, knowledge about cause-effect relationships between the process, its context and its performance (i.e. its outcome) is essential.
Two major challenges present themselves for the analysis of cause–effect relationships in business processes with process data. First, techniques need to incorporate contextual data (e.g. the sold product or the ordering customer in a sales process) as well as the immediate process layer (e.g. the process sequence or the duration between process activities). Existing knowledge about the cause–effect relationships between these contextual attributes and the process should be input into such techniques to make them context-aware. Second, the output of the techniques should be comprehensible, so users are more willing to accept and subsequently use them. Techniques --- especially those based on machine learning --- should be explainable to allow users to discover new knowledge from the learnt structures between input and output attributes. The output should guide analysts in their quest to find cause–effect relationships between the executed process steps and the process outcome.
In light of these challenges, this doctoral thesis applies a design science research approach to design artefacts that support the analysis of cause–effect relationships from process data. First, the thesis introduces a holistic conceptualisation of the term process analytics. It stresses the importance of both the process of analysis and human and organisational concerns to create value from process data. Most importantly, various techniques are designed for the analysis of process data with machine learning. All of these techniques are instantiated and evaluated with real-life data sets. For one of the techniques, a case study demonstrates its usefulness to process analysts to discover root causes for performance issues. In addition, the thesis presents design principles for producing comprehensible process models derived from process data. Last, a structured literature review discusses explainability in predictive business process monitoring to identify future research needs.
Part A of this dissertation presents a summary introducing the overarching research objective and research questions. Part B consists of seven research papers, six of which have been published in various renowned academic outlets, such as the Decision Support Systems journal, the Information Systems journal and the European Conference on Information Systems.
Business processes run at the core of an organisation’s value creation and are often the target of optimisation efforts. Organisations aim at adhering to their optimised processes. However, deviations from the optimised process still occur and may potentially impede efficiency in process executions. Conformance checking can provide valuable insights regarding past process deviations, but it cannot identify deviations before they occur. Outcome-oriented predictive business process monitoring (PBPM) provides a set of methods to predict process outcomes, e.g. key performance indicators. We propose an outcome-oriented
PBPM method for predictive deviation monitoring using conformance checking and deep learning to draw the most out of the two domains. By leveraging early intervention, the method supports the proactive handling of deviations, i.e. inserted and missing events in process instances, to reduce their potential harm. Our evaluation shows that the method can predict business process deviations with high predictive quality, particularly for processes with fewer variants.
Detecting Workarounds in Business Processes - A Deep Learning Method for Analyzing Event Logs
(2020)
Business processes performed in organizations often deviate from the abstract process models issued by designers. Workarounds that are carried out by process participants to increase the effectiveness or efficiency of their tasks are often viewed as negative deviations from prescribed business processes, interfering with their efficiency and quality requirements. But workarounds might also play an important role in identifying and re-structuring inefficient, dysfunctional, or obsolete processes. While ethnography or critical incident techniques can serve to identify how and why workarounds emerge, we need automated methods to detect workarounds in large data sets. We set out to design a method that implements a deeplearning-based approach for detecting workarounds in event logs. An evaluation with three public real-life event logs exhibits that the method can identify workarounds best in standardized business processes that contain fewer variations and a higher number of different activities. Our method is one of the first IT artifacts to bridge boundaries between the complementing research disciplines of organizational routines and business processes management.
Die Globalisierung und der damit einhergehende Konkurrenzdruck einerseits,aber auch neue Absatzchancen andererseits fordern u.a. auch in den Geschäftsbereichen Logistik und Produktion stetige Weiterentwicklung und Prozessverbesserungen, um in diesem globalen Markt bestehen zu können. Unter Schlagworten wie 'Internet of Things' (IoT) oder 'Cyber Physical Systems' (CPS) wird insbesondere seitens der IT-Branche die Auffassung vertreten, durch Einsatz solcher Technologien zu dieser Weiterentwicklung und Prozessverbesserung beitragen zu können. Ab den Jahren 2011 bzw. 2012 wurden speziell produzierenden Unternehmen,Maschinen- und Anlagenbauern und sonstigen Anbietern von Automatisierungstechnologien seitens der IT-Branche (und der deutschen Politik)unter dem Schlagwort 'Industrie 4.0' CPS-Technologien als ein potentiell wirksames Instrument angepriesen, um konkurrenzfähig zu bleiben.
Vor allem der Trend hin zu einer immer individuelleren und präziseren Befriedigung der Kundenwünsche führt entsprechend zu immer individuelleren Entwicklungsprozessen. Die überproportional steigende Anzahl technologischer Lösungskomponenten, die zudem in sich in vielen Varianten konfiguriert werden können, sind Ausdruck dieser individuelleren Entwicklungsprozesse. Aus dieser dadurch entstehenden hohen Komplexität ergibt sich die Herausforderung, eben jene Komplexität im Entwicklungsprozess noch beherrschen zu können und insbesondere im Dialog zwischen Technologieanwender und Technologieanbieter auf eine systematische und beiderseits verständliche gemeinsame Diskussionsgrundlage setzen zu können.
Die vorliegende Arbeit geht daher auf grundlegende Weise der Frage nach, auf welche Art und Weise Technologien als auch Anwendungsszenarien solcher Technologien beschrieben und gegliedert werden sollten, um systematische Entwicklungsprozesse optimal zu unterstützen. Darauf aufbauend werden abhängig von der Art und Weise der gefundenen Klassifikationsstrukturen entsprechende Entwicklungsprozesse abgeleitet, mit denen eine möglichst transparente systematische Suche komplexer technischer Lösungsarchitekturen für einen gegebenen Anwendungsbereich oder auch die Suche geeigneter Anwendungsbereiche für innovative Technologien möglich sein soll. Adressaten dieser Arbeit sind vor allem IT- bzw. Entwicklungsabteilungen insbesondere in Unternehmen aus Produktion
und Logistik, sowie Forschungseinrichtungen, die technische Innovationen für den Produktions- bzw. den Logistiksektor entwickeln.
Als Ergebnis dieser Arbeit konnte zunächst ein auf Einzelwirkungen basierender Systementwicklungsansatz gefunden werden, auf dessen Grundlage eine erste Partonomie von Wirkungen entwickelt wurde. Neben dieser Partonomie konnte im Rahmen dieser Arbeit eine Struktur zur systematischen Erhebung sog. wirkungsbezogener Anforderungen vorgeschlagen werden. Aufsetzend auf die Partonomie als auch auf die Struktur wirkungsbezogener Anforderungen konnte mittels methodischer Ansätze aus dem Bereich des Operations Research ein Lösungsansatz skizziert werden, mit der eine systematischere und teilautomatisierbare Entwicklung einer technischen Lösung für ein Anwendungsszenario im Grundsatz möglich erscheint. In Ansätzen konnte sowohl die Tauglichkeit der Partonomie, der wirkungsbezogenenen
Anforderungsstruktur als auch des Entwicklungsverfahrens erläutert und verprobt werden. Der auf Einzelwirkungen basierende Entwicklungsansatz
entzieht sich jedoch wesentlich der manuellen Prüfbarkeit, womit diese Arbeit eine Reihe von relevanten Anschlussarbeiten eröffnet, die sich der weiteren Formalisierung und der Implementierung des wirkungsorientierten Entwickelns widmen müssen.
The motivation for this thesis is the daily work of professionals in vocational education and training (VET) which has become highly challenging due to globalization and digitalization. Language heterogeneity among learners, in particular language difficulties, are present in all (vocational) subjects of the school-to-work transition. Professionals are subject matter experts who are now required to obtain an additional linguistic competence in language awareness to deal with the multitude of and deficits in learners´ language proficiency.
Many VET systems on the European level face similar challenges, one reason being the entrance of a large number of refugees. The international dimension combined with the lack of concrete practical and effective professional development measures for teachers to increase their language awareness and language promotion competence result in the need for a solution across national boundaries.
The central aim of this study is to investigate how vocational teachers´ competence to teach contents in a language-sensitive way can be addressed transnationally within a professional development concept for German vocational teachers in the school-to-work transition system. This is carried out following the Design-Based Research Approach on the basis of two transnational study visits. The focus lies on designing, implementing and evaluating this study visit in two European countries
A research model is built which includes two complete iterative development cycles with one professional development intervention in Sweden and a second, revised one, in France. The design-based research approach uses methods of qualitative social research. The intended practice-oriented design requires the close collaboration with experts from practice and the process is characterized as developmental including iterative cycles of testing, evaluation and revision.
The results – a study visit across borders as professional development intervention – show positive effects regarding the development of competences associated with language-sensitive content teaching and yield design principles in the specific context of professional development.
With this thesis, I aim to provide a better understanding of immigrants’ integration processes in internationalizing societies by studying how the structural conditions under which immigration takes place affect immigrants’ economic incorporation. Immigrants’ successful economic incorporation is key to their successful integration in the receiving society; yet, it is often impeded by immigrants’ foreign qualifications that prove less valuable in the receiving labor market.
My research scrutinizes how national institutions shape the opportunities of immigrants with foreign qualifications in the labor market. First, I zoom in on the interplay between educational institutions in immigrants’ sending and receiving countries, which I argue will determine the opportunity structure for importing foreign education. Depending on the institutional configuration in their sending country, immigrants will bring a certain type of education, and depending on the institutional configuration in the receiving country, employers will prefer a certain type of education that can prove more or less compatible with that supplied by immigrants. Second, I study the effectiveness of institutions that receiving countries put in place to improve immigrants’ opportunities in the labor market. To facilitate employers’ recognition of the foreign education that immigrants bring, several countries have introduced procedures to officially recognize foreign educational credentials.
In factorial surveys, I simulate hiring processes for medium-skilled positions in various occupations and study how employers respond to foreign-educated applicants that recently immigrated. Using vignettes, I experimentally vary the applicant profiles in several dimensions, and ask the employers to rate how likely they would invite the applicants to interview for jobs that correspond with their foreign qualifications, and how much on-the-job-training they expect would be required upon hiring the applicants. This controlled experimental setting provides excellent leverage for analyzing how national institutions shape immigrants’ opportunities. By exploring how employers in different institutional contexts of reception respond to foreign-educated applicants from systems of various institutional configurations, I can clarify how the interplay between educational institutions in sending and receiving countries affects immigrants’ prospects in the labor market. Moreover, by comparing how employers respond to immigrants with non-recognized foreign credentials, recognized foreign credentials, and credentials acquired in the receiving country, I can demonstrate the extent to which foreign credential recognition improves immigrants’ prospects of successful positioning.
The empirical findings underpin that the institutional context in which immigrants have acquired their foreign education clearly matters to employers: Immigrants from countries where highly standardized vocation-oriented education and training systems are in place have better chances of importing their foreign qualifications and getting hired for adequate jobs than immigrants from countries with less vocation-oriented systems. Notably, this is the case both in labor markets where vocational pathways strongly regulate the allocation of workers to jobs, such as in Germany, and in more flexible markets, such as in England.
Nevertheless, there remains some hope for immigrants that do not have the right type of educational background: Further analyses reveal that under certain circumstances, they will be able to overcome the institutional shortcomings of their education – for example, when they bring extensive occupational experience from their sending country. Moreover, the analyses show that the official recognition of foreign credentials has considerable potential to effectively foster immigrants’ labor market integration. Although foreign credential recognition does not lift foreign-educated applicants’ hiring chances to the level of native-educated applicants, immigrants with recognized foreign credentials have significantly better prospects of accessing adequate jobs.
Taken together, this thesis highlights the institutional embeddedness of stratification processes and immigrants’ integration in internationalizing labor markets and provides new insights into the conditions and strategies that allow immigrants to access jobs that correspond with their foreign qualifications.
This dissertation presents three essays that use experimental or empirical methods to investigate the the impact of incentives and the decision-structure on behavior. Each essay is a self-contained study that contributes to the understanding of human behavior. The first essay (chapter 1) identifies the impact that tracking technology and individual incentives have on human behavior. The second essay (chapter 2) focuses on interventions to induce short-term action for long-term benefits. The third essay (chapter 3) investigates the tendency by decision-makers to compensate potential previous mistakes.
In chapter 1, my coauthors and I investigate the impact of tracking technology and individual incentives in a controlled experimental setup. We identify the impact that the team interaction tracking and the individual incentive scheme have on behavior by fixing the experimental conditions and balancing teams across different treatments. Deviating from a standard laboratory experimental setup allows us to credibly manipulate the tracking environment. Since participants in this experiment are allocated to the different teams and treatments by the experimenters, the selection into incentive schemes does not affect the reaction to the incentives. The study not only evaluates the productivity effects of tracking technology and individual incentives, but also identifies effects on stress levels, which can lead to long-term health effects. First, we do not find evidence that team members produce higher output due to individual incentives. However, the results show that the work effort is less specialized as a result of moving from team to individual incentives. We then show that the introduction of tracking technology causes higher stress levels. The results demonstrate that tracking technology can be implemented to monitor teams and set incentives in teamwork. However, the productivity effects of such technology will be limited if incentives are not set optimally. Furthermore, since stress levels increase, the introduction of tracking technology may not pass a cost-benefit analysis if the stress increase leads to large long-term health costs.
Chapter 2 reports results from a framed field experiment that identifies the impact nudges have on voluntary actions with a long-term benefit. This experiment is set in the context of a university course. This context allows for the observation of behavior over a full semester, including the final exam. By randomizing students into different groups and sending each group different information emails for exam preparation, the impacts of different nudges on behavior and on exam outcomes is identified. Investigating behavior over the entire semester allows for the differentiation between the short-term reactions to the nudge and the long-term benefits. The results show that reminder nudges can increase exam preparation and lead to considerable improvements in grades. Subgroup analyses suggest that such grade improvements occur for students who achieved better-than-average grades on previous exams, but also for students who did not take a previous test. The results imply that the tracking of student behavior and more targeted interventions to tackle low preparation among some student types may be more effective than general nudges applied to all students.
In chapter 3 my coauthors and I analyze decisions by supposedly impartial decision-makers for compensation behavior in response to mistakes. By using data on referee mistakes in the Bundesliga, the highest elite football division in Germany, we evaluate whether referees try to alternate who they favor in close situations. Furthermore, we evaluate whether discretionary decisions such as yellow cards are influenced by previous mistakes. The results indicate that referees compensate a home team for a mistake against it by awarding additional yellow cards to the away team. This represents a form of home bias since no such behavior can be observed following mistakes against the away team. Additional analysis shows that the effects are more pronounced in games that are important to the home team, when the stadium is fully occupied, and when the referee is less experienced. These additional results are consistent with social pressure as an important factor in whether the referee compensates for a previous mistake. In summary, all three chapters provide evidence that humans react to incentives in their every-day environments. These reactions are rational and strategic but can also be influenced by the social context. The methods employed in the different chapters account for the different contexts investigated. The experiment in chapter 1 favors internal validity over generalizability due to the restricted actions investigated. The experiment in chapter 2, in contrast, provides data from a more natural context and allows for the analysis of short and long term effects of the considered intervention. Finally, the data in chapter 3 is collected without an experimental intervention and is thus unaffected by any influences due to the identification method. These methods all have comparative strengths and weaknesses. By combining multiple methods, the chapters in this dissertation demonstrate the wide range of tools available to produce insights into human decision-making processes.
Nach Darlegung der Forschungsziele in Verbindung mit einer Herleitung und Einordnung des Themas folgt im zweiten Kapitel ein theoretischer Abriss über die Digitalisierung im Krankenhaus.
Das dritte Kapitel gewährt einen Überblick über die etablierten Akzeptanztheorien. Es erfolgt eine Differenzierung zwischen Akzeptanztheorien der Sektion Technologieakzeptanz, Evaluationsmodellen der Sektion Systemerfolg und weiteren ausgewählten Modellen im Kontext der Akzeptanzforschung.
Das vierte Kapitel dient der Identifikation von Akzeptanzfaktoren, welche in ein konzeptionelles Akzeptanzmodell überführt werden können. Anhand dieser sollen fördernde oder hemmende Faktoren auf die Einführung bzw. Nutzung eines Klinischen Informationssystems ermittelt werden. Die Ergebnisdarstellung erfolgt zunächst deskriptiv, indem ausgewählte Merkmale der Primärstudien näher charakterisiert werden. Daran knüpft eine umfassende Darstellung der metaanalytischen Ergebnisse an, die durch die Ableitung eines metaanalytischen Akzeptanzmodells komplettiert wird.
Im Rahmen des fünften Kapitels wird als Schwerpunkt der Arbeit ein konzeptionelles Akzeptanzmodell entwickelt und validiert. Es werden zunächst die Ziele der Untersuchung konkretisiert. Nachfolgend werden anhand definierter Kriterien das konzeptionelle Akzeptanzmodell sowie die Forschungshypothesen abgeleitet und das Untersuchungsdesign festgelegt. Nach den theoretischen Vorüberlegungen folgt die Operationalisierung des konzeptionellen Akzeptanzmodells und die Durchführung der Befragung. Die empirische Validierung des konzeptionellen Akzeptanzmodells wird mit einer Gütebeurteilung sowohl der Messmodelle als auch des Strukturmodells abgeschlossen. Die Ergebnisse werden in den wissenschaftlichen Rahmen eingeordnet und Implikationen sowohl für die Universitätsklinik als auch für die Akzeptanzforschung abgeleitet.
Information systems research on smart services receives numerous contributions that result from joint research projects. Such projects bring together researchers from academia and industry; both conducting applied research while developing marketable services. This paper contributes a conceptual metaframework, which represents and describes joint research projects in service research based on the integration of previous conceptualizations. It combines the service marketing perspective of new service development (NSD) with the industry-academic collaboration perspective of action design research (ADR). The framework provides the entire IS community with a better understanding how joint research projects are conducted. Researchers that work in such projects can adopt the framework concepts and organize their projects accordingly. To demonstrate the framework’s application, we use the case of the development of a smart service in electric vehicle domain.