Refine
Year of publication
Document Type
- Workingpaper / Report (33) (remove)
Language
- English (33) (remove)
Keywords
- FHD (3)
- Bilanzierung (2)
- Fremdvergleichsgrundsatz (2)
- Gewinnverlagerung (2)
- Unternehmensbesteuerung (2)
- corporate income tax (2)
- fairness (2)
- profit-shifting (2)
- A_FBMV (1)
- Angehörigenpflege (1)
In order to determine demand as precisely as possible, many businesses use several forecasting methods. The aim of forecasting is to determine future demand based on data from the past. The use of a specific method is not always easy and depends on a number of factors. To help prospective engineers find the most suitable forecasting method for a specific problem, a forecasting game was developed and then evaluated.
The paper describes the design and the evaluation of the forecasting game. In order to provide an overview of existing forecasting methods, the first part of the paper examined the mathematical fundamentals of eight different forecasting methods and outlined the requirements for their application.
The second part of the paper describes the creation of a forecasting game in which prospective engineers can learn how to determine the appropriate forecasting method for specific scenarios. In total, five scenarios covering the three different demand patterns (linear/stationary, trend and seasonal) as well as the forecast quality methods were developed and can be played through. For each scenario, the player has to choose the most appropriate forecasting method for a specific problem based on a self-created task description. To make the game as realistic as possible, a fictional company with a background story was designed.
The last part was about the evaluation of the forecasting game. For the evaluation, a student survey to gather the opinions of the students was conducted. The results of the student survey show an overall positive evaluation of the simulation game by the students. However, the test also showed that the game takes a certain amount of time. Since only 15 of the approximately 30 students who tested the game participated in the evaluation, the results are not significant.
The impact of culture on entrepreneurship is a widely accepted phenomenon. Cultural factors influence entrepreneurship via different mechanisms on the macro-, meso-, and micro-level of a country. Building on existing research, we draw a clear link between national cultural dimensions and entrepreneurship, using a new model that arranges different cultural dimensions in groups based on their particular function: political, social, or individual (PSI-model) and that distinguishes between values and practices where relevant. The PSI-model provides a coherent theoretical framework on which different cultural dimensions and their impact on entrepreneurship can be analysed, allowing for particular attention to be drawn to social practices and social values. This paper contributes to a better understanding of the relationship between culture and entrepreneurship, providing empirical evidence of how specific cultural dimensions influence entrepreneurship. The findings are of relevance from a policy perspective and can be used to generate practical recommendations for national institutions interested in promoting entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial activities. The findings are also transferable to other fields related to national cultural dimensions such as level of innovation, investment, budgeting etc.
The population is growing constantly in urban areas. This results in an increasing demand for mobility solutions while it is also worldwide aimed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This paper summarizes the results of a comparative study concerning the greenhouse gas emissions (based on carbon footprint) caused by alternative urban passenger transportation systems. The emissions for the vehicles and their infrastructure are analyszed over the entire life cycle from manufacturing up to their end of life. An existing cable car sytem in La Paz, Bolivia was analysed and evaluated in comparison to other modes of transportation such as small busses, large busses and a tram. According to the system definitions and the considered balance framework the study shows that beside the use of the systems the materials and the manufacturing as well as the infrastructure have a significant impact on the total emissions over the life cycle. To put focus on the „true and real“ impacts to the society it is preferable to consider the measurement results in total absolute emissions.
The study “lidA – leben in der Arbeit. German cohort study on work, age and health” was a two-wave panel study funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and examines the relationship between work, health and work participation among aging employees from an interdisciplinary perspective (www.lida-studie.de). The lidA study was carried out by an interdisciplinary consortium consisting of the Institute for Safety Technology at Bergische University Wuppertal, the Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Nuremberg, the Institute of Social Medicine and Health Economics at Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg, the Institute of the History, Philosophy and Ethics of Medicine at Ulm University, infas Institute for Applied Social Sciences, Bonn and the Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA), Berlin, as an associated partner. lidA contains a representative sample of persons belonging to the 1959 and 1965 birth cohorts and employed on the reference date for sampling, 31 December 2009. They were interviewed personally (CAPI) in 2011 (wave 1; N=6,585) and 2014 (wave 2; N=4,244). The data contain information about work and current employment relationship characteristics, work demands, workloads, subjective health indicators, socioeconomic status, household context and allow both cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis. This dataset is now available as a Scientific Use File for the scientific community via the Research Data Centre of the Federal Employment Agency at the Institute for Employment Research. The report contains information on data collection, data editing, anonymisation and the description of the variables of the two waves.
This essay looks at the potentials and limitations of user research for studies on the practice of drama education. To date, this field has been dominated by impact studies. After illustrating the blind spots that are created by taking this research approach to the practice of drama education, we will present the user research perspective and look at the opportunities that it provides to generate new, differentiated knowledge. User research makes it possible to illuminate the processes of acquiring and using knowledge in terms of its delivery. It also provides a potential framework of analysis for placing these processes in the delivery context, which includes subjective learning types, relevance and institutional and social conditions. This expanded perspective will make it possible to identify the factors that foster and limit benefits and reflect them in practice.
Land of High Hopes
(2019)
We are living in the era of sophisticated, state-of-the-art technology, artificial intelligence, accelerating data sciences at ultimate speed and sheer unlimited possibilities. We are able to shoot unmanned rockets equipped with vehicles into the orbit. We can afford to spend fortunes on research and development. However, and that leaves me bloodcurdling and furious, we haven´t managed yet to settle at least some of the most pressing global humanitarian needs: access to food, water, electricity, education and healthcare. So how can we be proud of any achievements? What does make us proud anyway?! ...
The article argues that European innovators can profit from some of the concepts of philosophical Daoism, namely "wu-wei" (non-interference) and "ziran" ("go with the flow"). Whereas most Western approaches to innovation emphasize the different stages of the creative process as well as tools to enhance creativity, the Daoist world view allows for the mind to just wander and thus spontaneously discover the solution to a problem in a rather detached state of mind. Creative minds need space for personal development and the permission to wander around without being exposed to control and instant judgement on the results. Training individuals in the tools and techniques of problem solving and creativity as the common approach in innovation management is certainly necessary, but in the end it is the intellectual accomplishment of a creative mind that produces innovation. Managers can allow this to happen when they get the balance of control and non-interference right.
The working paper at hand assumes that differences of innovativeness of different countries can be explained to a certain extent by cultural differences. Thus, the paper deals with the research question of which cultural dimensions have an influence on national innovativeness. Previous research mainly uses the Hofstede-dimensions to describe cultural differences and often focuses on single parameters to describe national innovativeness (e.g. number of patents per capita). This paper, instead, uses the dimensions of the GLOBE-study which builds on the findings of Hofstede but is more up-to-date and comprehensive and uses two innovation indexes – the Global Innovation Index (GII) and the Innovation Union Scoreboard (IUS) – to describe national innovativeness. The authors use correlation analysis to find relationships between the GLOBEdimensions and the innovation indexes. They find positive correlations of innovativeness (both indexes) to Future Orientation (practice scale), Gender Egalitarianism (value scale), Human Orientation (value scale) and Uncertainty Avoidance (practice scale) as well as negative correlations to In-Group Collectivism (practice scale), Future Orientation (value scale) and Uncertainty Avoidance (value scale). Some of the findings are contrary to existing hypotheses, e.g. only a weak negative correlation of Power Distance to one of the indexes. Furthermore the findings show significant differences between practice scales and value scales, especially concerning Future Orientation and Uncertainty Avoidance which deserve further examination. Overall it can be concluded that culture has an impact on national innovativeness. The different cultural dimensions of the GLOBE-study show a multi-faceted interrelationship between culture and innovation. To come to a concise answer for the question which dimensions affect national innovativeness in which way additional research will be necessary.
The definition of individual creativity is based on a tension between novelty on the one side and usefulness respectively appropriateness on the other side. The paper explores how this tension pervades the stage and componential theories of creativity. To achieve this, the so called value square (“Wertequadrat”) developed by Helwig (1967) and Schulz von Thun (1998)is used which balances a value with its countervalue to analyze creativity. The author identifies tensions of action and inaction, expertise and mindfulness, precision and ambiguity as well as immersion and detachment permeating the creative process and the components of creativity. As a conclusion a morphological box for creativity is presented which allows one to show which combination of characteristics of the tensions support different stages of creativity. Furthermore implications for development and time management are discussed.
Texturen können als Oberflächenstrukturen realer Objekt aufgefasst werden und sind Variationen in Farbe, Geometrie, Transparenz, usw.. Im Gegensatz zu Algorithmen für die künstliche Generierung von Texturen gibt es nur wenige Ansätze zu Textur-Synthese-Sprachen oder zu Hilfsmittel für die Textur-Beschreibung. Die bekannten Werkzeuge decken zudem jeweils nur Teilgebiete der Generierung ab. Mit HiLDTe (Hierachical Language for the Description of Textures) ist nun eine Sprache entwickelt worden, mit der möglichst alle bekannten Texturtypen beschrieben werden können. HiLDTe basiert auf einem am Fachgebiet GRIS entwickelten Texturmodell, in dem Texturen generische, eventuell komplex zusammengesetzte Objekte repräsentieren. Aufgabe dieser Arbeit war es nun, Konzepte für die Sprache HiLDTe zu entwickeln, eine entsprechende Grammatik aufzubauen und mit Hilfe der UNIX-Werkzeuge LEX und YACC einen Compiler zu implementieren, mit dem ein ausführbarer Zwischen-Code für die in HiLDTe spezifizierten Texturen erstellt wird.
This paper explores the tensions in team creativity. The tensions in team creativity are based on a tension between originality and effectiveness in the standard definition of creativity. To display the tensions in team creativity, the value square (“Wertequadrat”) developed by Schulz von Thun (1998) is used which balances a value with its countervalue. The author identifies tensions for cohesion, consensus and conformity. Cohesion is described as a tension between team diversity and team safety, consensus as a tension between constructive controversy and participatory decision-making and conformity as a tension between support for innovation and task orientation. Finally, the connection of individual and team creativity is described as an interplay between solitary and interactive components.
The “fair” taxation of digital business models is challenging. One of the key aspects – both policy makers and the public opinion consider as most pressuring – is the determination of intragroup transfer prices for intangibles used in digital business models. In this paper, we address the issue of a “perceived fair” taxation of the digital economy in the light of the arm’s length principle based on a survey with transfer pricing experts. The aim of the survey is not to estimate arm’s length profit allocations but rather to elicit fairness considerations in different transfer pricing related scenarios. In a digital economy framework where arm’s length profits are distributed extremely inequitably, subjects perceive this distribution of profits as most unfair compared to more balanced scenarios. Consequently, subjects propose a “fair” distribution of profits that substantially differs from the exogenously given arm’s length allocation. In scenarios with a more balanced arm’s length allocation of profits, we find that the perceived fairness for the expert groups increases while a control group of business students is almost not influenced by the arm’s length allocation of profits.
In this paper, we present an approach to adopt UMLsec, which is defined for UML 1.5, to support the current UML version 2.3. The new profile UMLsec4UML2 is technically constructed as a UML profile diagram, which is equipped with a number of integrity conditions expressed using OCL. Consequently, the UMLsec4UML2-profile can be loaded in any Eclipse-based EMF- and MDT-compatible UML editing tool to develop and analyze different kinds of security models. The OCL constraints replace the static checks of the tool support for the old UMLsec defined for UML 1.5. Thus, the UMLsec4UML2-profile not only provides the whole expresiveness of UML2.3 for security modeling, it also brings considerably more freedom in selecting a basic UML editing tool, and it integrates modeling and analyzing security models. Since UML2.3 comprises new diagram types, as well as new model elements and new semantics of diagram types already contained in UML1.5, we consider a number of these changes in detail. More specifically, we consider composite structure and sequence diagrams with respect to modeling security properties according to the original version of UMLsec. The goal is to use UMLsec4UML2 to specify architectural security patterns.
The OECD Base Erosion Profit Shifting (BEPS) Initiative as well as the current fairness oriented public discussion regarding the taxation of digital business models highlight the importance and complexity of the arm's length principle. In a theoretical model of an internationally fragmented digital good's production process, we show that fairness considerations of tax authorities (namely inequity aversion) can result in a falling apart between a perceived "fair" and arm's length distribution of profits across tax jurisdictions. Our model predicts that a multinational firm follows the fundamental paradigm of international taxation, i.e. the arm's length principle, to properly incentivize internal agents involved in the production of a digital good. However, with inequity averse tax authorities, we find that tax authorities "prefer" a more equal distribution of profits compared to the arm's length allocation. From a multinational firm's perspective, inequity aversion among tax authorities dampens the strategic effect to - in accordance with arm's length principle - shift profits to low tax countries.
Investing as Random Trial
(2017)
We introduce an investment algorithm for a market of individual securities. The investment algorithm is derived from constraints depending on investment parameters in order to limit the risk and to take into account an individual investor. One constraint is devoted to trading costs. Purchased securities are selected randomly among securities that meet the buy condition, making trading a random trial. Simulations with historical price data are demonstrated for a simple example: The buy condition is evaluated on the basis of the price relationship for two subsequent trading days and the sales condition is defined by holding securities only for one day. A trading expert evaluates the expected return for the investment algorithm with respect to the random selection. Thus, the expert informs precisely on how many market players perform using the same investment algorithm. Its findings are for a parametrized set of buy conditions simultaneously, which makes a trading expert a valuable tool for theorists as well as for practitioners. In our example, the trading expert demonstrated clearly a significant mean reversion effect for a horizon of one day.
Reconciling work and family life is one of the main issues of welfare state policies in the fields of childcare and long-term care. On that account, policy and research are focused almost exclusively on women – often on the reconciliation of work and childbearing – and social policy at the state level. In our study, we concentrate on men who reconcile gainful employment with elderly care, and we include the company level – a level of analysis often neglected in traditional theoretical approaches and typologies of comparative welfare state research. In Germany, during the last decade, the share of sons who are responsible for taking care of their elderly relatives has remarkably increased. In our qualitative research, we carried out comparative case studies in eleven German companies. We conducted around 60 interviews with male employees caring for an elderly relative, as well as with members of the works councils and human resources departments in different kinds of companies. We analysed which familial, social, professional, legal as well as occupational resources are central for these men, how they cope with reconciling work and care, and which gaps in the welfare system they identify. Interestingly, the overwhelming majority of the caring sons claim not to have problems in reconciling work and care, although they spend significant time on caring. In this paper we try to explain this pattern by looking at their typical care arrangements. We found that while women tend to organise employment around care, men rather seem to organise care around their employment. Given the feminist critique of the “adult worker model” this is an interesting result and needs theoretical reflection. Do men have the solution to the care-blindness of the “adult worker model” without falling into the “cold modern model of care”? Which resources are mainly used in “adult worker care arrangements”? Where are the limits of the approach?
The construction of a basis of a certain lattice of interest is a basic tool in many fields of algorithmic number theory. All too often we can not compute with the original lattices because of irrational numbers involved but have to work with approximations of them. While helpful bounds were shown about the reduction of lattice bases in cite{buchmann94reducing}, here we introduce the notion of a $(epsilon,delta)$-constructable basis of a lattice and determine the precision of vectors that is necessary to extend a set to a $(epsilon,delta)$-constructable basis.
The German banking system and the global financial crisis: causes, developments and policy responses
(2009)
Germany’s banking sector has been severely hit by the global financial crisis. In a German context as of February, 2009, this paper reviews briefly the structure of the banking industry, quantifies effects of the crisis on banks and surveys responses of economic policy. It is argued that policy design needs to enhance transparency and enforce the liability principle. In addition, economic policy should not eclipse principles of competition policy.
CFX 11.0 is a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) program for simulating the behavior of systems involving fluid flow, heat transfer, and other related physical processes. It works by solving the equations of fluid flow (in a special form) over a region of interest, with specified (known) conditions on the boundary of that region. This tool is used here to analyse the straw cutter which is used to comminute the straw which is left standing in the field after stripper header has stripped the grains from the crops. Stripper Header is a new technique different to conventional harvester machines and it is still under development and testing. It works on the principle in which grains are first stripped off from the head of the standing crop which helps in much reduced intake freeing up the separation systems to handle a larger volume of grains. But with this, the new problem of the disposal of the long, uncut straw left after stripping of grains arose. So a straw cutter is used after the stripper header stage in this Combine Harvester, where the rotor is equipped with pressed steel blades and rotates towards the crop, i.e., it cuts and lifts the straw over the top. This technique is environment friendly because previously farmers would have to burn the long, uncut straw standing in the fields while in this case mulched straw can be used for min-till systems. This rotor based straw cutting machine is analysed here which helps us in increasing power efficiency and comminution rate and quality of cut straw particles. Here fluid flow simulation has been preferred over particle simulation: - CFX 10.0 tool is not very effective for particle simulation techniques and computation time is increased considerably. - It’s very hard to realize particle simulation in CFX 10.0 because we have to define size and properties of each particle and besides this wall conditions would have to be defined differently for every boundary. - Besides this, it’s hard to realize cutting effect with straw particles in CFX 10.0 which otherwise would be comminuted in real life conditions. - The results obtained from fluid simulation are validated using experimental results and found to be nearly the same which clearly contradicts any need of performing particle simulation.
The task of the Center for Language Research is to provide content-based English language instruction for students of computer science and engineering. As such, we find ourselves at the confluence of many of the streams currently running through the English Language Teaching profession, including English for Science and Technology (EST), English for Academic Purposes (EAP), English for Specific Purposes (ESP), Computer-assisted language learning (CALL), content-based instruction, and multimedia applications in foreign language pedagogy. This paper describes our initial attempts to construct a number of World Wide Web pages where students will be able to study EST, EAP, and computer science topics on their own in a multimedia environment.