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This epaper contains abstracts of lectures held at SRH University for Applied Sciences, Heidelberg, December 2014. Now, 15 years after the beginning of the Bologna process (1999), it is time to re¬view the international educational landscape and evaluate its impact to date. How has teaching in higher education and in universities changed and what are the next steps? The International conference on innovation in higher education is intended to be a platform for knowledge transfer concerning the following issues: innovative teaching and learning methods in higher education, especially in the areas of architecture, business, engineering, informatics, psychology, social and legal sciences and therapeutic sciences, research-based teaching, change management and new organizational trends in higher education, international cooperation in teaching and research.
Sustainability and eco-friendliness is gaining considerable attention within the hotel industry (Chen, Sloan & Legrand, 2009; Kim & Han, 2010). There has been a growing awareness of the environmental and social influence of hotel operation and development among customers, operators and investors. (Chen and Peng, 2012; Jones, Hillier & Comfort, 2014; Pryce, 2001). Especially hotel customers’ demands for environmentally responsible lodging have been rapidly increasing in recent years (Chen and Tung, 2014; Han, 2015). Sustainability is therefore regarded as one of the key issues within the global lodging industry (Jones, Hillier & Comfort, 2014) and one of the most important drivers for innovations in tourism in general. Considering that today’s customers are more and more sensitive to sustainable matters and are willing to change their consumption habits to reduce environmental and social harms, it is becoming inevitable for hotels to establish a sustainable orientation and to develop sustainable innovations. Otherwise the hotels are not able to maintain competitiveness or obtain competitive advantages in the lodging marketplace. (Chen and Peng, 2012; Jones, Hillier & Comfort, 2014; Hofmeister-Toth et al., 2011; Kim and Han, 2010; Manaktola and Jauhari, 2007).
This is a joint analysis by SRH University Berlin and Michael Lutz, Project Leader at The
Boston Consulting Group, of the crucial role of human resources (HR) in the integration phase of mergers and acquisitions (M&A), contributing a new perspective to the classic approach with its heavy bias towards quantitative measures. The conducted analysis of literature research as well as the evaluation of experiences by various experts aims to provide further understanding of the diverse reasons for the outcome of (un)sustainable M&A activities.
Research shows that most M&A activities fail in the long run because the classic approach during the three phases (1) pre-merger planning, (2) the merger itself, and (3) the post-merger-integration phase focuses on quantitative issues and insufficiently incorporates HR and cultural topics.
HR is integral for every M&A, as well as for the restructuring and change projects that often accompany mergers. Therefore, failing to adequately include employees in the M&A phases is one of the gravest risks while conducting a merger.
This article describes in detail the challenges faced when conducting an M&A with regard to
HR implementation and presents advise and tools for how to successfully mitigate an M&A failure due to insufficient HR implementation.
In this work a tailored approach for requirements engineering for risk management solutions is presented. The approach focuses on cross-disciplinary risk paradigms in inpatient healthcare and aims to provide a novel methodology that accounts for specific viewpoints of relevant expert groups. The presented results demonstrate the feasibility and usefulness of the approach in the context of the current evaluation within the German market.
Modern day labour market is influenced by different factors, mainly by ambitious investment in latest machinery, office automation software systems and computer-based solutions. Utilization of computer has benefited the employment market on vast scale, depending on the requirements of a particular business, its size and financial capabilities, and the intention to use. Furthermore, unparalleled technologies, such as cloud computing and smart technologies has directly affected demand for modern day labour. Nowadays, the utility model of cloud computing made it more popular and a favourite choice for the institutes to free up their internal resources and also reduce the number of administrative staff needed to maintain it. With certain kinds of offerings, institutes operating at small scales are also benefitting, which was almost impossible only a decade ago. Given that, the successful utilization of cloud computing remains a topic of extra ordinary importance among the scholars, experts, interested groups and several other institutions, and is defined in different ways according to their particular understanding and usage. But cloud is best defined by National institutes of standard and technology.
Adjustment and cost-effectiveness are key elements of a successful Information Security Management System (ISMS). ISMS-Processes, as basic elements of every ISMS, need to be aligned to the organization and its mission. As of today, a specific ISMS process framework does not exist. ISMS processes are not in focus of current research. This article aims to fill this research gap by presenting results of a process mapping study regarding ISMS processes in the most important and widely accepted international standards for Information Security Management. Authors propose a set of ISMS processes within an ISMS process framework which should be implemented at an individually appropriate maturity level.
ISMS core processes: a study
(2016)
Adjustment and cost-effectiveness are key elements of a successful Information Security Management System (ISMS). ISMS-Processes, as basic elements of every ISMS, need to be aligned to the organization and their mission. Actually a specific ISMS process framework which clearly differentiates between ISMS processes and security measures controlled by ISMS-processes does not exist. ISMS processes itself are not focused in current research. This article will fill this research gap while containing the results of a study to identify criteria for ISMS core processes as well as to identify relevant ISMS core processes.
Nowadays efficiency and quality of education is controversially discussed by politicians as well as by scientists. A number of important studies point out the necessity of improvements in the field of education. Using learning management systems might be a chance for institutes of higher education to face the demands of today.
In this paper we evaluate the need of learning management systems for higher education organisations. A value chain for organisations of higher education has been developed to categorize and to describe generic task. By conducting an empirical analysis through the academic task carriers (professors, students and administration department) we could identify the need for supporting each task by learning management system. The paper aims to describe a generic evaluation method for learning management systems. A comprehensive description of the evaluation method and results of the empirical analysis are presented in detail.
We present a new approach for classifying MPEG-2 video sequences as dasiacartoonpsila, dasiacommercialpsila, dasiamusicpsila, dasianewspsila or dasiasportpsila by analyzing specific, high-level audio-visual features of consecutive frames in real-time. This is part of the well-known video-genre-classification problem, where popular TV-broadcast genres are studied. Such applications have also been discussed in the context of MPEG-7 [1]. In our method the extracted features are logically combined using a set of classifiers to produce a reliable recognition. The results demonstrate a high identification rate based on a large representative collection of 100 video sequences (20 sequences per genre) gathered from free digital TV-broadcasting in Europe.
In this paper we describe in detail the recent publications related to video-genre-classification and present our improved new approaches for classifying video sequences in real-time as 'cartoon', 'commercial', 'music', 'news' or 'sport' by analyzing the content with new high-level audio-visual descriptors and classification methods. Such applications have also been discussed in the context of MPEG-7. The results demonstrate identification rates of more than 90% based on a large representative collection of 100 videos gathered from free digital TV and Internet.
Wo genau liegt der technische Unterschied zwischen Fernsehern mit HD-ready und Full-HD? Welche Übertragungswege und Empfangsmöglichkeiten gibt es, und welche Zusatzgeräte brauchen die Verbraucher, um die verbesserte Bildqualität ihrer hochauflösenden TV-Geräte voll nutzen zu können? Und ist es wichtig, ob sich das Fernsehbild „progressiv“ oder „interlaced“ aufbaut? Antworten auf diese und weitere Fragen gibt die neue Publikation „HD-TV – Technologische Einblicke in das hochauflösende Fernsehen der Zukunft“.
Dr. Ronald Glasberg (Technische Universität Berlin) hat im Auftrag des BITKOM einen Leitfaden zu grundlegenden, technologischen Einblicken in das hochauflösende Fernsehen der Zukunft erstellt. Die Publikation weist die optionalen Übertragungswege via Terrestrik, Kabel, Satellit, Mobilfunk oder Internet auf. Vor allem die digitalen Übertragungswege ermöglichen dem Konsumenten viele Annehmlichkeiten wie zeitversetztes Fernsehen, Video-on-Demand, das Auffinden von Schlüsselbegriffen im laufenden Programm sowie zukünftig mehr Interaktivität.
Abstract: ASP (Application Server Provider) marketplaces
provide a fundamental alternative to the classical business model
of software licensing. At this point, it is still unclear why and
when customers prefer the ASP model over more traditional
approaches. To make ASP more attractive, more knowledge
about possible pricing and product strategies is needed. In this
paper we describe different business models for ASP
marketplaces. We first compare the cost structures of the
classical licensing model with the new server-based approach.
Then we illustrate how price and product differentiation may
improve overall market efficiency. In particular, we show that
by selling different software versions for different prices, ASP
marketplaces may obtain near-optimal revenues with products
that are relatively inexpensive, disaggregated, and customizable.
Consumers can thus choose between a wide variety of product
lines to fit their differing budgets and requirements.
The web service model provides fundamental advantages compared to the classical software usage model. But transactions in the web service market have by far not reached the expected level. A reason for the tendency of market failure is the verifiable information asymmetry and uncertainty in the web service market. Besides deficiencies on the supply side, regarding configuration, display and communication of web service bundles, the limited web service knowledge of potential buyers are constitutional causes to the modest development and enforcement of the web service model. By the help of strategies derived from information economics the present study elaborates measures to take in order to prevent the market for web based services from failing. The conclusions of an online-based questioning experiment offer strategic recommendations to reduce buyer’s uncertainty in outsourcing decision. Results of the experiment point out the significant positive impact to reduce information asymmetry and transaction uncertainty in the web service market by integrating information substitutes in the web service bundle in order to transform experience and credence qualities into search qualities. It can be verified that web service customers have a higher willingness to pay when information substitutes are
integrated into the web service bundle.
Use of cloud computing in healthcare is a promising trend, particularly in utilization of smart items. Access, affordability and quality to proper healthcare is a great challenge in world society. With the utilization of smart sensors, there are possibilities to improve the quality of healthcare services whenever needed. Hence, such smart items services lead to economic advantages for the whole healthcare system. Keeping in mind these opportunities as well as challenges such as security or legal issues, it is important to bring healthcare and IT together. As a result, healthcare business processes need to be modeled in order to provide IT solutions tailored for practice-oriented applications. In this paper, we present a three-level architecture for a smart healthcare infrastructure. Our approach is based on recent literature work and results from conducted expert interviews with healthcare specialists and IT professionals. To demonstrate the applicability of this architecture model, we provide an example use-case as a template for any kind of smart sensor-based healthcare infrastructure.
Objectives/rationale: Healthcare systems all over the world are facing difficult challenges that have a direct impact and influence the delivery of healthcare services. As a response healthcare institutions are relying in the implementation of Information and communication technologies (ICTs) to overcome difficulties and satisfy patients’ demands in a cost-effective way adopting new technologies capable to innovate, extend, and redefine the way healthcare has been delivered for decades. New technological innovations such as Internet of things (IoT), Smart item technology, and cloud computing can improve the traditional e-healthcare system and extend service provision beyond the hospital facilities by using wireless sensor networks (WSN) and radio frequency identification devices (RFID), providing a new type of services advertised as “smart.” This type of services, enable doctors to treat patients remotely and allows people to do their normal daily routines, occupations, and activities while receiving appropriate, timely, and high-quality ubiquitous healthcare services.
Methods: An exploratory study is performed to review the route towards smart healthcare services, emphasizing the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and smart item technology as enhancers for smart healthcare services provision.
Results/findings: A new technological infrastructure promises to transform medical practice and disease prevention by empowering healthcare institutions with smart items for remote patient monitoring eliminating time-wasting procedures, reducing health costs, improving quality of service and patients satisfaction.
Implications/conclusions: Traditional e-healthcare system is transitioning into an interconnected smart-healthcare system potentiated by new technological advances capable to extend healthcare service provision and offer smart healthcare services.
We discussed the realisation of corporate social responsibility and responsible living in general with employers and employees in different companies and organisations. We found out, that most of the participants think, that they know too little about the corporate social responsibility activities of their company, evaluate the atmosphere as not really good and don’t see their own responsibility. Also they mentioned, that the employees mostly talk with each other about emotions and stories, less about facts and information. In the discussion all agreed, that it would be much more effective, if information about social responsibility is delivered by stories—by storytelling.
We prove this by a questionnaire, where we give the participants the same information about employees social and corporate social activities in a short news with numbers and also in the form of storytelling. We ask them, which text they would tell their friends, neighbours or colleagues and which text would attract them at most to motivate themselves for acting more responsible. We also ask the employees how they think this could be realised.
With the result we can show, how you can sensitize and activate people for bringing more attention, awareness and activity to a more responsible living inside and outside companies.
A high number of airlines has been switching its business concept from fixed prices for economy or business class to a system of bundles, where customers can choose among a different set of services and book flights to different prices, depending on their individual preferences. This paper aims at finding out which services are those consumers regard as most important and what therefore makes an airline a sustainable choice in terms of service. For that purpose a survey has been conducted for approx. one week, where participants have answered a set of questions online and offline. In the second chapter, the authors will explain certain ground assumptions of online consumers, stressing the importance of user-friendly websites as well as the cost of the most popular extra services offered by regular airlines and also low-cost carriers. Keeping this in mind, the survey’s results will be presented in chapter four. 105 participants gave
their opinion on what makes an airline’s service sustainable to them, the result being a mixture of good cabin crew soft skills, a minimum degree of comfort and efficiency throughout the whole time of purchasing a flight, being on board and leaving the aircraft. A user-friendly booking procedure as well as being able of leaving the airplane fast and receiving its luggage
without further waiting has - according to the survey - won over seats in the front row, high-quality menus and entertainment programs. Even the sustainability aspect having been regarded as a factor of high-quality services, is not a major criterion for travelers. What in most cases makes an airline sustainable for passengers is friendly personnel. The bundle systems are preferred, since the cabin crew aspect has not vanished completely in the airline sector, even among low budget airlines. To receive transparency and flexibility when booking a flight, saving money but knowing that a certain quality will almost always be delivered through soft skills on board could be the reason why passengers feel more comfortable with the new business concepts.
Die Umsetzung von IT-Service-Support-Prozessen auf der Basis des Referenzmodells IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) geschieht in vielen Unternehmen derzeit mit hoher Priorität. Obwohl zur Unterstützung der Support-Prozesse eine Vielzahl von Softwarelösungen zur Verfügung stehen, basieren diese heute nicht auf Service-orientierten-Architekturen. Die Vorteile einer Service-orientierten-Architektur werden daher im Rahmen des IT-Service-Supports nicht genutzt. Der Beitrag zeigt am Beispiel eines zentralen ITIL-Support-Prozesses, dem Incident-Management, wie dieser technisch auf der Basis von Web-Services umgesetzt werden kann. Die Grundlage bilden sechs Fallstudien, in denen die Gestaltung ITIL-basierter Support-Prozesse untersucht wurde. Aufbauend auf den Fallstudien wird ein generischer Incident-Management-Prozess definiert und mit Hilfe von Web-Services umgesetzt. Dabei kommen sowohl atomare als auch aggregierte Web-Services zum Einsatz. Für ein konkretes Service-Anliegen wird der Prozessablauf grafisch beschrieben. Die Umsetzung erfolgt exemplarisch unter Zuhilfenahme der Web Services Description Language (WSDL).
Due to an enhanced customer focus in the planning, development and delivery of IT services, service-oriented IT management has become increasingly important. This paper investigates to what effect service-oriented IT management has already been put into place in European companies. Benefit and cost categories of integrating service-oriented principles into IT management processes are analyzed. Additionally success factors for implementing serviceoriented IT management are investigated. For this purpose, six case studies were conducted. The situation of IT management before and after implementation was analyzed and comments are made on the corresponding transformation projects. Based on the case studies, this paper shows three typical benefit categories of service-oriented IT management. Eight cost categories for implementing and operating service-oriented IT management processes are discussed and six success factors of pertinent re-organization projects are identified. Findings can serve as guidelines for other IT organizations and can be used as enabler for getting informed decisions regarding the initiation of service-oriented IT management. Finally, the article highlights four current trends for service-oriented IT management and further research is outlined.
Web Services appear promising to facilitate interoperability and enable Dynamic Value Webs - the on-demand aggregation of services even across enterprise boundaries. However, past experiences have shown interoperability limitations in practice mainly due to information asymmetries on the Web Services markets. This Paper describes a service-oriented architecture for building Dynamic Value Webs in mobile environments using adaptive Location-Based Services. Our concept addresses the following three predominant difficulties: (1) service adaptivity to changing conditions in mobile environments, (2) interoperability including higher levels of semantics, and (3) assuring trustworthiness to all affected parties.
The application of wireless technologies in urban areas is at the beginning of a transformation. While municipalities worldwide have invested in deploying wireless access infrastructures, the services which build up on these and add value for individuals and organizations are still at their early stage. Especially for European municipalities there is still a looming potential. This paper explores the current status of municipal wireless adoption in Europe based on the analysis of 25 initiatives in European metropolitan areas and derives a setup approach for wireless city initiatives which focuses on the definition and evaluation of innovative services. The approach includes overall design requirements, a generic stakeholder analysis as well as clusters for innovative wireless services and is illustrated by a case example of an ongoing wireless city project in Germany.
Online Service Quality of Web-based E-Mail-Services: an Empirical Study for The German Market
(2009)
E-mail services represent an essential part of the IT landscape of enterprises. Besides in-house hosting, every company can make use of offers from specialized Application Service Providers (ASPs). Former research has shown a lack of transparency in the market for web-based services. This paper summarizes the results of a study on professional web-based e-mail services catering to the German-speaking market. This research mainly addresses following questions: What are the similarities and differences between the various services in the market? To which extent do the offered services meet a corporation's requirements? What kind of methodology can be used to analyze and to compare web-based services? And, with that in mind, do web-based e-mail-services represent a serious alternative to in-house hosting of e-mail-services? To answer these questions we compared information of selected service providers on the basis of a multi-scenario utility analysis.
The inherent quality of business processes increasingly plays a significant role in the economic success of an organization. More and more business processes are supported through IT processes. In this contribution, we present a new approach which allows the continuous quality improvement of IT processes by the interconnection of IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) reference model and process mining. On the basis of the reference model, to-be processes are set and key indicators are determined. As-is processes and their key indicators derived by process mining are subsequently compared to the to-be processes. This new approach enables the design and control of ITIL based customer support processes which will be trialed in a practice case of a customer relationship management (CRM) system. The procedural models, as well as its results, are introduced in this publication.
In order to deliver services of high quality in a cost-effective manner, processes and their support through information technology (IT) play an increasingly significant role. We present an approach, which allows optimizing the service delivery through continual process improvement. This approach combines the 7-step improvement process recommended by ITIL with process mining. On the basis of suggestions derived from process mining, performance indicators of different services are determined and subsequently compared as part of an internal benchmark. The approach, which will be trialed in practice, enables the optimization of service delivery certainly, but it is also concerned with the most effective utilization of limited resources in terms of people and tools.
When planned organisational change happens, the members of the organisation experience it in different ways at different times. Their “change journeys” begin with the original response to the change initiative and they pass through a sequence of steps from the initial realisation that there is a discrepancy or inconsistency with pre-existing schemas (i.e. when the individual learns of a change, or perceives that there has been a change) to an actual change in their own schemas (George and Jones, 2001), which is the point where the change journey has (temporarily) ended and the destination been reached.
Such a journey becomes possible when individuals start to question their own position(s) in regard to the change, when they start taking into account their own reactions to it together with developments and responses to the change initiative at the meso and macro-level over time. As individuals reach different understandings about themselves during the change process, their change journey itself changes: they may set out for a new destination, or continue to the original destination but follow a different route.
Much of the literature on reactions to change ignores the tendency of individuals to pay attention to their own reasons for how they react and tends to view responses to change–especially resistance– almost as an involuntary reflex rather than as part of a complex process of interpretation and action carried out by self-aware individuals. This paper reports on how reflexivity is a vital aspect of the change journey. We carried out a longitudinal, multi-level qualitative study of a planned change initiative at PCo, the Canadian subsidiary of a European pharmaceutical company, which involved the introduction of a new organisational structure– the creation of a matrix structure. Grounded theory was used to guide the research. More than sixty in-depth interviews were carried out over a period of eighteen months. The data from these interviews were supplemented by quantitative data.
We describe how members of the organisation thought through what the change was “really” about and what it meant for them. They told stories and passed on anecdotes, which provided a way of demonstrating their own analysis of the change and their role in it, and of then building on this in order to achieve particular goals, like simply securing their own position or moving up the career ladder. We show that there was an element of playfulness in these processes. The employees analysed their own position and changed this according to developments in their groups and in the organisation. For some, it was like playing a game where they had to react to what was going on and change their tactics and strategy. This could then meant replanning their own change journeys.
In analysing this process, we pay particular attention to the role of language. Language is not simply a mechanism of communication, but rather a fundamental aspect of organisation and organising (eg Westwood and Linstead, 2001). One view is that organisation exists only through language, leading to views of organisation as text, or as narrative, or as constituted in discourse (e.g. Mumby and Clair, 1997). So there is great value at investigating discourse during change processes because language, in the form of conversations, stories and rumours, is a significant factor in the way change is conceptualised (Balogun and Johnson, 2005). Conversation – “language-based interactions of individuals within organisations” (Woodilla, 1998: 33)– is one of the most common forms of communication in the workplace. Studies of managerial activities (e.g. Mintzberg, 1973) have shown that managers spend a large part of their time in carrying out oral communications. The act of conversation and the content of conversation produce action (Hardy et al., 2000), which indicates why conversations can play an important part in a change process. The way in which organisational members negotiate meaning in the change process is through discursive practices and textual objects (Anderson, 2005). Indeed, coherent language use can play a significant role in the outcome of change initiatives (Sillince, 1999) and there are fragmented and competing discourses within an organisation during a change process.
Stories play a significant role in the creation and maintenance of meaning in organisations. Stories are passed from one person to another through conversation, and storytelling is “something done around the water cooler” (Boje at al., 2001: 166). The informal nature of storytelling does not mean that it is not important. Boje (1991) shows how the use of stories enabled change to take place, as when an executive's storytelling enabled him to convince colleagues to move in new direction. Indeed, Tsoukas (2005) argues that organisational change is the process of constructing and sharing new meanings and interpretations of organisational activities.
Discourse, then, is a mechanism through which change happens and through which change journeys are planned and re-planned and made. The members of an organisation use discourse in all its various forms to reflect on and change (or not) their own position and to influence the change journeys of others.