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In many cases, transitioning towards sustainable agricultural production requires farmers to change their practices. These changes can include the adoption of sustainable agricultural practices, water-saving, or the disadoption of excessive chemical input use or land burning. Policy makers interested in making agricultural production more sustainable need to understand what encourages the uptake of sustainable practices and what is effective in reducing unsustainable practices. This thesis seeks to understand whether and how information provision and endorsement can contribute to the transition towards more sustainable agricultural systems.
The thesis consists of three self-contained papers. The first paper explores the potential of religious endorsement for inducing pro-environmental behaviour and encouraging the disadoption of fire as an agricultural practice, thereby preventing forest fires. The paper analyses the impact of a fatwa (an Islamic religious ruling) on reducing fire incidence in Indonesia. Results indicate that fire incidence decreased in Muslim majority villages following the issuing of the fatwa. For the post-fatwa period from August 2016 to December 2019, the average monthly effect amounts to around 2.2 prevented fire events per village. This is a considerable effect. The paper concludes that fire prevention efforts, and potentially other environmental conservation efforts, could benefit significantly from support by religious institutions and stakeholders.
The second paper investigates the role of information provision and training for the adoption of organic farming practices in Java, Indonesia. We use a randomised controlled trial (RCT) to identify the impact of a three-day hands-on training in organic farming for smallholder farmers. We find that the training intervention increased the adoption of organic inputs and had a positive and statistically significant effect on farmers’ knowledge and perceptions of organic farming. Overall, our findings suggest that information constraints are a barrier to the adoption of organic farming, as information provision increased the use of organic farming practices.
The third paper investigates whether urban and suburban Indonesian consumers are willing to pay a price premium for organic food. We use an incentive-compatible auction based on the Becker-DeGroot-Marschak (BDM) approach to elicit consumers’ WTP. We further study the effect of income and a randomised information treatment about the benefits of organic food on respondents’ WTP. Estimates suggest that consumers are willing to pay a price premium for organic rice, on average 20 percent more than what they paid for conventional rice outside of our experiment. However, our results also indicate that raising consumers’ WTP further is complex. Showing participants a video about the health or, alternatively, environmental benefits of organic food was not effective in further raising WTP. Exposure to the environmental benefits video was, however, effective in raising stated organic food consumption intentions.
Landscapes and societies in Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture in Southwest China have undergone unprecedented changes over the last 60 years. These transformations within the landscapes manifest themselves as land cover change, for example intensification of traditional land use systems and introduction of monocultures leading to deforestation, loss of biodiversity and other forms of environmental degradation. At the same time, communities and societies within these landscapes have experienced a certain degree of economic development, mainly through exploitation of natural resources. Through changing of political and economic frameworks, they have also profound transformations within their social and socio-cultural configurations. Based on the outcomes of field work in Xishuangbanna between 2006 and 2010, this study examines institutions, institutional voids and institutional change concerning land-use in the Naban River Watershed National Nature Reserve. Combining socio-economic and ecological data, patterns of land-use change and their interrelation to local communities are explored. With the emergence of the rubber-line, a socio-ecological frontier, disparities between upland and lowland landscapes and communities are intensifying.
This study is an urban history of Cagayan de Oro (Northern Mindanao, Philippines), a city in a developing region, which faced urban transformation from the end of WWII in 1945 to 1980. It employed a multidisciplinary approach wherein the city’s demographic, economic and infrastructural changes were analyzed. The study revealed that Cagayan had grown and transformed from a traditional town into an urban centre whereby its demography had continuously expanded with high rates of natural increase and large streams of in-migrants; while its economic activities had shifted from agricultural production to commerce and industrialization. Its economic transition was due to the promotion of Cagayan as the “Gateway to the South” or “Gateway to Northern Mindanao” by the deciding elites who were part of the transnational economic system that supplied resources to the developed countries such as the United States and Japan. As a result, the growth of Cagayan was not directed towards the masses but instead to the elites and their foreign allies. Cagayan experienced inertia in terms of infrastructural development. Therefore the absorption of foreign structures resulted to an artificial form of urban transformation in Cagayan.
The increasing relevance of massive graph data reinforces the need for adequate graph data management. While several graph database engines have been developed, the storage of graph data in a relational database management system, and therefore the seamless integration into existing information systems remains an open challenge.
Motivated by the use case to integrate Building Information Modeling (BIM) data into the MonArch system, we propose a solution that transforms the BIM data into a property graph and stores this graph in the database system.
We present a novel approach to efficiently store property graph data in a relational database management system using JSON functionality and redundant storage of edges in adjacency lists and show how to import huge data sets into this schema. Applying this approach, we import data sets of up to nearly 1 TB of disk space within the relational database, while only having 96 GB of main memory available.
We also present a new approach of how to retrieve data from this database schema, translating queries written in the popular property graph query language Cypher into SQL. Hence, we provide an intuitive way to write semantically complex queries.
We also demonstrate the efficiency of our approach using the standardized Linked Data Benchmark Council – Social Network Benchmark (LDBC - SNB) framework. Our approach increases the throughput for this benchmark by up to 85 times, compared to existing approaches for RDBMS.
In addition, we propose a new method to transform BIM data into the property graph model and how to apply the aforementioned property graph storage to this data. We can import IFC models of up to 300 MB within five minutes.
We show the suitability of our approach using our own use case specific benchmark, which we integrated into the previously mentioned Social Network Benchmark. For our interactive use case-specific queries, we achieve response times faster than 5 ms in 99% of all executions.
Finally, we present how the aforementioned approach to store BIM data in a relational database management system is integrated into the existing MonArch system by splitting the different functionalities of our approach into a microservice architecture.
Due to the increasing amount of distributed renewable energy generation and the emerging high demand at consumer connection points, e. g., electric vehicles, the power distribution grid will reach its capacity limit at peak load times if it is not expensively enhanced. Alternatively, smart flexibility management that controls user assets can help to better utilize the existing power grid infrastructure for example by sharing available grid capacity among connected electric vehicles or by disaggregating flexibility requests to hybrid photovoltaic battery energy storage systems in households. Besides maintaining an acceptable state of the power distribution grid, these smart grid applications also need to ensure a certain quality of service and provide fairness between the individual participants, both of which are not extensively discussed in the literature. This thesis investigates two smart grid applications, namely electric vehicle charging-as-a-service and flexibility-provision-as-a-service from distributed energy storage systems in private households.
The electric vehicle charging service allocation is modeled with distributed queuing-based allocation mechanisms which are compared to new probabilistic algorithms. Both integrate user constraints (arrival time, departure time, and energy required) to manage the quality of service and fairness. In the queuing-based allocation mechanisms, electric vehicle charging requests are packetized into logical charging current packets, representing the smallest controllable size of the charging process. These packets are queued at hierarchically distributed schedulers, which allocate the available charging capacity using the time and frequency division multiplexing technique known from the networking domain. This allows multiple electric vehicles to be charged simultaneously with variable charging currents. To achieve high quality of service and fairness among electric vehicle charging processes, dynamic weights are introduced into a weighted fair queuing scheduler that considers electric vehicle departure time and required energy for prioritization. The distributed probabilistic algorithms are inspired by medium access protocols from computer networking, such as binary exponential backoff, and control the quality of service and fairness by adjusting sampling windows and waiting periods based on user requirements.
The second smart grid application under investigation aims to provide flexibility provision-as-a-service that disaggregates power flexibility requests to distributed battery energy storage systems in private households. Commonly, the main purpose of stationary energy storage is to store energy from a local photovoltaic system for later use, e. g., for overnight charging of an electric vehicle. This is optimized locally by a home energy management system, which also allows the scheduling of external flexibility requests defined by the deviation from the optimal power profile at the grid connection point, for example, to perform peak shaving at the transformer. This thesis discusses a linear heuristic and a meta heuristic to disaggregate a flexibility request to the single participating energy management systems that are grouped into a flexibility pool. Thereby, the linear heuristic iteratively assigns portions of the power flexibility to the most appropriate energy management system for one time slot after another, minimizing the total flexibility cost or maximizing the probability of flexibility delivery. In addition, a multi-objective genetic algorithm is proposed that also takes into account power grid aspects, quality of service, and fairness among par-ticipating households. The genetic operators are tailored to the flexibility disaggregation search space, taking into account flexibility and energy management system constraints, and enable power-optimized buffering of fitness values.
Both smart grid applications are validated on a realistic power distribution grid with real driving patterns and energy profiles for photovoltaic generation and household consumption. The results of all proposed algorithms are analyzed with respect to a set of newly defined metrics on quality of service, fairness, efficiency, and utilization of the power distribution grid. One of the main findings is that none of the tested algorithms outperforms the others in all quality of service metrics, however, integration of user expectations improves the service quality compared to simpler approaches. Furthermore, smart grid control that incorporates users and their flexibility allows the integration of high-load applications such as electric vehicle charging and flexibility aggregation from distributed energy storage systems into the existing electricity distribution infrastructure. However, there is a trade-off between power grid aspects, e. g., grid losses and voltage values, and the quality of service provided. Whenever active user interaction is required, means of controlling the quality of service of users’ smart grid applications are necessary to ensure user satisfaction with the services provided.
Software model checking is a successful technique for automated program verification. Several of the most widely used approaches for software model checking are based on solving first-order-logic formulas over predicates using SMT solvers, e.g., predicate abstraction, bounded model checking, k-induction, and lazy abstraction with interpolants. We define a configurable framework for predicate-based analyses that allows expressing each of these approaches. This unifying framework highlights the differences between the approaches, producing new insights, and facilitates research of further algorithms and their combinations, as witnessed by several research projects that have been conducted on top of this framework. In addition to this theoretical contribution, we provide a mature implementation of our framework in the software verifier that allows applying all of the mentioned approaches to practice. This implementation is used by other research groups, e.g., to find bugs in the Linux kernel, and has proven its competitiveness by winning gold medals in the International Competition on Software Verification.
Tools and approaches for software model checking like our predicate analysis are typically evaluated using performance benchmarking on large sets of verification tasks. We have identified several pitfalls that can silently arise during benchmarking, and we have found that the benchmarking techniques and tools that are used by many researchers do not guarantee valid results in practice, but may produce arbitrarily large measurement errors. Furthermore, certain hardware characteristics can also have nondeterministic influence on the measurements. In order to being able to properly evaluate our framework for software verification, we study the effects of these hardware characteristics, and define a list of the most important requirements that need to be ensured for reliable benchmarking. We present as solution an open-source benchmarking framework BenchExec, which in contrast to other benchmarking tools fulfills all our requirements and aims at making reliable benchmarking easy. BenchExec was already adopted by several research groups and the International Competition on Software Verification.
Using the power of BenchExec we conduct an experimental evaluation of our unifying framework for predicate analysis. We study the effect of varying the SMT solver and the way program semantics are encoded in formulas across several verification algorithms and find that these technical choices can significantly influence the results of experimental studies of verification approaches. This is valuable information for both researchers who study verification approaches as well as for users who apply them in practice. Our comprehensive study of 120 different configurations would not have been possible without our highly flexible and configurable unifying framework for predicate analysis and shows that the latter is a valuable base for conducting experiments. Furthermore, we show using a comparison against top-ranking verifiers from the International Competition on Software Verification that our implementation is highly competitive and can outperform the state of the art.
The current movement towards a smart grid serves as a solution to present power grid challenges by introducing numerous monitoring and communication technologies. A dependable, yet timely exchange of data is on the one hand an existential prerequisite to enable Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) services, yet on the other a challenging endeavor, because the increasing complexity of the grid fostered by the combination of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and utility networks inherently leads to dependability challenges.
To be able to counter this dependability degradation, current approaches based on high-reliability hardware or physical redundancy are no longer feasible, as they lead to increased hardware costs or maintenance, if not both. The flexibility of these approaches regarding vendor and regulatory interoperability is also limited. However, a suitable solution to the AMI dependability challenges is also required to maintain certain regulatory-set performance and Quality of Service (QoS) levels.
While a part of the challenge is the introduction of ICT into the power grid, it also serves as part of the solution. In this thesis a Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) based approach is proposed, which employs virtualized ICT components serving as a replacement for physical devices. By using virtualization techniques, it is possible to enhance the performability in contrast to hardware based solutions through the usage of virtual replacements of processes that would otherwise require dedicated hardware. This approach offers higher flexibility compared to hardware redundancy, as a broad variety of virtual components can be spawned, adapted and replaced in a short time. Also, as no additional hardware is necessary, the incurred costs decrease significantly. In addition to that, most of the virtualized components are deployed on Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) hardware solutions, further increasing the monetary benefit.
The approach is developed by first reviewing currently suggested solutions for AMIs and related services. Using this information, virtualization technologies are investigated for their performance influences, before a virtualized service infrastructure is devised, which replaces selected components by virtualized counterparts. Next, a novel model, which allows the separation of services and hosting substrates is developed, allowing the introduction of virtualization technologies to abstract from the underlying architecture. Third, the performability as well as monetary savings are investigated by evaluating the developed approach in several scenarios using analytical and simulative model analysis as well as proof-of-concept approaches. Last, the practical applicability and possible regulatory challenges of the approach are identified and discussed.
Results confirm that—under certain assumptions—the developed virtualized AMI is superior to the currently suggested architecture. The availability of services can be severely increased and network delays can be minimized through centralized hosting. The availability can be increased from 96.82% to 98.66% in the given scenarios, while decreasing the costs by over 60% in comparison to the currently suggested AMI architecture. Lastly, the performability analysis of a virtualized service prototype employing performance analysis and a Musa-Okumoto approach reveals that the AMI requirements are fulfilled.
Tourismus in ländlichen Regionen umfasst alle touristischen Angebotsformen in Gemeinden bis zu 5.000 Einwohnern und abseits städtischer Ballungsräume. Dieser Tourismusraum steht aktuell vor großen Herausforderungen und ist ein häufig kritisch beäugtes Diskussions- und Forschungsfeld. Regelmäßig wiederkehrende Themenbereiche sind: die Abwanderung junger Fachkräfte, die Überalterung, Budgetsenkung der öffentlichen Hand sowie die Gefährdung der örtlichen Grundversorgung aufgrund des demographischen Wandels. In einer Vielzahl ländlicher Gebiete Deutschlands, z. B. Bayerischer Wald, Harz, Allgäu, Sylt, ist der Tourismus der wichtigste Wirtschaftsfaktor. Die Einnahmen aus dem Tourismus erhalten strukturschwächere, periphere Gebiete am Leben. Viele wären ohne das Standbein Tourismus schon in einer weitaus schlechteren Situation, mit einem niedrigen Grad an Lebensqualität. Der Tourismus schafft für viele Einheimische und junge Menschen noch eine der wenigen Möglichkeiten, Arbeit in der Heimat zu finden und deswegen dort leben zu können. Die Entwicklung des ländlichen Raumes, inklusive des Wirtschaftsfaktors Tourismus, wird auch in Zukunft eine fundamentale Rolle im Leben vieler Menschen spielen. Es bedarf daher einer angemessenen Auseinandersetzung mit dieser komplexen Thematik in Wissenschaft und Praxis. Die Wichtigkeit des Standbeines Tourismus sowie die Probleme und Misserfolgsfaktoren zu erkennen, sind wichtige Bausteine für eine positive Veränderung. Das häufig pessimistisch gezeichnete Bild des ländlichen Raumes gilt es aber auch durch positive Aspekte zu ergänzen und so wichtige Ankerpunkte aufzuzeigen. Naturschönheiten, ein vielfältiges und vernetztes touristisches Angebot und attraktive Unterkünfte bieten große Mengen an Potential. In einer durch die Globalisierung und die erhöhte Mobilität der Gäste verschärften Konkurrenzsituation zwischen den Tourismusorten gilt es sich klar zu positionieren und das geschnürte Paket sowie die Vorzüge effektiv zu vermarkten. Nur so kann man im bunten Blumenstrauß der Konkurrenz ein klar ersichtliches Profil abgeben und sich Aufmerksamkeit verschaffen. Das Vernetzen von Angeboten und das Einhalten von Qualitätsstandards sind Grundvoraussetzungen, um Gäste erstmalig oder wiederholt zur Reise zu bewegen. Es gibt durchaus auch in strukturschwächeren Gebieten konkrete Erfolgsfaktoren, die durch aktives Handeln erreicht werden können. Deshalb steht die Aufforderung „LÄNDLICHE RÄUME AKTIV GESTALTEN!“ bewusst einleitend in diesem Bericht; sie sollte in jedem angesprochenen Bereich beherzigt werden. Wenn einzelne negative Entwicklungen und die dazugehörigen Misserfolgsfaktoren festgestellt werden, ist gegenzusteuern. Gezieltes taktisches Vorgehen, aber auch Geduld sind gefragt. Die Gemeinden Arnbruck und Drachselsried streben eine gemeinsame Tourismusentwicklung für das Zellertal an, die auch strukturell und personell innovative Wege beschreiten darf. Außerdem interessieren sich die Zellertaler Gemeinden für empirisch begründete Handlungsempfehlungen zur Weiterentwicklung bestimmter Tourismusfelder und zur Vernetzung neuer oder bereits bestehender Felder. Dies soll eine nachhaltige Entwicklung der Gemeinden zu unterstützen. Diese Tourismusstrategie soll, basierend auf wissenschaftlichen Erhebungen, konkrete Handlungs- und Projektempfehlungen für die im örtlichen Tourismus relevanten Bereiche geben. Ebenso soll durch Bürgerbeteiligung in Form von Bürgertreffen lokales Wissen generiert werden, um die Transparenz der Studie zu erhöhen und die zukünftige Umsetzung der Inhalte zu erleichtern. Um Theorie und Praxis in diesem Projekt gewinnbringend zu vereinen, ist eine Kooperation zwischen der Professur für Regionale Geographie der Universität Passau (Projektkoordinator ist Janine Maier, M. A. und Projektleitung Prof. Dr. Werner Gamerith) und dem Projektmanagementbüro Rothkopf in Grafenau (in Form von ITMA Andrea Rothkopf) entstanden. Der Mehrwert durch die Kombination aus Wissenschaft und Praxis zeigt sich in der sich symbiotisch ergänzenden Aufgabenverteilung. Die Universität Passau liefert die Personalkraft für Umfragen und Erhebungen sowie das wissenschaftsspezifische Know-How. ITMA Andrea Rothkopf ist speziell für die praktische Umsetzbarkeit der gesammelten empirischen Daten, wissenschaftlich fundierten Trends, Ideen und Handlungsempfehlungen mit im Team. Zusammen ergeben beide Schritte ein stimmigeres Bild, als wenn nur ein Teilbereich für sich alleine arbeiten würde. So kann jeder Auftraggeber ausschließen, dass weder der fundamental wichtige theoretische Rahmen noch der Aspekt der praktischen Umsetzbarkeit vernachlässigt, sondern beide Bereiche jeweils komplementär eingesetzt werden. Somit kann diese Kombination für den Gesamterfolg eines Forschungsprojektes nur von Vorteil sein. Gefördert wird das Projekt durch das Amt für Ländliche Entwicklung Niederbayern.
Top-k Semantic Caching
(2015)
The subject of this thesis is the intelligent caching of top-k queries in an environment with high latency and low throughput. In such an environment, caching can be used to reduce network traffic and improve response time. Slow database connections of mobile devices and to databases, which have been offshored, are practical use cases.
A semantic cache is a query-based cache that caches query results and maintains their semantic description. It reuses partial matches of previous query results. Each query that is processed by the semantic cache is split into two disjoint parts: one that can be completely answered with tuples of the cache probe query, and another that requires tuples to be transferred from the server (remainder query).
Existing semantic caches do not support top-k queries, i.e., ordered and limited queries. In this thesis, we present an innovative semantic cache that naturally supports top-k queries. The support of top-k queries in a semantic cache has considerable effects on cache elements, operations on cache elements -- like creation, difference, intersection, and union -- and query answering. Hence, we introduce new techniques for cache management and query processing. They enable the semantic cache to become a true top-k semantic cache.
In addition, we have developed a new algorithm that can estimate the lower bounds of query results of sorted queries using multidimensional histograms. Using this algorithm, our top-k semantic cache is able to pipeline partial query results of top-k queries. Thereby, query execution performance can be significantly increased.
We have implemented a prototype of a top-k semantic cache called IQCache (Intelligent Query Cache). An extensive and thorough evaluation with various benchmarks using our prototype demonstrates the applicability and performance of top-k semantic caching in practice. The experiments prove that the top-k semantic cache invariably outperforms simple hash-based caching strategies and scales very well.
Tierplastik im 20.Jahrhundert. Heinz Theuerjahr (1913 - 1991). Biographie und Werkverzeichnis
(2000)
Bei der vorliegenden Arbeit handelt es sich um eine monographische Untersuchung des plastischen Gesamtwerkes von Heinz Theuerjahr. Den Schwerpunkt der Arbeit bildet die Erfassung der 851 plastischen Werke und ihre wissenschaftliche Aufbereitung im gesonderten Werkverzeichnis. Aus der Gesamtübersicht des plastischen Werkes heraus wird neben der Aufarbeitung einzelner Werkphasen und stilistischer Merkmale auch gezeigt, dass Theuerjahr keineswegs der Vorstellung eines reinen Tierbildhauers gerecht wird, die aus dem überproportional hohen Anteil an Tierplastiken von Theuerjahr im öffentlichen Besitz erwachsen ist. Erst im reifen Werk beginnt Theuerjahr, sich fast ausschließlich der Tierbildhauerei zu widmen. In einem weiteren Schritt wird Theuerjahrs Stellung innerhalb der traditionellen Tierbildhauerei des 20. Jahrhunderts untersucht. Im Anhang finden sich u. a. eine ausführliche Tabelle zu den Lebensdaten des Künstlers, ein detailliertes Verzeichnis aller Ausstellungen, sowie ein ikonographisches Register zum plastischen Werk.
Three Essays on Understanding Mobile Consumer Behavior: Business Models, Perceptions, and Features
(2016)
For about a decade, consumers have been carrying the Internet in their pockets. The rapid penetration of modern smartphones has meant that more than two-thirds of the people in the West can access and use online resources, anytime and anywhere. Consumers also can communicate and share their consumption experiences instantaneously. Platforms reach users for time-critical events through highly personal communication channels, in the sense that smartphones serve as constant companions. Many mobile applications and their basic services and contents also are available for free. The digital and mobile worlds thus are changing the very means of communication, suggesting the powerful need for marketing research and practice to find the opportunities and meet the challenges of the mobile Internet. In particular, scientific investigations are required to describe new business models in the free e-service industry and the consumer behavior affected by mobile features. This thesis examines these topics in three essays.
Study 1 considers business models that offer their services without charge. Offering services for free is symptomatic of not only mobile apps (90% of all apps are available for free) but the digital economy in general. For companies offering free e-services, this situation raises several important questions, in that, without any access device restrictions, how do customers of free e-services contribute value without paying? What are the nature and dynamics of nonmonetary value contributions by nonpaying customers? With a literature review and interviews with senior executives of free e-service providers, Study 1 presents a comprehensive overview of nonmonetary value contributions in the free e-service sector, including word of mouth, co-production, and network effects. Moreover, adding attention and data into this framework reveals two further aspects that have not been addressed in prior customer value research. By putting the findings in the context of the existing literature on customer value and customer engagement, this study sheds light on the complex processes of value creation in the emerging e-service sector, while advancing marketing and service research in general.
Study 2 deepens the findings from the first study; specifically, the focus is on the way that mobile users co-produce content and how this contribution is perceived by recipients in the network. With field data and a scenario experiment, this study demonstrates that recipients appreciate mobile-generated customer reviews fundamentally differently from other reviews. In particular, they discount the helpfulness of mobile reviews, due to their text-specific content and style particularities. The very fact that a review has been identified as written on a mobile device also lowers recipients’ perceptions of its value. Recipients use information about the device as a source cue to assess their compatibility with the review contribution channel. If they perceive themselves as compatible with the method used to generate the review (mobile or non-mobile), recipients regard the review as more helpful, because they attribute the review to the quality of the reviewed subject. If they perceive it as incompatible though, recipients assume that the review reflects the personal dispositions of the reviewer and discount its helpfulness.
Finally, Study 3 takes up the attention and cross-market network effects in a mobile setting; these were two nonmonetary dimensions identified by Study 1. Platform providers should develop measures to draw the attention of nonpaying customers to the offers of their paying customers. One attention-grabbing mobile-specific feature is push notifications to the device, which provide information about temporally or spatially relevant events. More concretely, Study 3 investigates how mobile push notifications remind users of upcoming deadlines in online auctions and therefore improve late bidding success. Late bidding is a prevalent strategy, in which bidders submit their bids at the very end of an online auction. This research uses field data about an online auction platform to demonstrate that late bidders use these mobile push notifications more frequently than do bidders with different bidding patterns. Within the group of late bidders, the chance to win an auction increases with their use of push notifications. After a mobile push notification, late bidders submit bids through mobile devices but also through non-mobile channels. Less experienced late bidders also benefit from push notifications, which increase their chances of success.
In summary, this dissertation contributes to an enhanced understanding of mobile consumer behavior by using various methods, including qualitative interviews, field observations, and online experiments. From a theoretical perspective, it contributes to current knowledge about nonmonetary costumer value contributions in general and their role in mobile settings in particular. This thesis highlights the role of mobile devices in co-production and perceptions of co-produced content. It also reveals how mobile-specific interactive features, like push notifications, affect late bidding efficiency. Therefore, it specifies the role of mobile devices in cross-market effects, in that they enable the platform to direct the relationship between buyers and sellers. The insights presented herein encourage managers to reevaluate their current practices, think about whether they should label co-produced content as generated through a mobile channel or not, and contemplate whether to develop mobile push notifications as helpful features for users (not as intrusive marketing messages).
Three essays on the welfare and social impacts of external shocks and public policies in Mexico
(2018)
In this thesis I examine the welfare and social consequences associated with one economic shock and two policy interventions in Mexico. I use non-experimental approaches that exploit increased data availability as well as in-depth knowledge of the institutional background and show how germane extensions in the methodology shed light on previously unaccounted consequences and help better identify affected households. In particular, I quantify the role of quantity substitution effects in the alleviation of welfare, I estimate the effect of quality substitution on the efficiency of a taxation policy, and I document the possible consequences of an aggressive policy intervention on organized and property crime.
In order to end poverty by 2030, the declared goal of the United Nations, a better understanding is needed which policies help poor households to escape poverty and how to end its inter-generational transmission.
Since the Millennium Declaration in September 2000, and the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the delivery of basic social services, such as education, health, water supply and sanitation, has become the central focus of international development assistance.
However, the provision of basic social services is not necessarily sufficient to lead to an accumulation of human and productive capital, which would allow households to escape poverty and interrupt its inter-generational transmission.
To understand why people are poor, we need to understand what productive decisions poor households take, and to identify what constraints households face in their attempt to accumulate human, as well as, productive capital. A better understanding of such constraints could guide policies that have a long-term impact on poverty reduction and on development.
A number of factor could explain why poor households operate at unprofitable levels and why they are constrained in their investment decisions. Empirical evidence points to different explanations: cost of learning and access to information, insufficient education, risk, credit constraints, non-convex production technologies, and behavioral patterns that are inconsistent with standard neoclassical models. Currently, one of the major challenges in formulating policies that foster productive investments among the poor, seems to be to disentangle the effects of scale, credit constraints, and the lack of insurance mechanisms.
This thesis seeks to shed further light on the relative role of these three constraints. In the context of rural India, it analyzes what production and investment decisions households take and how important risk and credit constraints as well as scale effects are in these decisions. Finally, it evaluates potential policy tools that could support households in overcoming these constraints.
Today, 33% of the world's poor live in India, the vast majority of them (80.5%) in rural areas. The economic structure of rural India is still dominated by agricultural production, and consequently, this thesis concentrates on agricultural production decisions and employment in agriculture.
In particular, this thesis addresses three questions in three individual papers: First, are farm households constrained in their crop choices by agricultural production risk and to which extent can India's public works program support households in overcoming this constraint? Second, how profitable is cattle farming in rural India at different levels of investment and which barriers do households face in reaching optimal investment levels? And third, can risk in agricultural wages explain limited investment in girls' education in the presence of intra-household substitution in household chores?
The first paper focuses on crop choice of farm households. It reassesses the stylized fact that households have to trade-off between returns and risk in their crop choice in the context of Andhra Pradesh, a state in the south of India. It then explores the effect of India's flagship anti-poverty program, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) on households' crop choice using a representative panel data set. The NREGS guarantees each household living in rural India up to a hundred days of employment per year, at state minimum wages.
The paper shows theoretically, and empirically, that the introduction of the NREGS reduces households' uncertainty about future income streams because it provides reliable employment opportunities in rural areas independently of weather shocks and crop failure. With access to the NREGS, households can compensate income losses emanating from shocks to agricultural production. Households with access to the NREGS can therefore shift their production towards riskier but also more profitable crops. These shifts in agricultural production have the potential to considerably raise the incomes of smallholder farmers.
The paper concludes that employment guarantees can, similarly to crop insurance, help households in managing agricultural productions risks. It also argues that accounting for the effects of the NREGS on crop choice and profits from agricultural production affects the cost-benefit analysis of such a program considerably.
The second paper concentrates on the profitability of farming cattle in Andhra Pradesh.
The paper also uses a representative panel dataset, and examines average and marginal returns to cattle at different levels of cattle investment. It finds average returns in the order of -8% at the mean of cattle value. These returns vary across the cattle value distribution between negative 53% (in the lowest quintile) and positive 2% (in the highest). While marginal returns are positive on average, they also vary considerably with cattle value and breed. The paper shows that average and marginal returns are considerably higher for modern variety cows, i.e. European breeds and their crossbreeds, than for traditional varieties of cows or for buffaloes. It also shows that cattle farming becomes most profitable at minimum herd sizes of five animals, due to decreasing average labor costs with increasing herd sizes.
The results of this paper suggest that cattle farming is associated with sizable non-convexities in the production technology and that substantial economies of scale, as well as high upfront expenses of acquiring and feeding high-productivity animals, might trap poorer households in low-productivity asset levels. The fact that wealthier households and households with lower costs to access veterinary services are more likely to overcome these barriers, supports this idea.
The second paper concludes that cattle farming might well generate positive returns for households in rural India, but that most households seem to operate at unprofitable levels. This could also explain the apparent paradox between widespread support of cattle farming through agricultural policy interventions and negative returns to cattle, as stressed in recent works. It argues that policy interventions that target productive assets will only be beneficial if transfers are high enough to allow households to overcome these entry barriers.
The third paper concentrates on the effect of risk on the productive decisions of households, and analyzes the effect of wage risk in agricultural employment on women's labor supply and time allocated to home production. It seeks to understand the extent to which risk raises labor supply of women to levels that can become harmful for other members of the household. The hypothesis is that in the presence of intra-household substitution effects -- for instance in the performance of household chores -- increased female labor supply might have negative effects on the time allocation of girls. If women have less time available for home production and childcare, and such activities can only be foregone at high cost, they might be forced to take older girls out of school or to cut down on the time these girls study at home in order for them to fill in for these tasks.
The paper uses cross-sectional data on the time allocation of different household members and predicts wage risk at the village level as a function of the historical rainfall distribution and a village's share of land that is under irrigation. The results show that wage risk affects the time allocation of women, increasing their labor supply and reducing the time they allocate to home production. Wage risk also increases the time girls spend on household chores and reduces their time in school. Because the observed effect of wage risk on girls' time allocated to household chores corresponds very closely to the effect observed for women, it seems plausible to attribute it to intra-household substitution effects. The observed effect of risk on girls' school time, however, is greater than the observed effect of risk on the home-production time of girls. This can be due to two reasons: First, in the presence of intra-household substitution effects, shocks in wages will not only increase female labor supply but also girls' time on household chores. And the model predicts that risk-averse households invest less in education when future school time becomes uncertain, because future school time affects the returns to current schooling. Second, if school attendance is indivisible, then girls might be forced to drop out of school temporarily or even permanently.
The paper then simulates the effect of the NREGS on the time-allocation decisions of working women and school-age girls. The results suggest that the NREGS could increase the time working women spend on household duties, because it reduces uncertainty regarding future earnings, and alleviates the need to accumulate savings. Thereby, the NREGS would reduce the pressure on girls to perform household tasks and allow them to increase the time they spend in school or studying by 6 minutes daily.
Wit these findings, this thesis contributes to a better understanding of the choices poor households in rural India face in their day-to-day decision making, and offers insights into what policies could support households in escaping poverty, and interrupt its inter-generational transmission.
Really new products frequently receive great academic, managerial and public attention, because they have the potential to change everybody’s lives. Our economic system fundamentally relies on creative destruction, i.e. the constant process by which innovations challenge established products. This tension between the new and the already existing in the end promises competitive advantage, but makes it difficult to successfully introduce product innovations to the market. Hence, companies strive to become better all along the innovation process, ranging from idea generation, to product launch, and customers’ post-adoption product experience. This dissertation addresses challenges along the product innovation process in three independent essays.
Essay 1 focuses on members’ collaboration behavior in innovation forums. Many innovations at first are invented by users and later on get developed into products ready for the consumer market within firms’ R&D departments. Users are often the first to encounter novel needs and come up with ideas, concepts and even prototypes to satisfy them. Online forums are social spheres where hobbyists and professionals from all over the world meet to exchange their ideas about products and share their latest experiences. Hence, online forums represent incredibly rich resources to inspire companies’ ideation processes. Essay 1 investigates the social mechanism of member collaboration in innovation communities. Theory on creativity postulates that the interaction between the core and the periphery of social networks enables the communities’ innovative performance. Recent research showed that members from the periphery can boost their individual innovative performance via exchanging with the community core. However, we still do not know why core members assist peripherals. Essay 1 reveals that core members benefit from exchanging with members from the periphery throughout increasing their own influence as experts among peers in the core. The identified mechanism can be used to select the right candidates for co-creation workshops.
Essay 2 identifies a product launch strategy for innovations which are both, radical and disruptive. The successful launch of radical and disruptive innovations is a difficult challenge, because their radical newness provokes consumers’ uncertainties. Furthermore, because of their disruptiveness, at the time of product launch those innovations are perceived to be inferior regarding their primary functionality compared to established products, although their performance in general is fully sufficient to satisfy consumers’ actual needs. A means to address the perceived inferiority is to add a feature to the innovation which offers a functional surplus by means of existing technology. Essay 2 shows that simultaneously introducing the innovation and a functionally modified version thereof increases consumers’ adoption intentions. Furthermore, consumers who opted for the modified, but more expensive version are not dissatisfied with their choice in the long run, although they do not need the additional performance from an objective point of view. Essay 2 contributes insights regarding the causes and consequences of this new product launch strategy to the theory of radical and disruptive innovations. The findings of this essay are highly relevant to managers, because they show how this strategy can be implemented in practice to lower the failure rate of really new products at product launch.
Innovation research to date is rich on evidence regarding the determinants of consumers’ adoption decisions. However, perhaps due to questions of data accessibility, insights of consumers’ post-adoption product evaluation are still scarce. Hence, essay 3 shifts the focus beyond product adoption to investigate the interplay of early adopters’ experienced utility, perceived aesthetic value and attitude toward the product in the long-run. Findings show that the perceived aesthetic value creates a halo effect in the post-adoption phase, such that the influence of early adopters’ experienced utility on attitude gets weaker, the more positively they evaluate the innovations’ aesthetics over time. Furthermore, the halo effect only tempers the relationship between experienced hedonic utility and attitude when consumers are characterized by innate consumer innovativeness. Managers should see the products’ form not only as a means to increase purchase intentions, but understand that aesthetic value offers the potential to shape consumers’ long term attitude toward the product, which in turn is an important driver for word of mouth behavior. A high score on the trait innate consumer innovativeness is an appropriate criterion for the selection of users for design co-creation.
The appearance of web and online media has created a substantial change in the manner by which employers and applicants interact. The development of web 1.0 applications with one-way communication and the advancement of web 2.0 technologies with interactive components have extended the spectrum of recruitment channels. The new recruitment media channels have led the selection and analysis of their impact out of interaction on each other to a new challenge within academical literature. This dissertation addresses these issues in three separate essays.
Study 1 focuses on the impact of Facebook as a social media recruitment channel on recruitment success. Many companies embed Facebook into their recruitment strategy as an additional recruitment channel for reaching potential applicants and motivating them to apply for available positions. Study 1 analyzes these activities and addresses the question of whether different Facebook activities influence recruitment success above and beyond other undertakings on traditional and online media channels. Study 1 concludes that on Facebook, company posts with a general focus and posts containing work or recruitment information both have a positive impact on recruitment success. The results of Study 1 are validated by company interviews with human resources (HR) managers who are responsible for the overall HR strategy of the company. Study 1 is the first academic work within HR and marketing research, which analyzes the impact of a company’s Facebook activities.
Study 2 examines the impact of traditional media recruitment channels on recruitment success. Many companies employ traditional media channels for their recruitment marketing actions with the aim of achieving recruitment success. Study 2 uses media richness theory as a basis for analyzing the impact of a company’s activities within traditional media channels on recruitment success. Study 2 concludes that exhibition fair and online marketing activities influence recruitment success. In connection with brand equity theory, Study 2 also verifies whether the addition of Facebook activities reinforces the impact of traditional media channels on recruitment success. The results indicate that general Facebook activities have a reinforcing impact on exhibition fair and print media recruitment practices.
Finally, Study 3 focuses on both the literature overview of traditional and social media recruitment practices and social media influence from the marketing literature. It also summarizes and categorizes previous research on the influence of traditional, online, and social media recruitment practices; the effect of a multichannel mix; and the influence of social media and social networking sites on different business outcomes from the marketing literature. Additionally, Study 3 identifies the research gaps and provides recommendations for future studies.
This dissertation uses vector autoregression modelling, including a validation with the help of company interviews and the employment of media richness, signaling, and brand equity theories, combined with a thorough analysis of the research need. The dissertation closes the research gap regarding the analysis of the impact of Facebook, online, and traditional media on recruitment success. It also adds new perspectives to the HR and marketing literature.
Monetary policy is commonly assumed to impact on commodity demand via relative prices. The bank lending channel (BLC) proposes an additional effect via the quantity of loans. This has found its way into economic textbooks, although it remains empirically controversial. I present various theoretical criticisms of the BLC and its building block, the formal model by Bernanke and Blinder (1988). This model operates with lopsided loan demand, money demand and money supply functions. The logic of the BLC is valid for individual investors who are affected by a cut in bank loans. For a whole sector with a given level of interest rates a reduction of loans does not however dry up investment, but only the holding of money. Since 1988 academics have been using model by Bernanke and Blinder as a work horse to empirically address the question of the quantitative relevance of the BLC. Cecchetti (1995) und Hubbard (1995) summarize the overall evolution of the controversial debate up to then. The data used for the research is mainly from the United States. In this literature review, I mainly focus on the next and more recent cohort of empirical investigations on the BLC in Europe that follow papers by Kashyap and Stein (1995, 2000) and Kishan and Opiela (2000) on U.S. transmission mechanisms. It is crucial that these authors are the first to address the question using individual bank balance sheet data for the U.S. Until now, empirical research has produced largely inconsistent results. This is more revealing as many of these investigations have deficiencies in controlling for other transmission channels that relate to relative prices. The debate on how monetary policy works has not ended: the BLC, which stresses the importance of potential changes in the supply of loans as a result of monetary policy, and its subsequent impact on aggregate demand, became prominent recently, but the concluding empirical evidence is absent. I attempt to contribute to this debate by conducting a cross-section and panel data analysis of developed and developing countries and by choosing the availability of bank loans as a dependent variable. The latter circumvents identification problems that appear when analyzing the response of aggregated bank loans to monetary policy changes. This evidence finds no support for the prediction of the BLC that there is an additional channel of monetary transmission mechanism.
In three studies, this dissertation deals with success factors of digital and non-digital services. More specifically it reveals the role of non-monetary costs for the success of free digital services. Moreover, it deals with customer orientation of frontline employees. It reveals the crucial role of the customer for frontline employees' ability to act in a customer-oriented manner.
Abstract 1: This paper investigates whether market quality, uncertainty, investor sentiment and attention, and macroeconomic news affect bitcoin price discovery in spot and futures markets. Over the period December 2017 – March 2019, we find significant time variation in the contribution to price discovery of the two markets. Increases in price discovery are mainly driven by relative trading costs and volume, and by uncertainty to a lesser extent. Additionally, medium-sized trades contain most information in terms of price discovery. Finally, higher news-based bitcoin sentiment increases the informational role of the futures market, while attention and macroeconomic news have no impact on price discovery.
Abstract 2: We investigate whether local religious norms affect stock liquidity for U.S. listed companies. Over the period 1997–2020, we find that firms located in more religious areas have higher liquidity, as reflected by lower bid-ask spreads. This result persists after the inclusion of additional controls, such as governance metrics, and further sensitivity and endogeneity analyses. Subsample tests indicate that the impact of religiosity on stock liquidity is particularly evident for firms operating in a poor information environment. We further show that firms located in more religious areas have lower price impact of trades and smaller probability of information-based trading. Overall, our findings are consistent with the notion that religiosity, with its antimanipulative ethos, probably fosters trust in corporate actions and information flows, especially when little is known about the firm. Finally, we conjecture an indirect firm value implication of religiosity through the channel of stock liquidity.
Abstract 3: This study shows that higher physical distance to institutional shareholders is associated with higher stock price crash risk. Since monitoring costs increase with distance, the results are consistent with the monitoring theory of local institutional investors. Cross-sectional analyses show that the effect of proximity on crash risk is more pronounced for firms with weak internal governance structures. The significant relation between distance and crash risk still holds under the implementation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, however, to a lower extent. Also, the existence of the channel of bad news hoarding is confirmed. Finally, I show that there is heterogeneity in distance-induced monitoring activities of different types of institutions.
Ongoing advancements in technology have significantly shaped the marketing landscape over the course of the last decades. Consequently, new technology-driven opportunities and challenges for marketing research and practice emerge. Those urge the need to redefine firm-based value propositions, to adapt business models, to place significant emphasis on topics such as innovation, design and strategy, but also to develop new knowledge and skill sets. In response to those changes, this dissertation addresses two major developments and related opportunities and challenges – namely, digitized retail environments and innovative, complex business models – in three different essays. Thereby, this dissertation contributes to a better understanding of the evolving relationship between marketing and technology.
Essay 1 and Essay 2 address the increasing digitization of physical retail environments. Retailers embrace a plethora of retail technologies to facilitate activities and processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to consumers and to consequently improving physical retail stores.
Essay 1 provides an integrated literature review on digital retail technologies’ impact on consumer behavior at physical retail stores. Thereby, Essay 1 adopts a shopping cycle based framework structured around distinct phases of consumer behavior to delineate and summarize findings from existing literature on the behavioral effects of retail technologies embraced by retailers. With the applied shopping cycle based framework, Essay 1 identifies specific gaps in extant literature relative to currently embraced practices of retail technology, but furthermore on emerging trends, which have the potential to reshape the retailing environment. Subsequently, an extensive research agenda is proposed to advance the next generation of knowledge development. With its integrated literature review and research agenda, Essay 1 contributes to research in the retail area, such as research on customer experience, shopper marketing and specifically on the role of technology in retailing.
Essay 2 analyzes consumers’ response to one particular innovative retail technology and thus replies to future questions of the research agenda developed in Essay 1. Essay 2 analyzes the perceptions and consequences of attribute-based personalized advertising in physical retail stores, where other people are present and can see the personalized content. Essay 2 shows when and how social presence of others impacts consumers’ attitudes and behavioral intentions, as well as emotions, when exposed to personalized advertising. The findings of two experimental studies provide evidence, that the presence of others does not influence consumer response per se, but it interacts with personalization. Further, the results show that consumers’ negative response to personalized ads in the social presence of others is mediated by embarrassment and moderated by consumers’ congruity state (the extent to which the ad is consistent with the consumer’s self-concept). These findings offer new theoretical insights into how consumers respond to personalized advertising in the social presence of others, and thus advance marketing research on personalized advertising, digital displays, shopper marketing as well as research on customer experience. Further, the results disclose meaningful managerial implications for the application of new consumer tracking technology.
Essay 3 addresses opportunities and challenges related to innovative, complex business models resulting from technological advancements. With customer orientation in free e-services, Essay 3 analyzes a strategically highly relevant phenomenon, which thus far has been neglected by prior research. Free e-services are characterized by the superiority of free costumers and interdependencies between free and paying customers. Essay 3 investigates how free e-service providers respond to those particularities in their customer orientation activities. Results from one qualitative and one quantitative study uncover, that only free-born providers, that from the outset strategically committed themselves to the free business model, possess customer orientation capabilities that match the particularities of free e-services. They use customer orientation toward one customer group to increase the satisfaction of the other simultaneously and, thus, are reaching their financial goals. Contrastively, laggards, that started with a non-free business model before launching their free e-service, do not exploit the full potential of customer orientation, as they focus too much on the paying customer group. These findings offer new theoretical insights for research on customer orientation, research on two-sided markets as well as on stakeholder marketing. Moreover, Essay 3 provides valuable and actionable insights for managers of free e-services.
Taking a broader perspective, this dissertation advances marketing knowledge on technological innovation, new types of consumer data, strategy shifts, as well as new firm capabilities and managerial skill sets required in an age of disruption within the virtual, but also the physical world. By using a variety of methods including conceptual work, experiments, qualitative interviews as well as survey research, and furthermore by ensuring high practical relevance, this dissertation adds important perspectives to the evolving relationship between marketing and technology.
In study 1 an introduction to the research on moral self-regulation is provided alongside with an explanation of the two manifestations of moral self-regulation: moral licensing and moral cleansing. At the core of the first study is an experiment which was designed to identify moral licensing and cleansing in the domain of honesty. The experiment merges relevant studies from social psychology and experimental economics. It assesses the question if moral self-regulation exists within the domain of honesty or more precisely, if the truth and lies are told in such a way as to balance each other out. After manipulating participants’ moral balances (either positively or negatively), rates of truth-telling are compared to a neutral baseline scenario. Since neither moral licensing nor moral cleansing is observed, the results provide no support to the initial hypothesis that moral self-regulation exists within the domain of honesty.
Study 2 builds on these results and discusses possible reasons for the absence of moral self-regulation. The research on moral hypocrisy and self-concept maintenance are presented and discussed as possible explanations. In order to shed more light on participants’ behavior, a coding procedure is presented that was used on the dataset from study 1. This approach makes it possible to quantify participants’ handwritten stories that resulted from the moral manipulation in study 1 and gain more insights on how truth-telling and lying affect the moral balance. By analyzing (dis)honesty on a more detailed level, results show that participants tend to act consistent to what they revealed about themselves in their stories.
Study 3 links together aspects of moral self-regulation, moral hypocrisy and impression management. The "looting game" is presented which lets participants loot money from a charity box being subject to altruistic punishment from observers. For their punishment decision observers are provided with a history of participants’ past actions. This design allows to assess how misconduct, punishment and the creation of a favorable impression interact and ultimately impact profits. The results indicate that moral cleansing, and not the desire to trick observers, is the reason for manipulation. Participants who loot money from the charity box do not expect to receive less punishment, rather they simply want to present a more favorable picture of themselves. On the other hand, observers fully account for the possibility of manipulation and tend to disregard a manipulated history. The looting game therefore brings the hypothesis into question that impressions are managed and manipulated to increase profits.
This work is comprised of three essays that attempt to contribute to the task of reviewing the prevailing (solely market-based) contractual approach for sovereign debt restructuring. These essays particularly focus on aspects of intra-creditor coordination. Although the content of these essays is interconnected, each unit is a stand-alone entity. Essay I: The latest Argentinean debt restructuring was the first time the resolution of a modern financial crisis was completely handed over to the private financial markets without official intervention by public institutions. This essay argues that the resulting harshest haircut for private creditors in history can be at least partially related to an assurance game played by creditors. It shows that incentive schemes provided by the Argentinean government were factors facilitating this haircut. The analysis suggests that, contrary to the recognition in the literature, the effects of Collective Action Clauses and Exit Consents within a restructuring process are not equal. In the case of Argentina, the inclusion of Collective Action Clauses in the defaulted bonds could have benefited the holdout creditors. Essay II: Experience from events of sovereign debt restructuring over the last decade shows that the prevailing process is mainly shaped by exchange-offers launched by the debtor. This suggests that negotiations for changing the repayment terms of the debt take place in an ultimatum game which centers virtually all bargaining power on the debtor side. Creditors vote according to reservations values that might be influenced by fairness consideration both vis-à-vis the debtor and their fellow creditors. And, as fairness is usually a highly subjective influence, this can result in a heterogeneity of reservation values which might impede effective intra-creditor coordination for the benefit of the debtor. Essay III: Mitigating intra-creditor coordination failures has always been crucial in any proposal for an institutionalized process of restructuring sovereign bonds. However, one source of failure in creditor coordination has not been taken into consideration. The current process of sovereign debt restructuring enables the debtor to launch an exchange offer which provides incentives to inter-temporally discriminate among creditors with different reservation values. Only a creditor representation that can effectively bind in all different creditor types will mitigate this failure and thereby prevent potential conflicts of interests among creditors. Enhancing the current proposal of creditor groups so that creditors can effectively pre-commit can shield the process from this kind of coordination failure. This essay concludes with a proposal for a creation of a creditor representation body which exhibits a similar mode of operation as a celebrated institutionalized creditor representation body in the penultimate century. To summarize the conclusions drawn from these essays, the contractual approach is not yet able to guarantee effective creditor coordination due to a lack of a comprehensive and forceful permanent creditor representation. Establishing such a permanent representation body would replicate the institutional development experienced during the last heydays of bonds as a source of emerging market financing. This would lead to a significant improvement in creditor coordination. Moreover, since the result of a potential debt restructuring draws back to the ex-ante lending decision by the individual investor, this improvement could contribute to the welfare-enhancing effects of external financing by private creditors for developing economies.
Diese Arbeit untersucht, wie Privatinvestoren vorzeitige Kündigungsrechte in strukturierten Zinsprodukten nutzen. Als Grundlage für die Analyse dient hierbei ein neuartiger, nicht öffentlich verfügbarer Datensatz, der über einen Zeitraum von circa 13 Jahren Entscheidungen von mehr als 800.000 Privatinvestoren über ein weiteres Halten oder eine vorzeitige Kündigung von Putable Bonds (Bundesschatzbriefen) abbildet. Das Ziel der Arbeit ist es, das Verständnis von finanziellen Entscheidungsstrategien von Privatinvestoren theoretisch und empirisch zu erweitern sowie mögliche Unterschiede innerhalb dieser Investorengruppe und im Vergleich zu anderen Kapitalmarktakteuren zu identifizieren. Darüber hinaus soll die Arbeit mögliche Handlungsfelder für Emittenten und Banken, welche vergleichbare Finanzprodukte anbieten, aufzeigen.
In three essays, this dissertation examines the past, present and future of branding in an international context, contributing to the research area of global/local brands, while also offering managers valuable insights for their branding strategies.
The first essay provides scholars and practitioners a detailed state of the art of global/local brand research and proposes promising angles for future research, especially considering major
challenges for our societies.
The second essay incorporates the segment of cosmopolitan consumers into perceived brand globalness/localness research. Theoretically grounded in the concepts of social identity theory and complexity, the essay builds on perceived brand globalness/localness to analyze how cosmopolitans arrange both their global and local orientations. Aside offering scholars a new theoretical lens regarding consumer cosmopolitanism, managers can benefit from the gained insights, if cosmopolitans are a particular target group in their business strategy.
The third and final essay meta-analytically investigates how the variables perceived brand globalness and localness materialize on various key outcome variables. At heart of this essay is a comparison of both perceived brand globalness and localness, offering scholars and practitioners valuable empirical insights on similarities and differences between their effects on outcomes such as brand quality.
1. IT-Exposure and Firm Value: We analyze the joint influence of a firm’s information technology (IT)-Exposure and investment behavior on firm value. Estimating a firm’s (partial) IT-Exposure allows for distinguishing between firms with a business model that is challenged by IT above and below market average. Hence, we estimate the annual IT-Exposure of a firm using a 3-factor Fama-French model extended by an IT-proxy. Subsequently, we analyze the relationship with Tobin’s Q in a panel data context, accounting for the relationship between IT-Exposure and investments proxied by R&D as well as CapEx. We use more than 48,000 firm-year observations for firms in the Russell 3000 Index covering the period 1990 to 2018. Although IT-Exposure has a negative impact on firm value, this discount can be overcompensated by up to 2.1 times by sufficient investments through R&D and CapEx, giving a firm with an average Tobin’s Q a premium of 14.8% to 19.2%, while controlling for endogeneity.
2. Corporate Social Responsibility, Risk, and Firm Value: An Unconditional Quantile Regression Approach: This paper examines the impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) on firm risk, comprising total risk, idiosyncratic risk, and systematic risk, as well as firm value. We focus on analyzing the interrelationships along the entire distribution of the dependent variables, thus estimating an unconditional quantile regression (UQR). The analysis is based on CSR scores from Refinitiv and MSCI, using up to 12,013 firm-year observations over the period 2002 to 2019 for all U.S. companies listed on NYSE, NASDAQ, and AMEX. UQR reveals strongly heterogeneous effects along the unconditional quantiles of the dependent variables, which are reflected in sign changes, magnitude and significance variations. For CSR we find a risk-reducing as well as value-enhancing effect. When applying fixed effects OLS, we can just partly confirm the risk-reducing and value-enhancing effect of CSR shown in the literature.
3. Heterogenous Effects of Religiosity on Firm Risk and Firm Value: An Unconditional Quantile Regression Approach: This paper examines the impact of religiosity on firm risk, comprising total risk, idiosyncratic risk, and systematic risk, as well as firm value. We focus on analyzing the interrelationships along the entire distribution of the dependent variables, thus estimating an unconditional quantile regression (UQR). The analysis is based on all U.S. companies listed on NYSE, NASDAQ, and AMEX for the period from 1980 through 2020. UQR reveals strongly heterogeneous effects along the unconditional quantiles of the dependent variables, which are reflected in sign changes, magnitude and significance variations. Overall, the risk-reducing effect of religiosity is more pronounced in the higher quantiles of the distribution. We further observe a value-reducing as well as value-enhancing religiosity effect. When applying fixed effects OLS, we can confirm the risk-reducing and non-existing value effect of religiosity shown in the literature. The robustness of our results is underpinned by a battery of additional tests.
The dissertation consists of three self-contained essays, with a focus on empirical capital market research. The first essay "Time-Varying Conditional Market Returns: Is Variance or Tail-Risk Priced", empirically investigates the question whether there is a positive relationship between aggregate market tail risk and expected returns. Based on the classical risk return trade-off, intuition suggests a statistically positive relationship between aggregate market tail risk and expected returns. The paper contributes to previous literature in several ways. First it offers an statistically well founded method for aggregate tail risk estimation in relying on EVT. In the second place it empirically determines a positive relationship between lagged aggregate market tail risk and market returns, based on a time-series approach, which can be further characterized by a non-linear dependence structure. The second essay "Credit Cycle Dependent Spread Determinants in Emerging Sovereign Debt Markets", empirically estimates non-linear dependence structures of determinants of changes in sovereign bond spreads. Empirical results of the paper clearly identify a non-linear influence of determinants of changes in emerging markets sovereign credit spreads. The statistical and economical significance as well as the sign of some determinants changes with respect to the underlying sovereign credit cycle. The third paper "Modeling the Dependence Structure between Aggregate Market Tail Risk and Expected Returns" takes on the results of the first paper regarding the non-linear positive dependence structure between aggregate market tail risk and expected returns. In order to implement a more profound analysis of the non-linear pattern, the paper employs several copula functions to model the conditional bivariate time series dependence structure. The inspection of the empirical results clearly indicates the Clayton copula function to provide the best formula describing the conditional dependence structure.
Fundamental changes in business-to-business (B2B) buying behavior confront B2B supplier firms with unprecedented challenges. On the one hand, a rising share of industrial buyers demands digitalized offerings and processes from suppliers. Consequently, suppliers are urged to implement digital transformations by expanding the range of both digital offerings and processes. On the other hand, B2B buyers increasingly expect suppliers to provide individually tailored solutions to their idiosyncratic needs. Hence, suppliers are also required to implement non-digital transformations by providing offerings and processes that are customized to each customers’ specific requirements.
The rise of these digital and non-digital transformations calls established knowledge into question. Thus, B2B marketing research and practice are urged to create a comprehensive understanding of digital and non-digital transformations by means of novel and empirically grounded insights and derive actionable response strategies. In respond, my dissertation addresses the overall research question of how B2B supplier firms can successfully implement both digital and non-digital transformations in three individual essays.
In Essay 1, I offer a broader perspective on both digital and non-digital transformations by investigating digital service customization (i.e., the tailoring of digital B2B services to customers’ individual needs). Through a systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis, I outline a comprehensive set of factors that favor the application of distinct digital service customization strategies. Essay 2 represents a deep dive into digital transformations of sales processes. By making use of two rich sets of qualitative interview material from supplier and buyer firms, I identify the challenges resulting for B2B salespeople from the introduction of digital sales channels into personal selling. Moreover, I uncover facilitating mechanisms that sales managers can employ to support salespeople in coping with digital sales channels. Finally, Essay 3 constitutes a deep dive into non-digital transformations. Based on qualitative interview material and survey data from matched sales manager–salesperson dyads, the essay explores how configurations of individual salespeople’s personal and procedural competencies facilitate success at selling customer solutions (i.e., highly customized, performance-oriented offerings comprising products and/or services). The essay shows that successfully selling customized offerings like solutions hinges on salespeople’s unique configurations of present and absent competencies.
In a nutshell, these essays provide three major insights on how B2B suppliers can successfully implement digital and non-digital transformations. First, they underscore that a comprehensive understanding of the origins and spillover effects of transformations is a key prerequisite to successfully implementing them. Second, they unveil that digital and non-digital transformations impact on multiple organizational levels. Third, they point out important resources and capabilities that help suppliers to successfully implement transformations, be they digital or non-digital.
With this dissertation, I make substantial contributions to the broader literature on digital and non-digital transformations in B2B contexts. At the same time, my dissertation provides hands-on implications for managers in B2B supplier firms that are facing fundamental transformations in the marketplace—both digital and non-digital in nature.
The dissertation "Three Essays on Credit Risk with a Special Focus on the Subprime Financial Crisis" consists of three self-contained essays. At the core of the dissertation is the market for credit risk and its role during and after the recent subprime financial crisis. In particular, it is dedicated to the following research questions: - What are the causes of the subprime financial crisis? - Which role did credit markets and credit derivatives play during the crisis? - How might the crisis be resolved? - What is the impact of the crisis on market participants perception of credit risk? - How can complex credit derivatives be modeled in a way that allows an understanding of their inherent risk?
This dissertation examines the overarching research question of how the suppliers’ brand management in the form of brand identity, brand culture, and brand essence influences buyer-seller relationships in three independent essays.
In Essay 1, I address the structure, capabilities, and outcomes of brand identity from a supplier perspective. Through qualitative interviews with suppliers, I examine how widespread the concept of brand identity is in practice and what exactly practitioners understand by it. Going further, I look at what capabilities and conditions are necessary for brand identity to be successful and what outcomes suppliers hope to achieve. Using an Information-Display-Matrix (IDM) test and a sample of Master of Business Administration (MBA) students, I examine the relevance of brand functions in more detail.
In Essay 2, I use a dyadic dataset with matched buyer-seller dyads to examine the causes and effects of perceptual congruence and incongruence of brand culture strength on the buyer-seller relationship, while considering relationship-specific investments and interaction mechanisms as moderating effects. I show that congruence and incongruence have different effects on customer loyalty and price sensitivity and that these are strongly context-dependent.
In Essay 3, I deal with brand essence strength interactions and their effects on the buyer-seller relationship. I use a dyadic dataset with matched buyer-seller dyads to show how brand essence strength influences customer loyalty and customer profitability, and how it interacts with key customer attitudes and other important buyer-seller relationship closeness indicators.
This dissertation makes a significant contribution to the literature on brand identity, brand culture, and brand essence in buyer-seller relationships. Furthermore, my dissertation offers practical implications for managers at B2B suppliers who (re)shape their brand management with a focus on the inner parts of the brand.
In Kapitel I werden Nachteile aufgezeigt, die traditionellen Maßnahmen wie Repression, Prävention und Transparenz innewohnen und die deren Schlagkraft für die Korruptionsbekämpfung in Frage stellen. Vor diesem Hintergrund werden drei neue Antikorruptionsansätze entwickelt. Die Konzeption dieser ist motiviert dadurch, dass Schmiergeldvereinbarungen insbesondere durch ein hohes Risiko an Opportunismus gekennzeichnet sind. Betrug, Verrat und Erpressung sind Unsicherheiten, denen korrupte Akteure vielfach ausgesetzt sind. Dies muss die Gesetzgebung berücksichtigen, um nicht zum Zweck der Durchsetzung von Schmiergeldvereinbarungen missbraucht zu werden. Andererseits kann sie sich diesen Schwachpunkt zunutze machen, um Korruption wirkungsvoll zu bekämpfen. In Kapitel II wird in formal-theoretischer Weise dargelegt, wie das Instrument der kodifizierten strafmildernden Selbstanzeige strategisch eingesetzt werden kann, um den Pakt des Schweigens zischen (Bestechungs-) Nehmer und Geber aufzubrechen und gleichzeitig gezielt opportunistisches Verhalten zu fördern. Es wird gezeigt, dass ein (Bestechungs-) Nehmer weniger für die Annahme eines Bestechungsgeldes als für die Erbringung der hierfür geforderten Gegenleistung bestraft werden sollte. Strafmilderung sollte einem Nehmer demgemäß nur dann gewährt werden, wenn dieser sein Vergehen nach Annahme des unrechtmäßigen Vorteils zur Anzeige bringt. Ebenso wird veranschaulicht, dass ein (Bestechungs-) Geber für das Gewähren eines Bestechungsgeldes aber nicht für die Annahme der von ihm hierfür geforderten Gegenleistung bestraft werden sollte. Die Selbstanzeige sollte nur dann zur Strafmilderung führen, wenn der Geber die von ihm geforderte Gegenleistung erhalten hat. Letztlich wird konstatiert, dass die Strafmilderung selbst zur größten Abschreckung für korrupte Akteure werden kann. Die formal-theoretischen Ergebnisse münden in Kapitel III in Politikempfehlungen für das Instrument der kodifizierten strafmildernden Selbstanzeige. Bezugspunkt hierfür sind auch einerseits die Bestimmungen des türkischen Strafgesetzbuches, andererseits jene der United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC). Zudem werden in Kapitel III die entsprechenden Rechtsvorschriften aus 56 Ländern untersucht. Die Querschnittsanalyse legt die Vermutung nahe, dass der Tatbestand der aktiven und passiven Bestechung weitgehend strafrechtlich verankert ist, in starkem Kontrast zum Instrument der kodifizierten strafmildernden Selbstanzeige. Weniger als die Hälfte der 56 Länder macht Gebrauch von diesem Instrument. Nur drei sogar für die passive Bestechung. Die Querschnittsanalyse zeigt demnach erhebliche Defizite in der Anwendung aber auch in der Ausgestaltung des Instruments der kodifizierten strafmildernden Selbstanzeige auf. Kapitel IV widmet sich im Gegensatz zu den vorangehenden Kapiteln dem Zivilrecht und seiner Funktion für die Korruptionsprävention. Insbesondere werden die Nichtigkeit und die schwebende Unwirksamkeit von auf Schmiergeldvereinbarungen beruhenden (Haupt-) Verträgen untersucht. Es wird konstatiert, dass sowohl die Nichtigkeit und die schwebende Unwirksamkeit einer zielgerechten Korruptionsbekämpfung entgegenstehen und Verträge, die auf einer Schmiergeldvereinbarung beruhen, demnach gültig oder lediglich teilnichtig sein sollten. Es wird ferner dargelegt, dass andere (zivilrechtliche) Instrumente für die Korruptionsprävention geeigneter sind. Kapitel V schließt die Arbeit ab.
Over the last two decades, the Internet has fundamentally changed the ways firms and consumers interact. The ongoing evolution of the Internet-enabled market environment entails new challenges for marketing research and practice, including the emergence of innovative business models, a proliferation of marketing channels, and an unknown wealth of data. This dissertation addresses these issues in three individual essays. Study 1 focuses on business models offering services for free, which have become increasingly prevalent in the online sector. Offering services for free raises new questions for service providers as well as marketing researchers: How do customers of free e-services contribute value without paying? What are the nature and dynamics of nonmonetary value contributions by nonpaying customers? Based on a literature review and depth interviews with senior executives of free e-service providers, Study 1 presents a comprehensive overview of nonmonetary value contributions in the free e-service sector, including not only word of mouth, co-production, and network effects but also attention and data as two new dimensions, which have been disregarded in marketing research. By putting their findings in the context of existing literature on customer value and customer engagement, the authors do not only shed light on the complex processes of value creation in the emerging e-service industry but also advance marketing and service research in general. Studies 2 and 3 investigate the analysis of online multichannel consumer behavior in times of big data. Firms can choose from a plethora of channels to reach consumers on the Internet, such that consumers often use a number of different channels along the customer journey. While the unprecedented availability of individual-level data enables new insights into multichannel consumer behavior, it also makes high demands on the efficiency and scalability of research approaches. Study 2 addresses the challenge of attributing credit to different channels along the customer journey. Because advertisers often do not know to what degree each channel actually contributes to their marketing success, this attribution challenge is of great managerial interest, yet academic approaches to it have not found wide application in practice. To increase practical acceptance, Study 2 introduces a graph-based framework to analyze multichannel online customer path data as first- and higher-order Markov walks. According to a comprehensive set of criteria for attribution models, embracing both scientific rigor and practical applicability, four model variations are evaluated on four, large, real-world data sets from different industries. Results indicate substantial differences to existing heuristics such as “last click wins” and demonstrate that insights into channel effectiveness cannot be generalized from single data sets. The proposed framework offers support to practitioners by facilitating objective budget allocation and improving team decisions and allows for future applications such as real-time bidding. Study 3 investigates how channel usage along the customer journey facilitates inferences on underlying purchase decision processes. To handle increasing complexity and sparse data in online multichannel environments, the author presents a new categorization of online channels and tests the approach on two large clickstream data sets using a proportional hazard model with time-varying covariates. By categorizing channels along the dimensions of contact origin and branded versus generic usage, Study 3 finds meaningful interaction effects between contacts across channel types, corresponding to the theory of choice sets. Including interactions based on the proposed categorization significantly improves model fit and outperforms alternative specifications. The results will help retailers gain a better understanding of customers’ decision-making progress in an online multichannel environment and help them develop individualized targeting approaches for real-time bidding. Using a variety of methods including qualitative interviews, Markov graphs, and survival models, this dissertation does not only advance knowledge on analyzing and managing online consumer behavior but also adds new perspectives to marketing and service research in general.
In this thesis I empirically assess a wide range of constraints faced by different types of entrepreneurs in developing countries and the effectiveness of different policy interventions aimed at removing them. Thereby, the thesis contributes to the growing literature on enterprises and entrepreneurial activities in developing countries, by producing valuable evidence on which are the constraints faced by which types of entrepreneurs in starting, surviving, and growing, as well as on which interventions work, and for whom. The thesis hence provides important insights for policy formulation aimed at inclusive growth.
It consists of three self-contained papers, which put different emphasis on three different areas in which important research gaps remain. The first paper, which is presented in chapter 2, focuses on interventions aimed at removing firm-level shocks. It consists of a systematic review of evaluations of targeted programs and broader policies that intend to promote micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in developing countries, and assesses which of these interventions are effective in creating jobs. The paper presented in chapter 3 considers death of small, mainly one-person and household businesses. Together with my co-author, I collated panel data on more than 14,000 small firms from 16 firm panel surveys conducted in 12 developing countries. We use this unique panel dataset to provide answers to the following questions: What is the rate of firm death over different horizons? Which firms are more likely to die? Why do they die and what happens afterwards? In chapter 4, I take a closer look at household-level shocks and non-separability between the household and the firm, and assess whether extending health insurance to previously uninsured households leads to increased investment in productive activities, by assessing the impact of a large national health insurance scheme, the Mexican Seguro Popular, on investment in productive agricultural and non-agricultural assets and activities in rural areas. Using panel data from the Mexican rural evaluation surveys of the Oportunidades cash transfer program, I estimate the effect of the program on out-of-pocket health care expenditures and productive assets and account for possible self-selection of households into the program, using difference-in-differences estimation, as well as a propensity score matched difference-in-differences specification.
In smart grids, managing and controlling power operations are supported by information
and communication technology (ICT) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. The increasing adoption of new ICT assets in smart grids is making smart grids vulnerable to cyber threats, as well as raising numerous concerns about the adequacy of current security approaches.
As a single act of penetration is often not sufficient for an attacker to achieve his/her goal, multistage cyber attacks may occur. Due to the interdependence between the power grid and the communication network, a multistage cyber attack not only affects the cyber system but impacts the physical system. This thesis investigates an application-oriented stochastic game-theoretic cyber threat assessment framework, which is strongly related to the information security risk management process as standardized in ISO/IEC 27005. The proposed cyber threat assessment framework seeks to address the specific challenges (e.g., dynamic changing attack scenarios and understanding cascading effects) when performing threat assessments for multistage cyber attacks in smart grid communication networks.
The thesis looks at the stochastic and dynamic nature of multistage cyber attacks in smart grid use cases and develops a stochastic game-theoretic model to capture the interactions of the attacker and the defender in multistage attack scenarios. To provide a flexible and practical payoff formulation for the designed stochastic game-theoretic model, this thesis presents a mathematical analysis of cascading failure propagation (including both interdependency cascading failure propagation and node overloading cascading failure propagation) in smart grids. In addition, the thesis quantifies the characterizations of disruptive effects of cyber attacks on physical power grids.
Furthermore, this thesis discusses, in detail, the ingredients of the developed stochastic game-theoretic model and presents the implementation steps of the investigated stochastic game-theoretic cyber threat assessment framework. An application of the proposed cyber threat assessment framework for evaluating a demonstrated multistage cyber attack scenario in smart grids is shown. The cyber threat assessment framework can be integrated into an existing risk management process, such as ISO 27000, or applied as a standalone threat assessment process in smart grid use cases.
Thomas Bernhard and the air crash on Tettelham in 1944. "It was a spectacle of unrelieved tragedy".
(2012)
In his autobiographical essay "Ein Kind" (A Child) the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard (1931-1998)describes the downing of a heavy World War II USAIRFORCE bomber at Tettelham near Traunstein in Upper Bavaria in 1944. The scene of the crash is now headed by a chapel and some reminiscenses of the crews' fate. Although the event is still vivid in the local history, it was not known that Thomas Bernhard had been a keen eyewitness.
Theorie trifft Praxis
(2017)
Ein Merkmal der kollektiven Verbreitung von Narrativen ist der hohe Grad an Emotionalität, mit der sie einhergehen. Massenmedien und deren narrative Strukturen spiegeln kulturelle Wertvorstellungen und Normen, die wie Glaubenssysteme fortwährend reproduziert werden. Narrative spiegeln sich in Religionen, Wirtschaftssystemen, politischen Strukturen und kulturellen Identitäten. Der israelische Historiker Yuval Noah Harari bezeichnet Geschichten als Grundpfeiler
menschlicher Gesellschaften. Nach Harari haben im Laufe der Geschichte Erzählungen über Götter, Nationen und Unternehmen so große Macht gewonnen, dass die Fiktion die objektive Wirklichkeit beherrscht, d.h. dass die Narrative einer Kultur oder Epoche deren Realität formen oder sogar erst hervorbringen.
Jedes narrative Denken aber ist im Kern von Dramaturgie bestimmt. Dabei steht im Fokus einer dramaturgischen Struktur insbesondere die Frage, wie Ziele erreicht, Konflikte oder Probleme gelöst und Hindernisse überwunden werden können. Erzählverläufe führen exemplarische Wege zur Lösung vor, die z.B. in Genres oder standardisierten Erzählmodellen immer wieder reproduziert werden. Dieser Beitrag geht von der Hypothese aus: Je weniger Austausch zwischen Theorie und Praxis stattfindet, desto destruktiver kann Dramaturgie wirken, während Verzahnungen zwischen Theorie und Praxis für beide Seiten wünschenswert und bereichernd sind. Auf der Seite der Theorie führt die Transparenz zu mehr Medienkompetenz, auf der Seite der Praxis ist Theorie die Basis für Reflexion und Orientierung.
Semiotik ist eine Wissenschaft, die es ermöglicht, Tiefenstrukturen von Texten begrifflich zu definieren und damit Dramaturgie und deren Wirkung wahrnehmbar zu machen. Semiotische Ansätze sind gleichermaßen für Theorie und Praxis relevant und vermögen dadurch beide Bereiche zu verbinden. Besonders deutlich wird dies am Beispiel des Zeichensystems Filmdramaturgie.
Die vorliegende Arbeit versucht, Geschlechterunterschiede in der Orthografiekompetenz aufzuklären. Dabei wurde die Frage gestellt, ob Jungen in einem jungenspezifischen Kontext bessere Rechtschreibleistungen erbringen als in einem neutralen Umfeld. Weiterhin steht im Fokus, ob das thematische Interesse einen Einfluss auf die Rechtschreibleistung von Jungen und Mädchen hat. Dafür wurde die Rechtschreibleistung von 244 Schülerinnen und Schülern der fünften und sechsten Jahrgangsstufen an bayerischen Gymnasien in einem Quasiexperiment durch kreuzvalidiertes Verfahren mit itemgleichen informellen Leistungstests erhoben. Das thematische Interesse wurde vor den Tests mit einem Fragebogen erhoben. Ein Test war in geschlechtsneutralen Kontext eingebettet, der andere in einen jungenspezifischen Kontext zum Thema Fußball. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass Mädchen nicht immer bessere Rechtschreibleistungen als Jungen erbringen und ihre Leistung im jungenspezifischen Text schwächer ist. Auch konnte gezeigt werden, dass das thematische Interesse an Fußball bei Jungen höher ist. Dennoch konnten diese im geschlechtsspezifischen Kontext insgesamt keine besseren Leistungen erbringen, aber einzelne fußballspezifische Lexeme schreiben sie häufiger richtig als Mädchen. Darüber hinaus wurde eine Beeinflussung der Leistung durch das thematische Interesse nachgewiesen. Die ambivalenten Ergebnisse bedürfen weiterer Forschungsmaßnahmen.
The Will to Play. Performance and Construction of Royal Masculinity in Early Modern History Plays
(2015)
Die vorliegende Arbeit untersucht Männlichkeitskonzepte in der Frühen Neuzeit, wobei das Hauptaugenmerk auf die dramatische Konstruktion der Figur des Königs gerichtet wird. Anhand von zehn Historiendramen der 1590er wird zum einen die diskursive Komplexität königlicher Männlichkeit in der Renaissance untersucht, um darauf aufbauend deren performative Darstellung zu analysieren. Im Theorieteil werden Männlichkeit und Herrschaft im elisabethanischen England mithilfe zeitgenössischer Texte diskutiert und durch den Genderdiskurs und die Performativität von Gender erweitert. Der darauf folgende Methodikteil entwickelt aus den gewonnenen Erkenntnissen eine Semiotik von königlicher Männlichkeit, die anschließend im Analyseteil anhand der ausgewählten Historiendramen evaluiert wird.
Earlier research showed that religion is related to participation
among adolescents. It emphasized the effects of belonging (affiliation to groups and traditions) on community service among Western populations. This article takes one step further and focuses on religiosity as a potential motivation for community problem solving during adolescence and young adulthood, in the Eastern European Orthodox cultural setting. Data comes from several semistructured interviews with participants in a civic project conducted in the city of Timisoara (Romania). Findings indicated a low impact of the social religious component on engagement. The cognitive dimension of belief and the emotional bonding (prayer, ritual connection to the higher reality) function as indirect motivators, through the moral element of behavior. Results also showed a privatization of spiritual life at young adults (the invisible religion): estrangement from doctrines and the development of an individualistic type of morality, meant to drive volunteer activities further.
People-centred reforestation is one of the ways to achieve natural climate solutions. Ghana has established a people-centred reforestation programme known as the Modified Taunya System (MTS) where local people are assigned degraded forest reserves to practice agroforestry. Given that the MTS is a people-centred initiative, socioeconomic factors are likely to have impact on the reforestation drive. This study aims to understand the role of translocal practices of remittances and visits by migrants on the MTS. Using multi-sited, sequential explanatory mixed methods and the lens of socioecological systems, the study shows that social capital and socioeconomic obligations of cash remittances from, as well as visits by migrants to their communities of origin play positive roles on reforestation under the MTS. Specifically, translocal households have access to, and use remittances to engage relatively better in the MTS than households that do not receive remittances. This shows that translocal practices can have a positive impact on the environment at the area of origin of migrants where there are people-centred environmental policies in place.
German state elections are in focus of this work due to the decreasing importance of the "catch all parties" and rise of the AfD in 2013. As small parties like the AfD first reached the 5% threshold in state parliaments (e.g. in the Saxony state election 2014), state elections can be used as barometer elections for the national ones. Further, state elections fill the gap between the 4-year national election cycle and provide additional information for the national election.
The aim of this thesis is to forecast state elections based on polling data from different institutes. Despite occurring errors in polls like measurement or sampling errors - which are also discussed in this work - forecasting is made with aggregate models depending on short term polling data. Irregular polling data have to be customized to generate daily data to apply parametric regression based models. To forecast single vote shares in multi-party elections, the range of methods varies from basic methods like averaging over nonparametric regression based methods to dynamic linear models.
Feature binding has been proven to be a common and general mechanism underlying human information processing and action control. There is strong evidence showing that when humans perform a task, stimuli (e.g., the target, the distractor) and responses are bound together into an episodic representation, called an event file or a stimulus-response (S-R) episode, which can be retrieved upon feature repetition. As compared with the target and the distractor, the context (i.e., an additional stimulus presented together with the target and the distractor, but not associated with any response keys throughout the whole course of the task), which is considered as task-irrelevant, did not receive that much attention in previous studies. The current thesis was aimed to provide insights into the different roles the context plays in S-R binding and retrieval. Specifically, in Study One and Two, the role of context as an element that can be integrated into an S-R episode was investigated, with a focus on the saliency and the inter-trial variability of the contextual stimulus. Both properties were found to influence how the context is integrated into an S-R episode. More specifically, results show that both saliency and inter-trial variability determine whether the context is directly bound in a binary fashion with the response, or it enters in to a configural binding together with another stimulus and the response. In Study Three, intrigued by the role of context as an event segmentation factor in the event perception literature, whether the context can demarcate the integration window of an S-R episode was tested. Results provide consistent evidence that sharing a common context leads to a stronger binding between a stimulus and the response, as compared with the condition when these elements are separated by different contexts, thereby suggesting a binding principle of common context. Taken together, the current thesis specifies the role of context in S-R binding and retrieval, and sheds some light on how contextual information influences human behavior.
The quality of mental-intellectual ability – oder eine typische Biografie lässt sich erzählen
(2009)
Zum Thema „Schlesischer Adel im 20. Jahrhundert. Krisenerfahrung, Elitentransformation und Selbstverständnis im Zeitalter der Extreme“ habe ich als „typical biography“ die Lebensgeschichte von Petra W. (43) gewählt. Petras Urgroßeltern von väterlicher Seite gehörten dem Schlesischen und Böhmischen Adel, die Großeltern wurden nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg nach Ungarn in die Puszta deportiert. Ihre Eltern haben unter magyarisierten Namen studiert, und fast nicht mit ihr Deutsch gesprochen – aber die promovierte Petra hat ihre Stolz und Stehaufmännchenfähigkeit geerbt. Ab 2003 lebt sie in Deutschland, ihr deutscher Wiedereinbürgerungsantrag wurde jahrelang und regelmäßig - ohne schriftliche Antwort - wörtlich abgelehnt. Ihre obligatorischen Integrationskurserfahrungen (zusammen mit Rußlanddeutschen und Türken) und die Diplomanerkennungsprozeduren waren für sie tief erschütternd. Hat Petra, „die höhere Tochter“ aus der dritten titel- und vermögenslosen oststämmigen Adelsgeneration in Deutschland eigentlich Zukunftsperspektiven am Anfang des 21sten Jahrhunderts?
This thesis investigates the quality of randomly collected data by employing a framework built on information-based complexity, a field related to the numerical analysis of abstract problems. The quality or power of gathered information is measured by its radius which is the uniform error obtainable by the best possible algorithm using it. The main aim is to present progress towards understanding the power of random information for approximation and integration problems.
In the first problem considered, information given by linear functionals is used to recover vectors, in particular from generalized ellipsoids. This is related to the approximation of diagonal operators which are important objects of study in the theory of function spaces. We obtain upper bounds on the radius of random information both in a convex and a quasi-normed setting, which extend and, in some cases, improve existing results. We conjecture and partially establish that the power of random information is subject to a dichotomy determined by the decay of the length of the semiaxes of the generalized ellipsoid.
Second, we study multivariate approximation and integration using information given by function values at sampling point sets. We obtain an asymptotic characterization of the radius of information in terms of a geometric measure of equidistribution, the distortion, which is well known in the theory of quantization of measures. This holds for isotropic Sobolev as well as Hölder and Triebel-Lizorkin spaces on bounded convex domains. We obtain that for these spaces, depending on the parameters involved, typical point sets are either asymptotically optimal or worse by a logarithmic factor, again extending and improving existing results.
Further, we study isotropic discrepancy which is related to numerical integration using linear algorithms with equal weights. In particular, we analyze the quality of lattice point sets with respect to this criterion and obtain that they are suboptimal compared to uniform random points. This is in contrast to the approximation of Sobolev functions and resolves an open question raised in the context of a possible low discrepancy construction on the two-dimensional sphere.
The impact of urban development on local residents in the urban periphery oscillates between processes of empowerment and processes of marginalization as well as between state-controlled order and decentralized self-organization. Consequently local authorities, including urban planners and local residents need to negotiate their respective roles in the production and usage of urban space defined by transition, transformation and ambiguity. Therefore, this work examines the underlying patterns, interactions and structures which define the negotiation of state-society relations in the framework of a porous peri-urban landscape in Vietnam’s secondary cities.
In Chapter 1, peri-urban areas are defined as space of transformation where pattern of rural land use are intertwined with pattern of urban land use to create an urban-rural interface with blurred boundaries. The main characteristic of the spatial pattern in Tam Kỳ and Buôn Ma Thuột is rooted urban porosity leading to the spatial intertwining of rural, peri-urban and urban spaces. The emerging urban landscape can be defined as peri-urban city. Three main themes define this peri-urban city beyond porosity: (1) processes of transformation creating the peri-urban city, (2) networks of power and control as means to adapt to these transformations and (3) mobility as prerequisite for ability to benefit from the changing landscape in peri-urban cities.
Chapter 2 describes how state authorities, urban planners and private investors at the local level in Tam Kỳ and Buôn Ma Thuột use porous space to reproduce the city based on their aspirations. This leads to a cargo cult urbanism, where urban planning is rooted in future aspirations for the city. Plans and construction efforts reference the image of a modern urban future and produce the image of a city, which does not exists in the real urban space of Tam Kỳ and Buôn Ma Thuột. In the meantime, practices based in peri-urban space are often contradictory to the official aspirations of local state authorities
Chapter 3 explores this emerging divergence between the aspired urban space by the state and the reality of urban space rooted in material and social porosity. Traditional, newly accessible and environmental porosity provide an array of accessible space which transforms the peri-urban city into a social arena of encounters and interaction. Consequently, porosity enables local residents to maintain urban space as commons. This counters the push towards the privatization of urban space by state and private actors and creates multiple aspirations for the urban future.
Rooted in urban space as commons, porosity enables the usage of peri-urban space as spaces of resistance as discussed in Chapter 4. Mobility and interaction are means of reproduction in the porous ambiguity of urban materiality but also become means of everyday resistance. The emerging spatialities of emancipation provide opportunities for an emerging urban citizenship. Urban materiality and urban citizenship have a mutually constitutive relationship.
Germany is considered a role model for dealing with past mass atrocities. In particular, the social reappraisal of the Holocaust is emblematic of this. However, when considering the genocide on the Herero and Nama in present-day Namibia, it is puzzling that an official recognition was only pronounced after almost 120 years, in May 2021. For a long time, silence surrounded this colonial cruelty in German political discourse. Although the discourse on German responsibility toward Namibia emerged after the end of World War II, it initially appeared detached from the genocide. That silence on colonial atrocities is to be considered a cruelty itself. Studies on silence have been expanding and becoming richer. Building on these works, the paper sets two goals: First, it advances the theorization of silence by producing a new typology, which is then integrated into discourse-bound identity theory. Second, it applies this theory to the analysis of the silencing and later acknowledging of the genocide on the Herero and Nama by German political elites. To this end, Bundestag debates, official documents, and statements by relevant political actors are analyzed in the period from 1980 to 2021. The results reveal the dynamics between hegemonic and counter-hegemonic discursive formations, how those are shifting in a period of 40 years, and what role silence plays in it. Beyond our emphasis on the genocide on the Herero and Nama, our findings might benefit future studies as the approach proposed in this paper can make silence a tangible research object for global studies.
The influence of situational interest on the appropriate use of cognitive learning strategies
(2017)
This study explores the role of two facets of situational interest, interestingness and
personal significance, as predictors of the adequate use of three types of cognitive
learning strategies (rehearsal strategies, organizational strategies, and elaboration
strategies). In order to attain this goal, it introduces a new measure of the adequacy
of the use of cognitive learning strategies by using the distance between teachers’
estimates of appropriate use of learning strategies for a specific task and students’
reported strategic behavior.
Based on a theoretical model of the use of cognitive learning strategies, the study
shows, by means of structural equation modeling, that different facets of situational
interest play different roles in predicting students’ surface and deep processing. In
summary, it was found that experienced personal significance played a major role
in predicting deep-processing strategies for a significant proportion of the 34 tasks
in this study, whereas interestingness fell short of expectations.
Limitations did arise owing to some missing values, which may blur the findings at
the lower interest and achievement end for the student sample. Nevertheless, suggestions
have been made for future research, which can help teachers of history
classes to determine components of success, namely experienced personal significance,
when designing tasks and consequently provide effective learning tasks to
their classes.
With respect to religious motivations for political participation and civic engagement, scholars have set their focus on social capital and the recruiting potential for volunteers inside religious communities. Less attention has been paid to individual religious impulses, but also to reasons for which people step out from deliberative processes, especially in regard to the Eastern European Orthodox cultural context. We are approaching this under-explored research field in this dissertation, with focus on the Romanian city of Timișoara, and look at three particular aspects: the influence of religious perceptions on political protests (analysis of the 1989 revolution), the manner in which religion motivates young people to volunteer (view on a local community project) and factors determining people to retreat from public engagement (analysis of citizens` local committees). The research methods are qualitative - interviews, group discussions and analytical interpretation. Results show that non- or less religious young people are encouraged to protest by an indefinable supernatural force and motivated by moral interests (need for dignity and a fair treatment / procedural justice), more than material ones (distributive justice). When engaging in the community, the impulse partially comes from an intrinsic spirituality and a privatized experience with the divine. Giving up civic engagement has nothing to do with remuneration, but with the need for freedom of expression and moral appreciation.
Hazardous materials (hazmat) have become important goods for satisfying the industrial and customer demand in our modern society. The transportation of these materials is always associated with safety, security and environmental concerns due to the dangerous nature of the cargo. To improve the safety of the transportation process hazmat transportation problems have become a popular research topic in the field of operations research. This thesis contributes to the ongoing research on the hazmat transportation problem. It provides an extensive overview of the existing literature on the hazardous materials transportation problem and offers a new classification extending the existing ones. With particular focus on the hazardous materials vehicle routing problem (HMVRP), this thesis compares different risk models and analyses their influence on the problem outcomes. Additionally, heuristic and meta-heuristic solution procedures are proposed for handling the NP-hard nature of the problem.
For this purpose, four different studies are conducted. Study 1 presents a state of the art literature review including over 300 contributions to the hazmat transportation problem. The historical development of the research field is analyzed and the most important journals are identified. A detailed classification focusing on hazmat transportation on public roads is provided. Furthermore, the study identifies research gaps and presents new research opportunities. Study 2 and 3 investigate the effects of path generation in a realistic urban network on the outcomes of the HMVRP. Additionally, different risk models for the HMVRP are compared and their influence on the problem solutions is analyzed. Study 2 proposes a simple but effective heuristic algorithm to solve the HMVRP with load-independent risk models. Study 3 extends the focus and includes load-dependent risk models. The influence of six different risk models on the solution outcomes of the HMVRP is compared and the tradeoff between risk minimization and the minimization of traveled distance is investigated. For this purpose, more than 1,700 problem instances are solved to optimality using CPLEX. In study 4 a hybrid genetic algorithm (HGA) for solving the HMVRP with a load-depending risk model is proposed. The HGA aims to find pareto-optimal solutions for the bi-objective HMVRP when risk and travel distance are addressed simultaneously. The structure of the HGA is explained and experimental findings are presented.
In conclusion, this thesis contributes to an improved understanding of the general development in the research field of hazmat logistics and the influence of different risk models on the solution outcomes of the HMVRP. Additionally, heuristic solution methods are proposed and tested for finding compromise solutions when the bi-objective case of risk and distance minimization is addressed. Furthermore, this thesis helps new researchers the access to the field of hazmat logistics as it provides a structured overview of the research field while pointing out research gaps. To address some of the identified research gaps, the thesis provides an extensive analysis of the risk modelling approaches. Thereby, it provides new insights to the basic research on risk modelling for the HMVRP. Finally, to overcome the long computation times of large problem instances heuristic solution approaches are proposed.
Netzwerke der Regional Cross-Border Governance haben in der EU insbesondere in den vergangenen zwei Jahrzehnten einen spürbaren Bedeutungszuwachs erfahren. Sie stellen hochkomplexe Governancestrukturen dar und bieten für beteiligte Akteure einen großen Mehrwert. Die EUSDR und EUSALP sind eine weitere Fortentwicklung von RCBG und können in verschiedenen Bereichen nachweisbare Erfolge vorweisen, werden jedoch der hohen im Vorfeld postulierten Erwartungshaltung nicht gerecht. RCBG-Netzwerke und insbesondere die Makroregionalen Strategien tragen in gewisser Weise zu einer territorialen Differenzierung der EU bei, diese sind jedoch noch weit davon entfernt, dass die zum Teil postulierte Erwartungshaltung bezüglich einer „(Makro-)Regionalisierung der EU“ erfüllt wird.
This collection of three chapters responds to today’s energy challenges. It explores innovative policy aimed to equip the energy poor with access to improved cooking energy and electricity, looking both at the demand and supply side of modern energy technologies. Concretely, it discusses mechanisms to increase uptake of off-grid solar electricity in rural Rwanda based on experimental demand measurements (Chapter 1), it studies how to diffuse improved cooking technologies in rural Senegal via supply-side mechanisms (Chapter 2), and it identifies the need to target cooking technologies in consideration of the broader household context in rural Senegal and beyond (Chapter 3).
With the rise of manycore processors, parallelism is becoming a mainstream necessity. Unfortunately, parallel programming is inherently more difficult than sequential programming; therefore, techniques for automatic parallelisation will become indispensable. We aim at extending the well-known polyhedron model, which promises this automation, beyond some of its current restrictions. Up to now, loop bounds and array subscripts in the modelled codes must be expressions linear in both the variables and the parameters. We lift this restriction and allow certain polynomial expressions instead of linear ones. With our extensions, we are able to handle more programs in all phases of the parallelisation process (dependence analysis, transformation of the program model, code generation). We extend Banerjee's classical dependence analysis to handle one non-linear parameter p, i.e., we are able to determine precisely the solutions of the system of conflict equalities for input programs with non-linear array accesses like A[p*i] in dependence of the residue class of p. We make contributions to three transformations desirable in automatic parallelisation. First, we show that using a generalised Simplex algorithm, which we have developed, schedules with non-linear parameters like theta(i)=floor(i/n) can be computed. In addition, such schedules can be expressed easily as a quantifier elimination problem but this approach turns out to be computationally less efficient with the available implementation. As a second transformation, we study parametric tiling which is used to adapt a parallelised program to the number of available processors at run time. Third, we present a localisation technique to exploit scratchpad memories on architectures on which data caching has to be handled by software. We transform a given code such that it keeps values which are reused in successive iterations of a sequential loop in the scratchpad. An access to a value written in an earlier iteration is served from the scratchpad to accelerate the access. In general, this transformation introduces non-linear loop bounds in the transformed model. Finally, we present an algorithm for generating code for arbitrary semi-algebraic iteration sets, i.e., for iteration sets described by polynomial inequalities in the variables and parameters. This is a vast generalisation of existing polyhedral code generation techniques. Although our algorithm is less efficient than polyhedral code generators, this paves the way for a code generator that can handle arbitrary parametric tilings and other transformations which introduce non-linear parameters (like non-linear schedules and the localisation we present) or even non-linear variables.
The well-known Riemann Mapping Theorem states the existence of a conformal map of a simply connected proper domain of the complex plane onto the upper half plane. One of the main topics in geometric function theory is to investigate the behaviour of the mapping functions at the boundary of such domains. In this work, we always assume that a piecewise analytic boundary is given. Hereby, we have to distinguish regular and singular boundary points. While the asymptotic behaviour for regular boundary points can be investigated by using the Schwarz Reflection at analytic arcs, the situation for singular boundary points is far more complicated. In the latter scenario two cases have to be differentiated: analytic corners and analytic cusps. The first part of the thesis deals with the asymptotic behaviour at analytic corners where the opening angle is greater than 0. The results of Lichtenstein and Warschawski on the asymptotic behaviour of the Riemann map and its derivatives at an analytic corner are presented as well as the much stronger result of Lehman that the mapping function can be developed in a certain generalised power series which in turn enables to examine the o-minimal content of the Riemann Mapping Theorem. To obtain a similar statement for domains with analytic cusps, it is necessary to investigate the asymptotic behaviour of a Riemann map at the cusp and based on this result to determine the asymptotic power series expansion. Therefore, the aim of the second part of this work is to investigate the asymptotic behaviour of a Riemann map at an analytic cusp. A simply connected domain has an analytic cusp if the boundary is locally given by two analytic arcs such that the interior angle vanishes. Besides the asymptotic behaviour of the mapping function, the behaviour of its derivatives, its inverse, and the derivatives of the inverse are analysed. Finally, we present a conjecture on the asymptotic power series expansion of the mapping function at an analytic cusp.
This paper aims at the documentation of the results of a study dealing with the relationship between in-group and out-group attitudes. The research enquires into the question whether nationalistic, patriotic, and anti-immigration attitudes are only correlated with each other or whether there is a causal relationship. The presentation of the Mplus output together with the correlation and covariance matrices will allow the readers to control the results and, if they want to do it, to test alternative models.
Zum Inhalt des Ethikunterrichts in Bayern zählen "die allgemein anerkannten Grundsätze der Sittlichkeit". Die Aufgabe des Ethikunterrichts in Bayern besteht darüber hinaus, laut der Verfassung des Freistaates Bayern, in der Beförderung einer "Befähigung zu werteinsichtigem Urteilen und Handeln".
Zu einer besonderen Art der Handlung zählen viele Philosophen den Einsatz von Technik. Hans Jonas beispielsweise gilt als einer der Hauptbefürworter der These, dass technisches Handeln einer speziellen Form der ethischen Reflexion bedürfe. Aufgrund der Eigenheiten technischen Handelns hat sich daher in der Ethik die Teildisziplin der Technikethik herausgebildet.
Eine der Aufgaben der Fachdidaktik einer wissenschaftlichen Disziplin besteht darin, die fachwissenschaftlichen Inhalte in schulische curricula zu transformieren. Des Weiteren entwickelt die Fachdidaktik normative Standards dazu, was guten Unterricht in einem Fach ausmacht. Ergänzend hierzu entwickelt die Fachdidaktik Methoden, um die Inhalte des Lehrplans bestmöglich zu vermitteln.
Obgleich jedes Unterrichtsfach, aufbauend auf der dahinterstehenden Fachwissenschaft, seine eigenen Methoden, Inhalte und Anforderungen aufweist, wird fächerübergreifend die Methodenvielfalt als ein Merkmal guten Unterrichts anerkannt.
Bezogen auf den Ethikunterricht besteht eine besondere Herausforderung darin, wie sich bei vornehmlich in Textform vorliegendem Quellenmaterial, durch unterschiedliche Unterrichtsformen, eine hinreichend differenzierte Methodenvielfalt gewährleisten lässt. Um diese zu erreichen, können Ethiklehrkräfte beispielsweise außerschulische Lernorte in den Unterricht miteinbeziehen. Obgleich zu beobachten ist, dass sich die Ethikdidaktik in den vergangenen Jahren erheblich weiterentwickelt und diversifiziert hat, findet die Rolle außerschulischer Lernorte im Ethikunterricht in den Standardwerken bisher keine besondere Beachtung. Jedoch existiert eine Reihe von Aufsätzen, welche die Möglichkeiten und Spezifika außerschulischer Lernorte untersuchen . Wenige Erkenntnisse existieren jedoch bisher bezüglich der Frage, wie der Besuch außerschulischer Lernorte ein besseres Verständnis der Technikethik befördern kann.
In dieser Arbeit soll untersucht werden, welche Rolle diese Lernorte bei der Vermittlung der im bayerischen Lehrplan für weiterführende Schulen vorgesehenen Inhalte aus dem Bereich der Technikethik einnehmen können. Konkret soll dies am Beispiel der "Technikethikwerkstatt", einer Lernwerkstatt zur Technikförderung als außerschulischem Lernort, geschehen. Es wird die Frage untersucht, unter welchen Umständen das Einbeziehen dieses außerschulischen Lernortes den Lernerfolg im Ethikunterricht fördern kann.
Previous laboratory studies on the centipede game have found that subjects exhibit surprisingly high levels of cooperation. Across disciplines, it has recently been highlighted that these high levels of cooperation might be explained by “team reasoning”, the willingness to think as a team rather than as an individual. We run an experiment with a standard centipede game as a baseline. In two treatments, we seek to induce team reasoning by making a joint goal salient. First, we implement a probabilistic variant of the centipede game that makes it easy to identify a joint goal. Second, we frame the game as a situation where a team of two soccer players attempts to score a goal. This frame increases the salience even more. Compared to the baseline, our treatments induce higher levels of cooperation. In a second experiment, we obtain similar evidence in a more natural environment–a beer garden during the 2014 FIFA Soccer World Cup. Our study contributes to understanding how a salient goal can support cooperation.
Teaching Journalism Literacy in Schools: The Role of Media Companies as
Media Educators in Germany
(2023)
German journalism is facing major challenges including declining circulation, funding, trust, and political allegations of spreading disinformation. Increased media literacy in the population is one way to counter these issues and their implications. This especially applies to the sub‐concept of journalism literacy, focusing on the ability to consume news critically and reflectively, thus enabling democratic participation. For media companies, promoting journalism literacy seems logical for economic and altruistic reasons. However, research on German initiatives is scarce. This article presents an explorative qualitative survey of experts from seven media companies offering journalistic media education projects in German schools, focusing on the initiatives’ content, structure, and motivation. Results show that initiatives primarily aim at students and teachers, offering mostly education on journalism (e.g., teaching material) and via journalism (e.g., journalistic co‐production with students). While these projects mainly provide information on the respective medium and journalistic practices, dealing with disinformation is also a central goal. Most initiatives are motivated both extrinsically (e.g., reaching new audiences) and intrinsically (e.g., democratic responsibility). Despite sometimes insufficient resources and reluctant teachers, media companies see many opportunities in their initiatives: Gaining trust and creating resilience against disinformation are just two examples within the larger goal of enabling young people to be informed and opinionated members of a democratic society.
Tatbestand: Anderssein
(2016)
Diese Ausgabe beleuchtet das Thema Anderssein aus supranationaler, persönlicher, wirtschaftlicher und historischer Perspektive und soll einen wissenschaftlichen Beitrag zur gegenwärtigen Debatte leisten. Einführend liefert Micha Pollok einen Überblick über die Hintergründe der aktuellen Flüchtlingssituation und deren Perzeption in Europa. Besonderes Augenmerk legt er dabei auf entstehende Konflikte zwischen den europäischen Mitgliedsstaaten. Kathrin Eberhardt geht der Frage auf den Grund, inwieweit die einzelnen Institutionen der Europäische Union eine normative power in der Asyl- und Flüchtlingspolitik darstellen. In einer explorativen Studie geht Ibrahim Bebars dem Verständnis des Begriffs „Willkommenskultur“ nach, indem er zwei Geflüchtete und zwei Passauer BürgerInnen interviewt. Vera Stelter beschäftigt sich in ihrer Arbeit mit der Reproduktion ethnischer Differenz im Bereich des Marketings. Sie analysiert aus konstruktivistischer Perspektive, inwiefern das Unternehmen AY YILDIZ die ethnische Grenzziehung zwischen „Deutschen“, „TürkInnen“ und „Deutsch-TürkInnen“ beeinflusst. Schließlich vergleicht Kai Schubert antisemitische mit antiziganistischen Feindbildern zur Zeit des Nationalsozialismus, wobei er sich psychoanalytischer Deutungen bedient.
Inhalt:
Micha Pollok
FLÜCHTLINGE IN EUROPA
Ein innereuropäischer Konflikt
Ibrahim Bebars
WILLKOMMENSKULTUR IN DEUTSCHLAND
Selbst- und Fremdwahrnehmung einer Gesellschaft
Vera Stelter
REPRODUKTION ETHNISCHER DIFFERENZ
Ethnomarketing in Deutschland am Beispiel des Mobilfunkanbieters AY YILDIZ
Kai Schubert
FEINDBILDER DES NATIONALSOZIALISMUS
Ein Vergleich von modernem Antisemitismus und Antiziganismus als projektiver Identifizierung
Kathrin Eberhardt
DIE EU - EINE NORMATIVE POWER
in der europäischen Asyl- und Flüchtlingspolitik
Data has become a necessary resource for firm operations in the modern digital world, explaining their growing data gathering efforts. Due to this development, consumers are confronted with decisions to disclose personal data on a daily basis, and have become increasingly intentional about data sharing. While this reluctance to disclose personal data poses challenges for firms, at the same time, it also creates new opportunities for improving privacy-related interactions with customers. This dissertation advocates for a more holistic perspective on consumers’ privacy-related decision-making and introduces the consumer privacy journey consisting of three subsequent phases: pre data disclosure, data disclosure, post data disclosure. In three independent essays, I stress the importance of investigating data requests (i.e., the first step of this journey) as they represent a largely neglected, yet, potentially powerful means to influence consumers’ decision-making and decision-evaluation processes. Based on dual-processing models of decision-making, this dissertation focuses on both consumers’ cognitive and affective evaluations of privacy-related information: First, Essay 1 offers novel conceptualizations and operationalizations of consumers’ perceived behavioral control over personal data (i.e., cognitive processing) in the context of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based data disclosure processes. Next, Essay 2 examines consumers’ cognitive and affective processing of a data request that entails relevance arguments as well as relevance-illustrating game elements. Finally, Essay 3 categorizes affective cues that trigger consumers’ affective processing of a data request and proposes that such cues need to fit with a specific data disclosure situation to foster long-term decision satisfaction. Collectively, my findings provide research and practice with new insights into consumers’ privacy perceptions and behaviors, which are particularly valuable in the context of complex, new (technology-enabled) data disclosure situations.
IT outsourcing to clouds bears new challenges to the technical implementation of legally compliant clouds. On the one hand, outsourcing companies have to comply with legal requirements. On the other hand, cloud providers have to support their customers in achieving compliance with these legal requirements when processing data in the cloud. Consequently, the questions arise when IT outsourcing to clouds is lawful, which legal requirements apply to data processing in clouds, and how cloud providers can support their customers on achieving legal compliance.
In this thesis, answers to these questions are given by performing a legal analysis identifying the legal requirements and a technical analysis identifying how legal requirements can be addressed in the context of cloud computing. Further, an information flow analysis is done, resulting in a system theoretical model that is able to describe information flow control in clouds based on the security classification of virtual resources and hardware resources. In a proof-of-concept implementation which is based on the OpenStack open-source cloud platform, it is shown that information flow control can be implemented as a part of cloud management and that legal compliance can be monitored and reported based on the actual assignment of virtual resources to hardware resources. Thereby, cloud providers are able to provide cloud customers with cloud resources, which are automatically assigned to hardware resources that comply with the legal requirements of the cloud customers. This consequently empowers cloud customers to utilise cloud resources according to their legal requirements and to keep control of managing the legal compliance of their data processing in clouds.
Szenopragmatik
(2016)
Wie hängen Zeichen, Szenen und Medien in der Lebenswelt des Menschen zusammen? Eine Antwort auf diese Frage erfordert konzeptionelle Überlegungen, die sich synoptisch zu einer Reihe relevanter Theorien verhalten müssen. Wie die einschlägigen Begriffe, aufeinander bezogen werden könnten, soll hier – eher vorläufig als abschließend – erkundet werden.
A plethora of resources made available via retrieval systems in digital libraries remains untapped in the so called long tail of the Web. These long-tail websites get considerably less visits than major Web hubs.
Zero-effort queries ease the discovery of long-tail resources by proactively retrieving and presenting information based on a user’s context. However, zero-effort queries over existing digital library structures are challenging, since the underlying retrieval system is only accessible via an API. The information need must be expressed by a query, instead of optimizing the ranking between context and resources in the retrieval system directly. We address three research questions that arise from replacing the user information seeking process by zero-effort queries.
Our first question addresses the transformation of a user query to an automatic query, derived from the context. We present means to 1) identify the relevant context on different levels of granularity, 2) derive an information need from the context via keyword extraction and personalization and 3) express this information need in a query scheme that avoids over- or under-specified queries. We address the cold start problem with an approach to bootstrap user profiles from social media, even for passive users.
With the second question, we address the presentation of resources in zero-effort query scenarios, presenting guidelines for presentation interfaces in the browser and a visualization of the triadic relationship between context, query and results. QueryCrumbs, a compact query history visualization supports recalling information found in the past and exploratory search by visualizing qualitative and quantitative query similarity.
Our last question addresses the gap between (simple) keyword queries and the representation of resources by rich and complex meta-data. We investigate and extend feature representation learning techniques centered around the skip-gram model with negative sampling. Finally, we present an approach to learn representations from network and text jointly that can cope with the partial absence of one modality.
Experimental results show close to human performance of our zero-effort query and user profile generation approach and visualizations to be helpful in terms of transparency, efficiency and support for exploratory search. These results indicate that the proposed zero-effort query approach indeed eases the discovery of long-tail resources and the accompanying visualizations further facilitate this process. The joint representation model provides a first step to bridge the gap between query and resource representation and we plan to follow and investigate this route further in the future.
Das Thema dieser Arbeit begibt sich ins Zentrum der Befreiungstheologie. Es geht um die Befähigung des Armen, sein Subjektsein deuten zu lernen und es so verantwortungsfähig entfalten zu können. Der Arme ist dazu auf Unterstützung angewiesen. Er braucht jemanden, der sich für ihn entscheidet und gegen die Realität der Unterdrückung stellt. Jeder, der das konsequent tut, muss wissen, dass er dabei sein eigenes Leben riskiert. Gerade deswegen ist nach den Gründen solchen Handelns zu fragen.
Die Arbeit besteht aus drei empirischen Studien, die als übergeordnete Forschungsfragen untersuchen sollten, welche signifikanten Prädiktoren das subjektive Wohlbefinden bei Studierenden beeinflussen können und zum anderen klären sollte, ob das subjektive Wohlbefinden in einem Zusammenhang mit der Studienabbruchsintention steht. Jede Studie baute auf den Hauptprädiktoren Persönlichkeit, Selbstkonzept und soziale Integration auf und hatte zugleich noch einen spezifischen Aspekt, der sich von Studie zu Studie änderte. In der ersten Studie wurde als zusätzliche Variable der Identitätsstatus betrachtet. An dieser Erhebung nahmen Studierende ab dem zweiten Semester teil und sie wurde im Querschnitt durchgeführt. Die zentralen Ergebnisse waren hinsichtlich des subjektiven Wohlbefindens die Bedeutung von Neurotizismus, Extraversion, dem Selbstkonzept der allgemeinen Problemlösung und die deutlich unterschiedlichen Ergebnisse zwischen Frauen und Männern. So hatte bei den Studentinnen vor allem Neurotizismus einen Einfluss und bei Männern hingegen die Extraversion. Hinsichtlich der Studienabbruchsintention zeigte sich ein vollständiger Mediatoreffekt zwischen der sozialen Eingebundenheit und der Studienabbruchsintention mit dem subjektiven Wohlbefinden als Mediator. Im Pfadmodell zeigte sich allerdings kein signifikanter Zusammenhang zwischen dem subjektiven Wohlbefinden und der Studienabbruchsintention. In der zweiten Studie lag der Fokus auf Studierenden im ersten Semester in einer Längsschnittuntersuchung und spezifizierte sich auf Aspekte der Motivation, die allerdings keine Zusammenhänge zeigten. Auch hier gab es einen vollständigen Mediatoreffekt des subjektiven Wohlbefindens hinsichtlich des Regressionspfades zwischen sozialer Integration und Studienabbruchsintention. Die dritte Studie legte den Schwerpunkt auf die Bedeutung der Grundbedürfnisse nach Deci & Ryan (2000) und die Emotionsregulationsstrategien Neubewertung und Unterdrückung. Die Teilnehmenden waren Studierende ab dem zweiten Semester, die im Längsschnitt befragt wurden. Beim ersten Messzeitpunkt während des Semesters waren das Autonomieerleben, Neurotizismus und das Selbstkonzept der allgemeinen Problemlösung signifikante Prädiktoren des subjektiven Wohlbefindens, beim zweiten Messzeitpunkt war der einzige, signifikante Prädiktor im Pfadmodell die Persönlichkeitsdimension Verträglichkeit. Zwischen dem subjektiven Wohlbefinden und der Studienabbruchsintention zeigte sich ein signifikanter Zusammenhang.
Subjektive Theorien von Grundschullehrkräften über Eltern wurden qualitativ-empirisch erkundet, um einen Beitrag zur Schule-Elternhauskooperation zu leisten. Luhmanns Systemtheorie und Fends Schultheorie bilden die theoretische Basis. Mithilfe von drei Interaktionsfeldern, die entscheidende Begegnungsräume zwischen Grundschullehrkräften und Elternschaft markieren, wurde dem Verhältnis zueinander nachgegangen (Luhmann, 2014; Fend, 2008). Mittels eines halbstandardisierten Leitfadeninterviews und einer adaptierten Struktur-Legetechnik sind die Subjektiven Theorien der Untersuchungsteilnehmer*innen erfasst worden (Scheele & Groeben, 1988). Aus der Perspektive von Lehrkräften wurden die individuellen und generellen subjektiven Theorien herausgearbeitet. Die Ergebnisse offenbaren fachlich fehlerhafte und für Kooperation teilweise äußerst hemmende Überzeugungen, obgleich der Wunsch nach einem kooperativen Miteinander stets betont wurde.
In den letzten Jahren hat sich in der Philosophie, Ästhetik, Kunst- und Bildwissenschaft eine Reihe von Denkern zu Wort gemeldet, die die Semiotik grundlegend kritisieren. Es kann mittlerweile von einer antisemiotischen Bewegung gesprochen werden, die sich mit Namen wie Dieter Mersch, Hans Belting, Gernot Böhme, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht oder Lambert Wiesing verbindet. Dabei wird mit Begriffen wie „Materialität“, „Präsenz“, „Aura“, „Ereignis“ und „hermeneutischer Widerständigkeit“ argumentiert, um Aspekte zu benennen, die die Semiotik nicht berücksichtigt habe und die in Zukunft anstelle von Zeichenphänomenen verstärkt beachtet werden sollten. Dieser Beitrag setzt sich mit der Kritik auseinander, zeigt die Leistungsfähigkeit und Grenzen semiotischer Theoriebildung auf und diskutiert Konsequenzen für die Semiotik und die Einzelwissenschaften, in denen die Kritik geäußert wird.
Der Beitrag stellt ein interdisziplinär durchgeführtes Lehr-Lern-Projekt als Best-Practice-Beispiel vor. Ziel des vom Lehrinnovationspool der Universität Passau geförderten Projekts war es, Studierende der Sprachwissenschaft und Geographie sowie Schülerinnen und Schüler der FOS/BOS an digitales, selbstständiges und forschendes Lernen im thematischen Kontext der „Sprachdynamik im deutsch-österreichischen Grenzraum“ heranzuführen. Der Aufsatz zeigt, wie Studierenden verschiedene Rollen als Lernende, Forschende und auch als Lehrende einnehmen, indem sie die Schülerinnen und Schüler als Lernpaten bei der Planung, Durchführung und Auswertung von gemeinsamen Forschungsvorhaben unterstützen. Exemplarisch wird ein Projekt für Schülerinnen und Schüler näher vorgestellt. Weiterhin reflektiert der Beitrag das Lehrhandeln der Dozierenden.
Large-scale software engineering projects are often distributed among a number sites that are geographically separated by a substantial distance. In globally distributed software projects, time zone issues, language and cultural barriers, and a lack of familiarity among members of different sites all introduce coordination complexity and present significant obstacles to achieving a coordinated effort.
For large-scale software engineering projects to satisfy their scheduling and quality goals, many developers must be capable of completing work items in parallel. A key factor to achieving this goal is to remove interdependencies among work items insofar as possible. By applying principles of modularity, work item interdependence can be reduced, but not removed entirely. As a result of uncertainty during the design and implementation phases and incomplete or misunderstood design intents, dependencies between work items inevitably arises and leads to requirements for developers to coordinate. The capacity of a project to satisfy coordination needs depends on how the work items are distributed among developers and how developers are organizationally arranged, among other factors. When coordination requirements fail to be recognized and appropriately managed, anecdotal evidence and prior empirical studies indicate that this condition results in decreased product quality and developer productivity. In essence, properties of the socio-technical environment, comprised of developers and the tasks they must complete, provides important insights concerning the project's capacity to meet product quality and scheduling goals. In this dissertation, we make contributions to support socio-technical analyses of software projects by developing approaches for abstracting and analyzing the technical and social activities of developers. More specifically, we propose a fine-grained, verifiable, and fully automated approach to obtain a proper view on developer coordination, based on commit information and source-code structure, mined from version-control systems. We apply methodology from network analysis and machine learning to identify developer communities automatically. To evaluate our approach, we analyze ten open-source projects with complex and active histories, written in various programming languages. By surveying 53 open-source developers from the ten projects, we validate the accuracy of the extracted developer network and the authenticity of the inferred community structure. Our results indicate that developers of open-source projects form statistically significant community structures and this particular network view largely coincides with developers' perceptions.
Equipped with a valid network view on developer coordination, we extend our approach to analyze the evolutionary nature of developer coordination. By means of a longitudinal empirical study of 18 large open-source projects, we examine and discuss the evolutionary principles that govern the coordination of developers. We found that the implicit and self-organizing structure of developer coordination is ubiquitously described by non-random organizational principles that defy conventional software-engineering wisdom. In particular, we found that: (a) developers form scale-free networks, in which the majority of coordination requirements arise among an extremely small number of developers, (b) developers tend to accumulate coordination requirements with more and more developers over time, presumably limited by an upper bound, and (c) initially developers are hierarchically arranged, but over time, form a hybrid structure, in which highly central developers are hierarchically arranged and all other developers are not. Our results suggest that the organizational structure of large software projects is constrained to evolve towards a state that balances the costs and benefits of coordination, and the mechanisms used to achieve this state depend on the project's scale.
As a final contribution, we use developer networks to establish a richer understanding of the different roles that developers play in a project. Developers of open-source projects are often classified according to core and peripheral roles. Typically, count-based operationalizations, which rely on simple counts of individual developer activities (e.g., number of commits), are used for this purpose, but there is concern regarding their validity and ability to elicit meaningful insights. To shed light on this issue, we investigate whether count-based operationalizations of developer roles produce consistent results, and we validate them with respect to developers' perceptions by surveying 166 developers. We improve over the state of the art by proposing a relational perspective on developer roles, using our fine-grained developer networks, and by examining developer roles in terms of developers' positions and stability within the developer network. In a study of 10 substantial open-source projects, we found that the primary difference between the count-based and our proposed network-based core--peripheral operationalizations is that the network-based ones agree more with developer perception than count-based ones. Furthermore, we demonstrate that a relational perspective can reveal further meaningful insights, such as that core developers exhibit high positional stability, upper positions in the hierarchy, and high levels of coordination with other core developers, which confirms assumptions of previous work.
Overall, our research demonstrates that data stored in software repositories, paired with appropriate analysis approaches, can elicit valuable, practical, and valid insights concerning socio-technical aspects of software development.
Our subject of study is strong approximation of stochastic differential equations (SDEs) with respect to the supremum and the L_p error criteria, and we seek approximations that are strongly asymptotically optimal in specific classes of approximations. For the supremum error, we prove strong asymptotic optimality for specific tamed Euler schemes relating to certain adaptive and to equidistant time discretizations. For the L_p error, we prove strong asymptotic optimality for specific tamed Milstein schemes relating to certain adaptive and to equidistant time discretizations. To illustrate our findings, we numerically analyze the SDE associated with the Heston–3/2–model originating from mathematical finance.
Stolpersteine im Diskurs – Beobachtungsstudie zum Verhalten beim Passieren von Stolpersteinen
(2016)
Erinnerungen – wir alle haben Erinnerungen. Im Laufe der Zeit ereignen sich unzählige Dinge. Und doch werden eigentlich alle geschichtlichen Ereignisse, unabhängig von ihrer Art, auf die eine oder andere Weise am Leben erhalten – eben durch Erinnerungen. In dieser Arbeit wird unter anderem untersucht, wie erfolgreich Erinnerungen mittels Initiativen wie den Stolpersteinen von Gunter Demnig aktiviert werden können. Hierzu wurde eine Beobachtungsstudie zum Verhalten an Stolpersteinen erstellt. Untersuchungsziel im Allgemeinen ist das Verhalten von Personen beim Passieren von Stolpersteinen. Es soll herausgefunden werden, wie hoch der Beachtungsgrad ist, ob Respekt oder Respektlosigkeit an den Tag gelegt wird und wie generell das Verhalten ausgeprägt ist.
Der erste Teil der Arbeit befasst sich schwerpunktmäßig mit einer Erklärung über Stolpersteine und der darum entstandenen Kontroverse, greift theoretische Begriffe und Konzepte auf und geht auf verschiedene Arten von Erinnerungen ein. Der zweite Teil beschreibt das Vorgehen beim Erstellen der Studie.Schließlich wird im dritten Teil der Arbeit der im Rahmen der Erhebungen gewonnene Datensatz ausgewertet und analysiert. Im letzten Schritt soll dann der Versuch unternommen werden, eine Antwort auf die grundlegende Frage dieser Arbeit zu finden: Werden Stolpersteine tatsächlich „mit Füßen getreten“?
Steuerung der Versorgung
(2014)
VORWORT
Die Versorgung von Kranken und Verletzten im Rahmen von ambulanter und stationärer Kranken- und Heilbehandlung ist in erster Linie eine Aufgabe von Ärzten, Therapeuten, Pflegern, Apothekern. Die vielfältige Tätigkeit dieser Medizinalpersonen bei Akutbehandlung, Rehabilitation sowie nachfolgender medizinischer Betreuung kann in der Weise gestaltet werden, dass sowohl die ständige Verbesserung der Versorgung in den einzelnen Sektoren des Gesundheitsgeschehens als auch die Koordinierung zwischen diesen Tätigkeitsfeldern analysiert und bei erkennbarem Bedarf so gestaltet wird, dass die in diesen Bereichen vorhandenen Erkenntnisse und Fähigkeiten optimal eingesetzt werden.
Diesem Zweck dienen Aktivitäten, die mit unterschiedlichen Bezeichnungen die Versorgung begleiten, „managen“ oder – in der Terminologie dieser Tagung – „steuern“. Dies geschieht mittlerweile in allen Bereichen, in denen die gesundheitliche Versorgung Aufgabe von Institutionen ist (Gesetzliche Krankenversicherung, Unfallversicherung und Rentenversicherung) und/oder in deren Interesse (Private Kranken-Kostenversicherung, private Unfallversicherung, Haftpflichtversicherungen) liegt. Die Deutsch-Österreichischen Sozialrechtsgespräche 2013 haben sich bereichsübergreifend und aus deutsch-österreichischer Perspektive mit diesem Phänomen befasst.
Die Tagung 2013 geht von der Überlegung aus, dass angesichts der Gleichartigkeit der Ziele und Probleme von „krankheits- bzw. gesundheitsbezogenem Management“ ein diesbezüglicher Gedanken- und Erfahrungsaustausch zwischen den Akteuren aus den verschiedenen Bereichen, die sich diesen Dingen widmen, aufschlussreich, anregend und für jeden der Beteiligten gewinnbringend sein müsste.
Nicht alle Akteure konnten bei der Tagung 2013 einbezogen werden; so ist z. B. die Rentenversicherung hinsichtlich ihrer Leistungen zur gesundheitsbezogenen Prävention und Rehabilitation nicht mit einem Beitrag vertreten. Des Weiteren sind Versicherer der privaten Kranken(kosten)versicherung und aus dem Bereich der Haftpflichtversicherung nicht direkt mit eigenen Beiträgen vertreten; allerdings werden diesbezüglich aufschlussreiche und informative Einblicke gewährt, einerseits durch Informationen aus dem Blickwinkel des Verbandes des privaten Krankenversicherungen, anderseits durch detaillierte Schilderungen von deutschen und österreichischen Unternehmen, die von den Versicherungen mit der Durchführung von „Gesundheits-Management“ beauftragt sind; diese Berichte enthalten auch Informationen über die jeweils verbindlichen Vorgaben und Regelungswerke, die bei diesen Aktivitäten maßgebend sind und aus deren Aktivitäten sich unschwer Rückschlüsse ziehen lassen auf
die Überlegungen der jeweiligen Auftraggeber im Hinblick auf die Gestaltung des Versorgungsmanagements.
Somit handelt es sich bei den hier abgedruckten Beiträgen um Überlegungen, die in ihren Ansätzen aus institutionellem Blickwinkel sehr unterschiedlich sind. Dabei ist bemerkenswert, dass auch die primären Ziele entsprechender Aktivitäten unterschiedlich akzentuiert sind: Teils wird normorientiert von den einschlägigen Rechtsvorschriften des Leistungsrechts ausgegangen; teils haben die Überlegungen und die darauf aufbauende Gestaltung des Versorgungsmanagements ihren Ausgangspunkt bei den finanziellen Rahmenbedingungen eines Versicherungssystems.
Ob aus der Perspektive der Erfüllungsgehilfen der Leistungserbringer Autonomie und Kreativität, Fachwissen und auch geschäftliches Interesse geschildert werden oder ob die klassischen mit breiter Vorbildwirkung maßgebenden Aktivitäten aus dem öffentlich-rechtlichen Bereich – in Erfüllung von entsprechenden Rechtspflichten – im Interesse von Geschädigten, aber durchaus auch mit finanziellem Interessenhintergrund dargelegt werden – im Ergebnis zeigt sich, dass ein weitgehender Gleichklang der gedanklichen Ansätze zu beobachten ist. Damit ist der Weg für einen konstruktiven Austausch von Gedanken und Erfahrungen eröffnet, untereinander innerhalb der Bereiche jeweils der öffentlichen und der privaten Verwaltungen, über die Grenzen von Privaten und Öffentlichen hinweg und zudem im Vergleich der einschlägigen Aktivitäten in Deutschland und in Österreich.
INHALTSVERZEICHNIS
Otfried Seewald
Einführung in das Tagungsthema 1
Andreas Kranig
Steuerung der Versorgung in der gesetzlichen Unfallversicherung (Deutschland) 35
Kay Schumacher
Steuerung der Versorgung in der deutschen gesetzlichen Unfallversicherung. Neuere Entwicklungen und praktische Beispiele 57
Bernhard Albert
Steuerung der Versorgung in der gesetzlichen Unfallversicherung (Österreich) 65
Monika Fröschl
Begleitung von Menschen mit chronischer Erkrankung – Vision und Wirklichkeit 73
Marcus Vogel
„Rehabilitationsmanagement“ für die deutsche private Unfall- und Haftpflichtversicherung 77
Martin Steidler
Steuerung der Versorgung in der deutschen gesetzlichen Krankenversicherung 87
Karl Olzinger
Steuerung der Versorgung in der österreichischen gesetzlichen Krankenversicherung 97
Florian Reuther
Steuerung der Versorgung aus der Sicht der privaten Krankenversicherung 121
Johannes Polak
Steuerung der Versorgung in der österreichischen privaten Krankenversicherung 129
Sterblichkeit und Erinnerung
(2022)
Wer von Erinnerung spricht, darf vom Tod nicht schweigen. Das Bewahren von Wissen, von Ereignissen, aber auch von Empfindungen usw. gewinnt gerade durch die prinzipielle Vergänglichkeit des menschlichen Handelns seine Bedeutung. Die Erinnerung an die Lebenswelt Verstorbener ist deshalb keine authentische Dokumentation, sondern durch gesellschaftlich tradierte Konzepte des Erinnerns (oder auch Nicht-Erinnerns) vorgeprägt. Vor diesem Hintergrund setzen sich die Beiträge dieses Bandes mit dem Verhältnis von Erinnerung und Vergangenheitsbezug im Spannungsfeld von Sterblichkeit, Tod und Gesellschaft auseinander. Mit Beiträgen von Thorsten Benkel, Ekkehard Coenen, Oliver Dimbath, Jan Ferdinand, Carsten Heinze, Matthias Meitzler, Christoph Nienhaus, Melanie Pierburg, Sarah Peuten, Leonie Schmickler, Laura Völkle, Lara Weiss und Nico Wettmann.
Für langfristige Auftragsfertigung bzw. Projektvorhaben ist es typisch, dass die Periodizitäten von Leistungserstellung und Rechnungslegung voneinander – zum Teil erheblich – abweichen. Dies erzeugt eine Problematik bei der Bilanzierung solcher Aufträge, da beim handelsrechtlichen Jahresabschluss ein jährlicher Rhythmus einzuhalten und bei Verpflichtung zur Zwischenberichterstattung Quartals- oder Halbjahresabschlüsse zu erstellen sind. Da sich für viele Unternehmen, die auf Konzernebene international bilanzieren, die Notwendigkeit ergibt, Einzelabschlüsse parallel sowohl nach HGB als auch nach Standards wie US-GAAP oder IFRS, die zum Konzernabschluss kompatibel sind, zu tätigen, wird dieses Problem noch erheblich verstärkt. Die Internationalisierung des externen Rechnungswesens erzeugt daher neue Aufgaben im internen Rechnungswesen - vor allem in Projektabrechnung und Projektcontrolling, die in Standardsoftware abzubilden sind. Die Erarbeitung einer zieladäquaten customizing-seitigen Abbildung einer Controllingkonzeption für Unternehmen mit projektbezogenen Leistungserstellungsprozessen auf Basis von Standardoftware unter der Beachtung deren Konformität mit den Regelungen der Rechnungslegungsvorschriften nach HGB, IFRS und US-GAAP steht im Mittelpunkt der Betrachtung. Die Entwicklung der Lösungsansätze innerhalb des Datenmodells einer betriebswirtschaftlichen Standardsoftware bietet sich hierbei nicht nur aufgrund der unmittelbaren Relevanz für die Unternehmenspraxis an, sondern erlaubt darüber hinaus aus wissenschaftlicher Sicht die Untersuchung betriebswirtschaftlicher Abhängigkeiten innerhalb eines in sich geschlossenen Modellrahmens. Die auf diesem Wege gewonnen Erkenntnisse können dabei teilweise auch vom konkreten Modellrahmen und somit von der spezifischen Software-Plattform abstrahiert und verallgemeinert werden. Dabei wird deutlich, dass die Sicherstellung einer korrekten Projektbewertungsrechnung weit über den Kernbereich des externen und internen Rechnungswesens hinausgeht und zwingend eine funktionsbereichsübergreifende Abstimmung von Werteflüssen und Prozessschritten erfordert.
Bitte beachten Sie, dass diese Publikation inzwischen erweitert und überarbeitet wurde. Sie finden die aktuelle Fassung unter folgendem Link:
https://ojs3.uni-passau.de/index.php/paradigma/issue/view/21
In diesem Papier werden für die Schulpraktika im Lehramtsstudium, für das Referendariat und schließlich für die professionelle Lehrkraft Handlungsstandards in sechs zentralen Dimensionen dargestellt: 1) Handeln als Lehrperson 2) die Schule als Lern- und Lebensraum 3) Unterrichtsbeobachtung und –evaluation 4) Unterrichtsplanung, -durchführung und –analyse 5) Klassenführung 6) Leistungsmessung In einer spiralcurricularen Darstellung wird der Weg der professionellen Entwicklung, beginnend bei den ersten Handlungserfahrungen als Lehrperson, anhand von Regelstandards entwickelt. Dazu werden jeweils Indikatoren aufgeführt, an denen man die Erreichung des jeweiligen Standards beobachten kann. Ein theoretischer Teil führt in die erziehungswissenschaftliche Diskussion rund um das Thema Lehrerbildungsstandards ein und verankert die vorliegenden sowie die dazugehörigen Indikatoren in der aktuellen Unterrichtsqualitätsforschung.
Which skills may student teachers be expected to have, after all, after having completed their first period of practical training at school? After three to six semesters of studying and a six-week long period of practical training at school, what may be expected from them when it comes to those professional skills as being expected from professional teachers? Which skills may they be expected to have in their fifth semester of studying, at a stage when, in the context of their studies, student teachers in Bavaria are doing their subject-related periods of practical training? And what may a trainee teacher be expected to have achieved at the end of his or her teaching training? Finally, which skills may professional teachers be expected to have which may not be expected from trainee teachers?
Questions like these give expression to a problem a team of professors, lecturers and responsible school supervisors has dedicated their efforts to. The overall objective of the collaboration was to define skills and indicators that describe developing processes between the beginning of studies and being a professional teacher. For this purpose, one reached back to current empirical findings from the field of pedagogical and psychological teaching quality research. Generally, due to the fact that pedagogical work focuses on achieving certain objectives, it is always normative. Usually empiricists hesitate when it comes to deductively deriving normative skills from the findings of quality research, even more as the data situation concerning certain sub-dimensions is rather contradictory. But still: in the course of an individual, biographical professionalization process, teacher training aims at providing each individual with abilities that will make him/her a good teacher or allow for “high-quality” teaching. Everybody working in the field of teacher training is aware of the fact that, when it comes to the practical aspects of teacher training, general formulations require concrete action. An illustrative example is the individual counselling of students or trainee teachers: After having given a lesson, each student and his/her tutor reflect on positive and less positive aspects by reaching back to quality criteria. And this is exactly what this paper is about: It tries to offer an advisory tool for students, trainee teachers, teachers, school administrations and school supervising authorities, by providing information about which concrete skills may be expected at a defined stage of professionalization and how these skills can be identified.
This paper is the result of a two-year collaboration; its release is meant to contribute to a debate on the topic among a larger public. Following the introductory remarks, in the first section of the paper Mägdefrau, Kufner and Hank present the theoretical basis: The criteria for selecting the dimensions of qualities of teaching as well as the spiral-curricular structure of the standards given in Section II are explained. Furthermore, there are some brief comments on possible practical applications.
Then in Sections II and III the standards of the collaborating authors are presented. Section II presents the standards according to the chosen dimensions of teacher behavior. That is, the reader will find the respective skills and indicators for the four phases of the Bavarian teacher education system (period of practical training at school, subject-didactic period of practical training, traineeship, and professional teacher training) in sequence. The first two phases refer to the university phase, the third to the training phase at school after graduating, and the forth describes the skills teachers should have at their disposal and continually develop through teacher trainings. (For an overview, see Figure 1.) This juxtaposition allows for easily pursuing the skills development process supposed to be achieved phase by phase for each dimension and sub-dimension. Then section III once again gives an overview of the standards according to the four phases, so that e. g. students in their first semester may see at first sight what skills they are expected to have after their first period of practical training at school.
Abstract zum Dissertationsfragment "Spotzuordnung und Wellenfront-Rekonstruktion für Shack-Hartmann-Sensoren" von Sascha Groening (20.04.1972 - 16.11.2001)
Sascha Groening war nach seinem Studium der Informatik an der Universität Passau von 01.Oktober 1998 bis 16. November 2001 wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter der Forschungsgruppe Entscheidungsunterstützende Systeme innerhalb des Forschungsverbundes Wissensbasierte Systeme, die 2005 in das Institut für Softwaresystem in technischen Anwendungen der Informatik an der Universität Passau überging.
Tragischerweise ist er am 16. November 2001 im Alter von nur 28 Jahren kurz vor der Fertigstellung seiner Dissertation völlig überraschend verstorben. In seiner Dissertation beschäftigte er sich mit Fragestellungen aus dem Teilprojekt „Entwicklung eines Messverfahrens mit hohem Dynamikbereich für die Qualitätssicherung von optischen Asphären für die in‐situ Messung von Wellenfronten (kurz Wellensensor)“ des Forschungsverbundes FORMIKROSYS II, der von der Bayerischen Forschungsstiftung gefördert wurde.
Auf den Sicherungen des Instituts konnten wir nur eine relativ unvollständige elektronische Version seiner Dissertation „Spotzuordnung und Wellenfrontrekonstruktion für Shack‐Hartmann‐Sensoren“ finden, da er seine Arbeit auf einem privaten PC anfertigte.
Monika Groening, seine Mutter, hat dagegen im Jahr 2013 privat unten stehenden Ausdruck seiner schriftlichen Arbeit gefunden, die einem Stand etwa zwei Wochen vor der geplanten Abgabe entspricht und die nun hiermit als Scan der Öffentlichkeit zur Verfügung gestellt wird.
Am Institut wurden nach Abschluss des Projektes Wellensensor die Forschungen auf diesem Gebiet nicht weiter verfolgt, da die Problemstellung des Projektes für die Partner, die die Lösung von Sascha Groening angewendet haben, zufriedenstellend gelöst war.
Im Rahmen des Projektes wurden die Leistungsgrenzen für ein Messgerät zur Vermessung von optischen Asphären (z.B. Gleitsicht‐Brillengläsern) und allgemeinen Wellenfronten (z.B. Strahlprofil eines Lasers, Wellenfront hinter einem optischen Subsystem) auf der Basis des Shack‐Hartmann‐Sensors erforscht. Das Prinzip beruht auf der geometrisch‐optischen Bestimmung lokaler Wellenfrontkrümmungen mit Hilfe eines Feldes von Mikrolinsen und einer CCD‐Kamera in der Fokalebene der Mikrolinsen. Sascha Groening entwickelte völlig neu konzipierte Auswertealgorithmen, die eine schnelle und zuverlässige Zuordnung von Fokuspunkten zu Mikrolinsen durchführen und damit eine hochgenaue Vermessung von
Ashären bei stark aberranten Wellenfronten möglich machen. Eine einfallende Wellenfront erzeugt in der Fokalebene der Mikrolinsen ein charakteristisches Spotmuster. Durch die Analyse der lokalen Ablenkungen der Spots von ihren Idealpositionen, also den Positionen, die bei Einfall einer ebenen Wellenfront entstehen würden, können Aussagen über das
lokale Steigungsverhalten der einfallenden Wellenfront getroffen werden. Je größer der Dynamikbereich des Messgerätes sein soll, desto schwieriger wird das Problem der Zuordnung von Spot zu Mikrolinse. Genau diese Herausforderung wurde von Sascha Gröning durch einen iterativen Spline‐Passungs‐Algorithmus schnell und elegant gelöst. Wenn dann
die Spotzuordnung erfolgt ist, kann die Wellenfront aus den lokalen Ablenkungen der Spots rekonstruiert werden.
Das Fragment der Dissertationsschrift ist vollständig bis auf Kapitel 1 Einleitung und Kapitel 7 Zusammenfassung. Außerdem fehlen in Kapitel 4 noch die Beschreibungen einiger untersuchter Verfahren zur Spotdetektion und in den Unterkapiteln von 5 und 6 fehlen die Verfahren zur Spotzuordnung und Wellenfrontrekonstruktion bei nicht stetig differenzierbaren bzw. unstetigen Wellenfronten. Ansonsten bietet die Arbeit aber einen guten Überblick über den Stand der Technik zur damaligen Zeit und erklärt die grundlegenden Verfahren, die von Sascha Groening erforscht und entwickelt wurden. In Kapitel 2 werden ausführlich das Funktionsprinzip des Shack‐Hartmann‐Sensors und die Wellenfrontvermessung erklärt, wobei speziell auf das Zuordnungsproblem von Spot zu Mikrolinse und auf die globale Wellenfrontrekonstruktion aus einem Feld partieller Ableitungen eingegangen wird.
Die mathematischen Grundlagen wie Tensorprodukt‐Splines oder die Lösungsverfahren für lineare Ausgleichsprobleme ohne und mit linearen Nebenbedingungen werden in Kapitel 3 gelegt. Einen ersten Schwerpunkt bildet Kapitel 4, das sich mit der Spotdetektion beschäftigt. Nach der Erläuterung der optischen Grundlagen wird die Spotentstehung mathematisch modelliert, um so geeignete Detektionsverfahren ableiten zu können.
Im zentralen Kapitel 5 der Dissertation geht es um die Spotzuordnung. Nach der Vorstellung bekannter Verfahren wird die neu entwickelte Spotzuordnung durch iterative Funktionspassung beschrieben. Nach einer initialen Zuordnung von einigen zentralen Spots, die unter Nutzung von Nebenwissen problemlos möglich ist, wird dann iterativ mit Hilfe von Splinepassungen vorgegangen. Bei einer vorhandenen Zuordnung wird durch Extrapolation der berechneten Splinepassung der Suchbereich für weitere, nicht zugeordnete Spots ausgedehnt, und diese werden dann wiederum korrekt zugeordnet. Diese Schritte werden iterativ wiederholt, bis alle Spots zugeordnet sind. Die Vorgehensweise, von bekanntem in unbekanntes Gebiet zu extrapolieren führt hier vortrefflich zum Ziel. Sascha Groening zeigt auch, dass der Erfolg vom gewählten Funktionsraum, hier Tensorprodukt‐Splines, abhängt. Schließlich runden die Verfahren zur Wellenfrontrekonstruktion, die ebenfalls auf Spline‐Passungen basieren, in Kapitel 6 die Arbeit ab.
Mit der Bereitstellung dieses Fragments seiner Dissertation wollen wir die geleistete Arbeit von Sascha Groening an der Universität Passau würdigen und hoffen, dass seine Ergebnisse ihren Platz in der wissenschaftlichen Gemeinschaft finden.
Im Mai 2015, Dr. Erich Fuchs
Der Beitrag „Spiel der Attraktionen. Raum, Körper und Ideologie im multimodalen Dispositiv der Virtuellen Realität“ von Martin Hennig geht am Beispiel der neuen Technologie der Virtuellen Realität der Frage nach einer ‚neuen Medialität‘ nach und führt diese eng mit der Frage nach ihrer multimodalen Konfiguration und Spezifik im Medienverbund, im Abgleich mit der verwandten Form des Video- und Computerspiels. Da es die Ebene der räumlichen Immersion ist, die in gängigen VR-Definitionen als mediales Alleinstellungsmerkmal fokussiert wird, werden zur Illustrierung Horrorspiele gewählt, da in diesen die räumlichen Konstellationen zentral sind.
Die Arbeit bemüht sich um eine Verdeutlichung der Effektivität des moralpädagogischen Ansatzes R. STEINERS im Vergleich zu jenem KOHLBERGS. Das Augenmerk liegt bei der Exploration der Pädagogik STEINERS vornehmlich auf methodisch-didaktischen Kriterien, d. h. weltanschauliche Aspekte der Anthroposophie werden weitgehend ausgespart. Die STEINER-Pädagogik wird dabei von einem vordergründig erziehungswissenschaftlichen und entwicklungspsychologischen Standpunkt aus in den Blick genommen. Die Intention liegt primär darin, Wirkung und in letzter Konsequenz pädagogische Ergebnisse der Pädagogik STEINERS transparenter zu gestalten. Das Grundinteresse zirkuliert um die Fragestellung, ob der moralpädagogische Ansatz STEINERS in der Praxis zu einem effektiveren Ertrag führt als die klassische Moralerziehung im Kontext der Regelschule (Gymnasium), die sich mehr oder weniger an der Entwicklungspsychologie KOHLBERGS orientiert. Im ersten Teil der Arbeit werden entwicklungspsychologische Aspekte in Bezugnahme auf KOHLBERG erläutert. Zum anderen wird die Genese der moralischen Urteilsbildung im Sinne KOHLBERGS beleuchtet, wobei diesbezüglich die Gewichtung von Kognition und Emotion im Urteilsprozess im Mittelpunkt steht. Der zweite Teil der Arbeit ist der Pädagogik STEINERS gewidmet. Hierzu wird als Orientierungsmaßstab im Kontext der Steinerschen Entwicklungslehre der epistemologische Ansatz PIAGETS herangezogen. Des Weiteren werden methodische Prinzipien und ihre didaktische Gestaltung erläutert, um die Bezugnahme auf moralpädagogische Aspekte zu eruieren. Dem Verhältnis und der Gewichtung von Kognition und Emotion im Prozess der moralischen Urteilsbildung wird wiederum eine bedeutsame Position zugestanden. Dem folgt ein Korrelationsteil, in welchem entwicklungspsychologische Auslegungen jenen STEINERS gegenübergestellt werden. Diesbezüglich wird auch ein Blick auf die Metaebene der ethisch-erzieherischen Modelle gewagt. Im Anschluss wird G. LIND (2003) mit seinem „Zwei-Aspekte-Modell“ Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt. In diesem Kontext wird auch der „Moralisches-Urteil-Test“ erläutert; ein Forschungsinstrument, das – von LIND entwickelt – die Konsistenz moralischer Urteilsfähigkeit in kognitiv-emotionaler Ausprägung erfasst. Darauf folgt der empirische Erhebungsteil, in dem die moralische Urteilskompetenz von Regel- und Waldorfschülern mit Hilfe des „MUTs“ verglichen wird. In der anschließenden Schlussfolgerung werden die Forschungsergebnisse erläutert und zur Diskussion gestellt, wobei nach einer adäquaten Thesenbildung gesucht wird.
Die zweite Erhebung der begleitenden wissenschaftlichen Evaluation des Teilprojekts Rettung der Flussperlmuschel in Niederbayern fokussiert sich auf LandwirtInnen als zentralen Akteuren, die in der Tendenz dem Flussperlmuschelschutz eher kritisch gegenüberstehen. Im Rahmen einer Gruppendiskussion setzten sich ausgesuchte Personen mit den verschiedenen Konfliktthemen kontrovers auseinander. Lediglich eine Person vermag sich vorzustellen, zugunsten des Naturschutzes Einschränkungen auf eigenen Landflächen hinzunehmen. Die anderen Teilnehmenden sehen sich eher an den Pranger gestellt und als Opfer von NaturschützerInnen wie auch der öffentlichen Meinung. Eine Parallel durchgeführte Inhaltsanalyse von Tageszeitungen zum Thema Flussperlmuschelschutz macht deutlich, dass diese Medien die Konflikte zum Thema fast nicht thematisieren. Im Fall der LandwirtInnen dürfte das auch damit zusammenhängen, dass sie keine organisiserte Vertretung haben, die ihre persönlichen Interessen bündelt.
VORWORT
Aktuell wird in vielen Ländern der Europäischen Union über die Organisation der Sozialversicherung diskutiert. Vorteile, Nachteile und Zukunftschancen der Selbstverwaltung zählen dabei zu den Diskussionsfeldern mit hoher emotioneller Beteiligung.
Im Rahmen der 7. Deutsch-Österreichischen Sozialrechtsgespräche (27. und 28.1.2005) wurde vor allem aus juristischer und ökonomischer Perspektive geprüft, was an rational nachvollziehbaren Argumenten zur Selbstverwaltung der Sozialversicherung stehen bleibt, wenn die Organisationsstruktur wissenschaftlich betrachtet wird.
Die Einbeziehung von Referenten, die aus der täglichen Praxis der Selbstverwaltung kommen, soll helfen, die wissenschaftliche Analyse in umsetzungsrelevante Schlussfolgerungen überzuführen. Der vorliegende Band dokumentiert die Beiträge der Tagung, die von den Referenten mit wissenschaftlichem Anmerkungsapparat schriftlich ausgearbeitet wurden und bringt eine
fundierte Aufarbeitung der Problematik.
Die Herausgeber schulden der Oberösterreichischen Gebietskrankenkasse für die maßgebende Unterstützung der Tagung und dieses Tagungsbandes Dank.
INHALTSVERZEICHNIS
Gerhard Kleinhenz
Einführender Systemvergleich 1
Gerhard Reber
Zentralisation versus Dezentralisation 25
Rainer Fuchs
Perspektiven der Selbstverwaltung in der Sozialversicherung 43
Walter Pöltner
Probleme der praktischen Ausgestaltung von Selbstverwaltung in Österreich 57
Otfried Seewald
Probleme der praktischen Ausgestaltung von Selbstverwaltung in Deutschland 79
Helmut Platzer
Zusammenhang Finanzausgleich und Strukturreform 135
Kern der vorliegenden Arbeit ist die Frage, ob aufgebautes individuelles Sozialkapital die Kosten für die Migration dieses Individuums erhöht. Hintergrund ist die Allokation des Faktors Arbeit, welche durch eine mangelnde Wanderungsbereitschaft behindert wird. Um dieser Frage nachzugehen, geht die Arbeit detailliert auf die Bedeutung des Sozialkapitals ein, wobei die makro- und die mikroökonomische Sichtweise auf diesen Einflussfaktor beleuchtet werden. Hierbei werden insbesondere die Definitionen nach Francis Fukuyama, Pierre Bourdieu und Edward Glaeser diskutiert. Anschließend wird, ausgehend von Granovetters Netzwerktheorie, die Bedeutung des Sozialkapitals für die ökonomische Situation eines Individuums analysiert. Des Weiteren wird untersucht, welche Ansätze bisher zur Messung des Sozialkapitals existieren und welche Vor- und Nachteile sie aufweisen. Dann wird das in dieser Arbeit genutzte Instrument, die Zeit seit dem letzten Umzug aus beruflichen Gründen, vorgestellt und seine Wahl begründet. Die empirische Untersuchung schließt sich an, welche sich auf Arbeitslose in der Bundesrepublik im Zeitraum 1997 – 2005 bezieht. Diese erfolgt mit Hilfe der binär-logistischen Regression, deren Vorgehensweise der Arbeit vorangestellt ist. Die Ergebnisse der empirischen Studie geben Hinweise darauf, dass, übereinstimmend mit Granovetters Netzwerktheorie, das Sozialkapital kein oder nur ein geringes Hindernis für Wanderungsbewegungen darstellt.
In den Gesellschafts- wie in den Kulturwissenschaften hat der Begriff des ‚Raums‘ in den letzten Jahren sehr viel Aufmerksamkeit erfahren. Zahlreiche Einzelstudien, Sammelbände und Handbücher loten den Bedeutungsumfang dieses Begriffs, aber auch die Schwierigkeiten aus, die sich einerseits aus der Vielfalt vorhandener Raumkonzepte und andererseits aus der Fülle ihrer keineswegs deckungsgleichen Anwendungsmöglichkeiten ergeben. Hinzu kommt die Schwierigkeit, den Begriff des Raums von verwandten Ausdrücken wie Platz und Ort, Umgebung und Territorium oder gar Welt abzugrenzen – ganz zu schweigen von den Verschiebungen, die zwischen verschiedenen Sprachen hinsichtlich der Auffassung von ‚Raum‘, ‚espace‘, ‚space‘ usw. bestehen.
Vor diesem Hintergrund erscheint es nicht nur zweckmäßig, sondern notwendig, im Rahmen einer transversalen Betrachtung nach strukturellen Ähnlichkeiten zwischen den Raumkonzepten unterschiedlicher Disziplinen Ausschau zu halten. Einen Versuch in dieser Richtung stellen die folgenden Überlegungen zu Querbezügen und Übergängen zwischen Raumsoziologie und Raumsemiotik dar.
Southeast Asia is one of the most dynamic regions in the world. This volume offers a timely approach to Southeast Asian Studies, covering recent transitions in the realms of urbanism, rural development, politics, and media. While most of the contributions deal with the era of post-independence, some tackle the colonial period and the resulting developments. The volume also includes insights from Southern India.
As a tribute to the interdisciplinary project of Southeast Asian Studies, this book brings together authors from disciplines as diverse as area studies, sociology, history, geography, and journalism.
Consumers interact with each other and within their social networks. Influentials have an overproportional influence on other consumers’ preferences and choices, thus having relevant implications for product development, marketing planning and strategic marketing. An important question that previous research has not analyzed yet, is whether and how to capture their influence on other consumers in preference-based market forecasts. This study analyzes these aspects for a representative sample of the German mobile phone market. It finds that assigning higher weights to the preferences of influentials significantly increases forecast accuracy. Other chapters of this thesis analyze the role of brokers in consumer networks and the decision process seeding points in viral marketing campaigns.
Seit jeher macht der Mensch sich Gedanken über ein „gutes“, und allerspätestens seit Aristoteles in philosophisch reflektierter Denkweise über ein sittlich gutes Leben. Dabei ist es oftmals nötig, zugunsten der sozialen Gemeinschaft auf die Ausübung individueller (egoistischer) Triebe und Neigungen zu verzichten, auch wenn dadurch unser (grundsätzlich hedonistisch ausgerichtetes) Leben zunächst etwas weniger angenehm wird. In jeder funktionierenden Gesellschaft ist es nötig, sich auf gewisse Normen und grundlegende Verhaltensformen zu einigen und dafür zu sorgen, dass diese eingehalten werden. Ein angeborenes universelles moralisches Wissen, welches konkrete Normen beinhaltet, gibt es allerdings nicht, dazu sind die Unterschiede der Wertesysteme weltweit zu groß. Wenngleich Moralkonzeptionen als (historisch) kontingent und veränderlich zu erachten sind, und auch wenn es in einer zunehmend globalisierten Welt pluralistische Formen sozialer Gemeinschaften und damit einhergehende divergierende Moralkonzeptionen gibt bzw. notwendigerweise geben muss, sollten diese für sich betrachtet in sich konsistent und für den einzelnen Teilnehmer der jeweiligen sozialen Gruppe möglichst plausibel sein, um akzeptiert werden zu können. Augenscheinlich wollen wir moralisch sein, da ansonsten jeglicher ethische Diskurs (wenn nicht jegliche Ethik überhaupt) von vorneherein hinfällig wäre. Überdies führt bewusstes unmoralisches Verhalten zu schlechtem Gewissen und dieses wiederum dazu, dass wir uns schlecht fühlen. Ethisch korrektes Verhalten hingegen führt zu einer Reaktion unseres cerebralen Belohungssystems. Indem wir also versuchen, moralisch so korrekt und fair wie möglich zu sein, betreiben wir sozusagen „moralische Selbst-Befriedigung“. Und dabei macht es keinen Unterschied, ob sich das moralische Verhalten auf Artgenossen oder auf Angehörige einer anderen Spezies bezieht. Es gibt im Hinblick auf die grundsätzliche moralische Berücksichtigung anderer leidensfähiger Individuen (welcher Art auch immer) somit keinen relevanten Unterschied – außer dem, den wir machen wollen. Plausibel rechtfertigen lässt sich ein solcher jedoch nicht. Die vorausgesetzte evolutionäre Kontinuität lässt überdies annehmen, dass zahlreiche Spezies solche Kriterien erfüllen, die ihre moralische Berücksichtigung durch den Menschen erfordern. Allerdings sind im Hinblick auf die Berücksichtigung anderer Spezies (in Bezug auf basale aber auch andere signifikante Interessen, deren Nichtbeachtung zu Leid führen könnte) jeweilige artspezifische Eigenschaften und Präferenzen zu beachten und dahingehend Unterschiede zu machen. Es müssen deshalb dahingehend Zugeständnisse gemacht werden an die jeweiligen Interessen und Bedürfnisse Angehöriger anderer leidensfähiger Spezies. Wie im Zuge dieser Arbeit dargestellt wird, verpflichten die Fähigkeiten zu Empathie und Theory of Mind uns vermöge des Analogieschlusses dazu, das geringere Übel für andere bewusst fühlende Lebewesen zu wählen oder möglichst ganz zu vermeiden, wo und wann immer dies möglich ist. Diese Verpflichtung besteht deshalb, weil wir zwischen Gut und Böse unterscheiden können und wissen, dass es die moralisch bessere Variante ist, Leid zu vermeiden wann immer es geht. Handeln wir entgegen dieser Regel, etwa indem wir wissentlich unnötiges Leid verursachen, so handeln wir moralisch definitiv falsch – und das wissen wir auch. Warum die vorherrschenden Konzeptionen von Moral unzureichend sind und eine Ausdehnung der menschlichen Moral auf nichtmenschliche Spezies zu fordern ist, aber auch welche Arten dabei einbezogen werden müssen und wie weit diese Einbeziehung reichen muss, d.h. in wieweit ihre jeweiligen Interessen zu wahren sind, soll ausgehend von aktuellen Erkenntnissen der Neurowissenschaften sowie bestehender Tierethik-Konzepte in dieser Arbeit dargestellt und in ein neues Konzept der Fairness-Ethik eingebunden werden. Da eine Nichteinbeziehung anderer leidensfähiger Spezies in die menschliche Moral in den allermeisten Fällen zu negativen Konsequenzen für die Spezies Mensch führt, ist der zugrunde liegende pathozentrische Ansatz in letzter Konsequenz zugleich ein anthropozentrischer.
Ausgehend von den gattungsspezifischen Besonderheiten des Historienfilms zeigt Thomas Wegener anhand zahlreicher Beispiele, dass der historische Spielfilm höchst eklektizistische Geschichtsbilder (nach)zeichnet. Diese Geschichtsbilder basieren einerseits überwiegend auf Vorstellungen des 19. Jahrhunderts, andererseits auf einer aus dem Faschismus bekannten Bildsprache. Keiner der Filme berücksichtigt den aktuellen historischen Forschungsstand. Vielmehr kommentieren die dargestellten, vergangenen, Welten aktuelle Ereignisse und Konflikte und spiegeln rezente Werte und Normen wider. Daher scheint es, so Thomas Wegener, für die historiographische Forschung sinnvoller zu sein, weniger nach dem „richtig“ oder „falsch“ zu fragen, sondern angesichts der enormen Breitenwirkung des Medium Films zu erörtern, wie genau Geschichte im Spielfilm gedacht und inszeniert wird.
Dieser Aufsatz stellt den rahmenden Teil einer kumulativen Dissertation dar, welche an der Universität Passau angenommen wurde. In der Dissertation wird der Mehrwert sowie die Wirkungsweisen von Politiksimulationen untersucht. Die Dissertation verortet sich in den beiden Feldern Politikwissenschaft sowie Politische Bildung, da nachgewiesen werden konnte, das Simulationen in beiden Feldern eine Wirkungsweise entfalten können. Zusätzlich zu diesem rahmenden Teil werden die Details der drei vorgestellten Forschungsprojekte in mehreren Einzelpublikationen intensiv behandelt, welche an den angegebenen Orten zu finden sind.
Web Search engines have become an indispensable online service to retrieve content on the Internet. However, using search engines raises serious privacy issues as the latter gather large amounts of data about individuals through their search queries. Two main techniques have been proposed to privately query search engines. A first category of approaches, called unlinkability, aims at disassociating the query and the identity of its requester. A second category of approaches, called indistinguishability, aims at hiding user’s queries or user’s interests by either obfuscating user’s queries, or forging new fake queries. This paper presents a study of the level of protection offered by three popular solutions: Tor-based, TrackMeNot, and GooPIR. For this purpose, we present an efficient and scalable attack – SimAttack – leveraging a similarity metric to capture the distance between preliminary information about the users (i.e., history of query) and a new query. SimAttack de-anonymizes up to 36.7 % of queries protected by an unlinkability solution (i.e., Tor-based), and identifies up to 45.3 and 51.6 % of queries protected by indistinguishability solutions (i.e., TrackMeNot and GooPIR, respectively). In addition, SimAttack de-anonymizes 6.7 % more queries than state-of-the-art attacks and dramatically improves the performance of the attack on TrackMeNot by 23.6 %, while retaining an execution time faster by two orders of magnitude.
Der Untertitel benennt das Thema der Studie. Die epidemiologischen Prognosen gehen von einer Zunahme der Zahl jener Personen aus, die dementielle Symptome aufweisen werden. Zugleich ist damit zu rechnen, dass die Anzahl der Pflegefachkräfte weiterhin abnimmt. Daraus folgt, dass der Druck in der gerontopsychiatrischen Pflege wächst. Als eine Variante, um die Situation zu entlasten, wird der Einsatz von Ortungs- und Detektionssystemen diskutiert. Die Studie beleuchtet die ethischen Kriterien, die bei der Verwendung von Ambient Assisted Services zu reflektieren sind.
In den vergangenen Jahrzehnten hat es unübersehbar zahlreiche Fortschritte im Bereich der IT-Sicherheitsforschung gegeben, etwa in den Bereichen Systemsicherheit und Kryptographie. Es ist jedoch genauso unübersehbar, dass IT-Sicherheitsprobleme im Alltag der Menschen fortbestehen. Mutmaßlich liegt dies an der Komplexität von Alltagssituationen, in denen Sicherheitsmechanismen und Gerätefunktionalität sowie deren Heterogenität in schwer antizipierbarer Weise mit menschlichem Verständnis und Alltagsgebrauch interagieren. Um die wissenschaftliche Forschung besser auf Menschen und deren IT-Sicherheitsbedürfnisse auszurichten, müssen wir daher den Alltag der Menschen besser verstehen. Das Verständnis von Alltag ist in der Informatik jedoch noch unterentwickelt. Dieser Beitrag möchte das Forschungsfeld “Sicherheit in der Digitalisierung des Alltags” definieren, um Forschenden die Gelegenheit zu geben, ihre Anstrengungen in diesem Bereich zu bündeln. Wir machen dabei Vorschläge einerseits zur inhaltlichen Eingrenzung der informatischen Forschung. Andererseits möchten wir durch die Einbeziehung von Forschungsmethoden aus der Ethnografie, die Erkenntnisse aus der durchaus subjektiven Beobachtung des “Alltags” vieler einzelner Individuen zieht, zur methodischen Weiterentwicklung interdisziplinärer Forschung in diesem Feld beitragen. Die IT- Sicherheitsforschung kann dann Bestehendes gezielt für eine richtige Alltagstauglichkeit optimieren und neue grundlegende Sicherheitsfunktionalitäten für die konkreten Herausforderungen im Alltag entwickeln.
Auf mediensemiotischer Grundlage erschließt der Beitrag erstmals theoretisch die für die 1990er und 2000er Jahre stilbildende Short Cuts-Narration, wie sie in der Folge von Robert Altmans gleichnamigem Film u.a. für Pulp Fiction, Magnolia, Babel, Amores Perros, L.A. Crash oder Love Actually und Cloud Atlas, aber auch für eine Vielzahl von literarischen Texten der Gegenwart ästhetisch prägend wurde. Die Erzählweise wird definiert, hinsichtlich ihrer Funktion in den Bedeutungskonstrukten systematisiert und in ihrer historischen Genese betrachtet, wobei 'Fragmentierung' und 'Vernetzung' als zentrale Paradigmen der Short Cuts-Narration auch im Kontext von Moderne und Postmoderne verortet werden. Kontrapunktisch behandelt der Beitrag zudem filmische Literaturfiktionen und deren semantische Funktionen.
Andreas Neumann macht in seinem Beitrag auf einen bisher von der Medien- aber auch Geschichtswissenschaft nur unzureichend beachteten Bereich der DDR-Fernsehforschung aufmerksam: Die Rolle der Frau in Partnerschaft und ihre Sexualität, sowie der Wandel der dementsprechenden Diskurse im Laufe der Zeit. Dabei wird der Grundannahme Michel Foucaults gefolgt, wonach es sich bei der Sexualität um einen besonders dichten Durchgangspunkt für Machtbeziehungen, nicht zuletzt zwischen Mann und Frau sowie Verwaltung und Bevölkerung, handelt. Anhand von drei, durchaus für die ganze Familie konzipierten, Fernsehserien - ABER VATI! (DDR 1974/1979), MÄRKISCHE CHRONIK (DDR 1983) und JOHANNA (DDR 1989) - analysiert Andreas Neumann die Darstellung von weiblichen Rollenbildern und der dazugehörigen Sexualität. Abschließend widmet sich der Beitrag auch den gesellschaftspolitischen Implikationen der aufgezeigten Darstellungen.
Die Integration von Anwendungen unterschiedlicher Art stellt seit geraumer Zeit eine der großen Herausforderungen in der Unternehmens-IT dar. Die vorliegende Dissertation untersucht die Frage, inwiefern der Einsatz der service-orientierten Architektur als Software-Architektur vor dem Hintergrund der Entwicklungen auf den Gebieten der Web Services und dem Grid Computing einen Beitrag zur Erfüllung betriebswirtschaftlicher und technischer Anforderungen in verschiedenen Integrationsszenarien leisten kann. Dazu werden verschiedene Typen von IT-Sourcing-Szenarien herangezogen, die vom innerbetrieblichen Aufbau einer service-orientierten Architektur, über die Einbindung von Partnern und Serviceunternehmen im Rahmen von Outsourcing bis hin zum Provisioning von Anwendungen und Rechendiensten reichen. Es wird die Möglichkeit einer Entkopplung der betriebswirtschaftlichen Entscheidung von der technischen Realisierung aufgezeigt. Durch die steigende Komplexität der Szenarien und durch eine damit einhergehende abnehmende Eingriffsmöglichkeit seitens des Managements wird die Tragfähigkeit der Architektur getestet, um komplexe Einmalnutzungsszenarien im Sinne des Service Providing vor dem Hintergrund gestiegener technologischer Möglichkeiten zu beleuchten. Ausgewählte Aspekte werden prototypisch realisiert.
Service Provisions and Business Relationships in the Digital Era – Four Essays in the B2B Context
(2019)
Digitalization has fundamentally changed how services are provided and how service providers and their customers interact with each other in the business-to-business (B2B) context. Against the backdrop of these developments, this thesis considers – in four essays – the changes brought about by both service and sales digitalization. Each essay investigates for one research topic the aspects of existing knowledge regarding non-digital services and/or sales which can be transferred to digital services and sales and which aspects must be adjusted. The aim is to support B2B firms that offer or receive services or plan to do so in the future which cope with the challenges of service and sales digitalization.
In doing so, the first and second essay investigate the contingency effect of service digitalization on service characteristics from the provider and customer views, respectively. Both essays aim at explaining service value as an endogenous variable. In the first essay, service modularity and service flexibility are considered as predecessors that help explain service value. The second essay investigates the effect of customer cocreation on service value. Whereas the first and second essay focus on service characteristics, the third and fourth essay focus on business relationships. Both essays explain relational conflict, one important facet of business relationships, as the endogenous variable and consider the perspectives of both providers and customers. The third essay elaborates on the diverging effect of service digitalization on relational conflict from these two perspectives. The fourth essay incorporates both service and sales digitalization and investigates the contingency effects of the two forms of digitalization on the relationship between coercive power use and relational conflict.
In conclusion, this thesis provides a more fine-grained view on the construct digitalization by differentiating explicitly between service digitalization and sales digitalization and introduces a new conceptualization of service (see all four essays) and sales digitalization (see the fourth essay) by treating digitalization as a continuum. Furthermore, this thesis investigates the opportunities and challenges brought about by digitalization. In particular, the first and second essays show the opportunities service digitalization creates for providers, who could benefit from service modularity, and customers, who could benefit from the integration of their own resources into service provisions. In addition, the third essay shows that for providers service digitalization has a positive and for customers contrarily a negative effect on relation conflict. The fourth essay shows that sales and service digitalization positively moderate the effect of coercive power use on relational conflict for weaker parties in business relationships (except for weaker providers) but not for stronger parties. In sum, this thesis contributes to a better understanding of the consequences of service and sales digitalization and provides recommendations for companies facing challenges and decisions related to this development.
Dieser Beitrag zeigt, welche Impulse die Semiotik im Zusammenspiel mit der Kunstpädagogik für die Gestaltung von Bildungsräumen auf theoretisch-reflexiver und praktischer Ebene geben kann. Am Beispiel der im Rahmen einer universitären Lehrveranstaltung durchgeführten konzeptionellen Gestaltung einer Mediothek für Kinder vom Kindergarten- bis zum Grundschulalter wird in diesem Beitrag das für die (Literatur-)Semiotik zentrale Konzept des Raumes von seinem germanistischen Fachbezug gelöst, mit kunstpädagogischen Impulsen verwoben und zu einer fächerübergreifenden Reflexion über Bildungsräume hin erweitert. Das diesem Dreischritt übergeordnete und für die Entwicklung der Mediothek als Leitidee angewandte Konzept der (Information and Media) Literacy ist sowohl für die Germanistik als auch für die Kunstpädagogik zentral. Zunächst werden daher ausgehend von einer literatursemiotischen Betrachtung des Raumes als Denkeinheit und Beschreibungskategorie semiotische Aspekte des Literacy-Konzepts herausgearbeitet. Anschließend wird die universitäre Lehrveranstaltung als Erfahrungsraum für (Information Media) Literacy beschrieben.
Semiotic Corporate Dashboard
(2017)
In einer sich zusehends globalisierenden und verdichtenden Welt nimmt die Zahl der Angebote und damit der Wettbewerb unter Unternehmen immer mehr zu. Schon die Zahl der Unternehmen und Produkte führt dazu, dass das Angebot immer unübersichtlicher wird. Mit zwei weiteren Effekten sorgen Unternehmen allzu oft zusätzlich dafür, dass ihr Angebot indifferent und austauschbar wird: Erstens werden erfolgreiche oder vermeintlich erfolgreiche Angebote gerne kopiert. Es kommt zu sogenannten Me-too-Angeboten. Zweitens fürchten Unternehmen, relevante und zahlungskräftige Zielgruppen auszuschließen und neigen dazu, für alle potentiellen Kunden etwas bieten zu wollen. Ein letztes Moment sorgt schließlich vollends dafür, dass zu viele Unternehmen sich kaum noch von ihren Wettbewerbern unterscheiden und so häufig einem gnadenlosen Wettbewerb über den Preis oder über die schiere Lautstärke der Kommunikation ausgesetzt sind. Wenn in
Unternehmen keine klaren Vorgaben zu Zielen und Identität gesetzt werden, bzw. die beschriebenen Effekte der Unschärfe nicht nur bei den Kunden, sondern auch den Mitarbeitern wahrgenommen werden, neigen Führungskräfte und Mitarbeiter im Vertrieb gerne dazu, sich für ihr Handeln je eine eigene Interpretation des Unternehmens zurechtzulegen.
Marketing-Agenturen und -Berater erkennen dieses Problem natürlich recht schnell und bieten dann als Lösung eine schulbuchmäßige Positionierung des Unternehmens oder sogar noch zugespitzt die Erarbeitung eines Brandings für Unternehmen oder Produkte an. Allerdings unterlaufen ihnen dabei oft zwei elementare Fehler. Sie entwickeln die Positionierung meist nur von den theoretischen Gegebenheiten des Marktes bzw. der Wettbewerbssituation her und vernachlässigen die internen Kräfte des Unternehmens. Zweitens fehlt ihnen in der Regel ein Modell, das die Interpretation so komplexer Zeichen-Systeme, wie sie Unternehmen und Produkte darstellen, auch nur halbwegs beschreiben kann. Gerade die betriebswirtschaftliche Theorie operiert auch heute noch sehr unreflektiert gleichzeitig mit abstrakten, rein verbalen Beschreibungen von Positionierungen und gleichzeitig mit metaphorisch an visuellen Zeichen
angelehnten Begriffen wie Image, Fremdbild oder eben Brand.
Dieser Beitrag will dem eine Methode entgegenstellen, die sich einerseits aus zeichentheoretischem Denken speist und andererseits dabei trotzdem als Analysemethode hohe Praxisnähe und starke Einbeziehung der Mitarbeiter eines Unternehmens beweist. Die Methode liefert je nach Anwendung eine mehrdimensionale, kollektive Interpretation des Unternehmens entweder im Jetzt oder in einer attraktiven Zukunft. Die Methode ist als interaktiver Workshop ausgestaltet und schon mehrfach erfolgreich in unterschiedlichen Branchen und Unternehmensgrößen angewendet worden. Das Feedback sowohl der Workshop-Teilnehmer, der involvierten Unternehmensführung und häufig auch einbezogener Marketing-Dienstleister – mit dem Auftrag, die Resultate später zu realisieren – war in deutlich überwiegender Zahl sehr positiv. Da der Fokus dieses Beitrags auf der Darstellung der Methode liegt, möchte ich auf den gerade im deutschen Wissenschaftsraum üblichen Begründungs- und Absicherungsballast praktisch völlig verzichten. Nur am Ende weise ich gesammelt auf die Werke hin, die die Methode inspiriert haben bzw. solche, die dem interessierten Leser Möglichkeiten zu kritischer Vertiefung geben.
Trotzdem möchte ich verschiedene theoretische, semiotische Implikationen aufzeigen. Dieser Beitrag hat es sich zum Ziel gesetzt, einige Ideen zu liefern, die zum Weiterdenken und zum Diskutieren einladen sollen: Wie viel Semiotik ist wirklich in diesem Modell? Welche Theorien stehen dahinter? Und wie groß ist der tatsächliche Einfluss von Zeichen auf das Wirtschaften?
In der Bildverarbeitung spielen Segmentierungsalgorithmen, bei denen die Art der zu segmentierenden Menge schon im Voraus festgelegt werden kann und nur noch ihre Größe und Lage angepasst werden muss, eine eher untergeordnete Rolle. Gründe hierfür sind vor allem komplizierte Zielfunktionen und daraus resultierende lange Rechenzeiten, die zudem meist kein optimales Ergebnis liefern. Dabei kann eine mengenbasierte Segmentierung durchaus sinnvoll eingesetzt werden, wenn gewisse Rahmenbedingungen eingehalten werden. In dieser Arbeit wird eine Theorie zur allgemeinen mengenbasierten Segmentierung vorgestellt und untersucht, unter welchen Bedingungen optimale Segmentierungsergebnisse erreicht werden können. Die anschließenden Anwendungen bestätigen die Nützlichkeit dieser Theorie.
Der Beitrag „Semantische Vielfalt im ‚freien‘ Erzählraum. Semiotische Aspekte der Early-Literacy-Förderung im Kontext von Multimodalität“ von Romina Seefried betrachtet verschiedene Storytelling-Formate, die für eine handlungs- und produktionsorientierte Förderung des mündlichen Erzählens im Rahmen der Early-Literacy-Förderung genutzt werden und analysiert deren multimodales Potenzial.
The main research question of this thesis is to develop a theory that would provide foundations for the development of Web of Things (WoT) systems. A theory for WoT shall provide a model of the ‘things’ WoT agents relate to such that these relations determine what interactions take place between these agents. This thesis presents a knowledge-based approach in which the semantics of WoT systems is given by a transformation (an homomorphism) between a graph representing agent interactions and a knowledge graph describing ‘things’. It focuses on three aspects of knowledge graphs in particular: the vocabulary with which assertions can be made, the rules that can be defined over this vocabulary and its serialization to efficiently exchange pieces of a knowledge graph. Each aspect is developed in a dedicated chapter, with specific contributions to the state-of-the-art.
The need for a unified vocabulary to describe ‘things’ in WoT and the Internet of Things (IoT) has been identified early on in the literature. Many proposals have been consequently published, in the form of Web ontologies. In Ch. 2, a systematic review of these proposals is being developed, as well as a comparison with the data models of the principal IoT frameworks and protocols. The contribution of the thesis in that respect is an alignment between the Thing Description (TD) model and the Semantic Sensor Network (SSN) ontology, two standards of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The scope of this thesis is generally limited to Web standards, especially those defined by the Resource Description framework (RDF).
Web ontologies do not only expose a vocabulary but also rules to extend a knowledge graph by means of reasoning. Starting from a set of TD documents, new relations between ‘things’ can be “discovered” this way, indicating possible interactions between the servients that relate to them. The experiments presented in Ch. 3 were done on the basis of this semantic discovery framework on two use cases: a building automation use case provided by Intel Labs and an industrial control use case developed internally at Siemens. The relations to discover often involve anonymous nodes in the knowledge graph: the chapter also introduces a novel skolemization algorithm to correctly process these nodes on a well-defined fragment of the Web Ontology Language (OWL).
Finally, because this semantic discovery framework relies on the exchange of TD documents, Ch. 4 introduces a binary format for RDF that proves efficient in serializing TD assertions such that even the smallest WoT agents, i.e. micro-controllers, can store and process them. A formalization for the semantics-preserving compaction and querying of TD documents is also introduced in this chapter, at the basis of an embedded RDF store called the µRDF store. The ability of all WoT agents to query logical assertions about themselves and their environment, as found in TD documents, is a first step towards knowledge-based intelligent systems that can operate autonomously and dynamically in a decentralized way. The µRDF store is an attempt to illustrate the practical outcomes of the theory of WoT developed throughout this thesis.
In our knowledge-driven society, the acquisition and the transfer of knowledge play a principal role. Web search engines are somehow tools for knowledge acquisition and transfer from the web to the user. The search engine results page (SERP) consists mainly of a list of links and snippets (excerpts from the results). The snippets are used to express, as efficiently as possible, the way a web page may be relevant to the query.
As an extension of the existing web, the semantic web or “web 3.0” is designed to convert the presently available web of unstructured documents into a web of data consumable by both human and machines. The resulting web of data and the current web of documents coexist and interconnect via multiple mechanisms, such as the embedded structured data, or the automatic annotation.
In this thesis, we introduce a new interactive artifact for the SERP: the “Semantic Snippet”. Semantic Snippets rely on the coexistence of the two webs to facilitate the transfer of knowledge to the user thanks to a semantic contextualization of the user’s information need. It makes apparent the relationships between the information need and the most relevant entities present in the web page.
The generation of semantic snippets is mainly based on the automatic annotation of the LOD1’s entities in web pages. The annotated entities have different level of impor- tance, usefulness and relevance. Even with state of the art solutions for the automatic annotations of LOD entities within web pages, there is still a lot of noise in the form of erroneous or off-topic annotations. Therefore, we propose a query-biased algorithm (LDRANK) for the ranking of these entities. LDRANK adopts a strategy based on the linear consensual combination of several sources of prior knowledge (any form of con- textual knowledge, like the textual descriptions for the nodes of the graph) to modify a PageRank-like algorithm.
For generating semantic snippets, we use LDRANK to find the more relevant entities in the web page. Then, we use a supervised learning algorithm to link each selected entity to excerpts from the web page that highlight the relationship between the entity and the original information need.
In order to evaluate our semantic snippets, we integrate them in ENsEN (Enhanced Search Engine), a software system that enhances the SERP with semantic snippets.
Finally, we use crowdsourcing to evaluate the usefulness and the efficiency of ENsEN.