Diese Arbeit versucht zu klären, ob der richtige Zeitpunkt für eine innovative Veränderung eines Geschäftsmodells ermittelt werden kann. Wenn ja, gilt es herauszufinden, wann dieser Zeitpunkt eintritt. In einer kurzen Einführung sind die Problemstellung und die Ziele dieses Themas zusammengefasst und die Vorgehensweise der Literaturrecherche, sowie deren Bearbeitung beschrieben. Es folgen die drei Hauptkapitel, welche inhaltlich aufeinander aufbauen. In dem Kapitel zwei sind Geschäftsmodelle thematisiert. Hier sind zunächst aus verschiedenen Quellen Definitionen des Begriffs "Business Model" herausgearbeitet, damit ein allgemeines Verständnis der Bedeutung eines Geschäftsmodells gewährleistet ist. Diese Definitionen sind durch das von Chesbrough und Rosenbloom (2002) praktische Beispiel der Nutzung eines Geschäftsmodells des Unternehmens Xerox Corporation gestützt. Im nächsten Schritt gilt es Typen von Business Models zu identifizieren. Als Quelle dient hierfür Weill et al (2005). Der letzte Abschnitt von Kapitel zwei beschäftigt sich mit den sechs Dimensionen eines Geschäftsmodells nach Bieger und Reinhold (2011). Diese sechs Dimensionen spielen zum Ende dieser Arbeit eine Rolle als Kriterien für die Analyse heutiger Literatur zum Timing von Geschäftsmodellen. Kapitel drei ist gleichzeitig Teil zwei der drei Hauptkapitel. Hier liegt der Fokus auf Innovationen. Der Begriff Innovation ist zunächst definiert und seine Wichtigkeit dargestellt, bevor verschiedene Arten von Innovationen beschrieben werden. Die einzelnen Innovationsarten leiten sich aus den Differenzierungskriterien nach Vahs und Brem (2013) ab. Um auch an dieser Stelle die Realität aus Unternehmenssicht näherzubringen, sind Fragestellungen aufgeführt, welche ein Geschäftsführer sich stellen sollte, wenn er sein Geschäftsmodell verändern möchte oder muss. Literaturgrundlage dieser Fragestellungen ist ein Artikel von Zott und Amit aus dem Jahr 2010. Nach der umfassenden Klärung des Begriffs Innovation und kurzer Hilfestellung für Geschäftsführer folgt eine Beschreibung zweier Methoden, um Geschäftsmodelle innovativ zu verändern. Die erste Methode ist die Nutzung des St. Galler Business Model Navigators nach Gassmann, Frankenberger und Csik (2013). Der St. Galler Business Model Navigator wurde an der Universität St. Gallen in der Schweiz von dem Institut für Technologiemanagement entwickelt. Die zweite beschriebene Methode für Business Model Innovation ist das Business Model Canvas Tool nach Osterwalder und Pigneur (2010), welches auf die sogenannten "nine building blocks" aufbaut. Das letzte Hauptkapitel dieser Arbeit bezieht sich auf dessen zentrale Fragestellung mit dem Stichwort Timing. Hier wird mit einem praktischen Beispiel von Timing von technologischen Innovationen begonnen, der IBM Mainframe Case, analysiert von Mahajan und Muller (1996). Danach folgt eine kurze Zusammenfassung des Standes in der heutigen Literatur zum Thema Timing. Im nächsten Schritt ist ein eigener Beitrag zum Thema "Business Model Innovation Timing" geschrieben, weswegen sich Literaturangaben in diesem Abschnitt auf dem Minimum halten. Diese Bachelorarbeit schließt ab mit der eigenen Analyse von heutiger Literatur zum Timing von Geschäftsmodellen. Ergebnis dieser Analyse ist eine Tabelle mit einer 20 x 7 Matrix, wo der Inhalt zwanzig ausgewählter Quellen den sechs Dimensionen eines Geschäftsmodells aus Kapitel zwei, sowie dem Kriterium Timing zugeordnet ist. So entsteht ein Überblick darüber, über welche Kriterien in der Literatur mehr oder weniger geschrieben wurde. Diese Analyse und Zuordnung ist ausgewertet, indem die Quellen mit dem Kriterium Timing genauer betrachtet werden, um die zentrale Fragestellung dieser Arbeit zu beantworten zu versuchen. Ein kurzes Fazit rundet die Bachelorarbeit ab.

Coordination and awareness mechanisms are important in systems for Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) and traditional groupware systems. It has been a key focus of research into collaborative groupware and its capability to enable people to efficiently collaborate and coordinate work. Until now, no classification of the mechanisms has been undertaken to identify commonalities and differences in coordination and awareness mechanisms and to show their significance in collaborative environments. In addition, there is a little investigation of coordination and awareness mechanisms in new forms of groupware such as socially enabled Enterprise Collaboration Systems (ECS). Indeed, both in science and in practices, ECS incorporating social software have become increasingly important. Based on the combination of traditional groupware and social software, ECS also include coordination and awareness mechanisms that may simplify collaboration, but these have not yet been investigated. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to identify coordination and awareness mechanisms in the academic literature to provide a general overview of those mechanisms examples. Additionally, this thesis aims to classify the mechanism examples. Based on a deep literature analysis, concepts described in literature are chosen and applied with the intension to analyse the mechanisms and to reach a classification. Based on the classification of the identified mechanisms their commonalities and differences are examined and described to gain a better understanding of them. For illustration purpose, examples of coordination and awareness mechanisms and their application are portrayed. The mechanisms examples refer to the classification groups derived. The selection of the mechanisms for the visualization is based on significant differences in their functionality. Subsequently, the selected mechanisms, more based on traditional groupware, are checked to a limited extend whether they can be found in socially enabled ECS. The collaborative platform of IBM Connections serves as a practical example of ECS incorporating social software. IBM Connections is used at the University of Koblenz to run the platform "UniConnect". On the platform it is investigated which of the identified mechanisms examples of the literature are applied in IBM Connections and which additional mechanisms are created by users. This work is the first step in the study of coordination and awareness mechanisms in socially-enabled ECS. In addition, it is expected to detect new mechanisms which are used while the social factor to collaborative work is new. The purpose of this thesis is to examine and collect coordination and awareness mechanisms examples in literature to analyse them. Additionally, the purpose is to provide a first overview of mechanisms and to classify them by investigating their commonalities. Beside this thesis should give incentive for further investigations to investigate coordination and awareness mechanisms in socially integrated ECS.

Die Messung der Produktivität von Dienstleistungen ist trotz zunehmender Relevanz immer noch ein wenig durchdrungenes Forschungsfeld. Ursachen hierfür sind vor allem in den besonderen Merkmalen von Dienstleistungen - Immaterialität und Integrativität - zu suchen. Eine typische Dienstleistung der B2B Softwarebranche ist die Anpassung von Systemen an die Bedürfnisse des Kunden - das sogenannte Customizing. Die Ausschöpfung des Customizing-Potentials von Standardsoftware und -produkten und eine stärkere Einbeziehung des Kunden in Innovationsprozesse werden jedoch dadurch erschwert, dass die Produktivität dieser Dienstleistung nur unzureichend mess- und somit bewertbar zu sein scheint. Der vorliegende Beitrag beschreibt die Entwicklung eines Modells zur Messung der Produktivität von Dienstleistungen auf der Basis unterschiedlicher Vorstudien im Rahmen des CustomB2B Projektes an der Universität Koblenz-Landau.

In order to enhance the company’s appeal for potential employees and improve the satisfaction of already salaried workers, it is necessary to offer a variety of work-life balance measures. But as their implementation causes time and financial costs, a prioritization of measures is needed. To express a recommendation for companies, this study is led by the questions if there are work-life balance measures which have more impact on employee satisfaction than others, how big the relative impact of work-life balance measures on job satisfaction in comparison to other work and private life variables is, if there is a relation between the effectiveness of measures and their use and if there is a difference between the measures which are most important from the employees’ perspective and the companies’ offers. These questions are formulated in eight research hypotheses which are examined in a quantitative research design with online survey data from 289 employees of fifteen different German companies. The formation of a hierarchy of the effectiveness of measures towards job satisfaction as well as the investigation of the relative impact in comparison to other variables is performed using a multiple regression analysis, whilst the differences between employees’ expectations and the availability of offers are examined with t-tests. Support in childcare, support in voluntary activities and teambuilding events have a significantly higher impact on job satisfaction than other work-life balance measures, and their potential use is higher than the actual use which leads to the conclusion that there is yet potential for companies to improve their employees’ satisfaction by implementing these measures. In addition, flexible work hours, flexible work locations and free time and overtime accounts are the most important measures from the employees’ point of view and already widely offered by the surveyed companies. In general, the overall use of the available measures and the quantity of offered measures are more important with regard to job satisfaction than the specific kind of measure. In addition, work-life balance measures are more important towards job satisfaction for younger people.

The technological progress is highly responsible for how people live their everyday life. Technical innovations provide new opportunities to re-design all areas of life and because of that the society has to adjust to these changes permanently. These days, due to the fact that there is a changeover from analog into digital processes, this circumstance is highly relevant. However, it is not always clear whether a technological innovation just entails chances or involves risks, too. The research field of technology assessment pursues the goal to examine the influence of technological innovations on the society. For this purpose, unpredictable consequences of a technology need to be anticipated in advance to provide the opportunity of earlier reactions. The core of this thesis a discussion about a project based approach of technology assessment. Additionally, it is being investigated whether and how systems theory approaches can be used to improve predictions in the research area of technology assessment. Therefore, the question of how reliable forecasts are in this kind of context will be answered. Moreover, there is an investigation if an added-value can be created through performing system thinking. As a methodical approach a literature review has been performed. Furthermore, experts were questioned in an interview and by e-mail to gain an insight in the practical work of technology assessment. Based on the elaborated project structure, for each part of the project was examined if significant results can be maintained through the sophisticated use of principles of the systems theory. The analysis of this paper has shown that the results of a technology assessment may have more reliable forecast value in comparison to an investigation without proper consideration of system thinking. Especially, the understanding of a system during the phase of conception of a project can be crucial for the positive outcome for the results of technology assessment. This master thesis represents the theoretical point of view regarding topics technology assessment and systems theory. An application test for the validation of the results in the practical work of technology assessment is recommended.

Despite their importance to the permanent success of service firms, the construct of perceived customer discrimination and its impact on the customer so far has received relatively little attention in business and management research. Existing studies, mostly social science studies from the United States, show the existence of discrimination in different service contexts. Nevertheless, the existing literature shows some gaps that require further research. So far primarily qualitative and case-based studies about customer discrimination exist which hinder the generalization of the findings. Moreover, although such studies give insight into the origin and the perception of discrimination from the customers" perspective, they provide no useful means to the management of service firms to verify the existence of discrimination in the customer contact of their own company. A research gap exists mainly with regard to the measurement of perceived customer discrimination and the investigation of its consequences. The aim of this thesis is to develop and validate a multi-item scale for measuring perceived customer discrimination. Firstly, this thesis develops a literature-based understanding of perceived customer discrimination, assuming a three-dimensional conceptualization of the construct. Based upon this three-dimensional conceptualization in a first study, an instrument for measuring perceived customer discrimination with the dimensions "overt discrimination", "discriminatory level of service" and "subtle discrimination" is being developed using qualitative and quantitative methods. Based on this three-dimensional conceptualization of perceived customer discrimination hypotheses are formulated and empirically tested supporting the nomological validity of the scale (study 1). Subsequently, the predictive validity of the scale is examined with a further sample and a known groups validity is conducted (study 2). To reconfirm the three-dimensionality and the nomological validity of the scale, dyads of service employees and customers are being surveyed in a further study via a questionnaire (study 3). Managerial and research-related implications of the results are discussed.

Social Media is a world-wide phenomenon which has drastically changed the way humans communicate, the availability of information, as well as a crucial tool for various businesses. This has also heavily influenced the sporting community which presents the focus of this study. The work aims to examine the self-presentation, on the media platform Instagram, of footballers from FC Bayern Munich, to gain an understanding of how athletes use this medium as a communication and marketing tool to build their brand. Instagram was chosen due to it being a platform on which users post visual images as their primary communication mechanism. There are many social media uses for professional athletes. From the sharing of personal lives, professional highlights, and opinion, to product placement and endorsements, athletes are closer to fans and consumers than ever before. Social media also puts the athlete in charge of the message, image, and content regarding their careers and their lives Ten footballers were selected against specified criteria and examined against Goffman’s theory of self-presentation (1959) to formulate the research question: “Which forms of presentation of football players of FC Bayern Munich ́s Instagram posts achieve the highest user engagement?” Empirical research analysed the effect of different visual and contextual forms on user engagement rates. Through the works literature review, individual hypotheses were derived and tested in a quantitative standardized media content analysis. The first 50 Instagram posts of each of the ten FC Bayern Munich football players with the most followers were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics software. From the visual aspect seven photo categories were developed which were examined in relation to their engagement rate with the posts. Within the contextual framework, the importance and effect of the number of tags and hashtags used were analyzed. Findings revealed differences to previous research on an athlete ́s use of written social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter, as the majority of visual images posted by athletes were in sporty settings, thus reflecting frontpage-performance strategies according to the self-presentation theory. Further results showed that a greater utilization of hashtags and tags do not correlate with a higher impact on the engagement rates. Personal brand management implications for athletes are examined in greater detail in the discussion.

How entrepreneurs become successful with their business ideas has been a topic of discussion within entrepreneurial research circles for many years. Business success has been related to psychological characteristics and many research findings have explained how people become entrepreneurs and furthermore, how they find success in regards to their business ventures. People always wanted to know what defines an entrepreneur and more importantly, what is needed to become a successful entrepreneur. Curious minds began to search for the recipe for success. Personality Traits have been researched for years, leading to the discovery of many diverse and distinct forms which are still recognized today. Researchers compared the Behavioral Approach or the analysis of demographical characteristics to success. This raises the question of what an entrepreneur needs to become successful which is made more difficult due to the fact that entrepreneurship and who an entrepreneur is can be difficult do define exactly. Entrepreneurs are diverse and distinct individuals that each possess their own characteristics, behavior and reasons for starting a business. Many people assume that it is just someone who starts their own business. While partially correct, this only scratches the surface of what it is to be an entrepreneur. This thesis answers the following three research questions: 1. Which personality traits were found in the almost sixty years of researching? 2. What triggers do entrepreneurs need for starting a new business? 3. Which factor makes the entrepreneur successful with their business idea? Also, reading the thesis, one may gain a better understanding of what entrepreneurship is, what defines an entrepreneur and what one needs to become a successful entrepreneur. In this thesis the reviewing literature method developed by Wolfswinkel et al. (2011) was used to identify suitable literature and references for the main chapters. For that the five stages of the grounded-theory method for reviewing the literature were used in an iterative fashion. In step one inclusion and exclusion criterias for literature were defined. Then literature was searched matching the criterias of step one. In step three the samples were refined. Then in step four the found literature was analyzed and coded before the results of this research was presented in the following text. Many entrepreneurial personality traits were discovered and confirmed during the studies conducted over the last sixty years, these include but are not limited to Need for Achievement, Locus of Control, or risk taking propensity. Motivation is clearly the main trigger to start your own business. During the studies reasons were discovered of how and why an entrepreneur may become successful outside of posessing the right combination of traits. For example: having human, financial and social capital, an entrepreneurial behavior and the right economic conditions to start a business that will survive for more than five years.