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In the age of Web 2.0 the internet as a platform to provide services or sell goods gained more attention in companies. Especially for customer support customer forums can be a useful tool for companies. By providing customer forums, companies can reduce their support costs dramatically. Nevertheless, it is often difficult for companies to measure the success of customer forums. In the research literature the determinants of success of customer forums have seldom been studied. The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to fill this research gap by applying the model of Lin and Lee to measure the success of online-communities on customer forums. In addition, metrics for measuring the success of this model are discussed. The discussion of this topic leads to the conclusion that the model of Lin and Lee is mostly applicable for customer forums, and provides a useful approach to measuring suc-cess both in theory and in practice. This could be demonstrated by the example of the 1&1 customer forum. The metrics that were found in the theoretical part were quite relevant in practice. Nevertheless, future research should focus more on monetary indicators to also make success of customer forums financially assessable.
Implementation of Agile Software Development Methodology in a Company – Why? Challenges? Benefits?
(2019)
The software development industry is enhancing day by day. The introduction of agile software development methodologies was a tremendous structural change in companies. Agile transformation provides unlimited opportunities and benefits to the existing and new developing companies. Along with benefits, agile conversion also brings many unseen challenges. New entrants have the advantage of being flexible and cope with the environmental, consumer, and cultural changes, but existing companies are bound to rigid structure.
The goal of this research is to have deep insight into agile software development methodology, agile manifesto, and principles behind the agile manifesto. The prerequisites company must know for agile software development implementation. The benefits a company can achieve by implementing agile software development. Significant challenges that a company can face during agile implementation in a company.
The research objectives of this study help to generate strong motivational research questions. These research questions cover the cultural aspects of company agility, values and principles of agile, benefits, and challenges of agile implementation. The project management triangle will show how benefits of cost, benefits of time, and benefits of quality can be achieved by implementing agile methodologies. Six significant areas have been explored, which shows different challenges a company can face during implementation agile software development methodology. In the end, after the in depth systematic literature review, conclusion is made following some open topics for future work and recommendations on the topic of implementation of agile software development methodology in a company.
The goal of this master thesis was to develop a CRM system for the Assist team of CompuGroup Medical that is aiding in integrating open innovation into the development of the Minerva 2.0 software. To achieve this, CRM methodology has been combined with Social Networking Systems, following the research of Lin and Chen (2010, pp. 11 – 30). To achieve the predefined goals literature has been analyzed on how to successfully im- plement a CRM system as well as an online community. Subsequently the results have been applied to the development of the Minerva Community according to the guidelines of Design Science suggested by Hevner et al. (2004, pp. 75 – 104). The finished product is designed based on customer and management requirements and evaluated from a customer and company perspective.
A guideline for the examination of business models is developed in this research project and M.Sc. study, focusing on young, innovative enterprises ("start-ups"). Start-ups often start to operate in uncertainty and tentativeness. To forecast the success of such an enterprise is therefore today hardly possible by means of quantitative data. The evaluation of innovative business models ("Business Model Check") today is a gap in Business Administration and Management studies.
Entscheidungsverhalten unter Unsicherheit mit Berücksichtigung von Persönlichkeitseigenschaften
(2014)
The subject of this Bachelor Thesis is the research of decision-making in consideration of personal characteristics. One part of this thesis should analyze the uncertainty and the risk of decision-making and explain which differences a decision-maker is faced with. The other part should compare different groups of people and point out that these groups are faced with different problems in their decision making process. The differences in these groups are based on demographical and personal characteristics, such as the type of profession or the level of knowledge. The conclusion of this paper is to assign different types of heuristics, logics, theories and other decision-supporting tools to the different groups of people.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is of rising importance in these days. AI is increasingly used in various company fields. Nonetheless, no high-quality scientific sources could be found stating the use of AI in the field of leadership. This research gap is addressed with this elaboration by performing expert interviews with leaders. In total seventeen companies could be questioned. The results indicate that AI is not widely used in leadership yet since only one company uses it currently and just about 10% of the participants plan the implementation in the closer feature. While the following items ex- plain why companies want to use AI in leadership: Chances for automation, time and cost savings, many important disadvantages and issues prevent companies from actively using it now: No areas of application are known, no need justifies the use, human interactions as a key aspect of leadership is reduced and it is hard to collect all necessary data. Beyond that, it was aimed to identify changes in the field of leadership through the use of AI. This objective could not be addressed due to the limited number of participants using AI in leadership.
Keywords: Leadership, artificial intelligence, transformation, state-of-use
A growing flood of advertising and information as well a limited capacity to collect information present a challenge to marketing today. Marketing in general is very important for the success of a company. But the classic marketing theory which ignores the special characteristics of young companies dominates. A new company with a new idea and a new product meets an existing market with customers and established competitors. For an innovation-related founding context this is a special challenge.
In this bachelor thesis the subjects, entrepreneurship and marketing will be discussed first. In addition the special characteristics of young companies, the so-called liabilities will be explained. The meaning of the term entrepreneurial marketing is explained by detailed consideration of the close and wide conceptual understanding. Afterwards the comparison clarifies the difference to the classic marketing. As part of the literature review, the current state of research will be presented and the practical use will be examined in more detail based on the central approaches. The approaches are the guerrilla marketing, ambient marketing, sensation marketing, viral marketing and ambush marketing. How entrepreneurial marketing with the central approaches is used in a start-up company is analyzed by a qualitative investigation in the form of a case study.
The case study shows that unconventional marketing measures and low use of medium can have a large effect. The entrepreneurial marketing therefore offers an alternative to classic marketing because it pays attention to the special characteristics of a young start-up company. This bachelor thesis shows that the entrepreneurial marketing can convert the weaknesses of young founding companies into strengths and lead to superiority over the competition.
As a result of the technical progress, processes have to be adjusted. On the one hand, the digital transformation is absolutely necessary for every organization to operate efficient and sustainable, on the other hand whose accomplishment is a tremendous challenge. The huge amount of personal data, which accrue in this context, is an additional difficulty.
Against the background of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), this thesis focuses on process management and ways of optimizing processes in a Human Resources Department. Beside the analysis of already existing structures and workflows, data management and especially the handling of personal data in an application process are examined. Both topics, the process management and the data protection are vitally important by itself, but it is necessary to implement the requirements of data protection within the appropriate position of a corresponding process. Relating to this, the thesis deals with the research question of what barriers may occur by a sustainable process integration and to which extend the GDPR prevent an unobstructed workflow within the Human Resources Department of the Handwerkskammer Koblenz. Additionally, answering the question of which subprocesses are convenient for a process automation is highly significant.
In scope of these questions Business Process Management is the solution. By means of the graphical representation standard, Business Process Model and Notation, a process model with the relevant activities, documents and responsibilities of the recruitment process is designed. Based on a target-actual comparison it becomes apparent, that standardized process steps with less exceptions and a large amount of information are basically convenient for automation respectively partial automation. After the different phases of the recruitment process are documented in detail, a Workflow-Management-System can ex-port the transformed models, so the involved employees just have to carry out a task list with assigned exercises. Against the background of the data protection regulations, access rights and maturities can be determined. Subsequently only authorized employees have admission to the personal data of applicants. Because of impending sanctions by violation against the GDPR, the implementation of the relevant legal foundations within the recruitment process is necessary and appropriate. Relating to the defined research questions, it appears that in principle not every activity is appropriate for a process automation. Especially unpredictable and on a wide range of factors depending subprocesses are unsuitable. Additionally, media discontinuities and redundant data input are obstacles to an enduring process integration. Nevertheless, a coherent consideration of the topics of business process management and the data protection regulations is required.
The subject of this thesis was to analyse the involvement of classical creativity techniques and IT tools in different phases of the innovation process. In addition, the present work deals with the integration of Design Thinking and TRIZ into the innovation process. The aim was to define a specific innovation process based on diverse existing Innovation process models from the literature. This specific innovation process should serve as a basis for the analysis of integration of creativity techniques, IT tools, Design Thinking and TRIZ. Summarizing it can be said that the application of creativity techniques and IT Tools is admissible and useful in every phase of the innovation process. In this work it was shown that the design thinking method can be integrated in the early stages of the innovation process. Also, the process model of TRIZ, which differs from traditional innovation processes, can be combined with classical innovation processes.
In this thesis, the methods of a feasibility study are applied to analyze whether or not the foundation of an academic based startup focusing on IT-consulting is possible. For this purpose the concept of consulting, the demand for the offering of consulting services as well as the relevant market are analyzed. Furthermore, empirical research through face-to-face interviews with IT-companies located in the region of Koblenz is utilized in order to gain further insight about the feasibility of said business venture. The result of the research is to be presented in a concrete recommendation for further actions.
Die Reputation von Unternehmen ist einer zunehmenden Gefahr ausgesetzt, die sich aus der (unreflektierten) Nutzung sozialer Netzwerke durch die eigenen Mitarbeiter ergibt. Die Treiber und Hemmnisse eines solchen Nutzerverhaltens von Arbeitnehmern in sozialen Netzwerken wurden bislang nur unzureichend erforscht. Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht unter Verwendung der Boundary Theorie am Beispiel der Plattform Facebook, inwieweit die Persönlichkeitsmerkmale Neurotizismus und Extraversion, die Organisationsidentifikation und die Unternehmensreputation ein zustimmendes Verhalten von Nutzern begünstigen. Eine experimentelle Online-Studie mit 494 Probanden zeigt, dass insbesondere eine hohe Unternehmensreputation und Organisationsidentifikation zu einem erhöhten zustimmenden Verhalten führen.
Digital happiness
(2016)
Emotions in the digital world gain more and more importance by the accelerating digitalization of recent years. In everyday life as well as professional and educational environments, the use of media is almost inescapable. This work takes a closer look to the still relatively unknown topic, “Digital Happiness“. In the literature emotions in the digital world are studied increasingly, but concerning the topic of “Digital Happiness” there are not many insights.
In this research the differences between communicating emotions through digital media and face-to-face communications, as well as their impacts, are investigated. The perception and expression of emotions in the real and digital world are considered. Furthermore, a first definition of “Digital Happiness” and a model with the associated determinants that influence “Digital Happiness” is developed.
To achieve these goals, a literature analysis by the method of Webster & Watson (2002) is performed. Therefore, 15 articles are selected and analyzed in more detail to illustrate the current state of research. These articles are organized into a concept matrix. In addition, special phenomena, such as Quantified Self, are closely considered in order to determine other factors. Based on the literature analysis, a qualitative study by the method of Mayring (2014) is performed. It is developed into an interview guideline that serves as the basis for the investigation of the established determinants of the literature analysis. This is confirmed or refuted by 30 interviews with users of information and communication technologies. With the help of the interviews, a large part of the determinants in the literature can be confirmed. Moreover, some new determinants are identified. These results are included into the final model. This model provides a basis for further research in the field of “Digital Happiness“. Finally, different implications for research and practice are found, which reveal the need of further research.
This thesis aims to find models to calculate damages to persons in the context of railway accidents. These models were tested for their applicability for a railway accident database. The reviewed models for injured casualties were identified by a research of literature. Their applicability for the accident database was tested with the aid of average values and sample values. The analysis of fatalities was executed via the combination of collected values of two literature researches. These values were compared to the values of the database.
It was stated that there is a calculation for seriously injured, which may serve more exact values than the calculation of the database, especially when there is more detailed data about the casualties. The calculation of slightly injured couldn't be realized by just beholding the pure damages to persons, because it's only a small part of the costs the responsible company has to pay. For the calculation of fatalities appeared problems with the methodology of the most studies.
Entrepreneurship plays a vital role in scientific literature and in public debates. Especially in these hightech and digitized times it happens more and more frequently that young entrepreneurs with a good idea make the breakthrough and set up an established company. Basically, there are an increasing number of start-ups and a trend towards independence. The economy of a country depends on young entrepreneurs in order to remain economically competitive in international competition. It follows that young entrepreneurs must be encouraged and supported. This support is expressed in various stages of foundation and through various fields of action. In the meantime, there are many offers for start-up support. These networks satisfy different fields of action along a foundation. However, a structured overview of these networks on which a young founder can orient himself and gain easily access to the offers of the networks, is missing until then.
This work attempts to present these offers clearly on a map and to categorize and present the commitment in the respective fields of action. In addition to this main objective, the following three key questions are investigated and answered in this work:
1. How can the Entrepreneurship Networks be assigned to the respective fields of action of Entrepreneurship Education?
2. What is the benefit of such a classification for potential entrepreneurs in detail?
3. Are these Entrepreneurship networks missing an important step? Might they improve their offer? Does the value chain cover every need a young entrepreneur might have?
For this purpose, the respective fields of action of the networks are first separated from each other along a founding and defined individually. Subsequently, a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches was used to filter and analyze the contents of the websites of the networks. The results of this investigation were transformed in a classification
The aim of this work is to produce a map that displays the existing networks in the world clearly. The map also contains information that is more detailed and the classifica-tion of the networks in the respective fields of action.
Interest in crowdfunding has been increasing in recent years, both from the economy and the scientific community. Besides artists and entrepreneurs, researchers are now also funding their projects through many small contributions from the crowd. However, the perceived use in Germany does not reflect the benefits of a crowdfunding campaign, especially in international comparison. This study investigates this issue by identifying the motives and barriers for crowdfunding in order to formulate recommendations for research institutions to encourage the use of crowdfunding.
By means of a literature review, first insights are gained which are then used to conduct qualitative interviews with eleven researchers who successfully completed a crowdfunding campaign. The results indicate that researchers in Germany use crowdfunding primarily to raise awareness for the subject and the scientific community in general. The initial assumption of the speed of crowdfunding as a motive was contradicted by the experts. The major barriers are the immense effort involved in a campaign and the lack of reputation for the concept of crowdfunding by German scientists. In addition, only subjects and projects with a high public relevance and funding volume of up to five digits are recommended for crowdfunding. Furthermore, the public exposure of the experts during the campaign was identified as an additional barrier.
These findings lead to three recommendations for research institutions to increase the use of crowdfunding: Firstly, universities should raise awareness for the subject of crowdfunding as an additional form of research funding and highlight the benefits of a crowdfunding campaign. Secondly, universities should cooperate with crowdfunding partners and utilize the networking capacities of a university. Lastly, universities should provide support to distribute the workload among interdisciplinary teams in order to enhance the effortreturn ratio of a crowdfunding campaign.
The chosen methodology and the scope of the thesis enable further research that might examine the perspective of the universities and the conditions in other countries. In addition, a largescale quantitative survey is required to validate the identified concepts statistically.
Durch eine systematische Literaturanalyse sollen die wichtigsten Aspekte des Phänomens Crowdsourcing abgedeckt werden. Da die Summe an Forschungsfragen relativ breit gefächert ist, soll der Fokus der Arbeit auf die im Folgenden aufgelisteten Fragen gelegt werden: Was ist unter dem Begriff Crowdsourcing gezielt zu verstehen? Wie lässt sich das Phänomen Crowdsourcing von anderen angrenzenden Konzepten trennen? Wo liegen die Gemeinsamkeiten und wesentlichen Unterschiede zwischen den einzelnen Konzepten? Welche Ausprägungsformen von Crowdsourcing sind in Theorie und Praxis vorzufinden? In welchen Bereichen kommt Crowdsourcing zum Einsatz? Welche Unternehmen setzen Crowdsourcing erfolgreich um? Welche Plattformen zur Unterstützung von Crowdsourcing sind vorhanden? Welche Ziele bzw. Ergebnisse sollen mit dem Einsatz von Crowdsourcing erreicht bzw. erzielt werden? Wie läuft der Crowdsourcing-Prozess ab und in welche Phasen lässt sich dieser unterteilen? Wie sieht die Wertschöpfung durch Crowdsourcing (a) allgemein und (b) speziell für Unternehmen aus? Welche Chancen und Potenziale sowie Risiken und Grenzen entstehen dabei den Unternehmen? Was lässt sich in Zukunft im Bereich des Crowdsourcing noch verbessern, das heißt in welchen Bereichen besteht noch Forschungsbedarf?
Einige akademische Arbeiten behaupten, dass Software, die in einem offenen Prozess erstellt wurde, strukturierter ist, als Programme, die im geschlossenen Umfeld entstanden sind. Die Rede ist hier von Open Source und Closed Source. Der Nachweis dieser Annahme wird mit der Technik der so genannten Design Structure Matrix (DSM) erbracht. DSM erlauben die Visualisierung der Struktur einer Software und ermöglichen das Berechnen von Metriken, mit denen dann der Level an Modularität der einzelnen Open Source Software (OSS) verglichen werden kann. Unter zu Hilfename dieser Technik geht die Diplomarbeit der Frage nach, ob ein Zusammenhang zwischen Geschäftsmodell und OSS existiert.
Accidents annually cause high economic damages for concerned persons, companies and the state. To determine the exact costs of a damage is a challenge. Scientific studies differ from each other because of different models of calculation. Due to the fact of a low number of accidents concerning rail transport there are not many studies about how to calculate the costs an accident causes. The aim of this thesis is to give an overview about methods when dealing with these costs and to point out occurring difficulties. Generally, costs of accident can be divided in two categories. One category deals with personal injuries whereas the other focuses on material damages. Personal injuries contain material and immaterial damages. This leads to difficulties in calculation. The main aspect when dealing with personal damages is the loss of manpower, the costs of medical supply and the costs of the recovery of the legal situation. Currently there is no model of how to calculate personal damages concerning rail transport in Germany. The “Bundesamt für Straßenverkehr” developed an extensive model for calculations of costs of accident concerning traffic. It turned out that the death of people has costs round about 1.1 million euro. Severely and slightly injured people cause damages about 106,000 euro and 5,000 euro. This thesis declares that the model is important regarding different aspects of rail transport and that it is based on statistically collected key performance indicators. Furthermore, some approaches, which analyse the value of life, are mentioned. There are large derivations between them. To make a calculation of material damage the current value of the object must be respected. When dealing with the limitation of material damages the focus is on damages concerning infrastructure. In addition, railway infrastructure can be mentioned. With the help of the “Kostenkennwertekatalog” of Deutsche Bahn AG acquisitions costs for certain components of infrastructure can be determined. As a result, they offer a basis for calculating damages.
The erosion of the closed innovation paradigm in conjunction with increasing competitive pressure has boosted the interest of both researchers and organizations in open innovation. Despite such rising interest, several companies remain reluctant to open their organizational boundaries to practice open innovation. Among the many reasons for such reservation are the pertinent complexity of transitioning toward open innovation and a lack of understanding of the procedures required for such endeavors. Hence, this thesis sets out to investigate how organizations can open their boundaries to successfully transition from closed to open innovation by analyzing the current literature on open innovation. In doing so, the transitional procedures are structured and classified into a model comprising three phases, namely unfreezing, moving, and institutionalizing of changes. Procedures of the unfreezing phase lay the foundation for a successful transition to open innovation, while procedures of the moving phase depict how the change occurs. Finally, procedures of the institutionalizing phase contribute to the sustainability of the transition by employing governance mechanisms and performance measures. Additionally, the individual procedures are characterized along with their corresponding barriers and critical success factors. As a result of this structured depiction of the transition process, a guideline is derived. This guideline includes the commonly employed actions of successful practitioners of open innovation, which may serve as a baseline for interested parties of the paradigm. With the derivation of the guideline and concise depiction of the individual transitional phases, this thesis consequently reduces the overall complexity and increases the comprehensibility of the transition and its implications for organizations.
Anreizfaktoren der Wissensverwertung für Universitäten und kleine und mittelständische Unternehmen
(2014)
This scientific paper identifies and describes the incentives for the utilization of knowledge for universities and small and medium-sized companies. In addition, different models " for example the Knott/Wildavsky model " are continuously adapted, created and expanded, which leads to an new integrative model. The main problem is that companies have to integrate knowledge from external sources into their operations. According to the literature, this model of open innovation is considered as inevitable in order to remain competitive. This is especially the case for small and medium-sized companies. The reasons for this are illustrated as the possibilities of a successful collaboration. Germany has a relativley high involvement in knowledge and technology transfer in international comparison. Nevertheless, a number of companies assume their insitution won´t benefit from knowledge utilization.
The literature review revealed that there is no existing model, which combines the stages of knowledge utilization with the incentives of universities and companies. This paper closes the identified gap through the created integrative model. The formulated incentive factors can help universities and companies recognizing if a cooperated research is beneficial or not.
At the beginning the basic theoretical foundations are defined based on the literature review, followed by a description of the incentive factors of knowledge exploitation. On the one hand there is a distinction between tangible and intangible incentives. On the other hand there is a segmentation of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Both are important regarding to the motivation of employees and scientists. In the end, a knowledge utilization model is presented and adapted to the present case, before proceeding with the extension of the model providing an additional perspective and adding the incentive factors.
By the procedure described an integrative model is created. It can be useful to all affected people, universities and their scientists as well as small and medium-sized companies and their employees.