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Purpose
With shorter product cycles and a growing number of knowledge-intensive business processes, time consumption is a highly relevant target factor in measuring the performance of contemporary business processes. This research aims to extend prior research on the effects of knowledge transfer velocity at the individual level by considering the effect of complexity, stickiness, competencies, and further demographic factors on knowledge-intensive business processes at the conversion-specific levels.
Design/methodology/approach
We empirically assess the impact of situation-dependent knowledge transfer velocities on time consumption in teams and individuals. Further, we issue the demographic effect on this relationship. We study a sample of 178 experiments of project teams and individuals applying ordinary least squares (OLS) for regression analysis-based modeling.
Findings
The authors find that time consumed at knowledge transfers is negatively associated with the complexity of tasks. Moreover, competence among team members has a complementary effect on this relationship and stickiness retards knowledge transfers. Thus, while demographic factors urgently need to be considered for effective and speedy knowledge transfers, these influencing factors should be addressed on a conversion-specific basis so that some tasks are realized in teams best while others are not. Guidelines and interventions are derived to identify best task realization variants, so that process performance is improved by a new kind of process improvement method.
Research limitations/implications
This study establishes empirically the importance of conversion-specific influence factors and demographic factors as drivers of high knowledge transfer velocities in teams and among individuals. The contribution connects the field of knowledge management to important streams in the wider business literature: process improvement, management of knowledge resources, design of information systems, etc. Whereas the model is highly bound to the experiment tasks, it has high explanatory power and high generalizability to other contexts.
Practical implications
Team managers should take care to allow the optimal knowledge transfer situation within the team. This is particularly important when knowledge sharing is central, e.g. in product development and consulting processes. If this is not possible, interventions should be applied to the individual knowledge transfer situation to improve knowledge transfers among team members.
Social implications
Faster and more effective knowledge transfers improve the performance of both commercial and non-commercial organizations. As nowadays, the individual is faced with time pressure to finalize tasks, the deliberated increase of knowledge transfer velocity is a core capability to realize this goal. Quantitative knowledge transfer models result in more reliable predictions about the duration of knowledge transfers. These allow the target-oriented modification of knowledge transfer situations so that processes speed up, private firms are more competitive and public services are faster to citizens.
Originality/value
Time consumption is an increasingly relevant factor in contemporary business but so far not been explored in experiments at all. This study extends current knowledge by considering quantitative effects on knowledge velocity and improved knowledge transfers.
Am Ende der Globalisierung
(2021)
Die Globalisierung ist zur allgegenwärtigen Gewissheit geworden. Doch wie zutreffend ist das Konzept »Globalisierung«, wenn zeitgleich nationale Grenzen gestärkt und transnationale Freihandelszonen ausgeweitet werden, wenn auf unterschiedlichen scales Territorien überwunden und zugleich territoriale Abgrenzungen neu gesetzt werden? Aktuelle Veränderungen als Re-Figuration von Räumen zu verstehen, ermöglicht die Analyse und Diskussion widersprüchlicher, spannungsreicher und konflikthafter räumlicher Prozesse und ihrer alltäglichen Erfahrung. Die interdisziplinären Beiträge des Bandes liefern theoretische und empirische Analysen zu politischen, digitalen und alltäglichen Räumen im Konzept der Re-Figuration.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how learning solely via an assistance system influences work performance compared with learning with a combination of an assistance system and additional training. While the training literature has widely emphasised the positive role of on-the-job training, particularly for groups that are often underrepresented in formalised learning situations, organisational studies have stressed the risks that emerge when holistic process knowledge is lacking and how this negatively affects work performance. This study aims at testing these negative effects within an experimental design.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses a laboratory experimental design to investigate how assistance-system-guided learning influences the individuals’ work performance and work satisfaction compared with assistance-system-guided learning combined with theoretical learning of holistic process knowledge. Subjects were divided into two groups and assigned to two different settings. In the first setting, the participants used the assistance systems as an orientation and support tool right at the beginning and learned the production steps exclusively in this way. In the second setting, subjects received an additional 10-min introduction (treatment) at the beginning of the experiment, including detailed information regarding the entire work process.
Findings
This study provides evidence that learners provided with prior process knowledge achieve a better understanding of the work process leading to higher levels of productivity, quality and work satisfaction. At the same time, the authors found evidence for differences among workers’ ability to process and apply this additional information. Subjects with lower productivity levels faced more difficulties processing and applying additional process information.
Research limitations/implications
Methodologically, this study goes beyond existing research on assistance systems by using a laboratory experimental design. Though the external validity of this method is limited by the artificial setting, it is a solid way of studying the impact of different usages of digital assistance systems in terms of training. Further research is required, however, including laboratory experiments with larger case numbers, company-level case studies and analyses of survey data, to further confirm the external validity of the findings of this study for the workplace.
Practical implications
This study provides some first evidence that holistic process knowledge, even in low-skill tasks, has an added value for the production process. This study contributes to firms' training policies by exploring new, digitalised ways of guided on-the-job training and demonstrates possible training benefits for people with lower levels of (initial) abilities and motivation.
Social implications
This study indicates the advantage for companies and societies to invest in additional skills and training and points at the limitations of assistance systems. This paper also contributes to training policies by exploring new, digitalised ways of guided on-the-job training and demonstrates possible training benefits for people with lower levels of (initial) abilities and motivation.
Originality/value
This study extends existing research on digital assistance systems by investigating their role in job-related-training. This paper contributes to labour sociology and organisational research by confirming the importance of holistic process knowledge as opposed to a solely task-oriented digital introduction.
An ever-increasing number of policy problems have come to be interpreted as representing a particular type of intractable, ill-structured or wicked policy problem. Much of this debate is concerned with the challenges wicked problems pose for program management rather than policy analysis. This article, in contrast, argues that the key challenge in addressing this type of policy problems is in fact analytical. Wicked policy problems are difficult to identify and interpret. The knowledge base for analysing wicked policy problem is typically fragmented and contested. Available evidence is incomplete, inconclusive and incommensurable. In this situation, the evidentiary and the interpretative elements of policy analysis become increasingly indistinguishable and inseparably intertwined. The article reveals the problems this poses for policy analysis and explores the extent to which the consolidation, consensualization and contestation of evidence in policy analysis offer alternative procedural paths to resolve these problems.
We asked whether invariant phonetic indices for syllable structure can be identified in a language where word-initial consonant clusters, regardless of their sonority profile, are claimed to be parsed heterosyllabically. Four speakers of Moroccan Arabic were recorded, using Electromagnetic Articulography. Pursuing previous work, we employed temporal diagnostics for syllable structure, consisting of static correspondences between any given phonological organisation and its presumed phonetic indices. We show that such correspondences offer only a partial understanding of the relation between syllabic organisation and continuous indices of that organisation. We analyse the failure of the diagnostics and put forth a new approach in which different phonological organisations prescribe different ways in which phonetic indices change as phonetic parameters are scaled. The main finding is that invariance is found in these patterns of change, rather than in static correspondences between phonological constructs and fixed values for their phonetic indices.
Menschen mit chronisch entzündlichen Darmerkrankungen (CED) leiden unter vielfältigen körperlichen und psychosozialen Einschränkungen. Wie auch bei anderen chronischen Erkrankungen könnten Patientenschulungen ihr psychisches Befinden verbessern (z.B. De Ridder & Schreurs, 2001; Faller, Reusch & Meng, 2011a; Küver, Becker & Ludt, 2008; Schüssler, 1998; Warsi, Wang, LaValley, Avorn & Solomon, 2004). Für CED liegen jedoch nur wenige Schulungsevaluationen vor (z.B. Bregenzer et al., 2005; Mussell, Böcker, Nagel, Olbrich & Singer, 2003; Oxelmark, Magnusson, Löfberg & Hillerås, 2007), deren Aussagekraft i.d.R. durch methodische Mängel eingeschränkt ist. Daher ist die Bedeutung von Schulungsprogrammen für CED-Betroffene weiterhin offen. Überdies gibt es für den deutschen Sprachraum noch keine Schulung, die zu psychischen Verbesserungen führt. Aus diesem Grunde wurde ein 1,5-tägiges Wochenend-Seminar mit medizinischen und psychologischen Inhalten konzeptionalisiert, manualisiert und in der vorliegenden Studie evaluiert.
Zur summativen Evaluation nahmen 181 ambulante CED-Patienten an einer prospektiven, multizentrischen, randomisierten, kontrollierten Studie mit vier Messzeitpunkten teil: vor (T1), zwei Wochen (T2) und drei Monate (T3) nach dem Seminar. Zur 12-Monatskatamnese (T4EG) wurde die Stabilität der Effekte in der Experimentalgruppe (EG; n = 86) überprüft. Die Wartekontrollgruppe (n = 95) erhielt zunächst die Standardbehandlung, also keine Patientenschulung, und konnte an dieser nach der dritten Datenerhebung ebenfalls teilnehmen. Kovarianzanalysen (ANCOVAs) mit Kontrolle für die jeweilige Ausgangslage wurden durchgeführt. Weitere Analysen legten eine Adjustierung für die Krankheitsaktivität zu T1 nahe, weshalb diese als zusätzliche Kovariate in die ANCOVAs aufgenommen wurde. Krankheitsbezogene Ängste und Sorgen (PS-CEDE Gesamtwert zu T3; Krebs, Kachel & Faller, 1998) fungierten als primärer Zielparameter. Zu den sekundären Zielkriterien gehörten Progredienzangst und Angstbewältigung (PA-F-KF und PA-F; Mehnert, Herschbach, Berg, Henrich & Koch, 2006 bzw. Dankert et al., 2003; Herschbach et al., 2005) sowie die Gesundheitskompetenzen Positive Grundhaltung, Aktive Lebensgestaltung und Erwerb von Fertigkeiten und Handlungsstrategien (heiQ; Osborne, Elsworth & Whitfield, 2007; Schuler et al., 2013). Weitere sekundäre Zielparameter waren gesundheitsbezogene Lebensqualität (SF-12; Bullinger & Kirchberger, 1998), Symptome einer Angststörung oder Depression (PHQ-4; Kroenke, Spitzer, Williams & Löwe, 2009; Löwe et al., 2010), Wissen, der Umgang mit der CED bzw. von ihr ausgelösten negativen Gefühlen sowie die Zufriedenheit der Teilnehmenden mit dem Seminar. Von Interesse war außerdem, ob Geschlecht, Alter, Art, Dauer oder Aktivität der Erkrankung vor der Schulung einen Einfluss auf die genannten Variablen hatten und ob für sie differentielle Wirksamkeitseffekte bestanden. Darüber hinaus wurden krankheitsbezogene Ängste und Sorgen von ungeschulten Studienteilnehmern untersucht.
Zwei Wochen und drei Monate nach der Schulung ließen sich im Vergleich von Experimental- und Kontrollgruppe signifikante, mittlere bis große Effekte auf krankheitsbezogene Ängste und Sorgen, Progredienzangst und deren Bewältigung sowie eine Positive Grundhaltung der CED gegenüber erzielen (stets p ≤ .001). Außerdem kam es zu beiden Messzeitpunkten zu signifikanten, großen Interventionseffekten auf den Erwerb von Fertigkeiten und Handlungsstrategien im Umgang mit der Erkrankung, das Wissen um sie und den Umgang mit ihr (stets p < .001) sowie zu moderaten Effekten auf den Umgang mit CED-bedingten negativen Gefühlen (T2: p = .001; T3: p = .008). Alle beschriebenen Effekte waren auch nach zwölf Monaten noch stabil. Für Aktive Lebensgestaltung, gesundheitsbezogene Lebensqualität sowie Angst- und Depressionssymptomatik konnten keine Schulungseffekte nachgewiesen werden.
Die zusätzliche Kontrolle für die Krankheitsaktivität zu T1 führte zu keinen wesentlichen Änderungen in den Ergebnissen. Auch bei den Subgruppenanalysen hatte die Krankheitsaktivität keinen relevanten Einfluss auf die Wirksamkeit der Schulung. Gleiches gilt für Geschlecht, Alter, Art und Dauer der CED. Mit Ausnahme der Krankheitsaktivität deuteten dies bereits die zur Baseline durchgeführten t-Tests an, bei denen insgesamt nur sehr wenige signifikante, höchstens moderate Unterschiede zwischen den einzelnen Subgruppen auftraten.
Sowohl bei der formativen als auch der summativen Evaluation zeigte sich überdies die hohe Zufriedenheit der Teilnehmenden mit der Schulung. Neben der Akzeptanz konnte außerdem die Durchführbarkeit bestätigt werden. Die Auswertung der Ängste und Sorgen der Studienteilnehmenden lieferte zudem Hinweise für die Entwicklung und Modifikation von Interventionen für CED-Betroffene.
Es lässt sich festhalten, dass für die hier evaluierte Schulung für CED-Patienten ein Wirksamkeitsnachweis erbracht werden konnte und sie sehr positiv von den Teilnehmenden bewertet wurde. Sie führte sowohl kurz-, mittel- als auch langfristig zu substantiellen Verbesserungen in psychischer Belastung, Selbstmanagement-Fähigkeiten, der Bewältigung der Erkrankung sowie im Wissen und war gleichermaßen wirksam bei Betroffenen, die sich in Geschlecht, Alter, Art, Dauer oder Aktivität ihrer CED unterschieden.
Culture-driven innovation
(2017)
This cumulative dissertation deals with the potential of underexplored cultural sources for innovation.
Nowadays, firms recognize an increasing demand for innovation to keep pace with an ever-growing dynamic worldwide competition. Knowledge is one of the most crucial sources and resource, while until now innovation has been foremost driven by technology. But since the last years, we have been witnessing a change from technology's role as a driver of innovation to an enabler of innovation. Innovative products and services increasingly differentiate through emotional qualities and user experience. These experiences are hard to grasp and require alignment in innovation management theory and practice.
This work cares about culture in a broader matter as a source for innovation. It investigates the requirements and fundamentals for "culture-driven innovation" by studying where and how to unlock cultural sources. The research questions are the following: What are cultural sources for knowledge and innovation? Where can one find cultural sources and how to tap into them?
The dissertation starts with an overview of its central terms and introduces cultural theories as an overarching frame to study cultural sources for innovation systematically. Here, knowledge is not understood as something an organization owns like a material resource, but it is seen as something created and taking place in practices. Such a practice theoretical lens inheres the rejection of the traditional economic depiction of the rational Homo Oeconomicus. Nevertheless, it also rejects the idea of the Homo Sociologicus about the strong impact of society and its values on individual actions. Practice theory approaches take account of both concepts by underscoring the dualism of individual (agency, micro-level) and structure (society, macro-level). Following this, organizations are no enclosed entities but embedded within their socio-cultural environment, which shapes them and is also shaped by them.
Then, the first article of this dissertation acknowledges a methodological stance of this dualism by discussing how mixed methods support an integrated approach to study the micro- and macro-level. The article focuses on networks (thus communities) as a central research unit within studies of entrepreneurship and innovation.
The second article contains a network analysis and depicts communities as central loci for cultural sources and knowledge. With data from the platform Meetup.com about events etc., the study explores which overarching communities and themes have been evolved in Berlin's start up and tech scene.
While the latter study was about where to find new cultural sources, the last article addresses how to unlock such knowledge sources. It develops the concept of a cultural absorptive capacity, that is the capability of organizations to open up towards cultural sources. Furthermore, the article points to the role of knowledge intermediaries in the early phases of knowledge acquisition. Two case studies on companies working with artists illustrate the roles of such intermediaries and how they support firms to gain knowledge from cultural sources.
Overall, this dissertation contributes to a better understanding of culture as a source for innovation from a theoretical, methodological, and practitioners' point of view. It provides basic research to unlock the potential of such new knowledge sources for companies - sources that so far have been neglected in innovation management.
Memory, history, knowledges of the living together on to know living together of the literature
(2011)
Cultures and societies develop in a certain moment and within a certain context an awareness of how to live together, which not only has to be enriched continuously, but can also be lost or destroyed to a greater or smaller measure. Literature is, in its capacity as highly dynamic and interactive heritage and generator of life knowledge, that multilingual wisdom, which in dense form can find basic gnosemes of a good living, knowing how to survive and how to live together, which are crucial for the future of our planet and its very different manifestations of life.
Ingo Schwarz: „Uebrigens verbleibe ich mit besonderer Werthschätzung Euer gnädiger König“. Zum Briefwechsel Alexander von Humboldts mit Friedrich Wilhelm III. im September 1804
Giuseppe Buffon: The Franciscans in Cathay: memory of men and places. A Contribution for the genealogy of geographical knowledge of Alexander von Humboldt
Ottmar Ette: Icono-grafía, cali-grafía, auto-grafía. Sobre el arte de la visualización en los diarios del viaje americano de Alexander von Humboldt
Elisa Garrido: Arte, ciencia y cultura visual en el atlas pintoresco: Vista de la Plaza Mayor de Mexico
Thomas Heyd: Ascensión al Teide de Alexander von Humboldt
Karin Lundberg: Networking Knowledge: Considering Alexander von Humboldt’s Legacy in a New Shared Space in Education
Petra Werner: In der Naturgeschichte „etwas Höheres suchen“. Zu Humboldts Konzept der Pflanzengeographie