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Institute
The Covid-19 pandemic and the Online Access Act (Onlinezugangsgesetz – OZG) are forcing Germany's public administration to accelerate digital transformation in general and the digitalization of agencies on federal, state and municipal level in particular. To assess this endeavor’s progress, existing e-Government maturity models were evaluated. The majority of models mainly focus on technical characteristics of an administrative act, while disregarding the importance of (1) public servants, (2) their work situation and (3) organizational processes. It is the latter three determining successful digitalization. Consequently, we fuse previous e-Government maturity models with the individual perspective of public servants including internet-based work, virtualization of teams and societal participation. This paper describes the synthesis of a model, its advantages and limitations including next steps towards its empirical validation.
Theory on achievement goals favours a trichotomous model encompassing learning goals, performance-approach, and performance-avoidance goals. Performance-avoidance goals are associated with lower achievement compared to performance-approach and learning goals. The present study investigated the predictions of this model as regards achievement after failure. Low achievement of participants with performance-avoidance goals was expected to be mediated by a high degree of negative self-related thoughts. Before manipulating achievement goals, achievement on verbal analogies was assessed. After manipulating achievement goals for an anagram task, all participants (N = 87) were exposed to failure. Subsequently, achievement on a parallel version of the verbal analogies task was assessed. Participants in the performance-avoidance goals condition showed low achievement after failure, mediated by a high degree of negative self-related thoughts.
This book is the merger and continuation of two successful textbooks, (i) Integration Management with SAP ECC® covering operational processes in sales, cost accounting, materials management and procurement, SOP, MRP, production order execution and project management in manufacturing as well as (ii) Data Warehouse Management with SAP BW® covering the design and implementation of analytics systems based on aggregate structures and “data cubes”.
In-memory computing, however, has accelerated database systems to such an extent that analytics does not have to be based on aggregate data cubes any more. Rather, it can be based on the original transaction data and can hence be seamlessly integrated into operational systems in (near) real time. This opens a completely new avenue of business computing by integrating artificial intelligence, machine learning and advanced analytics into transactional data processing.
This book leverages SAP Hana® data analytics to enhance the operational case study – the manufacture of umbrellas. The case is developed step by step, whereby students build the case virtually from scratch, each working in his/her own manufacturing plant. The case study implementation is supported by a host of interactive materials and web trainers at https://www.wu.ac.at/erp/.
Designing for Light-Weight Collaboration: The Case of Interactive Citizens’ Advisory Services
(2010)
For successful digitalization of the public sector, insights into how digitalization affects the work of public sector employees must be attained. Hence, integrative conceptual models and metrics of digital work are needed. A five-dimensional model describing the degree of digitalization of administrative action (Kaesmayr, Schorn & Steidle 2021) provides the point of departure for this paper. To enable actual measurement, the development and validation of a corresponding questionnaire is presented. Its development includes the item formulation by specifying attributes, raters and objects of the underlying constructs as well as the formation of indices by means of a contrast weighting specifically augmented for this type of work. The validation of the scale includes component as well as confirmatory factor analyses based on data from 519 administrative employees in Germany. The scale provides the opportunity to describe and evaluate the degree of digitalization of administrative procedures and to evaluate measures to improve digital case processing. Furthermore, it enables research into conditions and consequences for a successful digital transformation. However, further research is required to verify the predictive validity and practical benefits of the scale.
e-Government in Germany is usually not ranked top of the class in Europe. Rankings, such as the EU eGovernment Benchmark 2022, UN E-Government Development Index and others show that Germany is rather poorly ranked among the developed nations of the world. The authors assume that there is a correlation between the quality of Public Sector Education regarding digital competences and the quality of e-Government the so digitally educated civil servants can deliver. Civil servants in Germany usually graduate from one of the approximately 20 main universities of public administration; hence, an overview of the digital competences taught there is the core of this article. The main result is that both the quantity and the quality of digital competences taught need to be improved and, in the worst case depend on the university chosen, even zero digital competences are taught to the future civil servants.
This Bachelor's thesis is about analysing the one typical administrative degree program of each federal state as well as of the Federal Republic of Germany. The aim is to examine which Information and Communication Technology (ICT) modules are taught, what scope they have and whether they teach basic skills according to International Certificate of Digital Literacy (ICDL) or advanced skills. Finally, the competences that exceed the basics will be clustered and it will be analysed whether they are administration-specific or generally technology-related.
Increasing and new work demands drain employees’ energy resources at work. This four-week longitudinal field experiment investigated the energizing potential of a respite intervention conducted at the workplace (either a simulated savoring nature intervention or a progressive muscle relaxation intervention). First, growth modeling analyses confirmed a linear trend for the growth of vigor and decline in fatigue across the days of the intervention group, indicating a typical upward resource trajectory. No changes appeared in the control group. Mediation analyses indicated that repeatedly engaging in a daily respite intervention influenced more stable energy levels after the intervention period indirectly through the immediate changes in daily energy levels during the intervention period. Findings suggest that, in some cases, respite interventions may present a useful tool to replenish and build energy resources at work. Implications for using respite intervention in organizational research and practice are discussed.
Facilitating digital transformation through education: A case study in the public administration
(2020)
The need for qualified people to manage the digital transformation in public administration is tremendous. University curricula require adjustments to qualify graduates adequately. Business and engineering departments run practice-oriented university courses to tackle real-world digitalization challenges. In doing so, they shaped digital transformation in many companies. While potentially effective, such approaches remain rare in public administration teaching. It is unclear how to combine a contemporary, practice-oriented training approach towards digitalization with the contents of public administration curricula. The paper outlines the structure and methods employed in a course offered to public administration students at a German University. The preliminary evidence shows that the course was successful among students and practice-partners. Overall, the paper illustrates how public administration universities can contribute towards digital transformation by collaborating with municipalities and by empowering students to manage and drive digital transformation in the public sector.
Digitalization affects public servants’ job demands and resources. The current paper investigates which measures managers can employ to optimize digital work on administrative procedures. Building on a previous study on the impact of digitalization on work experiences and performance in public agencies and on a literature research regarding leadership instruments, we derived two sets of measures on job design and digital communication management. The proposed measures were validated conducting expert interviews with actual and prospective managers from various municipal agencies. Overall, our analyses revealed heterogenous patterns regarding the prevalence of the proposed measures. Experts reported various potential benefits and challenges as well as suitable recommendations regarding their implementations which indicates that the proposed measures could indeed contribute to facilitating digital work on administrative procedures. Finally, the practical implications as well as limitations of our approach are discussed.
Research has shown that colours influence motivation and cognitive performance. In achievement contexts, red evokes avoidance motivation that hinders creativity, while blue elicits an approach motivation that facilitates creativity. However, due to their position and mode of presentation, colours may convey a different message. Red accent lighting creates a cosy, friendly room atmosphere that may, even in an achievement context, elicit an approach rather than an avoidance motivation. Results (N = 146) showed that both blue and red accent light increased strategic approach motivation compared to white accent light. Moreover, through the heightened approach motivation, colourful accent light indirectly improved creative performance. Implications for future research on colour and practical implications for colour usage are discussed. Practitioner Summary Designing work environments for creativity is a new topic in ergonomics research and practice. The present study demonstrates indirect effects of coloured accent light on creativity providing interesting possibilities for the design of work places for knowledge workers, classrooms, and all other rooms in which people work on new ideas.
Employee creativity is critical to organizational competitiveness. However, the potential contribution made by the workspace and the physical environment is not fully taken into account because, up to now, it has been rather unclear how aspects of the physical environment, especially light, can support creativity. Consequently, in six studies, the present research investigated the effect of light and darkness on creative performance. We expected that darkness would offer individuals freedom from constraints, enabling a global and explorative processing style, which in turn facilitates creativity. First, four studies demonstrated that both priming darkness and actual dim illumination improved creative performance. The priming studies revealed that the effect can occur outside of people's awareness and independent of differences in visibility. Second, two additional studies tested the underlying mechanism and showed that darkness elicits a feeling of being free from constraints and triggers a risky, explorative processing style. As expected, perceived freedom from constraints mediated the effect of dim illumination on creativity. Third, moderation analyses demonstrated the effects' boundary conditions: the darkness-related increase in creativity disappeared when using a more informal indirect light instead of direct light or when evaluating ideas instead of generating creative ideas. In sum, these results contribute to the understanding of visual atmospheres (i.e. visual messages), their importance for lighting effects, and their impact via conceptual links and attentional tuning. Limitations as well as practical implications for lighting design are discussed
Purpose ‐ Regulatory focus theory (RFT) can successfully predict and describe organizational behaviour and managerial decision making. However, no empirical study has tested its central assumption in an organizational context. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between employee's regulatory focus and their work priorities. Design/methodology/approach ‐ In total, 307 employees from the public and private sectors in Germany participated and three organizational priorities were confirmed in a confirmatory factor analysis: growth, existence, and relatedness aspects. Their relationship with employee's regulatory focus was analyzed using multi-level modeling. Findings ‐ It was found that employees' promotion and prevention focus were related to specific work priorities: the higher a person's promotion focus, the more the person valued growth aspects. The higher the prevention focus, the more the person valued existence-related work aspects. Both regulatory foci increased the importance of good relationships at work. Research limitations/implications ‐ The findings provide new insights into previous research on the impact of personality traits, especially regulatory focus, on job-related attitudes like job satisfaction or job commitment. Practical implications ‐ The results are useful for leaders and human resource managers aiming to understand the driving forces behind employee's job motivation and decisions. Originality/value ‐ This is the first study to address the central question of different priorities associated with promotion and prevention focus in the organizational field. Results provide insight into previous findings on the impact of regulatory focus on job-related attitudes and offer practical implications for practitioners interested in job motivation and decision making.
Drawing on an online survey of mayors from the German federal state of Baden-Wuerttemberg this article analyses (1) to what extent social media is used abusively at the municipal level, (2) how mayors react to hate speech and (3) whether the experience of such insulting comments and threats is correlated with their perception of social media as a tool for political communication. The analysis shows that hateful comments are part of the social media experience on the local level. 53.9% of the mayors have at least once experienced personal insults and hostilities on social media in their role as politicians. The majority of them (56.7%) ignored the hate speech without reaction. Significantly fewer reacted more actively: 29.8% responded to the insulting message, 5.4% blocked the hater, and 8.2% filed a judicial complaint. The statistical analysis shows that mayors who use social media in a more professional way are more likely to react to hate speech in such an active manner. Moreover, the experience of hate speech and particularly an active type of reacting are found to be positively related to mayors' perceptions of how useful they consider social media to be for political communication.
The present article analyzed, how need for cognition (NFC) influences the formation of performance expectancies. When processing information, individuals with lower NFC often rely on salient information and shortcuts compared to individuals higher in NFC. We assume that these preferences of processing will also make individuals low in NFC more responsive to salient achievement-related cues because the processing of salient cues is cognitively less demanding than the processing of non-salient cues. Therefore, individuals lower in NFC should tend to draw wider ranging inferences from salient achievement-related information. In a sample of N = 197 secondary school students, achievement-related feedback (grade on an English examination) affected changes in expectancies in non-corresponding academic subjects (e.g., expectation of final grade in mathematics or history) when NFC was lower, whereas for students with higher NFC, changes in expectancies in non-corresponding academic subjects were not affected.
This publication advances some refutable hypothesis concerning user behaviour and learning success in eLearning systems using system simulations. A simulation in this context is strongly interactive HTML 5 content giving users an almost real-life experience of working with an application system, here an ERP system. Simulations can be enriched with addition information, data and process models, user guidance, or business content. This type of content is distinctly different from traditional eLearning content focusing on presentational content and teamwork or quizzes to check progress. To test the hypotheses the paper explores metrics provided by a typical eLearning platform and in how far the metrics can be used to test the hypotheses.
Impulse and reflection jointly drive people's behavior. However, the impact of the physical environment, especially light and brightness, on reflective and impulsive behavior and the underlying processes have not been understood. We expected that light and brightness would increase self-awareness and, in turn, lead to a reflective and controlled self-regulation. Five studies confirmed our assumptions. Particularly, participants in a brightly lit room reported a higher public self-awareness than those in a dim room. Moreover, brightness triggers more controlled and reflective forms of self-regulation independent of whether lighting conditions (Study 2) or priming methods (Study 3) were used to manipulate brightness. Finally, two additional studies revealed that brightness facilitates the suppression of desires and socially undesirable impulses which signals high self-control. Overall, these results contribute to the understanding of automatic effects of light and brightness and effortless self-control. Limitations as well as practical implications for lighting design in therapeutical settings and retail spaces and are discussed.
How can employees be qualified to provide sound customer advisory services? How can they be empowered to deliver the value of public sector modernization to customers? In this paper, we offer a novel approach to qualify service personnel on-the-job using “facilitation affordances”. In this approach, artifacts, providing appropriately designed facilitation affordances, are introduced into service personnel’s work practices. These facilitation artifacts invite them to start experiential learning, and, hence, to improve their advice giving behavior. To develop our approach, we followed a design research approach, here we developed a set of design requirements and, ultimately, five design principles for facilitation artifacts. We tested our approach in the context of citizens’ advice services in public administrations. We implemented a prototype facilitation artifact and conducted a user study with six real-world advisors and twelve clients. Our preliminary results show that the “learning with facilitation affordances”-approach promises to enhance the service personnel’s skills that matter in modern public administrations. Furthermore, with the proposed qualification approach and the design principles for facilitation artifacts, we seek to deepen the knowledge on the importance of affordances for learning and, concurrently, provide practitioners with useful guidelines to implement the “learning with facilitation affordances”-approach in their organizations.
Although good administration plays a crucial role for a state to function, to date no comprehensive and accepted conceptualization exists. Scholars and policymakers, however, are depending on a comprehensive and valid set of criteria to assess the quality of administrations and the effects of reforms and interventions. To develop an appropriate conceptualization, we draw on literature from jurisprudence, administrative, political, economic, as well as social sciences. Applying Rossiter’s C OAR SE approach to ensure content validity, 30 constructs underlying good administration were derived. The items formulated to measure these constructs were empirically validated in an online survey with 519 case workers in German municipal agencies. Principal components analysis yielded four components, i.e., diligence/mission, efficiency, information, and responsivity/support. Thereby, it becomes apparent that some of the criteria used in the literature, such as proportionality, load on multiple components.
Positive psychology research is increasingly being transferred to organizational contexts and organizations are increasingly striving for healthier and more motivated employees. In this study, a three-week self-instructed online-intervention which combines positive activities and mindfulness was developed and evaluated using a randomized-controlled group design with employees. All exercises could be easily integrated into the daily working routine. The intervention is based on broaden-and-build theory, the two-component model of mindfulness and the positive-activity model. Results indicate that the intervention is effective in increasing work engagement, hope and sleep quality as well as in reducing fatigue in the experimental group compared to a waitlist control. Practical implications for human resource departments and corporate health management are discussed.
Not Motivated to Act During Goal Pursuit: Powerlessness Blocks Motivation Transfer in Goal Systems
(2013)
The current research investigates a motivational mechanism that contributes to the inferior goal striving and attainment of powerless individuals: the transfer of motivation from goals to means. We expected that this mechanism would work effectively only in powerful individuals. The results of an experiment and a field study confirmed our assumptions. The more motivated powerful people were to attain the goals, the more they engaged in self-determined action and, in turn, the more positively they experienced goal-related activities. No such relation was found for their powerless counterparts. Implications for power research and goal systems theory are discussed.
Research on persuasive technologies (PT) focuses, primarily, on the design and development of IT for inducing change of individual’s behavior and attitude through computer-human and computer-mediated influence. The issue of practices in co-located human-human persuasive encounters remained unattended in the PT community. This study uses the notion of persuasive practices to understand the course of events in face-to-face home security advisory sessions – it specifies and illustrates such practices and discusses their impact on the persuasiveness of the encounter. Furthermore, it presents potential of IT to support such persuasive practices thus opening new research possibilities of PT research.
Previous research indicates that short work breaks in nature can facilitate emotional recovery, but during a workday nature is not always accessible. We conducted two intervention studies (N = 51; N = 101) applying virtual reality technology in a short work break and examined the effect of the degree of immersion into nature and the type of nature (stimulating vs. calming) on the restorative experience and, in turn, on affective states. The results revealed that high immersion promotes being away and perceived fascination. Being away mediated the effect of high immersion on increased positive and decreased negative affect. Perceived fascination mediated the effect of stimulating nature on increased positive affect in both studies and decreased negative affect in Study 2. The present research highlights the unique benefits of virtual realities, degrees of immersion and different types of nature for recovery interventions in organisations. Practitioner Summary: Integrating virtual realities into the work environment is an emerging topic. The present research demonstrates that a short technology-based intervention via virtual reality enhances emotional recovery. The results provide interesting possibilities for the design of work breaks in situations where nature is not within reach or not accessible.
The aim of this study was to test the effects of a daily positive work reflection intervention on fostering personal resources (i.e., hope and optimism) and decreasing exhaustion (i.e., emotional exhaustion and fatigue) among caregivers for the elderly and caregivers who provide services at patients' homes. Using an intervention/waitlist control group design, 46 caregivers in an intervention group were compared with 44 caregivers in a control group at 3 points of measurement: pre-intervention, post-intervention, and at a 2-week follow-up. The results show that emotional exhaustion and fatigue were reduced for the intervention group. Primarily, caregivers with a high need for recovery at baseline benefited from the intervention. The results reveal no intervention effects for personal resources; however, they reveal a trend that the intervention led to an increase in hope and optimism among caregivers with a high need for recovery. Overall, the findings show that caregivers benefit from a daily positive work reflection intervention, particularly when their baseline levels of resources and well-being are low.
Based on the mandate of political representatives and public administration to work in the public interest and to fulfil the legal requirements, it is surprising that the offer of public e-services is making slow progress. Based on this mandate, both the digitisation of the administration and the digitalisation of its services should develop more proactively since it can be observed that citizens readily accept private-sector digital offerings. This observation raises the question of whether politics and public administration accommodate citizens’ preferences by giving low priority to digitisation and digitalisation, or not. By answering this question this paper provides insight into the thinking of citizens and gives politicians, as well as public administration, an idea about their expectations and their idea of Public Value Creation when it comes to digital public services