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This article investigates the interplay between darkness, construal level, and psychological distance based on the link between environmental lighting conditions and visual perception. In the dark, visual perception becomes less focused and detailed, leading to more abstract representations. We argue that this link between physical darkness and a global perceptual processing style spills over to the conceptual level. In three experiments, darkness triggered a more global perceptual and conceptual processing style than did brightness, regardless of whether the darkness was physically manipulated or primed. Additionally, two Implicit Association Tests (IATs) showed that darkness is more strongly associated with high-level construal than with low-level construal. Moreover, drawing on the generalized link between construal level and psychological distance, we proposed that darkness is also linked to perceived psychological distance because the lack of detail information and the abstract representations in the dark remove objects and other persons from people’s direct, detailed experience. Eight IATs confirmed the implicit link between darkness and four dimensions of psychological distance. These implications of these results are discussed with regard to thinking styles and social processes like stereotyping and cooperation.
This research explores stakeholders' perspectives on administrative procedures, focusing on basic psychological needs. The goal is to understand the motives driving evaluations of administrative quality and performance, particularly for constitutive administrative acts. Using a multi-method approach, the study analyzes five stakeholder groups' central motives at different stages of administrative procedures. To achieve this, the user experience journey technique is adapted to identify stakeholders' motivations, including achievement, affiliation, and power. Guided workshop discussions, qualitative expert interviews, and a review of legal sources are utilized to determine stakeholders' urgencies at each step of the process. Through qualitative content analysis of expert interviews, the study deduces the central concepts underlying these urgencies. The findings provide valuable insights into stakeholders' perspectives, motivations, and urgencies regarding administrative procedures and thus important attributes of good administration. This understanding is crucial for evaluating administrative performance and shaping potential goals for administrative reforms.
What Citizens Experience and How Omni-Channel Could Help - Insights From a Building Permit Case
(2021)
How can the physical environment, especially light, facilitate conflict resolution? Previous research has led to no clear answers about optimal lighting conditions in conflict situations and, until now, potential moderators and mediators have been scarcely investigated. Building on research on light-induced cooperativeness, we expected that self-oriented individuals would be influenced by the lighting in social situations such as conflict resolution. In self-oriented individuals, dim warm light should promote interdependent self-construal and, in turn, lead to a preference for collaborative conflict resolution strategies. Two studies confirmed our assumptions, with social dominance orientation and trait interdependent self-construal serving as indicators of individuals' social orientation. Overall, these results provide an explanation for inconsistent previous findings and contribute to the understanding of light-induced changes in social behavior. Limitations as well as practical implications for lighting design in social spaces are discussed.
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.
Germany's public administrations must go digital by law till 2022. The German Online Access Act (our translation for “Onlinezugangsgesetz”, OZG) forces most services offered by public administration on federal, federal state and municipal level to become digitized. For most of these services still being paper-based and Germany not being one of the leaders in e- government according to many sources, the question of user acceptance arises. For answering the question whether the approach used in the digitalization labs leads to the development of digital public services that are accepted by future users, we conducted a heuristic evaluation of a prototype that was developed within the implementation of the OZG. The paper describes the setting, the test undertaken and the outcome and concludes with an estimate, whether the huge paradigm change towards the development of digital public services that are accepted by future users will be successful or not.
In 2021/2022 a consortium of European universities delivered a scientific basis for a policy fighting fake news and hate speech with support of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe, describing also the technical and legal basics of both phenomena. In this context a survey was performed with the delegates of the Congress and the book, which contained also the survey results, was presented to the Congress in its Spring Session 2022. In 2023 a broader survey was done in a selection of countries, which also returned 675 filled-in questionnaires from Romania. The part of the questionnaire dealing with possible remedies contained questions which remedies are considered technically and legally feasible by the participants.Confirming the results of the survey in 2021/2022 the results for Romania showed a severe lack of basic knowledge about how the internet works and its governance. In this paper we want to show the results for Romania in detail, discuss them and suggest possible training measures which seem necessary to make the local and regional politics and administration fit for the Digitalization.The analysis of data from other European countries showed that this phenomenon is not restricted to Romania but is widely recognizable all over Europe. It also confirms the results from the survey among the Congress delegates. Therefore, this paper may be based on the Romanian dataset, however it signifies a pan-European issue.The authors are grateful to Vice Dean Nicolae Urs (Babeș-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca) and Catalin Vrabie (National University of Political Studies and Public Administration) for their support in spreading the survey among Romanian municipalities.
Social Security
(2022)
Lately, there has been an emerging global consensus to establish social security rights to prevent poverty, enable access to education, and promote gender equality, equal opportunities, and sustainable growth. Social security protects individuals from risks such as sickness, work accidents, old age, and unemployment. So, in 2015 the United Nations (UN) introduced its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (‘SDG’) as part of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development addressing economic, social, and environmental tasks. Remarkably, one third of these goals are...
Sensor networks have become ubiquitous in all types of machinery and infrastructure. These sensor networks are/will be extensively used in the Smart City, which includes public as well as private sensor networks the latter being a much-neglected source of information feed for a smart city administration (Komninos, 2014). This can include vehicle (from eScooter to mini-van) sharing data, park house data, etc. However, the city’s backbone IT infrastructure must be able to accept and process this data and to draw the right conclusions from them. The backbone of this IT infrastructure will for all practical purposes be an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System as it is already standard in the private sector (for an example, Müller-Török et al., 2019). This contribution analyzes the integration of sensor networks into ERP systems in the Smart City. It will also analyze the implications of this development for public sector education.
To deal with stress and exhaustion at work, personal resources need to be replenished during breaks. The aim of this laboratory study (n = 122 students) was to test the restorative potential of sensory-enriched break environments (SEBEs) in a between-subjects with repeated measures design, focusing on the type of the environment (natural outdoor vs. built indoor environment) and sensory input (no sensory input vs. audiovisual input vs. audiovisual and olfactory input). Analyses showed that SEBEs simulating either a natural or a lounge environment were perceived as more pleasant and restorative (fascination/being away) than a standard break room, which in turn facilitated the recovery of personal resources (mood, fatigue, arousal). Moreover, adding a congruent scent to an audiovisual simulation indirectly facilitated the recovery of personal resources via greater scent pleasantness and higher fascination and being away. The current study shows opportunities for sensory enrichment to foster restoration in break environments. Practitioner Summery: This project reveals the impact of the recovery process of simulated environments on personal resources. Analyses confirmed that sensory-enriched environments were perceived as more restorative than less enriched environments, which in turn facilitated the recovery of personal resources. The results highlight the relevance of holistic sensory impressions to fostering recovery.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.