Fakultät Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften

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Die Fakultät vereint Forschung und moderne Lehre nach internationalen Standards. Das Hohenheimer Modell verzahnt dabei betriebs- und volkswirtschaftliche, sozial- und rechtswissenschaftliche Aspekte.

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Collaborating in the digital age: On the design of collaboration support systems
(2024) Wöhl, Moritz; Gimpel, Henner
Collaboration is undergoing a transformation in the digital age. As digital technologies advance, individuals and organisations need to continuously adapt to the ever-changing circumstances in their mutual engagement, especially when these technologies form the nexus of interaction. Three major trends shape this evolving collaborative landscape. First, globalisation diminishes the significance of physical boundaries, fostering a globally distributed workforce. Second, propelled initially by the COVID-19 pandemic but now a lasting trend, there is a heightened value placed on the flexibility afforded by remote or hybrid work. Third, the ascendant capabilities of large language models hint at them becoming central to collaboration, which benefits both employees and organisations. Collectively, these trends not only shape collaboration as of today but also provide implications for its future trajectory. These shifts present interesting avenues for designing collaboration support via digital technologies. This dissertation delves into the design of Collaboration Support Systems in light of these developments. These systems encompass software, tools, and services to enhance outcomes from collaborative efforts. At their core, collaborators coordinate their actions. More specifically, they process and communicate information before taking a decision. Collaboration support in this dissertation explicitly targets these three facets to enhance collaborative endeavours. The structure of this dissertation is bifurcated into direct support to collaborators via technical systems (Part A) and indirect support through aiding facilitators of a collaborative endeavour (Part B). Part A (Chapter II) of this dissertation explores the facet of delivering support to collaborators engaged in direct collaboration, offering profound insights into how technological systems can be harnessed to augment collaborative endeavours across four distinct chapters. Each chapter elucidates strategies to support collaborators in information processing, communication, and decision-making. Chapter II.1 delves into the collaboration of multi-professional teams, spotlighting the work system in inpatient palliative care, characterised by frequent in-person interactions and noticeable reservations towards digital technologies, making it a relevant subject of investigation. This chapter discerns potential challenges and opportunities to overcome them with digital technologies by maintaining the relevance of in-person interactions. Building on this, Chapter II.2 articulates the design and prototype of a system tailored for multi-professional collaboration, addressing the specific challenges unearthed in the preceding chapter. Chapter II.3 targets virtual teams engaging synchronously in chats, facilitated by an automated facilitator to streamline their collaboration by fostering favourable patterns in collaboration to sidestep potential pitfalls. Chapter II.4 explores academic research collaboration, aiming to illuminate methods for assessing the current research landscape and signposting promising areas for future collaborative research. Part B (Chapter III) shifts its lens towards amplifying support mechanisms for facilitators, enhancing the support mechanisms available for facilitators, thereby aiming to amplify the effectiveness and efficiency of their roles within the collaborative structure – particularly within crowdsourcing environments. These environments are often geared towards addressing complex, wicked problems by pooling diverse knowledge resources. This part underscores the facilitator’s pivotal role in steering collaborative ventures, supporting them throughout the multifaceted processes, particularly in information processing, communication, and decision-making. Chapter III.1 presents an assessment model with five success dimensions, equipping facilitators with guidance on actions before, during, and after a crowdsourcing initiative. This framework helps in achieving high-quality results through a well-guided process. Subsequent chapters delve deeper into vital facets of crowdsourcing: Chapter III.2 advocates for fostering intellectual cross-fertilisation among collaborators, promoting a richer and potentially more innovative range of contributions. Chapter III.3 proposes a synthesis information system, utilising natural language processing to enhance the facilitator’s support in efficiently assessing discussion content and effectively disseminating it to a wider audience in diverse formats. In conclusion, this dissertation provides a comprehensive guide for collaboration support design. It concludes by consolidating and discussing both parts’ results, implications, limitations, and avenues for future research. The emergence of large-scale language models will blur the lines between the two parts of this dissertation. Today, these models automate only specific aspects of facilitation and support human moderators in their roles. As large language models continue to evolve and their capabilities improve, it is foreseeable that the distinction between the two parts will diminish. Hence, although distinct in their approach, both parts intertwine, providing a cohesive perspective on the potential and design of Collaboration Support Systems and creating a common body of knowledge that informs the future of collaborative endeavours. Key themes threading through the dissertation include seamless integration into daily-use systems, leveraging natural language processing, and guiding collaborators’ focus in their interactions. This dissertation’s insights contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the potential and design nuances of Collaboration Support Systems.
Design and analysis of information systems for individual health and well-being
(2024) Bonenberger, Lukas; Gimpel, Henner
Information systems (IS) are ubiquitous in today’s world. Initially rooted in the business context, IS research within personal settings is steadily gaining momentum. An essential factor contributing to this phenomenon is the acknowledgment that IS and their design can improve the lives of individuals. Individuals encounter various challenges that adversely affect their health and well-being. However, IS present avenues to address some of these issues. Prominent examples of such challenges that prior research has identified as susceptible to mitigation through IS include stress, grief, home resource conservation, information technology (IT)-mediated interruptions, and social media harm. All these challenges negatively affect individuals’ health and well-being. IS are potent tools owing to their ubiquity and technological capabilities. Their designs shape their objectives and functionalities, which are crucial for addressing challenges and fostering individual health and well-being. The transition of IS research from business to more personal spheres has been conceptualized into a framework for the digitalization of the individual (DOTI [1]). The DOTI framework encompasses the digitalization of individuals across two dimensions. First, it delineates the different roles of individuals that IS research can explore, including their roles as employees, social beings, and customers. Second, the framework encompasses the research angles of IS design, individuals’ behavior, and the consequences of their digitalization. This dissertation aligns with the DOTI framework, focusing on developing and analyzing IS designs tailored to individuals in various roles to foster their health and well-being. The aim of this dissertation is twofold. First, it seeks to gain a comprehensive understanding of how IS can address the abovementioned challenges, which negatively impact individual health and well-being. Second, this dissertation aims to develop IS design knowledge and analyze IS design to establish a foundation for such knowledge development to mitigate challenges and foster individual health and well-being. This dissertation uses qualitative and quantitative research methods, including literature review, interviews, surveys, experiments, and field studies. Several methodological approaches are integrated into higher-level design science research. Further, one study adopts a mixed-methods approach, whereas another is fully quantitative. This dissertation is divided into two parts. Part A aims to develop design knowledge for IS to foster individual health and well-being, while considering individuals in the role as themselves according to the DOTI framework. Chapter 2 describes the design of mobile stress assessment systems that detect individuals’ stress levels to enable subsequent coping efforts. It improves the understanding of how mobile systems can better support individuals in coping with stress, and presents theoretical design knowledge, five prototypes, and a structured literature review. Chapter 3 introduces design knowledge for more empathetic recommender systems on social media sites to enhance users’ well-being. It broadens the understanding of social media harm in the context of social media recommender systems by presenting a conceptual framework, meta-requirements, and design principles. Chapter 4 expands on these results and presents design knowledge for sensitive social media recommender systems. This design knowledge advances Chapter 3 by incorporating specific design features and evaluating user appraisals by using the Kano customer satisfaction model. Part B of this dissertation focuses on considering individuals’ specific roles according to the DOTI framework in IS design aimed at fostering their health and well-being. Chapter 5 considers individuals as employees. It develops design knowledge for neuro-adaptive flow support systems to promote flow experiences and reduce IT-mediated interruptions in the workplace, with the aim of enhancing well-being and productivity. The chapter presents a neuro-adaptive interruption management mechanism. Chapter 6 investigates the effects of social norm messages as social media design elements in encouraging users to express sympathy toward online mourners, thereby enhancing their well-being. It considers individuals in specific roles as social beings. The chapter elucidates the design characteristics that contribute to the effectiveness of social norm messages in this domain. Chapter 7 explores the effects of the decision-making latitude of agentic IS artifacts on individuals’ psychological well-being and environmental friendliness perception in smart homes. Therefore, it considers individuals in their specific customer roles. The chapter provides insights into agentic IS artifact design regarding functional adaptivity, using the challenge of home resource conservation as an example. In summary, this dissertation advances design knowledge and offers insights into IS design aimed at mitigating the challenges that adversely affect individuals’ health and well-being, thereby fostering these outcomes. This enriches the existing literature on IS design and investigation of these challenges, providing practical insights for effective mitigation efforts. Moreover, the research activities included in this dissertation contribute to promoting responsible digitalization.
Navigating the information landscape: uncovering links between information perception, processing, and behavior
(2023) Utz, Lena; Gimpel, Henner
Digitalization has transformed how individuals access and share information, making some of it available anytime and anywhere through the internet, mobile devices, and social media. Digitalization has also changed how information is created and disseminated, enabling individuals to actively participate in the Information Age by creating user-generated content. The exponential growth of digital content presents both opportunities and challenges. While individuals can access information quickly and easily regarding a wide range of topics, it is essential to distinguish between truthful and false information. Fake news, especially from social media, has political and societal consequences, eroding trust in traditional media and institutions. Additionally, even if the information is true, individuals can be intentionally or unintentionally manipulated by specific characteristics of the information. Cognitive biases, such as the negativity effect and confirmation bias, influence how people perceive and process information. Individuals’ social environments, platform design, and individual characteristics also shape how they deal with information. To navigate the information landscape, it is essential to understand how individuals perceive and process information and how it can influence their behavior. This topic is a subject of the study of Human Information Behavior. To better understand the links, this dissertation builds on the Stimulus-Organism-Response model. This psychological model explains how stimuli (such as information) influence an individual’s cognitive and emotional state (organism), leading to observable behaviors (responses). Thereby, the dissertation distinguishes between primary and context stimuli, between cognitive and affective processes as part of the organism, and between psychological and behavioral responses. This cumulative dissertation aims to contribute to the understanding of how individuals perceive and process information and how information influences their behavior. For this purpose, it relies on literature-based theorizing and the analysis and interpretation of empirical data obtained from online experiments and surveys. Because false information tremendously influences society, politics, and every individual, this dissertation focuses on fake news. The first three chapters examine socio-technical interventions to combat fake news. Chapter 2 provides an approach to improving reporting behavior. It analyzes the influence of injunctive and descriptive social norms (SNs) on social media users’ reporting of fake news. The findings revealed that SN messages influence users’ re-porting behavior. While injunctive SN messages can serve as motivational tools and affect user reporting behavior in social media environments, the empirical results demonstrated no significant effect from the sole application of descriptive SN messages. However, combining both types of SN messages proved to be the most effective approach. Chapter 3 addresses the influence of the order of intervention on the short- and long-term perception of fake news. The findings showed that the order in which the intervention, consisting of warning messages and verified information, is displayed impacts the perception of fake news. When delivered after fake news exposure, such interventions can decrease the believability of fake news more effectively than interventions delivered before exposure. Chapter 4 examines how the fake news reader’s emotions influence the believability of fake news and whether warning labels can mitigate these effects. The results revealed that while low-arousal emotions in the reader could decrease the believability of fake news, high-arousal emotions did not affect believability compared to the control group. However, the presence of a warning label before reading the fake news could reduce its believability, regardless of the level of emotional arousal. Chapter 5 broadens the perspective beyond fake news. Using the example of online product reviews and information, it examines how different characteristics of information influence the user evaluation of digital products. The findings revealed that there is a “placebo effect.” This placebo effect depends on the source of information and negative placebo information has a stronger effect than positive placebo information. Furthermore, the timing of the presentation of the placebo information is important. Placebo information provided after physical sensory input had a stronger effect than information provided before it. In summary, this dissertation contributes to the understanding of how individuals perceive and process information and how information influences their behavior. The insights from this dissertation can support individuals and society in the fight against fake news. Furthermore, it uncovered the manipulative power of specific characteristics of information. The insights from this dissertation provide a foundation for future research and practical applications in the realm of human information behavior.
Third Mission Advancement in Higher Education : developing and envisioning entrepreneurial pathways for higher education institutions
(2020) Stolze, Audrey; Kuckertz, Andreas
In 1983, Henry Etzkowitz coined the term ‘entrepreneurial universities’ to explain the strategic developments taking place at some American higher education institutions (HEIs) that have engaged in industry partnerships and generating revenue from new sources, such as patents. The involvement of HEIs in economic activities has led scholars to propose that HEIs currently have a third mission beyond the traditional two missions of teaching and researching. In the past few decades, this phenomenon has attracted the attention of policy-makers, researchers, and HEI leaders, with new developments being documented in many countries around the world. Nevertheless, one aspect of this phenomenon that remains poorly understood is the entrepreneurial pathways pursued by HEIs in their attempt to strategically develop their third mission. Therefore, the overarching research question addressed in this dissertation is: how can HEIs become more entrepreneurial and strategically advance their third mission? The purpose of this dissertation is to envision and develop entrepreneurial pathways for HEIs, contributing to the research domain of higher education entrepreneurialism from a managerial perspective. This dissertation comprises three studies: (1) a systematic literature review of the transformation journey of 36 HEIs across the globe establishes the researching status quo, proposes core entrepreneurial pathways and an action-framework, and identifies specific research avenues for the topic; (2) an international foresight study adds a novel perspective by proposing five future scenarios for HEIs based on the interests, preoccupations, and expectations of entrepreneurial ecosystem stakeholders from sixteen countries; and (3) a confirmatory study which identifies two mechanisms through which dynamic capabilities translate into third mission strategic advancements. Combined, these studies shed light on the strategic choices HEIs must take when developing their third mission, effectively explaining how HEIs can become more entrepreneurial. This dissertation thereby contributes concomitantly to the theory on entrepreneurial universities and HEIs’ management practice.

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