Wertschöpfungs- und Werteinforderungsnormen im Rahmen der "Plural Form Governance": Ein empirischer Test in Key-Account- und Nicht-Key-Account-Dyaden

Zusammenfassung: In den letzten Jahren hat sich die betriebswirtschaftliche Forschung verstärkt mit der Gestaltung sog. Regelungssysteme zur Kontrolle dyadischer Austauschprozesse befasst. Wesentliche Elemente eines Regelungssystems sind Verträge, beziehungsspezifische Investitionen, Normen sowie Vertrauen. Die Kombination einzelner Regelungsmechanismen in einem zusammenhängenden System wird auch als "Plural Form Governance" bezeichnet. Aus Managementsicht ist fraglich, welchen Einfluss einzelne Regelungsmechanismen auf Erfolgsgrößen, in vertikalen Dyaden bspw. Kundenzufriedenheit und -commitment, ausüben. Die regressionsanalytischen Ergebnisse der vorliegenden Studie aus dem Business-to-Business-Bereich (n = 297) weisen auf einen hohen Erklärungsbeitrag der Regelungsstruktur hin. Sie erlauben zudem, die relative Bedeutung der einzelnen Regelungsmechanismen zu verstehen. Im Gegensatz zu früheren Studien unterscheidet dieser Beitrag dabei explizit zwischen Normen, die Wertschöpfung regeln, sowie Normen, die Werteinforderung regeln. Zudem werden zwei Arten von Geschäftsbeziehungen unterschieden, Key-Account-Dyaden und Nicht-Key-Account-Dyade

Augmented Reality Smart Glasses: Societal Benefits and Risks

Poster-Design ohne Abstrac

Are Wearables Good or Bad for Society? An Exploration of Societal Benefits, Risks and Consequences of Augmented Reality Smart Glasses.

Recent market research forecasts predict that a new form of wearable devices will soon influence the media landscape: Augmented Reality Smart Glasses. While prior research highlights numerous potentials in personal and professional settings of smart glasses, this technology has also triggered several controversies in public discussions, for example, the risk of violating privacy and copyright laws. Yet, little research addresses the questions of whether smart glasses are good or bad for societies, and if yes, why. This study conducts exploratory research to contribute to narrowing this gap. Based on a survey among consumers, we identify several societal benefits and risks that determine consumers’ evaluation of the anticipated and desired success of smart glasses. These findings lead to numerous important implications for consumers, scholars, managers, and policy makers

Influence of Future Time Perspective on Involvement: an Approach With Two Studies

The aim of this research is to extend current knowledge of older consumers' behaviour, focusing on involvement and future time perspective. Furthermore, we propose recommendations for customer approaches in the context of colon cancer prevention, as older consumers increasingly face new challenges in the realm of medical decision-making

Mind the gap: A process model for diagnosing barriers to key account management implementation

Today, many firms develop and implement key account management (KAM) programs to manage the relationships with strategically important customers. The implementation of KAM programs requires the configuration of special activities, actors, and resources dedicated to key accounts, which poses major challenges for managerial practice. Firms often underestimate the fundamental organizational change required for a successful implementation of KAM. The objective of this article is to advance extant knowledge on KAM by developing a framework that outlines essential processes to assess and diagnose barriers to KAM implementation. In our article, we integrate extant knowledge on KAM organization and enactment, and we propose a four-step process model that links the concepts of embeddedness, differentiation, integration, and alignment. In addition, we illustrate our model in a case study analysis with a large-scale European industrial company. The findings of our study allow us to derive avenues for further research on KAM implementation as well as implications for management practice

Genome of the Avirulent Human-Infective Trypanosome—Trypanosoma rangeli

Background: Trypanosoma rangeli is a hemoflagellate protozoan parasite infecting humans and other wild and domestic mammals across Central and South America. It does not cause human disease, but it can be mistaken for the etiologic agent of Chagas disease, Trypanosoma cruzi. We have sequenced the T. rangeli genome to provide new tools for elucidating the distinct and intriguing biology of this species and the key pathways related to interaction with its arthropod and mammalian hosts.  Methodology/Principal Findings: The T. rangeli haploid genome is ,24 Mb in length, and is the smallest and least repetitive trypanosomatid genome sequenced thus far. This parasite genome has shorter subtelomeric sequences compared to those of T. cruzi and T. brucei; displays intraspecific karyotype variability and lacks minichromosomes. Of the predicted 7,613 protein coding sequences, functional annotations could be determined for 2,415, while 5,043 are hypothetical proteins, some with evidence of protein expression. 7,101 genes (93%) are shared with other trypanosomatids that infect humans. An ortholog of the dcl2 gene involved in the T. brucei RNAi pathway was found in T. rangeli, but the RNAi machinery is non-functional since the other genes in this pathway are pseudogenized. T. rangeli is highly susceptible to oxidative stress, a phenotype that may be explained by a smaller number of anti-oxidant defense enzymes and heatshock proteins.  Conclusions/Significance: Phylogenetic comparison of nuclear and mitochondrial genes indicates that T. rangeli and T. cruzi are equidistant from T. brucei. In addition to revealing new aspects of trypanosome co-evolution within the vertebrate and invertebrate hosts, comparative genomic analysis with pathogenic trypanosomatids provides valuable new information that can be further explored with the aim of developing better diagnostic tools and/or therapeutic targets

Shotgun Sequencing Analysis of Trypanosoma cruzi I Sylvio X10/1 and Comparison with T. cruzi VI CL Brener

Trypanosoma cruzi is the causative agent of Chagas disease, which affects more than 9 million people in Latin America. We have generated a draft genome sequence of the TcI strain Sylvio X10/1 and compared it to the TcVI reference strain CL Brener to identify lineage-specific features. We found virtually no differences in the core gene content of CL Brener and Sylvio X10/1 by presence/absence analysis, but 6 open reading frames from CL Brener were missing in Sylvio X10/1. Several multicopy gene families, including DGF, mucin, MASP and GP63 were found to contain substantially fewer genes in Sylvio X10/1, based on sequence read estimations. 1,861 small insertion-deletion events and 77,349 nucleotide differences, 23% of which were non-synonymous and associated with radical amino acid changes, further distinguish these two genomes. There were 336 genes indicated as under positive selection, 145 unique to T. cruzi in comparison to T. brucei and Leishmania. This study provides a framework for further comparative analyses of two major T. cruzi lineages and also highlights the need for sequencing more strains to understand fully the genomic composition of this parasite