Business environment, managerial strategies, and the allocation of decision-making authorities in Swiss Firms

The allocation of decision-making authorities may be seen as the last link in a causal relationship starting from changes in environment and continuing to business strategy. Changes in task complexity, which can be measured by the introduction of a diversica- tion or an outsourcing strategy, are expected to result in a shift towards a more centralized or decentralized allocation of decision-making authorities. Using nationally representative Swiss rm data, OLS, Propensity Score Matching as well as a combined matching and dierence-in-dierences approach in order to account for endogeneity and unobserved het- erogeneity are applied. Estimates using all three approaches show a highly signicant positive impact of outsourcing on a decentralized decision rights assignment, whereas a diversication strategy yields no in uence. The conclusion therefore is that a lower delega- tion risk due to a decline in complexity results in decentralized decision-making authorities in Swiss rms.Allocation of decision-making authorities - Diversication - Outsourcing - Average treatment eect - Propensity score matching estimators - Combined matching dierence-in-dierences estimator

Taking video cameras into the classroom.

Research into the communication and interactions in classrooms need to take the multimodal nature of classrooms into account. Video cameras can capture the dynamics of teaching and learning, but the use of videos for research purposes needs to be well thought through in order to accommodate the challenges this tool holds. This article refers to three research projects where videos were used to generate data. It is argued that videos allow the researcher to hone in on the micro-details and, in contrast to other data generation tools, allows researchers who were not present at the time to view what has been witnessed. A video recording is a data source but not data by itself and the information that is discerned from a video is framed and shaped by the research paradigm and the questions asked

Field structure and electron life times in the MEFISTO Electron Cyclotron Resonance Ion Source

The complex magnetic field of the permanent-magnet electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) ion source MEFISTO located at the University of Bern have been numerically simulated. For the first time the magnetized volume qualified for electron cyclotron resonance at 2.45 GHz and 87.5 mT has been analyzed in highly detailed 3D simulations with unprecedented resolution. New results were obtained from the numerical simulation of 25211 electron trajectories. The evident characteristic ion sputtering trident of hexapole confined ECR sources has been identified with the field and electron trajectory distribution. Furthermore, unexpected long electron trajectory lifetimes were found.Comment: 11 pages, 18 figure

KINECTWheels: wheelchair-accessible motion-based game interaction

The increasing popularity of full-body motion-based video games creates new challenges for game accessibility research. Many games strongly focus on able-bodied persons and require players to move around freely. To address this problem, we introduce KINECTWheels, a toolkit that facilitates the integration of wheelchair-based game input. Our library can help game designers to integrate wheelchair input at the development stage, and it can be configured to trigger keystroke events to make off-the-shelf PC games wheelchair-accessible

Temporal regularity effects on pre-attentive and attentive processing of deviance

Temporal regularity allows predicting the temporal locus of future information thereby potentially facilitating cognitive processing. We applied event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to investigate how temporal regularity impacts pre-attentive and attentive processing of deviance in the auditory modality. Participants listened to sequences of sinusoidal tones differing exclusively in pitch. The inter-stimulus interval (ISI) in these sequences was manipulated to convey either isochronous or random temporal structure. In the pre-attentive session, deviance processing was unaffected by the regularity manipulation as evidenced in three event-related-potentials (ERPs): mismatch negativity (MMN), P3a, and reorienting negativity (RON). In the attentive session, the P3b was smaller for deviant tones embedded in irregular temporal structure, while the N2b component remained unaffected. These findings confirm that temporal regularity can reinforce cognitive mechanisms associated with the attentive processing of deviance. Furthermore, they provide evidence for the dynamic allocation of attention in time and dissociable pre-attentive and attention-dependent temporal processing mechanisms

Involving children and young adults with complex needs in game design

Involving young people with complex needs in game design can be a challenging research endeavor, particularly when working within a school context. In this paper, we discuss findings from two case studies where we worked with young adults with visual impairment, and young people with mobility disabilities. We focus on ethical challenges that emerged during the research process, and we discuss management strategies to foster the establishment of inclusive and engaging field research into video games for young people with complex needs

Business environment, managerial strategies, and the allocation of decision-making authorities in Swiss Firms

The allocation of decision-making authorities may be seen as the last link in a causal relationship starting from changes in environment and continuing to business strategy. Changes in task complexity, which can be measured by the introduction of a diversification or an outsourcing strategy, are expected to result in a shift towards a more centralized or decentralized allocation of decision-making authorities. Using nationally representative Swiss firm data, OLS, Propensity Score Matching as well as a combined matching and difference-in-differences approach in order to account for endogeneity and unobserved heterogeneity are applied. Estimates using all three approaches show a highly significant positive impact of outsourcing on a decentralized decision rights assignment, whereas a diversification strategy yields no influence. The conclusion therefore is that a lower delegation risk due to a decline in complexity results in decentralized decision-making authorities in Swiss firms

User Representation in eCommerce and Collaboration Applications

The development of the Internet was originally based on the assumption that a user remains anonymous. However, more and more services need to know the user for providing personalized services or for presenting the user to other users. As in real life, a user will interact with different services hosted by different providers. With the current approach users have to provide and update information about their identity and interests for each service independently. That results in cold-start problems for new services and in inconvenience for the user. In this paper we argue that user-centric global identity management is needed for future e-commerce and collaboration applications. We present the current state of art in the area of identity management, discuss needs and possibilities for future developments, and show some results of the work we have done in this context. 1