Envisioning the "Sharing City": Governance Strategies for the Sharing Economy

Recent developments around the sharing economy bring to the fore questions of governability and broader societal Benefit - and subsequently the need to explore effective means of public governance, from nurturing, on the one hand, to restriction, on the other. As sharing is a predominately urban phenomenon in modern societies, cities around the globe have become both locus of action and central actor in the debates over the nature and organization of the sharing economy. However, cities vary substantially in the interpretation of potential opportunities and challenges, as well as in their governance responses. Building on a qualitative comparative analysis of 16 leading global cities, our findings reveal four framings of the sharing economy: "societal endangerment", "societal enhancement", "market disruption", and "ecological Transition". Such framings go hand in hand with patterned governance responses: although there is considerable heterogeneity in the combination of public governance strategies, we find specific configurations of framings and public governance strategies. Our work reflects the political and ethical debates on various economic, social, and moral issues related to the sharing economy, and contrib-utes to a better understanding of the field-level institutional Arrangements-a prerequisite for examining moral behavior of sharing economy organizations

Das Verhältnis zwischen Hochschule und Wissenschaft in Deutschland

Dieser Beitrag rekonstruiert den Einfluss der Hochschulentwicklung und der wissen–schaftlichen Kapazitätsbildung auf die wissenschaftliche Wissensproduktion in Deutschland, einem der weltweit stärksten Produzenten wissen­schaftlichen Wissen seit 1900. Folgende Forschungsfragen sollen beantwortet werden: Wie haben institutionalisierte Strukturen, und darin verschiedene Organisationsformen, die langfristige Entwicklung wissenschaftlicher Produktivität beeinflusst und verändert? In welchen organisationalen Netzwerken entwickelt sich aktuell die Wissenschaft weiter? Die Annäherung an den Forschungsgegenstand erfolgt auf der Makroebene anhand von Indikatoren zur Erfassung der globalen Expansion, Kooperation und Produktion der Wissenschaft. Vor dem Hintergrund dieses Untersuchungsrahmens wird dann auf der Mesoebene das Zusammenspiel von Organisationsformen in Deutschland mittels netzwerkanalytischer Verfahren betrachtet. Ziel des Beitrags ist, die Orte und institutionellen Settings wissenschaftlicher Produktion zu identifizieren und anhand ihrer Aufgaben und Ziele voneinander abzugrenzen sowie ihre Beziehungen zuein­ander herauszuarbeiten. Als theoretische Basis werden neo-institutionalistische Ansätze zur Untersuchung und Erklärung der Expansion des Hochschulwesens und der Wissenschaft und zur Analyse von organisationalen Netzwerken herangezogen. Grundlage der empirischen Analyse bilden Publikationen in peer-reviewed Zeitschriften als Kennzeichen wissenschaftlicher Produktion

Earth Virtualization Engines (EVE)

To manage Earth in the Anthropocene, new tools, new institutions, and new forms of international cooperation will be required. Earth Virtualization Engines is proposed as an international federation of centers of excellence to empower all people to respond to the immense and urgent challenges posed by climate change

Big data in science and higher education research: The case of intermediaries in higher education

Many publicly available sources for big data research projects – for instance, websites of organizations in the field of higher education, shared knowledge on Wikipedia or debates on social media platforms – contain large amounts of relational and textual data. To make use of these qualities, a conceptual lens that combines social network and institutional analysis is quite helpful: Social network analysis enables us to capture larger structures and positions of individuals and organizations within these structures; institutional analysis provides concepts and tools to make meaning structures visible. In combination, we can study field configurations in unprecedented detail on a large scale. How such an approach can be applied to science and higher education research is demonstrated by early results of a current research project on transnational intermediaries in higher education

Big data in science and higher education research: The case of intermediaries in higher education

Many publicly available sources for big data research projects – for instance, websites of organizations in the field of higher education, shared knowledge on Wikipedia or debates on social media platforms – contain large amounts of relational and textual data. To make use of these qualities, a conceptual lens that combines social network and institutional analysis is quite helpful: Social network analysis enables us to capture larger structures and positions of individuals and organizations within these structures; institutional analysis provides concepts and tools to make meaning structures visible. In combination, we can study field configurations in unprecedented detail on a large scale. How such an approach can be applied to science and higher education research is demonstrated by early results of a current research project on transnational intermediaries in higher education

Collaboration in research between organizational forms in Germany

How do organizations in research and development cooperate with each other? In a new project undertaken by the University of Hannover (Anna Kosmützky), University of Luxembourg (Justin W. Powell and Jennifer Dusdal), and University of Mannheim (Achim Oberg), we investigate the role of organizational forms in research collaboration in Germany. Our goal is to deepen the understanding of the variety of roles forms play in the research and development field. To identify these roles, our project reconstructs the field of STEM+ (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine) in Germany as a network of organizations with ties derived from co-authored research papers in ranked journals. In the project’s current initial phase, a static image of that network for the year 2010 is analyzed from different perspectives. These perspectives provide first insights into the roles of organizational forms: Which universities collaborated with each other? What is the relevance of research associations, such as Max Planck, Helmholtz, Leibniz, and Fraunhofer? How do collaborations differ between disciplines

Wirkungen der Sharing Economy in Deutschland

Um den Beitrag der Sharing Economy zum nachhaltigen Wirtschaften in Deutschland zu ermitteln, wurde ein Ansatz entwickelt, mit dem Geschäftsmodelle von Sharing Organisationen und ihre Wirkungen sowie die Ausdehnung von Geschäftsmodellen und damit ihre potenziellen Auswirkungen auf gesellschaftlicher Ebene systematisch untersucht werden können