What Drives Employees to Become Active?

Most research on IT adoption underlies the assumption that employees are resistant towards the acceptance of new technology in organizations. On the contrary, phenomena like IT consumerization, Bring Your Own Device and shadow IT are showing that some employees are actively shaping their own workplace by using alternative (private) IS. In this paper, we describe our research idea on how to investigate the mechanisms that drive employees to become more active. We draw on the cybernetic negative feedback loop as theoretical framework. We suggest that the comparison between organizational IS and private IS can induce dissatisfaction which in turn can trigger employees to change their behavior. Further, we develop an empirically testable research model based on Expectation Confirmation Theory to answer our research question

Private vs. Business Customers in the Sharing Economy – The implications of Trust, Perceived Risk, and Social Motives on Airbnb

The sharing economy is continuously changing the hospitality industry while competing with incumbent businesses over the available market share. This study examines the peer-to-peer renting service Airbnb. In particular, we investigate how social motives, trust, and perceived risk of private and business customers, alter the accommodation provider’s intention to accept a booking request. Understanding the implications of private and business customers is key – not only for platform providers, but also for researchers investigating the sharing economy. In this article, we develop a questionnaire for assessing the influence of the respective customer type on trust, perceived risk, and the provider’s intention. Our pretest employs survey data (n = 53) and principal component analysis (PCA) to prepare a clean structural equation modeling

Raising the Bar The Effect of New and More Appealing Alternatives on User Satisfaction with Incumbent Information Systems

With more and more employees in organizations being digital natives, a workforce emerges, which is familiar with the adoption of new and innovative technology in its private life. Applying the negative cybernetic feedback loop model as our research model, we argue that the knowledge and experience with private alternative system raises the bar for organizational systems. To this end, we address the following question in our study: How is user satisfaction with an incumbent system affected by the introduction of a more appealing alternative? To answer this question, we conducted an online experiment with a representative sample of 292 participants. We show that user satisfaction with an incumbent system is lower when users are familiar with a more appealing system

The Influence of Private Alternatives on Employees\u27 Acceptance of Organizational IS

Recent phenomena such as IT consumerization, bring your own device, and shadow IT describe employees who introduce new technologies into their organizations rather than resist technological change. We research the underlying mechanism that drives employees to introduce new private technology into their working environment. In our study, we intentionally separate the impact that organizational IS performance and private technology use have on satisfaction with organizational IS and consider satisfaction’s dynamics as a fundamental aspect in our research model. As a theoretical contribution, we suggest that familiarity with superior private technological alternatives for organizational IS decreases satisfaction with organizational IS and, thus, fosters behavioral change. In our empirical study, we found interaction effects that indicate that innovative employees, in contrast to non-innovative employees, reach a higher satisfaction level in situations with high organizational IS performance. Furthermore, we found that non-inert employees, in contrast to inert employees, become dissatisfied with organizational IS when they experience well-performing IS in their private environments

Why Would Customers Engage in Drone Deliveries?

Modern technologies, such as autonomously flying vehicles respectively drones, have won attention and are on the edge to change incumbent industries. Whereas drones are currently used in a variety of industry landscapes, such as filmmaking and agriculture, we focus particularly on the shipping industry. In this paper, we take the customers’ perspective and evaluate why customers would engage in drone deliveries. We investigate the influence of trust, perceived risk, and motivational factors and propose a research model that seeks to explain the customers’ intention. This study uses survey data (n = 116) and structural equation modeling. Our results provide empirical evidence that trust and perceived risk, as well as specific motivational factors influence the customers’ intention to engage in drone deliveries. Further, our paper encourages researchers, designers, and developers to build the respective IS including the expectations of future drone users. Therefore, academic and practical implications are discussed

Japaner und die englische Sprache Probleme und ihre Ursachen Teil I

Obwohl Englisch die erste Fremdsprache in Japan ist, sprechen es die meisten Japaner entweder kaum oder so mangelhaft, daβ eine Kommunikation auf Englisch nicht zustande kommt (mit Ausnahme des wirtschaftlichen Bereiches). Die vorliegende Arbeit befaβt sich mit den allgemeinen und speziellen Ursachen dieses Phänomens

Semiautomatic quality control of topographic reference datasets

The usefulness and acceptance of spatial information systems are mainly dependent on the quality of the underlying geodata. This paper describes a system for semiautomatic quality control of existing geospatial data via automatic image analysis using aerial images, high-resolution satellite imagery (IKONOS and RapidEye) and low-resolution satellite imagery (Disaster Monitoring Constellation, DMC) with mono- and multi-temporal approaches focusing on objects which cover most of the area of the topographic dataset. The goal of the developed system is to reduce the manual efforts to a minimum. We shortly review the system design and then we focus on the automatic components and their integration in a semiautomatic workflow for verification and update. A prototype of the system has been in use for several years. From the experience gained during this time we give a detailed report on the system performance in its application as well as an evaluation of the results

Menschen schützen und unterstützen: warum Solidarität weiterhin gefragt ist in der Pandemie

Seit Beginn der Pandemie hat sich unser Fachwissen sowohl über die Ausbreitung des Virus als auch über Präventionsmaßnahmen vervielfacht. Tests, Impfungen und Therapien sind verfügbar und viele Fragestellungen durch die Erkenntnisse der letzten Jahre gelöst worden. Trotzdem bleibt die Entscheidungsfindung für Interventionen im Sinne der öffentlichen Gesundheit weiterhin eine Herausforderung. Dafür kann die unabhängige und interdisziplinäre Wissenschaft weiterhin wichtige Impulse setzen und Perspektiven liefern. Dieses Papier stellt einige zentrale Punkte zusammen, die aus einem intensiven Diskursprozess entstanden sind, der in den letzten Monaten unter den angeführten Expert*innen und Wissenschafter*innen verschiedener Disziplinen stattgefunden hat. Es besteht der Grundkonsens, dass eine gesundheitspolitische und ethische Notwendigkeit besteht, den Schutz jener Menschen im Blick zu behalten, welche anfälliger für schwere COVID-19 Krankheitsverläufe, als auch Long Covid sind, sowie deren Umfeld und generell im Hinblick auf Gesundheitsfragen vorsichtig agierende Personen. Dieses Papier soll Bewusstsein für die Thematik stärken, und Entscheidungsträger:innen sensibilisieren und darin unterstützen, diese Personenkreise in ihren Überlegungen im Blick zu behalten

Nomenclature for kidney function and disease: report of a Kidney Disease:Improving Global Outcomes (KDIGO) Consensus Conference

The worldwide burden of kidney disease is rising, but public awareness remains limited, underscoring the need for more effective communication by stakeholders in the kidney health community. Despite this need for clarity, the nomenclature for describing kidney function and disease lacks uniformity. In June 2019, Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes (KDIGO) convened a Consensus Conference with the goal of standardizing and refining the nomenclature used in the English language to describe kidney function and disease, and of developing a glossary that could be used in scientific publications. Guiding principles of the conference were that the revised nomenclature should be patient-centered, precise, and consistent with nomenclature used in the KDIGO guidelines. Conference attendees reached general consensus on the following recommendations: (i) to use "kidney" rather than "renal" or "nephro-" when referring to kidney disease and kidney function; (ii) to use "kidney failure" with appropriate descriptions of presence or absence of symptoms, signs, and treatment, rather than "end-stage kidney disease"; (iii) to use the KDIGO definition and classification of acute kidney diseases and disorders (AKD) and acute kidney injury (AKI), rather than alternative descriptions, to define and classify severity of AKD and AKI; (iv) to use the KDIGO definition and classification of chronic kidney disease (CKD) rather than alternative descriptions to define and classify severity of CKD; and (v) to use specific kidney measures, such as albuminuria or decreased glomerular filtration rate (GFR), rather than "abnormal" or "reduced" kidney function to describe alterations in kidney structure and function. A proposed 5-part glossary contains specific items for which there was general agreement. Conference attendees acknowledged limitations of the recommendations and glossary, but they considered standardization of scientific nomenclature to be essential for improving communication