Browsing by Issue Date

Now showing 1 - 20 of 905

Making Choices Rational: The Elective Affinity of Artificial Intelligence and Organizational Decision-Making
(Weizenbaum Institute, 18-10-2024) Meyer, Uli; Werner, René
This article investigates the elective affinity between decision-making models in the fields of organizational theory and artificial intelligence (AI), exploring the decision-making influence of societal ideas in these two research contexts. Using Herbert Simon’s work on organizations and AI as an example, we examine the properties of these societal ideas and identify six key characteristics, emphasizing rational calculations based on a logic of consequences. These specific notions of decision-making converge again in the phenomenon of AI-based algorithmic decision-making in organizations, as we demonstrate using examples from descriptions and advertisements of such systems, the current literature on their use, and empirical research concerning organizational practices.
Editorial: Volume 4, Issue 3
(Weizenbaum Institute, 23-10-2024) Emmer, Martin; Iglesias Keller, Clara; Krasnova, Hanna; Krzywdzinski, Martin; Metzger, Axel; Schimmler, Sonja; Ulbricht, Lena; Vladova, Gergana
This issue of the Weizenbaum Journal of the Digital Society addresses the increasing prevalence of algorithmic management in both business and public administration. This subject is the focus of vigorous debate across sociology, law, political science, and economics. The articles featured in this issue not only analyse the historical foundations of this practice but also examine its manifestations in various contexts, extending beyond the gig economy to encompass other industries.
Development of the Industrial IoT Competences in the Areas of Organization, Process, and Interaction Based on the Learning Factory Concept
(2017) Gronau, Norbert; Ullrich, André; Teichmann, Malte
Lately, first implementation approaches of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies penetrate industrial value-adding processes. Within this, the competence requirements for employees are changing. Employees‘ organization, process, and interaction competences are of crucial importance in this new IoT environment, however, in students and vocational training not sufficiently considered yet. On the other hand, conventional learning factories evolve and transform to digital learning factories. Nevertheless, the integration of IoT technology and its usage for training in digital learning factories has been largely neglected thus far. Existing learning factories do not explicitly and properly consider IoT technology, which leads to deficiencies regarding an appropriate development of employees‘ Industrial IoT competences. The goal of this contribution is to point out a didactic concept that enables development and training of these new demanded competences by using an IoT laboratory. For this purpose, a design science approach is applied. The result of this contribution is a didactic concept for the development of Industrial IoT competences in an IoT laboratory.
Popularity cues in online media: Theoretical and methodological perspectives in political communication research
(2018) Porten-Cheé, Pablo; Jost, Pablo; Eilders, Christiane; Maurer, Marcus; Haßler, Jörg
Popularitätshinweise wie Likes und Shares signalisieren grundsätzlich positive Nutzerreaktionen. Im Kontext politischer Kommunikation sind sie in ihrer aggregierten Form entweder Indikator für Relevanzzuweisungen von oder die Zustimmung zu Online-Beiträgen. Popularitätshinweise können aber auch Faktoren sein, welche die Wahrnehmung, das Verhalten und die Einstellungen des Publikums beeinflussen. Dieser Beitrag thematisiert theoretische und methodologische Aspekte für beide Perspektiven. Im Rückgriff auf Konzepte wie wahrgenommene Relevanz, Einstellungskonsonanz und Persuasion, werden zuerst die Gründe für das Liken und Sharen diskutiert. Danach wird die Wirkung von Popularitätshinweisen hauptsächlich vor dem Hintergrund der Schweigespiraltheorie und heuristischer Informationsverarbeitung erörtert. Die Informationsverarbeitung wird als Schlüsselfaktor identifiziert um zu verstehen, wie das Liken und Sharen politischer Inhalte entsteht und welche politischen Effekte Popularitätshinweise auf Individualebene hervorrufen. Die methodologische Diskussion bezieht sich auf Fragen der Datenerhebung, sowie der Validität und der Durchführbarkeit von Studien zu Popularitätshinweisen.
Four Parameters for Measuring Democratic Deliberation: Theoretical and Methodological Challenges and How to Respond
(2018) Fleuß, Dannica; Helbig, Karoline; Schaal, Gary S.
Although measuring democratic deliberation is necessary for a valid measurement of the performance of democracies, it poses serious theoretical and methodological challenges. The most serious problem in the context of research on democratic performance is the need for a theoretical and methodological approach for “upscaling” the measurement of deliberation from the micro and meso level to the macro level. The systemic approach offers a useful framework for this purpose. Building on this framework, this article offers a modular approach consisting of four parameters for conceptualization, measurement, and aggregation which can be adjusted to make the measurement of democratic deliberation compatible with the various general measurement approaches adopted by different scholars.
Intentional Forgetting in Organizations: The Importance of Eliminating Retrieval Cues for Implementing New Routines
(2018) Kluge, Annette; Gronau, Norbert
To cope with the already large, and ever increasing, amount of information stored in organizational memory, “forgetting,” as an important human memory process, might be transferred to the organizational context. Especially in intentionally planned change processes (e.g., change management), forgetting is an important precondition to impede the recall of obsolete routines and adapt to new strategic objectives accompanied by new organizational routines. We first comprehensively review the literature on the need for organizational forgetting and particularly on accidental vs. intentional forgetting. We discuss the current state of the art of theory and empirical evidence on forgetting from cognitive psychology in order to infer mechanisms applicable to the organizational context. In this respect, we emphasize retrieval theories and the relevance of retrieval cues important for forgetting. Subsequently, we transfer the empirical evidence that the elimination of retrieval cues leads to faster forgetting to the forgetting of organizational routines, as routines are part of organizational memory. We then propose a classification of cues (context, sensory, business process-related cues) that are relevant in the forgetting of routines, and discuss a meta-cue called the “situational strength” cue, which is relevant if cues of an old and a new routine are present simultaneously. Based on the classification as business process-related cues (information, team, task, object cues), we propose mechanisms to accelerate forgetting by eliminating specific cues based on the empirical and theoretical state of the art. We conclude that in intentional organizational change processes, the elimination of cues to accelerate forgetting should be used in change management practices.
Jahresbericht 2017–2018
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2018) Emmer, Martin; Metzger, Axel; Schieferdecker, Ina; Weizenbaum Institute
Das Weizenbaum-Institut für die vernetzte Gesellschaft hat im September 2017 seine Arbeit aufgenommen. Damit gibt es erstmals ein durch den Bund finanziertes Forschungsinstitut, das interdisziplinär und grundlagenorientiert die Wechselwirkungen zwischen Digitalisierung und gesellschaftlichen Veränderungen erforscht und Gestaltungsoptionen für den digitalen Wandel entwickelt. Das erste Jahr der Förderung war geprägt von einer großen Dynamik, sowohl mit Blick auf den Aufbau des Instituts und erste wissenschaftliche Ergebnisse als auch mit Blick auf politische und gesellschaftliche Entwicklungen im Bereich der Digitalisierung.
Exploring Students’ Engagement Patterns in SPOC Forums and their Association with Course Performance
(2018) Liu, Zhi; Pinkwart, Niels; Liu, Hai; Liu, Sannyuya; Zhang, Guangtao
With the popularity of Small Private Online Courses (SPOCs) in higher education, a plentiful of discussion data has been increasingly generated in SPOC forums. With 752 undergraduates’ discussion posts, this study aims to investigate students’ engagement patterns within SPOC forums in terms of engagement behaviors and emotions. Firstly, we designed a behavioral code rule to identify posting- and content-level behaviors, and examined their association with course performance. Secondly, we built an emotion lexicon including positivity, negativity and confusion word sets, and adopted an emotion calculation approach to visualize emotional evolutionary trends and to examine emotional differences in registration types and course performance. The results show that, (1) the high-performing group was more active in the most engagement behaviors except for interactive postings. (2) The registered group delivered more threads and wrote richer vocabulary in post content. (3) Whether students were registered for a course or not did not have a significant effect on their emotional expressions, but the registered group exhibited more confusion in forum interactions at the end of the semester. (4) Positive emotion was prevailing for the entire population. Furthermore, compared with the low-achieving group, the high- performing group had higher emotion densities in three types of emotions.
“Digital citizenship” revisited: the impact of ICTs on citizens’ political communication beyond the Western state
(2018) Emmer, Martin; Kunst, Marlene
The role of ICTs in political participation has been a core topic in political communication research for about two decades. Numerous studies have tested whether the enthusiasm about the mobilizing impact of ICTs holds true. Most have been conducted in Western countries and, therefore, reflect a Western-centric understanding of politics and participation. Although these studies have provided insight into the potential of ICTs for established democracies, political and cultural contexts from developing world regions such as sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have thus far been neglected. However, given the rapid dissemination of ICTs (e.g., mobile phones) and their innovative application in everyday life in developing countries, regions like SSA should be of particular interest for research in this field. This article aims to highlight the shortcomings of Western research and to recommend adjustments in future efforts to investigate effects of ICTs, including developing world regions, in order to develop a more robust empirical grounding for theories of participation.
Digidem Digest - Issue 0 (January - March 2018)
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2018-04-09) Thiel, Thorsten; Weizenbaum Institute Research Group "Democracy and Digitalization"
The Digidem Digest literature radar was a monthly curated overview of the latest publications with relevance to the research group "Democracy and Digitalization" at the Weizenbaum Institute. Their research focused around the interrelation of digitalization and democratic self-determination, asking how liberal-democratic societies appropriate digital technologies and how democracy is changing within the digital configuration. The present articles and publications were chosen by observation of leading journals within the field - a list can be found at the end of each newsletter.
Digidem Digest - Issue 1 (March/April 2018)
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2018-04-18) Thiel, Thorsten; Weizenbaum Institute Research Group "Democracy and Digitalization"
The Digidem Digest literature radar was a monthly curated overview of the latest publications with relevance to the research group "Democracy and Digitalization" at the Weizenbaum Institute. Their research focused around the interrelation of digitalization and democratic self-determination, asking how liberal-democratic societies appropriate digital technologies and how democracy is changing within the digital configuration. The present articles and publications were chosen by observation of leading journals within the field - a list can be found at the end of each newsletter.
Digidem Digest - Issue 2 (May 2018)
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2018-05-28) Thiel, Thorsten; Weizenbaum Institute Research Group "Democracy and Digitalization"
The Digidem Digest literature radar was a monthly curated overview of the latest publications with relevance to the research group "Democracy and Digitalization" at the Weizenbaum Institute. Their research focused around the interrelation of digitalization and democratic self-determination, asking how liberal-democratic societies appropriate digital technologies and how democracy is changing within the digital configuration. The present articles and publications were chosen by observation of leading journals within the field - a list can be found at the end of each newsletter.
Digidem Digest - Issue 3 (June 2018)
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2018-06-29) Thiel, Thorsten; Weizenbaum Institute Research Group "Democracy and Digitalization"
The Digidem Digest literature radar was a monthly curated overview of the latest publications with relevance to the research group "Democracy and Digitalization" at the Weizenbaum Institute. Their research focused around the interrelation of digitalization and democratic self-determination, asking how liberal-democratic societies appropriate digital technologies and how democracy is changing within the digital configuration. The present articles and publications were chosen by observation of leading journals within the field - a list can be found at the end of each newsletter.
Digidem Digest - Issue 4 (July 2018)
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2018-07-25) Thiel, Thorsten; Weizenbaum Institute Research Group "Democracy and Digitalization"
The Digidem Digest literature radar was a monthly curated overview of the latest publications with relevance to the research group "Democracy and Digitalization" at the Weizenbaum Institute. Their research focused around the interrelation of digitalization and democratic self-determination, asking how liberal-democratic societies appropriate digital technologies and how democracy is changing within the digital configuration. The present articles and publications were chosen by observation of leading journals within the field - a list can be found at the end of each newsletter.
Digidem Digest - Issue 5 (August 2018)
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2018-09-11) Thiel, Thorsten; Weizenbaum Institute Research Group "Democracy and Digitalization"
The Digidem Digest literature radar was a monthly curated overview of the latest publications with relevance to the research group "Democracy and Digitalization" at the Weizenbaum Institute. Their research focused around the interrelation of digitalization and democratic self-determination, asking how liberal-democratic societies appropriate digital technologies and how democracy is changing within the digital configuration. The present articles and publications were chosen by observation of leading journals within the field - a list can be found at the end of each newsletter.
Digidem Digest - Issue 6 (September 2018)
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2018-10-01) Thiel, Thorsten; Weizenbaum Institute Research Group "Democracy and Digitalization"
The Digidem Digest literature radar was a monthly curated overview of the latest publications with relevance to the research group "Democracy and Digitalization" at the Weizenbaum Institute. Their research focused around the interrelation of digitalization and democratic self-determination, asking how liberal-democratic societies appropriate digital technologies and how democracy is changing within the digital configuration. The present articles and publications were chosen by observation of leading journals within the field - a list can be found at the end of each newsletter.
Digidem Digest - Issue 7 (October 2018)
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2018-10-29) Thiel, Thorsten; Weizenbaum Institute Research Group "Democracy and Digitalization"
The Digidem Digest literature radar was a monthly curated overview of the latest publications with relevance to the research group "Democracy and Digitalization" at the Weizenbaum Institute. Their research focused around the interrelation of digitalization and democratic self-determination, asking how liberal-democratic societies appropriate digital technologies and how democracy is changing within the digital configuration. The present articles and publications were chosen by observation of leading journals within the field - a list can be found at the end of each newsletter.
Digidem Digest - Issue 8 (November 2018)
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2018-12-05) Thiel, Thorsten; Weizenbaum Institute Research Group "Democracy and Digitalization"
The Digidem Digest literature radar was a monthly curated overview of the latest publications with relevance to the research group "Democracy and Digitalization" at the Weizenbaum Institute. Their research focused around the interrelation of digitalization and democratic self-determination, asking how liberal-democratic societies appropriate digital technologies and how democracy is changing within the digital configuration. The present articles and publications were chosen by observation of leading journals within the field - a list can be found at the end of each newsletter.
How autonomous are so-called autonomous weapon systems – a conceptual critique
(2018-12-13) Kreowski, Hans-Jörg; Butollo, Florian; Eyert, Florian; Irgmaier, Florian; Rehak, Rainer
For more than ten years, unmanned weapon systems and especially killer drones have been in use. They operate semi-autonomously and especially the use of weapons is not yet decided independently by the systems. But the development of fully autonomous weapon systems is already in progress. This is highly alarming and dangerous, since this does not only cause a gigantic arms race and an increased risk of war, but also brings with it considerable technical and, connected to them, ethical problems. The term “autonomy“, for instance, is misleading in the context of weapon systems, as these are programmed systems that decide on life and death on the basis of their programs.
The Impacts of Digital Transformation on Regional Labour Markets in Germany: Substitution Potentials of Occupational Tasks
(Weizenbaum Institute, 2019) Kropp, Per; Dengler, Katharina
The digital transformation may have large impact on the labour market. In order to determine the extent to which occupational tasks are currently replaceable by computers or computer-controlled machines, Dengler and Matthes (2015b, 2018b, 2018a) calculated substitution potentials of occupations. In this paper, we investigate the impact of digital transformation on different regions in Germany by analysing substitution potentials of occupational tasks on two different regional levels: administrative districts and regional labour markets. On the level of districts, it becomes clear that urban service centres and some rural areas have a much lower share of employees working in a highly substitutable occupation compared with manufacturing regions. In many cases, low and high values cancel each other out within regional labour markets. Nevertheless, the values still range from 15 to 38 percent. In high value regions, close monitoring of future labour market developments and (further) education appear to be of particular importance to meet the challenges of the digital transformation.