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- IBM - International Business Management (39) (remove)
Many articles claim that the successful management of organizational change is from utmost importance to ensure the survival and prosperity of the company in the fast moving and ever-changing business environment. There are various techniques, models and theories that were created to help companies to cope with organizational change.
This thesis aims to conduct secondary research to answer the following research questions:
1. Are change management models still relevant in the 21st century concerning their applicability and expected outcome?
2. How can the Change Management models be compared?
3. What role does leadership play in organizational change management?
Therefore, the following eight change management models are considered:
• Lewin’s Change Model
• ADKAR Model
• Kotter’s 8-Step Model
• Kübler-Ross Change Curve
• McKinsey’s 7s Model
• Nudge Theory
• Bridges Transition Model
• The Satir change management model
It can be concluded that the eight change management models are still relevant in the 21st century but the implementation must be well planned and precisely organized and implemented in a faster pace than in the past. The models can be divided into two categories - organizational and individual change management theories. Through an analysis of the findings it can be stated that good leadership of the ongoing organizational change is indispensable. There is no doubt in the fact that change management needs to be well managed but in order to be well comprehended by the employees and sustained, effective leadership is necessary. It can be summarized that effective leadership of organizational
3
change needs to combine the intellectual, spiritual, emotional and behavioral dimension with a strong focus on vision, values, corporate culture, strategy, empowerment of the employees, motivation as well as inspiration.
This paper explores the different techniques used by search engine optimizers to increase a website ́s ranking, thus visibility. The author focuses on modern methods from the areas of On-Page and Off-Page SEO. Findings, gathered through a literature review, conclude that SEO has become a more complex process, as search engines algorithm have advanced; transforming from a pure technical optimization to a more user-oriented optimization. Furthermore, the paper identifies several areas that a webmaster can use to collect data to monitor a website ́s performance. In addition, insights into what the data can have for a meaning, are given. The paper finales with a brief overview of various ways to monetize a website.
The rapid pace of change is posing a series of challenges both in industrialized and in emerging economies. Throughout history, one important measure to deal with change was to further develop technology, to find the right solution, to improve the current standard, in one word: to innovate. Over the past decades, different types of innovation have emerged. One fairly recent form is frugal innovation. The principle of frugal innovation is to build a strategic fit between affordability, quality and sustainability with the aim to create a greater value for customers while using fewer resources as capital, time or material. In view of contemporary developments like globalization, climate change, or increasing poverty which create issues across countries, industries and social classes, frugal innovation can offer solutions. Existing literature mainly reports about frugal innovation as an option to serve consumers from low income markets in developing countries. However, the concept might be already or might become in future equally crucial for industrialized economies. The purpose of this research is to investigate the future development of frugal innovation in industrialized economies. A critical question in this paper is to identify how much innovation concepts in industrialized economies differ from innovation concepts in emerging countries and in the following, to assess to what extend the frugal innovation concept would imply a reorientation for industrialized economies. The results indicate that innovators in industrialized economies still follow the typical “higher, faster, further strategy” and that different mind-sets might be necessary to introduce a frugal innovation approach. Moreover, the results show that frugal innovation offers a unique combination of principles that respond to a very high degree to present consumer, market or eco-political trends. A limitation of this paper is that in industrialized countries, hitherto there exist very few examples of frugal innovation concepts. Subsequently, the theoretical and empirical literature, which can be reviewed, is limited.
Open-plan office design is deemed to be a beneficial tool for facilitating communication and collaboration. However, its alleged advantages are not proven by the chosen contemporary research presented in this thesis. By means of comparative analysis of secondary data, the thesis provides evidence for detrimental influence of open-plan office design to the workforce. Consequently, the well-being model proposed by Chartered Institute of Personnel Development is employed, thus enabling placing the influence of open-plan design within well-being domains and determining that this workspace arrangement affects employee well-being detrimentally. Having established the interconnectedness of the subjects, the thesis concludes by providing suggestions for management and expressing the need for further research.
Online commerce is growing rapidly. With the wide accessibility of the internet, e-commerce is becoming the most important ways or medium for doing business globally. The growth of e-commerce business provides companies a great opportunity to invest online so as to position their brand.
This thesis observes the elements of online brand positioning. Furthermore, it analyses whether these elements can be applied to an online business. For this Zalando the online fashion retailer, will be taken as an example. It starts with a literature review on e-commerce definition, important factors for e-commerce business, advantages of e-commerce business, brand positioning, importance of brand positioning and online brand positioning elements. The chosen brand positioning elements are then applied to analyse the online brand positioning of Zalando. Furthermore, it observes the influence of brand positioning elements on their competitive advantages.
The brand positioning elements are benefits and feature, price and value statements, competitive advantages, information on product and services, processes, partnering and relationship, leadership claims and corporate power, corporate social responsibility and credibility. All these brand positioning elements are addressed by Zalando and these elements have played an important role for the positioning of Zalando`s brand.
This paper analyzes the terms User Experience (UX) and Expatriate Experience (XX), and by conducting empirical research, explores the UX of an intercultural coaching app, its possible influence on XX and offers suggestions for further development. This research is not only relevant to the development of the digital coaching tool, The RockMeApp but also gives ideas for further research. By analyzing the findings of the literature review and the empirical research conducted, namely eleven interviews with clients of the RockMeApp, several conclusions were made. Firstly, both UX and XX can be regarded as highly subjective and dynamic topics that are difficult to define. Secondly, new insights on XX from the expat’s perspective are given as well as a practical example of UX research. While the RockMeApp is perceived to be very good in terms of utility and usability, recommendations have been made on how to enhance its UX, mainly regarding its structure, aesthetics and the inclusion of emotions and explanations.
Digitalization is one of the major challenges for companies today. Well-established “traditional” companies have to adapt and develop new business models to stay competitive. Digitalization, connected services and alternative drive technologies are identified as key trends in the automotive industry. New competitors from different industry segments, e.g. IT industry, enter the automotive industry. Therefore, the automotive industry faces new challenges due to digitalization. These challenges are identified in the scope of this thesis. One major is a transformation of the classic sales process of a vehicle. Mercedes-Benz Special Trucks developed a new certified partner program. Bodybuilders, who are working with the model series Econic, can apply for the partner status.
Furthermore, Mercedes-Benz Special Trucks will launch a product information platform. Bodybuilders have the opportunity to market themselves and their products on the platform. Therefore, this thesis aims to identify the theoretical factors of the success of a digital platform and to transfer these factors to the automotive industry. Qualitative research methods were conducted to examine the practical relevance of these factors. By analyzing already existing platforms in the automotive industry, it turned out that many industry-specific success factors are already implemented. Thereby a series of recommendations for actions, regarding the design and optimization of the EconicPartner Portal, were derived.
Due to changes in the labour market, the share of atypical employment in Germany has risen substantially. This has implications on the old-age provision of the persons concerned, since the German pension framework has been primarily developed for persons under standard employment. The analysis shows that the statutory pension insurance discriminates against the self employed, since their entry into the system is only provided in an atypical manner. Marginally and part time employed often fail to accumulate entitlements and thus their risk of old-age poverty is high. Moreover, the quantitative assessment of the statutory pension framework unveils that independent retirement planning is in conflict with the statutory basic income provision as it undermines individual efforts. In the light of a changing work environment and the rise of the digital economy, future trends are posing challenge on the German system. Those require reforms, in order to ensure a higher accessibility of more flexible employment forms into the statutory pension insurance as well as other types of state-subsidised retirement plans.
The use of social media for marketing purposes has already begun replacing virtually all traditional marketing practices in order to cater to a generation of digital natives and young festival goers – a trend that can be especially observed in the music industry today. For all that, not all marketers of music festivals are fully informed about the necessity of a well-developed and multifaceted social media strategy. The goal of this study was to explore the topic of strategic social media in music festival organizations and to derive a model upon which music festival organizations can establish and form their social media strategy more effectively. For this purpose, a literature review was conducted and a combined social media model for assessing social media strategies of music festival organizations was proposed. Six prevailing themes pertaining to social media strategy that were identified constitute the model: 1. Channel selection and evaluation, 2. Audience analysis, 3. Communication style, 4. Social media content, 5. Social monitoring and risk management, and 6. Roles and responsibilities. In the second part of this study, a qualitative research design employing interviews and a case study was used in order to explore strategic social media use in leading festivals in Serbia, Croatia and North Macedonia. The findings of this study reveal about the impact of specific social media platforms, the use of analytics tools for gathering audience insights, the two-way interactive communication with the fans, the efficiency of content resulting from co-creation, the role and importance of PR in social media, as well as the position of social media in the organization and the staffing approach for social media marketing.
Digital transformation and globalization have become so prominent in today's life, that companies have to innovate in order to stay on the markets continuously. Thousands of new digital solutions are developed and launched daily, making it hard for the big slow corporation to catch up. In order to gain a competitive advantage, many corporates opened up to external sources of innovation such as suppliers, consumers, and startups.
This research focuses on showing how corporates and startups can mutually benefit from collaboration and particularly in the DACH region of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. To highlight the importance of the strategic partnership, the research also includes a short analysis of the main cultural differences between startups and corporates, an economic overview of the region and the characteristics of a collaboration between startups and corporates.
To investigate the topic, qualitative research based on published secondary data has been carried out.
The automotive industry is undergoing substantial structural changes. New forms of powertrains and players are emerging. Manufacturers, due to internal as well as external drivers, are building their cars on platforms. By making use of modular design approaches, they hope to satisfy customer needs best and stay competitive. When designing global platforms, local variations are to be avoided. The presented paper offers an approach to rank components of an electric vehicle according to their likeliness of a local design adaption. To verify the results of the value chain- based analysis, the variant indicator analysis, interviews were carried out. The analysis shows that the battery is most likely subject to design changes. Also, variant drivers in the value chain bear the highest potential for local redesigns.
Rapid changes and advancement in technology are characterized in today’s economy, which has especially changed the nature of customer service. Customers are expecting more convenience and faster service while companies cope with this demand by increasingly utilizing automation processes, such as chatbots or social bots. While chatbots and social bots have great potential to be utilized in customer service, there has been little research that describes the possible applications, customer expectations and key challenges in their implementation. This study aimed to narrow this research gap by conducting a case study at the Daimler AG in Germany. Six expert interviews were conducted at the Daimler AG and a customer survey with 46 respondents was executed to explore the applications of social bots and chatbots as well as key challenges in the implementation of chatbots. Potential applications of social bots and two utilization types of chatbots were identified. In addition, a total of 14 key challenges were explored. These challenges can be combated with 19 optimization proposals, which help ensure a successful implementation of chatbots in customer service. This thesis ends with four recommendations that can be used by future managers of bot projects. These are: Transfer information about bots to all involved parties, enhance the conversational aspect, optimize the content development and expand the bot’s abilities.
The objective of this thesis is it to find out which factors are influencing the interpersonal
communication between two leaders in job sharing. With the help of a literature review,
a communication model including three relevant factors for the area of application could
be developed. Those factors are the relationship between the partners, the choice of an
adequate communication medium and contextual factors. It could be shown that those
factors have an influence on the communication frequency and mode. Recommendations
what needs to be considered regarding each factor to ensure an effective communication
are given.
This thesis is assigned by Carestream Dental in order to implement a launch plan of the Showpad (A Sales Enablement Platform) application in the EMEA region for the sales and marketing teams. To ensure successful implementation, a thorough analysis was conducted in order to review and established the necessity of the Showpad application. It was imperative to build an implementation plan before the launch. The application was structured and tested among the sales and marketing team to examine the benefits of the application before making any decisions about the Launch. The purpose of this thesis was:
To understand the full capabilities of the platform for sales and marketing.
To define and build a structure that fits the EMEA sales needs.
To this effect, build an implementation plan for a successful launch of the platform. Studying whether the application would add value to the sales and marketing team processes. This thesis was executed as quantitative research collecting data through primary research. A survey was conducted to find out whether the marketing and sales team found the platform useful for them and how they experienced the built-in structure and layout. The purpose of Showpad was to enable our sales and marketing work more efficiently when it comes to having materials for their working needs and the platform was intended to replace previous system, the decision to launch was based on their opinions and experiences. A workshop was organized with the sales and marketing representative as part of implementation plan to discuss internal and external processes of usage. The first step was to roll-out for internal marketing and sales and the second step to launch for external dealers. The overall look and feel of the platform was created in alignment with the Carestream Dental branding guidelines. The structure of the platform was built based on the sales needs and information collected during the workshop. The structure was clear, and content found easy to access in comparison to the platform already in place like Sharepoint. The platform improved the alignment and communication between the marketing and sales team to a good extent.
Sales promotional tools are of significant importance in attracting potential customers and retaining current customers. We can already have access to many studies in examining and comparing the causes and effects that different sales promotional strategies could bring to various aspects, such as, sales, brand name and brand loyalty. Several researches have also explained the irrational buying decisions and behaviors consumers have when they are given framed promotional message. Researches have shown that, in many cases, consumers tend to go for a free offer (bonus pack) instead of a discount offer although the economic value is equal. It is also shown by previous studies from students of Hochschule Furtwangen University have concluded that in Germany, for non-durable goods, consumer’s willingness to pay is higher with BOGOF offer then that of discount’s. They have also conclude that the effects that promotional tools could bring are long term by designing the survey with situation that the promotion has expired. It is known that BOGOF is preferred over discount, but how good is BOGOF compared to when there is no promotion given? And are there any changes in consumer’s perception towards product’s quality with different promotion applied? This study will be focusing on two promotional strategies: discount and BOGOF in the non-durable goods industry in Europe and in China. There will be a Baseline Test and an A/B survey. A total of 1061 participants were randomly selected to participate in an online survey. The questions of the Baseline Test are under a situation with no promotion, while A survey’s questions are under a situation of ended discount and B surveys are under a finished BOGOF offer. The survey results indicated that, both in Europe and China, the willingness to pay for non-durable products in BOGOF offer is higher than that of the discounts, while the baselines are close with the result of discounts. This study has the potential to contribute to academics and marketers in the non-durable goods industry as it consolidates previous findings and provides insights of the relationship between baseline and promotional tools.
Programmatic Advertising has been proven to cause privacy concerns amongst its recipients. Various research points out the fact that heavy use of data for personalized advertisements can have a disturbing and scaring effect on the users. This thesis takes a closer look on the privacy concerns of users and whether these concerns are connected to a lack of awareness about the topic Programmatic Advertising.
Since there is a big research gap about this topic, it was essential to collect primary data. For this matter, a combination of qualitative and quantitative data-gathering has been utilized.
The outcome of this research has helped to come up with managerial implications that provide advertisers with a deeper understanding about the users’ privacy concerns and whether these are linked to a lack of awareness and knowledge about Programmatic Advertising.
With the constant changes in the workplace environment, Human Resources practitioners and organizations are facing work environment shifts never experienced before. The future workplace consists of four generations working simultaneously (Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials and Generation Z) and there is a significant increase in the presence of technology, that advances and increases its potential exponentially, causing conceptual changes on what work is and what will be required to optimally operate in such environment. Therefore, the topic of generational differences is in the center of companies and researches’ attention. The main purpose of this paper is to propose knowledge sharing practices that can optimize the inclusion process of the multigenerational workforce. To achieve this purpose, secondary empirical data on generational differences, especially focused on work attitudes, ethics, and values were used. In addition, an in-depth interview with a Human Resources practitioner was conducted. The outcome was the proposal of five knowledge sharing practices, that this paper believes to promote long-term optimal results in multigenerational inclusion.
Retail banking provides financial services for individuals and families, and one overlooked aspect has been on international students in Germany. This study aims to discover and rank what are important banking factors for international students at HFU. Building on existing work from other geographical areas, it asks: What are the key factors that international students at HFU consider when choosing a bank?
Based on reviews of past literature, an online survey was distributed to potential respondents via email and social media channels. Analysis of the responses demonstrated that the most important factor is in the following order: (Most important) Security -> Services -> Financial Factors -> Convenience -> Reputation (Least important).
On this basis, it is recommended that banks consider taking into account the top important determinants (such as availability of online banking, cyber security, reliability, financial stability and responsiveness) and the least important determinants (word of mouth recommendation, popularity of the bank, tangibles, bank branches and parking facilities) when tailoring their strategies.
Over the decades, several reasons like globalization, pressure from large counterparts (SMEs suppliers and customers), outstanding performances and advantages of competitors have driven SMEs to adopt standardized and integrated Enterprise resources planning (ERP) systems. However, implementing an ERP system is a very complex and risky project mainly for SMEs which can lead to ERP implementation ineffectiveness. There are many causes of ERP ineffectiveness, but important one mainly for SMEs is a lacking connection to organizational behavior (including structure and culture) during the ERP implementation, which may lead to misfits between existing organization behavior (structure and culture) and ERP systems because of two separate characters. The integration and standardization nature of ERP systems may not be compatible with all aspects of existing organizational behavior, and it is likely that some aspects or dimensions in organizational behavior influence the ERP implementation success or failure. Based on the theory of organizational structure and culture and the prior literature, this study examines which traditional organizational structure indicators (centralization and formalization), and on the other hand, culture indicators (team orientation and change orientation) affect the implementation of an ERP system. The finding ensures that a high degree of centralization and formalization dimensions of organizational structure has a positive, significant influence on ERP implementation effectiveness. Likewise, there is a positive and significant relationship between team orientation and change orientation of organizational culture with ERP project success. By analysing two firms of Estonia and Germany, this study declares that SMEs have a moderate attention towards their ERP implementation projects which shows that it is not always a problem of ERP implementation failure and proves that SMEs should be focusing not only on technical aspects of ERP system but on organizational aspects particularly on structure and culture as well that may increase the success chance of ERP implementation.
Due to the recent political and economic events of the so called U.S.-China Trade War, the media broadcasted extensively about both parties placing tariffs on each other. This situation impacts heavily on global value chains and brings an increasing focus on GVCs in terms of an economic upgrading in China. A re-examination of the bilateral trade relationships of China and its value added on export products becomes an interesting topic which deserves to be analyzed. In order to understand how GVCs function in international trade and their impact on public and private sectors, an overview of GVCs is presented. Using one of the successful examples of GVCs, this paper focuses on China’s high-tech industry and aims to evaluate its role in GVCs. By reviewing the transformation and development of high-tech industry in China, this paper provides insights into the change of industrial structure and current challenges during the transitional phase. By analyzing statistical data from Input-Output Table for China’s most advanced sectors – computer, electronic and optical products – this paper found out that China’s role of GVCs has changed overtime. More precisely, there is a trend of moving towards knowledge- and service-intensive sectors.