Refine
Year of publication
- 2019 (35) (remove)
Document type
- Bachelor Thesis (35)
Has full text
- No (35) (remove)
Is part of the Bibliography
- No (35)
Keywords
- Leadership (3)
- Automotive industry (2)
- Banking (2)
- China (2)
- Communication (2)
- Germany (2)
- Social media (2)
- Workplace (2)
- Ad-hoc announcements (1)
- Artificial intelligence (1)
Course of studies
- IBM - International Business Management (35) (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.