Search results

Trade shows have played a prominent role in the corporate communication mix for many years. Enterprises use these multifunctional communication platforms to pursue a wide variety of objectives. The purpose of this paper is to, on the one hand, to examine the extent to which trade shows are suitable as an instrument of live communication to meet specific communication objectives during the customer relationship cycle. On the other hand, it examines the way in which these objectives interrelate with each other.

Telephone surveys of around 400 marketing decision‐makers have been conducted every year since 2004. For analysing the data, bi‐variate longitudinal comparisons with t‐tests on significance were used as well as a correlation analysis with Spearman's Rho.

The results indicate that trade shows are suitable primarily as an instrument to nurture confidence in brands and to sustain customer loyalty, but less as an instrument to increase awareness levels. To improve the effectiveness of trade shows, complementary objectives should be targeted simultaneously.

The results can help marketing managers and exhibitors to combine all customer channels efficiently and fine‐tune the allocation of marketing resources in order to optimise “customer transfer” through every phase in the customer relationship cycle.

Though trade shows are widely acknowledged to be a valid multifunctional communication platform to pursue a wide variety of objectives, this paper is the first one to theoretically and practically address and analyse possible relationships which might occur between multiple communication objectives.

This chapter outlines opportunities for designing place-based or localized social media services and technologies for tourist settings. Following an exploration of how ephemeral, collaborative social networks emerge, consideration is given to understanding tourist places in terms of networking and socialization. In the field of information technology design, there are many examples of experimental mobile, location-based services that provide informational overplays for tourism sites and generally seem to merely replicate the functions of guidebooks or online information services. However, viewing the performance of tourism through a lens that emphasizes place-making as a social practice could inspire the innovation and design of new mobile social technologies to enrich tourist places and interactions.

The paper reports on a research project exploring the change in the organizational context of communicators and communication units in higher education and research institutions (HERIs), the importance of informal processes within their daily work and the great diversity of expectations communicators have to tackle.

Based on a literature review, a mixed-methods study combining expert interviews with 54 German HERI heads of communication units, an online-survey and a document analysis of organizational characteristics was conducted. Findings were validated in four focus groups.

The study illuminates the impact of organizational and operational structures of HERIs on communicators and their boundary spanning activities. Due to varying expectations of stakeholders, communicators constantly have to switch roles. Members of HERIs' executive boards affect status and working conditions for communicators in the organization.

Interviews with other HERI actors, especially members of the executive board, are proposed to get more thorough insights into the organizational context of HERIs and the mutual expectations of different internal stakeholders.

Insights from the project may help HERI actors to reflect their organizational context and to identify potentially contentious structures or processes.

Communicating science sometimes clashes with complex organizational and operational structures. Despite the “organizational turn” in HERI research, there is a lack of data on the relation between communicators, their communication units and the larger organizational context. The exploratory study addresses this gap.

This paper offers design cybernetics as a theoretical common ground to bridge diverging approaches to design as they frequently occur in collaborative design projects. Focusing on the education of architects and structural engineers in China, the paper examines how compatible approaches to design can be established in both disciplines.

The paper analyses relevant literature as well as observations from Chinese practice and academia. Design cybernetics is introduced and examined as a basis for establishing shared narratives to support cross-disciplinary collaborations involving architects and structural engineers.

Design cybernetics offers a body of vocabulary and a rich resource of strategies to address applied designing across design-oriented disciplines such as architecture and science-based disciplines such as structural engineering. The meta perspective of design cybernetics also provides a basis for the implementation of pedagogy supporting cross-disciplinary collaboration in applied design.

The scope of the paper is limited to the examination of the theoretical framing as well as the implementation of pedagogy in the cultural and geographical context of China.

The paper outlines several design cybernetic strategies for pedagogy in support of cross-disciplinary collaborative design processes and illustrates their implementation in applied design education.

Addressing a significant and persistent gap between the two disciplines of architecture and structural engineering in the context of Chinese building practice, this paper examines the particularities of this context and presents an educational approach to support cross-disciplinary collaboration that has value in and beyond the context of China.

The purpose of this paper is to offer an autonomous motivation perspective to explore the relationship between perceived overqualification and adaptive work behavior and examine job autonomy as a factor that may moderate the association.

The hypotheses were tested in two culturally, demographically, and functionally diverse samples: sample 1 was based on North American community college employees (n=215); sample 2 was based on full-time workers, employed in a Chinese state-owned enterprise specializing in shipping (n=148).

In study 1, perceived overqualification was negatively related to self-rated adaptive behavior. A follow-up study 2 extended these findings by demonstrating that perceived overqualification was negatively related to supervisor-rated adaptive work behavior when job autonomy was low, rather than high.

The results of this research offer an autonomous motivation perspective to explain why perceived overqualification relates to adaptive behavior and suggests a job design approach to encourage adaptive behaviors of people who feel overqualified – a sizable segment of the current workforce.

This is one of the first studies to explore adaptive behavior of workers who feel overqualified – an outcome that has not been examined in this domain. The findings further point out what can be done to encourage adaptive behaviors among overqualified employees.

Social media empower individuals to voice their opinions about issues that they perceive to be unacceptable. When many others add their opinions and large quantities of messages containing negative word-of-mouth suddenly spread online, an online firestorm occurs. By extending the situational theory of problem solving (Kim and Grunig, 2011) into the domain of online communication, this study aims to identify the drivers for participating in online firestorms.

With reference to a fictitious online firestorm trigger (i.e. perceived moral misconduct) posted on Facebook, a qualitative pre-study and quantitative online survey were conducted. Based on the responses of 410 participants, an ordinary least squares regression was modeled to examine the factors of participating in the online firestorm. Later, structural equation modeling was applied to test the model and gauge its fit with the data.

Participants' involvement recognition, perception of being collective actors and approval of slacktivism behaviors positively predicted their participation in the online firestorm, whereas non-anonymity hampered it.

The study's findings not only contribute to the current understandings of online firestorms but are also valuable for developing theory and forms of professional crisis management. Moreover, they offer insights into the factors of online communication environments that encourage users to voice their opinions.

This paper aims to deal with the design optimization of a synchronous reluctance machine to be used in an X-ray tube, where the goal is to maximize the torque while keeping low the amount of material used, by means of gradient-based free-form shape optimization.

The presented approach is based on the mathematical concept of shape derivatives and allows to obtain new motor designs without the need to introduce a geometric parametrization. This paper presents an extension of a standard gradient-based free-form shape optimization algorithm to the case of multiple objective functions by determining updates, which represent a descent of all involved criteria. Moreover, this paper illustrates a way to obtain an approximate Pareto front.

The presented method allows to obtain optimal designs of arbitrary, non-parametric shape with very low computational cost. This paper validates the results by comparing them to a parametric geometry optimization in JMAG by means of a stochastic optimization algorithm. While the obtained designs are of similar shape, the computational time used by the gradient-based algorithm is in the order of minutes, compared to several hours taken by the stochastic optimization algorithm.

This paper applies the presented gradient-based multi-objective optimization algorithm in the context of free-form shape optimization using the mathematical concept of shape derivatives. The authors obtain a set of Pareto-optimal designs, each of which is a shape that is not represented by a fixed set of parameters. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this approach to multi-objective free-form shape optimization is novel in the context of electric machines.

Discussing cybernetics as an enacted practice within specific contexts, this paper aims to identify key similarities and differences of two cybernetically informed approaches to tertiary education in the distinct contexts of China and South Africa.

Making explicit and comparing two cybernetically informed educational approaches, the authors identify shared aspects as well as differences arising from their practice in social contexts that have differing norms and values.

The authors find that conversational settings for learning, immediacy of feedback, the key role of the teacher and assessment strategies that are matched to cybernetic learning and teaching strategies all constitute shared vital aspects of cybernetically informed teaching that are valid across two distinct educational contexts. Enacting these key aspects however requires careful adaptation to local contexts.

Primarily qualitative in nature, this study is limited to the examination of two bodies of work conducted independently of each other in differing contexts.

Arising from the long-term examination of applied educational practice, findings discussed in the paper are intended to inform similar practice in other contexts. The authors however emphasise that enacted ethical practice requires careful adapting of learning and teaching strategies to local conditions.

Based on the authors’ findings, the authors demonstrate the value of cybernetically informed tertiary education that emphasises ethical settings for learning on the basis of mutuality, equality and social inclusion.

Based on two bodies of work that consolidated practice-based insights independently of each other, this paper presents insights on cybernetically informed education that, shown to work well in two very different contexts, may offer a broader applicability.

Renegotiations not only promise an economically relevant improvement of the original negotiation outcome for the communicator of the demand but also imply a potential threat to the business relationship. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of renegotiations in detail and to provide practical implications for the optimal usage of renegotiations by analyzing potential renegotiation strategies.

Structural equation modelling was used to analyze the data of 255 negotiation experts collected via a standardized online questionnaire.

Social psychological outcome of renegotiations has the most relevant impact on relationship continuity (RC). The impact of economic outcomes is wholly mediated by the social psychological outcome. Regarding the use of different renegotiation strategies, other-oriented strategies and direct communication are most successful, whereas self-oriented strategies correlate negatively with all results.

The study’s sample is drawn from Germany, which requires careful consideration of the results’ generalizability.

When demanding renegotiation, practitioners should apply strategies characterized by other-orientation and direct communication to increase the probability of RC. For the sake of the business relationship, self-oriented strategies should be avoided.

This paper presents the first detailed analysis of the impact of renegotiations on business relationships and investigates the effects of different renegotiation strategies on renegotiation outcomes and RC; hence, it is of great value for practical usage and may serve as a stepping stone for further research.

The purpose of this paper is to apply the concept of framing in the field of risk governance and risk management research.

A five-constituent approach to framing – cognitive, strategic, action, emotional and institutional framing – is applied to contrastively analyze the multifaceted character of the two concepts of risk governance and risk management.

This paper analyzes the multifaceted utilization of risk governance framing and the conscious demarcation between risk governance and risk management. Risk governance framing strengthens the proactive control of strategic risks with regard to business model adaptation to changing risk landscapes. The verbal imagery of risk governance already sets the agenda for the sustainability-oriented as well as value-oriented steering of the risks of a business model. Following the analysis of the different framing areas, propositions are presented.

Although framing is applied in various academic disciplines, there is limited research relating to corporate risks. While risk governance provides companies with a concept to ensure the sustainability of their business models in the complex risk landscape, the related framing brings the appropriate interpretation and the deliberate tone into focus.