Stakeholders (re-)gain digital sovereignty allowing various stakeholders to adapt Internet-of-Things systems according to their privacy needs, either on the organizational or individual level. Both are required, in order to preserve intellectual property, and handle control in a transparent way. The project thereby unlocks additional adoption potential for IoT-based products and services, affecting production, healthcare, smart home, and logistics. The basic enabler is digital twin modeling and execution. It uses a message-passing protocol for tracing privacy data, their collection, processing, distribution, and control. Hence, the approach significantly impacts digital literacy of IoT users and developers, while reducing development effort through its design-integrated engineering nature.

The challenges faced by organisations since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic are forcing them to rethink their strategy processes to cope with the resulting repercussions. Initial research shows that the crisis changes companies’ strategic practices in relation to their key stakeholders, and that openness can contribute better outcomes. In this sense, Open Strategy, in which organisations are transparent towards stakeholders including them in strategic activities, is of relevance in strategic practices in crises and beyond. In this study, conducted as a collaboration between the JKU’s Departments of International and Strategic Management and Fronius – the Austrian industry leader in the field of welding – we aim to understand how the COVID-19 crisis has affected the organisation’s strategic practices. We specifically aim to analyse how Open Strategy can contribute to managing the repercussions of the crisis and evaluate long-term implications. In terms of methods, we aim to investigate the role of Open Strategy by conducting a qualitative research including 30 interviews with Fronius and their main stakeholders. The study addresses a practical challenge for the company, by addressing Fronius’ need for more openness in strategic activities, not only because of the pandemic, but also due to ongoing changes in the industry. The results have direct implications for Fronius, and are wide reaching at the same time, by providing implications for other businesses with similar challenges. Moreover, as research on implications of Open Strategy and crises is limited, we contribute to a better understanding of the role of Open Strategy in strategic activities in times of crises.

The spread of the unknown Coronavirus potentially puts actual accounting procedures into question. Especially the banking sector faces an unprecedented challenge in the accounting for expected credit lasses (ECL) for financial instruments in accordance with IFRS 9. The use of forward-looking information in determining the value of financial instruments is crucial in IFRS 9. Facing a high degree of uncerta nty [J"'e last montns as well as the variety of relief measures taken by European govemmems cred't institutions are challenged in using intensified application of judgement in the current accounting context.

The research project's main aim is to evaluate the disclosure quality from an investor's perspective in financial reports of European credit institutions. As Covid-19 is expected to increase ECL in the financial reports due to the pandemic the research focus lies on the required detailed disclosures regarding the assumptions taken and judgements made. Consequently the question is whether disclosure quality and quantity is higher in the first "Post-Covid19-outbreak" financial statements.

In the past decades, the retail industry and its environment have faced continuous changes like the increased importance of online retailing as well as the changed consumer demand for greater convenience. Related, wide-ranging economic and demographic changes have resulted in market-specific pressures leading to seismic strategic shifts across the industry (LeDoux & Vojnovic, 2013; Wrigley et al., 2019). The grocery retail sector, for example, has seen forays into online ordering and delivery, extensive store format innovation and changing store network provision affecting the balance between metropolitan centres and rural areas 2019). This restructuring has created geographical regions with inadequate food supply – commonly referred to as ‘food deserts’ (Adams et al., 2010; Bitler & Haider, 2011; Dennis et al., 2007). In order to solve the problem of supply gaps, retailer introduce a new form of retail outlets, which can be managed with a minimum amount of personnel resources.

The aim of this project is to explore the effect of unmanned automated retail outlets on the vitality of rural areas. Therefore, the authors propose an exploratory research design with interviews aiming to investigate stakeholders from two locations such as local businesses, local residents, administration, association, etc. on the one hand and a web-based and on-site administered surveys with disadvantaged shoppers from two locations (rural locations without grocery stores nearby, “food deserts”) on the other hand. The study has a longitudinal character and will take place across three collection times. This survey method enables the authors to ensure mid- and long-term results and identify relevant consumers’/residents’ perspectives, trends and behaviours.

The aim of this project is to better understand sustainable digital business models for the restaurant and food services industry in Linz and Upper Austria. Whereas many local businesses struggle to survive during the COVID-19 crisis, digital platforms thrive. Even before, online food delivery platforms have challenged the restaurant business. While there has been growing research regarding the dire situation of food delivery workers, little is known about food delivery platforms and their relationship to restaurants. In collaboration with a  newly founded, locally oriented food platform in Linz, Hungry Lama, this collaborative research project seeks to better understand why restaurants do or do not cooperate with an online platform for food delivery. As a result, a better understanding of sustainable digitalization strategies for restaurants as well as locally-oriented food platforms, themselves competing with international players, will be developed. This case raises wider questions which are interesting from both a practical and a theoretical lens: How can the restaurant experience be supported even in the context of online food delivery? Is the Covid-19 crisis a threat or an opportunity regarding the digitalization of traditional sectors?

Opportunities through digitization: Rethinking learning. Redesigning organizations. In the context of digital transformation processes organizations are faced with environments that are constantly becoming more insecure, dynamic and complex. Researchers as well as practitioners have an increasing interest in understanding as to how organizations can cope with uncertain dynamics and continue to call for exploring more flexible and increasingly digitalized work arrangements and new forms of organizing to meet the requirements of our new age (Lee & Edmondson, 2017). chabaDoo GmbH – the company partner for this project – is a young educational IT company, who does not only want to reshape education through digital transformation processes but who also wants to be “different” from conventionally driven and structured organizations by using means of digitalization and a set of practical “new forms of organizing” conceptualizations to support the design of more flexible and collaborative work arrangements. So far, research findings about the dynamics of adoption and implementation of such concepts are still scarce and contradictory. Understanding how these concepts are put into practice and how they influence the formation of an organizational identity becomes even more relevant in increasingly digital work settings with reduced face time. The research project aims at addressing questions such as “Which processes constitute chabaDoo’s identity?”, “How is its identity formation influenced by its flexible and increasingly digitally driven work arrangements?”, “What tensions emerge in this regard?” and “What does this mean for leading and developing the organization?”.

In our field, programming education for non-computer science students (e.g., Business Informatics, Business Administration), we can observe high diversity among our students, for example, with respect to gender differences, cultural differences, differences with respect to age, educational background, or work experience. Introductory programming courses traditionally face high drop-out rates and poor performance and students often perceive learning to program as difficult. Current research on diversity in programming education has primarily focused on gender differences, thus neglecting the influence of other diversity dimensions on students’ performance. The proposed project aims to fill this gap by first identifying how heterogeneous groups of students can be best supported. Based on our findings we will develop a didactic concept with accompanying teaching and learning material to actively support different diversity dimensions in programming education. The concept will include competence models for measuring competences and as a result support individual learning paths. Support for distance learning and flipped classroom methods will be a fundamental part of our concept. To further support a flat learning curve in university programming courses in the future, we will closely work with schools and educational centers for teachers to integrate algorithmic thinking into school curricula. We will empirically evaluate our concept using a mixed method approach, combining both qualitative and quantitative methods for data collection and analysis. In particular, we will explore the effects of our concept in our programming course and will investigate the value of these effects as perceived by lecturers and students.

Production companies still struggle transforming their shopfloor operations into digitalized, decentralized networks of cyber-physical production systems (CPPS). This is due to the high complexity of these systems, making their effective and efficient design a difficult task leading to high risk and uncertainty. A number of recent studies have identified the lack of a suitable methodology for CPPS design as a major obstacle. Recommended extensions of current systems engineering methods include:

• the integration of agile methods
• the integration of methods for stakeholder collaboration, and
• rapid and virtual prototyping

These issues have been declared in a 2018 Industry 4.0 study as “primary research needs” to be addressed by 2025, and establish the principal targets of the research proposed in DESTINY. The project follows an interdisciplinary approach that amalgamates methods from two separate disciplines: design thinking, including its foundations in the scientific study of design, and (cyber-physical) production systems. Such an approach is required as common design thinking techniques – such as collaborating and empathizing with customers/users, working in interdisciplinary teams, and rapidly producing tangible prototypes – cannot be easily mapped onto CPPS design due to its highly constrained technical environment and the different mindsets of systems engineers and design thinkers. DESTINY applies a rigorous scientific methodology to develop a framework and methods for CPPS design thinking, and to theoretically and empirically validate the results. The research will thus produce a theory and toolset for effectively and efficiently develop CPPS, helping to accelerate the digital transformation of the production industry.

The spread of COVID-19 seems to have hit Europe out of the blue. Scholars as well as practitioners are particularly interested in how health care organizations can cope with uncertainty and how they can become more resilient. Organizational resilience is the firm’s ability to anticipate trends and threats, to cope with unexpected events effectively, and to learn from those events in order to produce a dynamic capability that is directed towards facilitating organizational change (Duckek, 2014). Responding to current calls in the literature, we aim to investigate the relationship between leaders’ and organizational resilience. Such a multilevel study involves multiple relationships that are examined as part of this project. By examining health care organizations’ resilience from a multi-level perspective, we address one of “the grand challenges that confront our species” (Tourish, 2019: 21), especially since this crisis will probably not be the last global pandemic. We will also develop implications for health care practice.

Additional information can be found here.

See the German short report on the German website here., opens a file

Many problems in business decision making can be modeled as mathematical optimization problems, like mixed-integer programming problems; or satisfiability problems. Using (commercial) software packages for solving these problems, companies such as AirFrance, Amazon, Microsoft, Uber or HP apply these techniques to diverse areas like assigning flights to aircrafts, facility location, project scheduling, project portfolio optimization, network design, vehicle routing, security testing, formal verification of hardware and many others. These software packages now allow solution of problem-instances with up to millions of decision variables in reasonable time. However, the solvability often depends on the structure of the encoded problem, and from a theoretical computer science perspective, both mixed-integer programming problems and satisfiability problems belong to a family of hard problems. Moreover, with the advent of big data, the instances, which are needed to be solved are becoming lager and larger. Thus, to tackle the issues imposed by theoretical hardness and ever-increasing problem-sizes, further improvements in the solution algorithms are needed.

In the research carried out within this “seed”-project, we want to improve solution algorithms for mathematical optimization problems and satisfiability  problems, by i) hybridizing the solution algorithms and ii) transferring ideas between the different scientific domains. The researchers involved in this proposal already successfully published their first joint paper on such research, and the “seed”-project would be a great opportunity to allow to explore this promising research area further.

In this project, we aim to develop a closer understanding of the influence of religious (Christian or Muslim) and secular values on family firms (FFs) and their managerial decisions. Managerial decisions of family firms are shaped by their unique emphasis on socio-emotional wealth, i.e. distinct non-financial aspects or goals that meet the owner family’s affective needs. We focus on selected influential managerial decisions including corporate social responsibility engagements, mergers & acquisitions activities, crisis management and management control choices. Religious and secular values can be expected to either attenuate or reinforce the impact of socioemotional wealth on these managerial decisions. This project can therefore shed light on how religious and secular values shift families’ reference points and thus influence decision-making. To do so, we want to draw on interviews with members of owner families from the DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) due to its homogenous cultural background. We envisage that this project not only allows for novel insights into the under-researched question of how religion shapes managerial decisions of family firms, but also for the identification of configurations of such values and managerial choices that promise a more effective management of FFs.