Open Access

Professor Thomas Roeb kennt den Discount. Er lehrt Handelsbetriebslehre an der Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg und berät Unternehmen aus Handel und Konsumgüterbranche.

Due to regionalization and global competition, many companies have turned their attention to other markets outside the domestic ones in anticipation of securing profitable market(s) for their products. Cormart (Nigeria) Limited is one of such companies, seeking to expand beyond its domestic borders. Cormart is a Nigerian trading company specializing in Industrial Raw Materials and Chemicals. It represents the business interests of top Multinational Companies that wish to do business in Nigeria. In line with its expansion strategy, Cormart seeks to introduce its newly developed spray starch product (RENEW) into the Ghanaian market.

Der globalisierte Kapitalismus, Umweltkatastrophen, Überbevölkerung sowie zunehmende politisch und religiös motivierte Konflikte fordern ein Umdenken ökonomischer Konzepte. Allein mit den herkömmlichen Sozial- und Wirtschaftssystemen lassen sich existenzbedrohende Probleme wie Armut, Hunger, Krankheit, mangelnde Bildung und Betreuung nicht lösen. Es gilt dringend, neue, zukunftsweisende unternehmerische Konzepte zu entwickeln und zu fördern. Seit geraumer Zeit hat sich unter dem Begriff „Social Entrepreneurship“ eine Bewegung etabliert, die versucht, unter Beachtung klassischer Ökonomiegrundsätze gesellschaftliche Herausforderungen nachhaltig zu lösen.

Funktionseinschränkungen nach erworbener Hirnschädigung können die Mobilität der Betroffenen beeinträchtigen und zu gravierenden Änderungen des Lebensstils bis hin zur Inaktivität führen. Es ist davon auszugehen, dass ein inaktiver Lebensstil den Gesundheitszustand weiter verschlechtert und sich für die Betroffenen daraus ein erhöhtes Risiko für weitere chronische Erkrankungen ergibt. Bisherige Studienergebnisse beschreiben weder das Aktivitätsverhalten von Menschen mit erworbener Hirnschädigung noch wurden geeignete Interventionen zur nachhaltigen Steigerung der körperlichen Aktivität (KA) entwickelt. Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit war es ein umfassendes Abbild des Aktivitätsverhaltens im Alltag von Menschen mit erworbener Hirnschädigung zu erstellen sowie die Machbarkeit und die Auswirkungen einer Bewegungsintervention auf das Aktivitätsverhalten und die Lebensqualität zu untersuchen.

The aim of design science research (DSR) in information systems is the user-centred creation of IT-artifacts with regard to specific social environments. For culture research in the field, which is necessary for a proper localization of IT-artifacts, models and research approaches from social sciences usually are adopted. Descriptive dimension-based culture models most commonly are applied for this purpose, which assume culture being a national phenomenon and tend to reduce it to basic values. Such models are useful for investigations in behavioural culture research because it aims to isolate, describe and explain culture-specific attitudes and characteristics within a selected society. In contrast, with the necessity to deduce concrete decisions for artifact-design, research results from DSR need to go beyond this aim. As hypothesis, this contribution generally questions the applicability of such generic culture dimensions’ models for DSR and focuses on their theoretical foundation, which goes back to Hofstede’s conceptual Onion Model of Culture. The herein applied literature-based analysis confirms the hypothesis. Consequently, an alternative conceptual culture model is being introduced and discussed as theoretical foundation for culture research in DSR.

Basic demand from enterprises towards academic education: provide students not only methodological/theoretical knowledge, but also prepare them for the future tasks in the world of works! This contradicts academia’s focus on sustainably teaching basic principles. With the extra-curricular international online program erp4students, we successfully managed to bridge this "conflict-of-interest”.

Job-related migration has been fostered across Europe balancing unemployment in one country with demands for employees in others. However, the numbers of early school leavers and university dropouts significantly increased in the hosting countries. We propose a higher measure of cultural sensitivity in education in order to prevent frustration. The Learning Culture Survey investigates learners’ expectations towards and perceptions of education on international level with the aim to make culture in the context of education better understandable. After a brief introduction, we subsume the steps taken during the past seven years and found results. Subsequently, we introduce a method for the determination of conflict potential, which bases on the understanding of culture as the level to which people within a society accept deviations from the usual. We close with demonstrating the usefulness of the data and insights from our Learning Culture Survey in the context of practical scenarios.

The aim of our research is finding measures to preserve the learners’ initial motivation in educational settings. For that we need to avoid conflicting situations that possibly could jeopardize their joy of learning. In our thematically comprehensive Learning Culture Survey, we investigate the cultural biasing of students’ attitudes, behaviours, and expectations towards education. Particularly in times of massive international migration and growing numbers of refugees, the relevance to deeply understand cultural aspects in education increases. Just with this understanding, we can raise the awareness towards more cultural tolerance across all involved stakeholder groups and thus, foster the development of more culture-sensitive educational approaches. In this paper we focus on the most relevant aspect of motivation and comparatively discuss our study conducted in Germany and South Korea. Mit unserer Forschung wollen wir Maßnahmen finden, die dazu beitragen, die anfängliche Bildungsmaßnahmen zu Motivation von Lernern bewahren. Zu diesem Zweck in müssen Konfliktsituationen möglichst vermieden werden, wenn sie das Potential haben, ihnen die Freude am Lernen zu verderben. In unserem thematisch breitgefächerten Learning Culture Survey (Untersuchung von Lernkultur), untersuchen wir bei Lernern das Vorhandensein und den Einfluss kulturspezifischer Prägungen auf deren Verhaltensweisen, Gewohnheiten und Erwartungen bzgl. Bildung. Besonders in Zeiten massiver internationaler Migration und steigender Zahlen von Flüchtlingen wächst der Bedarf nach entsprechender Forschung stetig an. Nur wenn wir die Zusammenhänge zwischen Lernen und Kultur ausreichend verstehen, sind wir in der Lage, auf allen Ebenen die Entwicklung des erforderlichen Bewusstseins bzgl. kultursensibler Bildungsansätze zu fördern. In diesem Beitrag konzentrieren wir uns auf den sehr wichtigen Aspekt Motivation und diskutieren die Ergebnisse, die wir in unserer vergleichenden Studie in Deutschland und Südkorea erzielt haben.

With a focus on Technology Enhanced Learning, this paper investigates if and to which extent a culture shift can be expected alongside with the adoption of currently emerging Web 3.0 technologies. Instead of just offering new opportunities for the field to improve education, such a culture shift could lead to unexpected general consequences not just for Technology Enhanced Learning but the whole educational sector. Understanding the dimension of expectable changes enables us to prevent conflicts and pointedly support culture-related change processes. After an introduction of the Revised Onion Model of Culture, which, later on, serves as theoretical foundation, expectable changes in the design of learning scenarios are analysed, distinguishing the stakeholder groups “learners” and “educators”. Eventually, the found changes are analysed to which extent a general culture shift is to be expected in order to understand the transferability and limitations of future research results in the field.