Fachbereich Wirtschaftswissenschaften
Refine
H-BRS Bibliography
- yes (27)
Departments, institutes and facilities
Document Type
- Article (9)
- Conference Object (8)
- Part of a Book (6)
- Working Paper (2)
- Book (monograph, edited volume) (1)
- Doctoral Thesis (1)
Year of publication
- 2018 (27) (remove)
Language
- English (27) (remove)
Keywords
- ICT (4)
- Dementia (3)
- Exergame (2)
- Kenya (2)
- autonomous driving (2)
- caregivers (2)
- participatory design (2)
- travel mode choice (2)
- Active and Healthy Aging Technologies (1)
- Berufliche e‑Mental Health (1)
Smallholder farmers as a backbone for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals
(2018)
Argentina substantially contributes to the global organic agriculture and food sector due to its large areas of organically managed agricultural land. However, most of the organic production is intended for export. Overall, food supply for the domestic organic market is hardly tapped. Based on this, we investigate the current importance of organic agriculture and food production as well as consumption attitudes and behavior within the country. The novelty of the study also lies in the observation, documentation and analysis of latest stakeholder‐driven developments towards organic agriculture and food. Furthermore, the publication allows the Argentinean organic market to be significantly more visible for the international audience.
Urban food systems consist of many stakeholders with different perspectives, different interests and different governance tools. This study aimed at developing potential future scenarios for the food system of Cologne by analysing the system with a Delphi approach. In our research-design, the suitability of the Delphi-method was evaluated not only as a tool for future modelling and scenario design, but also as a communication tool among the group of participants on a multi-stakeholder-platform. As a case study, the Food Policy Council of Cologne, Germany was used. Cologne can be seen as a forerunner among German cities in the development of a new urban food policy. Some of the successful steps to re-envisioning food as an urban system include joining the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, the decision of the City Council to become an edible city and the establishment of a Food Policy Council. For the study it was important to capture participants’ visions of a common goal regarding the governance of the urban food system and also to identify mental ‘silos’. It was obvious that the municipality of Cologne together with the Food Policy Council made great efforts towards participatory processes to build a vision for a sustainable and regional food supply. However, many stakeholder-groups in the process still work exclusively among themselves and do not actively practice the confrontation with the viewpoints of other relevant groups. This supports the maintenance of ‘silos’ and leaves little room for face-to-face discussions. Therefore, the primary aim of this study is to explore key components of food provisioning in the future for Cologne while confronting all stakeholders (municipal administration and politicians, farmers and food activists) with the perspectives of all group members. We used a multi-stakeholder Delphi approach with 19 panellists to find out essential components of the municipal regional food provisioning system in Cologne. Unique in this Delphi study is the bringing together of municipal administration, regional urban farmers and food activists. The research is still on-going, but preliminary results show that more communication among all relevant actors, especially horizontally among different city departments, in the urban food system is needed.
New approaches in securing more sustainable urban food futures: case from Cologne-Bonn region
(2018)
The paper contributes to the debate on the political economy of implementation of propoor social policy. It argues for a broadening of the debate, which is dominated by technocratic arguments, emphasizing the lack of financial resources, technology or skills as the major barriers for effective implementation. Describing the dynamic interplay of ‘formal’ operational programme structures and ‘informal’ traditional institutions in delivering the CT-OVC – the largest and oldest cash transfer programme in Kenya – it argues for the need to look more closely into the local political economy as an important mediating arena for implementing social policies. Implementation is heavily contingent upon the local social, political and institutional context that influences and shapes its outcomes. These processes are highly dynamic and ambivalent evolving between ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ structures and institutions. They may change over time and place, challenging the implicit assumption that programmes are evenly implemented across geographic and political entities.
This paper analyzes the complex effects and risks of social protection programmes in Ghana and Kenya on poor people’s human wellbeing, voice and empowerment and interactions with the social protection regulatory framework and policy instruments. For this purpose, it adopts a comprehensive Inclusive Development framework to systematically explore the complex effects of cash transfers and health insurance at the individual, household and community level. The findings highlight the positive provisionary and preventive effects of social protection, but also illustrate that the poorest are still excluded and that promotive effects, in the form of enhanced productivity, manifest themselves mainly for the people who are less resource poor. They can build more effectively upon an existing asset base, capabilities, power and social relations to counter the exclusionary mechanisms of the system, address inequity concerns and offset the transaction costs of accessing and benefitting from social protection. The inclusive development framework enables to lay these complex effects and interactions bear, and points to areas that require more longitudinal and mixed methodology research.
Dementia not only affects the cognitive capabilities, especially memory and orientation, but also physical capabilities, which are associated with a decrease of physical activities. Here, ICT can play a major role to improve health, quality of life and wellbeing in older adults suffering from dementia and related stakeholders, such as relatives, professional and informal caregivers. The aim of the presented system is to increase physical and cognitive capabilities of people with dementia and their caregivers to support them in daily life activities, reduce the strain of the caregivers and improve both their wellbeing.
Daryoush Daniel Vaziri illustrates that the use of mixed methods designs may support the induction of more subtle and complete theories about older adults’ use of technologies for the support of active and healthy aging. The results show that older adults’ social contexts and environments considerably affect their perspectives, practices and attitudes with respect to health, quality of life, well-being and technology use for active and healthy aging support. Results were collected with older adults aged 60+ as well as relevant secondary stakeholders like caregivers, policy makers or health insurance companies.
This paper presents the outcomes of an exploratory field study that examined the social impact of an ICT-based suite of exergames for people with dementia and their caregivers. Qualitative data was collected over a period of 8 months, during which time we studied the daily life of 14 people with dementia and their informal and professional caregivers. We focus on the experiential aspects of the system and examine its social impact when integrated into the daily routines of both people with dementia themselves and their professional and family caregivers. Our findings indicate that relatives were able to regain leisure time, whilst people with dementia were able to recapture certain aspects of their social and daily activities that might otherwise have been lost to them. Results suggest that the system enhanced social-interaction, invigorated relationships, and improved the empowerment of people with dementia and their caregivers to face daily challenges.
As a result of ageing societies, the prevalence of dementia, and accordingly the need of care is increasing rapidly. Here, the use of ICT-based technologies may facilitate and promote a self-sustaining life-style for people with dementia and their caregivers. The presented poster describes early findings from the project MobiAssist and outlines the ICT-based training system. The system aims to increase the physical and cognitive capabilities of people with dementia, relief the caregivers and improve wellbeing of involved parties.
Innovations in the mobility industry such as automated and connected cars could significantly reduce congestion and emissions by allowing the traffic to flow more freely and reducing the number of vehicles according to some researchers. However, the effectiveness of these sustainable product and service innovations is often limited by unexpected changes in consumption: some researchers thus hypothesize that the higher comfort and improved quality of time in driverless cars could lead to an increase in demand for driving with autonomous vehicles. So far, there is a lack of empirical evidence supporting either one or other of these hypotheses. To analyze the influence of autonomous driving on mobility behavior and to uncover user preferences, which serve as indicators for future travel mode choices, we conducted an online survey with a paired comparison of current and future travel modes with 302 participants in Germany. The results do not confirm the hypothesis that ownership will become an outdated model in the future. Instead they suggest that private cars, whether conventional or fully automated, will remain the preferred travel mode. At the same time, carsharing will benefit from full automation more than private cars. However, the findings indicate that the growth of carsharing will mainly be at the expense of public transport, showing that more emphasis should be placed in making public transport more attractive if sustainable mobility is to be developed.
The curricula of all degree programs at H-BRS have many different practice-oriented activities and focus on hands-on learning. In labs and small classrooms (30–60 persons), students get a personalized learning environment which is complemented with many individual and group projects that foster collaborative work situations. There are several main areas that students learn from working with industry, local organizations or public institutions.
The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach is the most important tool in the evaluation of environmental (sustainability) impacts of products and processes. We used the method to conduct an impact analysis with regard to raw material inputs (pulp) for the German paper production industry. In our analysis, we compare the environmental effects of primary sulphate pulp, scrap paper pulp and grass-based pulp and estimate their impacts in the impact categories "greenhouse gas emissions", "eutrophication" as well as "energy and water consumption". Furthermore, we discuss the opportunities of the methodical approach and some general problems and limits of the application of a LCA. In conclusion, we found environmental advantages for the use of grass as an alternative resource in the German paper production industry, especially in the fields of transport and water consumption.
This book is about how computer systems might be designed to serve their users rather better. It deals with how to study the natural behaviour of users to see how computer systems might best help them, and how one might also involve them in the design of computer systems that will assist them in their everyday practices.