Vienna University of Economics and Business
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A Call for Interdisciplinary Research on Applied Human-centricity in a Sustainable Digital Economy
Full text linkHuman-centricity is a fundamental aspect of a sustainable digital transformation. While the importance of human-centricity has been widely discussed, the field still lacks commonly accepted interdisciplinary definitions, concepts, evaluation methodologies, and realization approaches. We call for more interdisciplinary research and collaboration towards the co-creation of "applied human-centricity" in real-world sustainable digital environments
Human-centric Personal Data Protection and Consenting Assistant Systems: Towards a Sustainable Digital Economy
Full text linkWith the growing digital transformation, increasingly more personal data is produced, collected, shared, and used. Online privacy has become one of the most significant challenges for co-creating digital artefacts in a sustainable digital world. This paper presents the results of a representative study on online privacy conducted in Austria, which shows a growing need for personalized and human-centric sociotechnical solutions which empower humans to exercise their rights to online privacy, consenting and agency. We call such systems Personal Data Protection and Consenting Assistant Systems (PDPCAS). Using a human-centric perspective on privacy and consenting, which is inspired by recent advancements in cognitive sciences and sociology of science and technology, as well as the results of our representative study, combined with the results of a set of interdisciplinary expert interviews, we provide a reflection on PDPCASs, which mainly includes the functional and non-functional requirements of such systems. Based on the results of our studies, we reflect on the main challenges for the development and adaptation of PDPCASs. We argue that besides the absence of supporting automation standards, the lack of enforceability, and the technical complexities of developing human-centric PDPCASs, the user-acceptance and user experience design pose significant challenges to realizing these systems in practice. Finally, the paper provides a short reflection on the importance of human-centric PDPCASs for the co-creation of a sustainable digital economy
Konfliktkompetenz in kreisförmigen Organisationen
Full text linkDie Rolle von Konfliktkompetenz in kreisförmigen Organisationen wird in dieser Arbeit beleuchtet. Als eher neues, weniger bekanntes Organisationskonzept erlaubt kreisförmige Organisation eine erhöhte Mitarbeiterbeteiligung und damit eine gemeinsame Konfliktbehandlung. Inwiefern die kreisförmigen Elemente die Konfliktkompetenz von Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeitern beeinflussen und welcher Zusammenhang zwischen beidem besteht, wird näher analysiert und diskutiert. Konfliktkompetenz wird dabei auf individueller und organisationaler Ebene sowie in einer Strukturtheorie betrachtet. Als Sekundäranalyse baut diese Masterarbeit auf den Daten eines Forschungsprojekts auf und analysiert diese mithilfe der qualitativen Inhaltsanalyse. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass Konfliktkompetenz eine zentrale Rolle in kreisförmigen Organisationen spielt. Sie ist integraler organisationaler Bestandteil von kreisförmigen Organisationen, individuelle Voraussetzung und Ergebnis. Folglich kann eine Transformation hin zur kreisförmigen Organisationsstruktur die Steigerung von Konfliktkompetenz auf individueller wie auch organisationaler Ebene bewirken. Die Organisation wird damit agiler.Series: Theses / Institute for Nonprofit Managemen
Needs and Artificial Intelligence
Full text linkThroughout their history, Homo sapiens have used technologies to better satisfy their needs. The relation between needs and technology is so fundamental that the US National Research Council defined the distinguishing characteristic of technology as its goal “to make modifications in the world to meet human needs”. Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most promising emerging technologies of our time. Similar to other technologies, AI is expected “to meet [human] needs”. In this article, we reflect on the relationship between needs and AI and call for the realization of needs-aware AI systems. We argue that re-thinking needs for, through, and by AI can be a very useful means towards the development of realistic approaches for Sustainable Human-centric, Accountable, Lawful, and Ethical (HALE) AI systems. We discuss some of the most critical gaps, barriers, enablers, and drivers of co-creating future AI-based sociotechnical systems in which [human] needs are well considered and met. Finally, we provide an overview of potential threats and HALE considerations that should be carefully taken into account and call for joint, immediate, and interdisciplinary efforts and collaborations.Series: Sustainable Computing Paper Serie
Field Visit Planning for Humanitarian Rapid Needs Assessment
No full textAfter a sudden-onset disaster, the rapid needs assessment (RNA) process is carried out to quickly assess the needs of affected people. During the RNA stage, assessment teams travel to the field to conduct interviews with affected community groups and make direct observations of affected sites. Reviewing humanitarian guidelines shows that there is a great need for decision support for
field visit planning in order to utilize resources more efficiently at the time of great need. There are challenges while planning the field visit during the RNA stage. First, decisions may be made under significant uncertainty due to transportation network disruptions and safety and security concerns in affected regions. Second, due to time restrictions to perform RNA, assessment teams usually do not have time to visit all affected sites. Therefore, they need to take a sample of sites that includes various community groups. Finally, despite existing optimization approaches in the academic literature, humanitarian organizations may have difficulties applying these methods in the field due to a lack of expert staff and lack of trust in the models. This cumulative dissertation aims to bridge research gaps related to mentioned challenges in planning the field visit during the RNA stage. This is achieved through conducting an integrated research project with three papers:
Paper 1 focuses on addressing various uncertain aspects of the post-disaster environment in the field, ranging from travel time and community assessment time to accessibility of sites and availability of community groups. These uncertainties are considered while developing heuristic algorithms inspired by the general procedure explained in practical humanitarian guidelines for
site selection and routing decisions of the assessment teams during planning and executing the field visits. The performance of proposed heuristic algorithms is tested within a simulation environment, which can incorporate multiple uncertain factors.
Paper 2 proposes a bi-objective problem to construct routes for an assessment plan to cover community groups, each carrying a distinct characteristic, in a balanced way. In order to model balanced coverage, Paper 2 investigates the lexicographic maximin approach as an alternative way to the classic max-min approach. The bi-objective optimization considers total route duration and coverage ratio vector maximization. The problem is solved by a heuristic approach based on the multi-directional local search framework.
Paper 3 extends Paper 2 by investigating the impact of travel time uncertainty on the previous bi-objective problem. Travel time uncertainty largely stems from transportation network disruptions, including link capacity, reliability, and availability. A robust optimization approach is applied to address travel time uncertainty.
Constructing efficient routes for field visits during the RNA stage can improve the assessment plan significantly. This dissertation assists decision-makers in considering real-world assumptions such as the trade-offs between the quickness and quality of assessment, uncertainty of various parameters in a post-disaster environment, and equity among different community groups while making their site selection and routing decisions during the RNA stage.Security: validuse
Video-mediated situations as a basis for new societal spaces during and after the COVID- 19 crisis
Full text linkThis paper focuses on a major challenge that the COVID-19 pandemic poses to societies
worldwide, namely the restriction of social contacts in order to limit the spread of the
coronavirus. The need to physically distance has enormous implications for private,
professional and public spaces and situations. When Peter Wagner (2020) pursues the
question of why the COVID-19 pandemic is ascribed a society-changing potential, he refers
to this movement restrictions. In fact, the sudden and radical suspension of most economic,
social and cultural activities (Ammar et al., 2020) during the pandemic has changed the
possibilities of participating in social space (Levebre, 1974) radically. While measures against
the virus have swept the public space and face-to-face interactions have become a health risk,
we hypothesise that much of social life has shifted to video-mediated interactions (Beaunoyer
et al., 2020; Gilbert et al., 2020). To maintain sociality, we have observed that, in many cases,
interactions have shifted to video-based communication channels and led to new and
unexpected spaces.Series: Discussion Paper Series / Center for Empirical Research Method
Headquarters Landscape in Austria: International HQs.
Full text linkAustria is home to several intermediary headquarters (HQs) of large multinational corporations (MNCs). With this study, we deep dive into the international HQ landscape of Austria and study its composition and characteristics in terms of types, location, size, sector, and origin of its international HQs. This report is meant to be an addition to our previously published report on “Headquarters Landscape in Austria: An overview” (2022). Therefore, it focuses on a subsample – represented by the population of international HQs in Austria – of the initial database of HQs in Austria. What emerges from the study is that Austria and especially its capital city Vienna is the seat of different types of international HQs: both divisional and regional HQs. Moreover, the countries that are most commonly choosing Austria as an HQ location are the neighboring DACH countries (i.e., Germany and Switzerland) and the US. Finally, even though the number of international HQs is considerably smaller than that of domestic corporate parents, the size of the former is much bigger (with an average turnover of more than 10bn€). This emphasizes the relevance of international HQs for the Austrian economy
Consenting Participation? How Demands for Citizen Participation and Expert-Led Decision-Making Are Reconciled in Local Democracy
Full text linkThe rising participatory demands of citizens have been addressed with a variety of democratic innovations. However, increasing demands for democratization have been accompanied by a parallel rise in scepticism and doubt about the capabilities of representative democracies to ensure policy efficacy. I seek to address this democratic ambivalence by focusing on the demands for citizen participation in the context of local democracy. In a series of qualitative interviews, and using Vienna’s Seestadt Aspern, Europe’s biggest city development project, as an illustration, I examine (a) bottom-up and top-down understandings of democracy and participation among administration, city-planners and citizens and (b) strategies to reconcile inconsistent expectations of participation. I show that conflicting understandings of participation are dealt with in different settings and that, despite a public commitment to democratic participation, citizens, city-planners and administration alike expect a democratically concealed yet controlled management process allegedly ensuring more efficacious policy decisions
Who Is in Charge? Social Inequality in Different Fields of Volunteering
Full text linkVolunteering in civil society organizations (CSOs) is often idealized as an arena that is open to everybody. Prior research, however, has shown that participation in volunteer work also depends on an individual’s wealth, education, and social networks. CSOs are not open to every volunteer. Inequality within volunteers, however, has rarely been investigated, as are the factors that bring actors into more powerful positions in volunteering. Our research concentrates on this question. We aim to identify the characteristics and resources that are important for holding an executive position in the field of volunteering in general and in four selected subfields (culture and leisure, social services, religion, sports). To this end, we analyzed a large database created from the Austrian micro-census. The findings reveal significant relations between the actors’ economic, social, and educational resources, and their hierarchical positions in CSOs in each of the fields. Overall results indicate that social inequality is (re-)produced by the way CSOs select and promote volunteers. We embed our findings in Pierre Bourdieu’s Social Theory and conclude that volunteering, in particular, volunteering on boards and committees might be one of the hidden mechanisms that reinforce inequality in society