In an effort to make the cultural and institutional aspects of energy efficiency in industrial organizations more visible, this article introduces a theoretical framework of decision-making ...processes. Taking a sociological perspective and viewing organizations as cultural systems embedded in wider social contexts, I have developed a multilevel framework addressing institutional, organizational, and individual dimensions shaping decisions on energy efficiency. The framework's development is based on qualitative empirical fieldwork and integrates insights into organizational theory; neo-institutional theory, the attention-based view of the firm, and organizational culture theories. I conclude that decisions on energy efficiency are results of problematization and theorization processes. These processes emerge between the institutional issue-field, the organization, and its members. The model explains decisions shaped by environment (external and material), organizational processes (energy-efficiency practices, climate and culture) and individuals’ characteristics. The framework serves several purposes: introducing a meta-theory of decision making, providing a concept for empirical analysis, and enabling connectivity to the research on barriers.
Despite strong political efforts in Europe, industrial small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) seem to neglect adopting practices for energy efficiency. By taking a cultural perspective, this ...study investigated what drives the establishment of energy efficiency and corresponding practices in SMEs. Based on 10 ethnographic case studies and a quantitative survey among 500 manufacturing SMEs, the results indicate the importance of everyday employee behavior in achieving energy savings. The studied enterprises value behavior-related measures as similarly important as technical measures. Raising awareness for energy issues within the organization, therefore, constitutes an essential leadership task that is oftentimes perceived as challenging and frustrating. It was concluded that the embedding of energy efficiency in corporate strategy, the use of a broad spectrum of different practices, and the empowerment and involvement of employees serve as major drivers in establishing energy efficiency within SMEs. Moreover, the findings reveal institutional influences on shaping the meanings of energy efficiency for the SMEs by raising attention for energy efficiency in the enterprises and making energy efficiency decisions more likely. The main contribution of the paper is to offer an alternative perspective on energy efficiency in SMEs beyond the mere adoption of energy-efficient technology.
In an effort to make the cultural and institutional aspects of energy efficiency in industrial organizations more visible, this article introduces a theoretical framework of decision-making ...processes. Viewing industrial organizations as cultural systems embedded in wider social contexts, I have developed a multilevel framework addressing institutional, organizational, and individual dimensions shaping decisions on energy efficiency. The Framework draws from neo-institutional theory, the attention-based view of the firm, a psychosocial conception of organizational culture and ethnographic fieldwork. I conclude that decisions on energy efficiency are results of problematization and theorization processes. These processes emerge between the institutional issue-field, the organization, and its members. The model explains decisions on energy efficiency shaped by the institutional environment, the organizational processes (energy-efficiency practices, climate and culture) and individuals’ characteristics. The framework: introduces a meta-theory of decision making on energy efficiency in industrial organizations and provides a concept for empirical analysis.
From the perspective of manufacturing companies, the political, media and economic discourse on decarbonisation in the recent years manifests itself as an increasing social expectation of action. In ...Germany, in particular, this discourse is also being driven forward by powerful companies, respectively sectors, most notably the automotive industry. Against this background, the present paper examines how German manufacturing companies react to rising societal pressure and emerging policies. It examines which measures the companies have taken or plan to take to reduce their carbon footprint, which aspirations are associated with this and the structural characteristics (company size, energy intensity, and sector) by which these are influenced. A mix methods approach is applied, utilising data gathered from approx. 900 companies in context of the Energy Efficiency Index of German Industry (EEI), along with media research focusing on the announced decarbonisation plans and initiatives. We demonstrate that one-size-serves-all approaches are not suitable to decarbonise industry, as the situation and ambitions differ considerably depending on size, energy intensity and sector. Even though the levels of ambition and urgency are high, micro and energy intensive companies, in particular, are challenged. The present research uncovers a series of questions that call for attention to materialise the ambitions and address the challenges outlined.
Designing information-seeking systems has become an increasingly complex task as today’s information spaces are rapidly growing in quantity, heterogeneity, and dimensionality. The challenge is to ...provide user interfaces that have a satisfying usability and user experience even for novice users. Although information visualization and interaction design offer solutions, many information-seeking systems such as online catalogs for libraries or web search engines continue to use outdated user-interface concepts developed decades ago. In this paper, we will present four principles that we identified as crucial for the successful design of a modern visual information-seeking system. These are (1) to support various ways of formulating an information need, (2) to integrate analytical and browsing-oriented ways of exploration, (3) to provide views on different dimensions of the information space, and (4) to make search a pleasurable experience. These design principles are based on our experience over a long period in the user-centered design and evaluation of visual information-seeking systems. Accordingly, we will showcase individual designs from our own work of the past 10 years to illustrate each principle and hence narrow the gap between the scientific discussion and the designing practitioner that has often hindered research ideas from becoming reality. However, most of the times search is only one part of a higher level user activity (e.g. writing a paper). Thus future research should focus on the challenges when regarding search in such a broader context. We will use the final two chapters to point out some of these challenges and outline our vision of an integrated and consistent digital work environment named Zoomable Object-oriented Information Landscape.
Dialect atlases comprise considerable numbers of linguistic feature maps, i.e. dialect maps representing one linguistic feature each. Large amounts of data like these are often difficult to handle. ...This article presents a new quantitative method for the automatic analysis of such large corpora of linguistic feature maps. It makes use of geographical similarities between single maps to establish a system of criteria for structural relatedness. Furthermore, it employs statistical techniques to test whether given linguistic relations between the maps coincide significantly with structural relations. To achieve this, each underlying point-symbol map is converted into an area-class map (with all the original information still available). These area-class maps yield additional information regarding their structural composition. Cluster analysis is then employed to obtain groupings of similar maps. Such groupings facilitate the search for language-internal factors that influence the geographical distribution of linguistic variants, as the relevance of any given linguistic parameter for spatial patterns can be tested using statistical methods. Moreover, language-external factors, such as topographical conditions, can be tested in the same way. Thus, this new method allows for a profound and substantiated investigation of the regularities that can be found in the geographical distributions of linguistic variants.
We present Adaptive Pointing, a novel approach to addressing the common problem of accuracy when using absolute pointing devices for distant interaction. First, we discuss extensively some related ...work concerning the problem-domain of pointing accuracy when using absolute or relative pointing devices. As a result, we introduce a novel classification scheme to more clearly discriminate between different approaches. Second, the Adaptive Pointing technique is presented and described in detail. The intention behind this approach is to improve pointing performance for absolute input devices by implicitly adapting the Control-Display gain to the current user’s needs without violating users’ mental model of absolute-device operation. Third, we present an experiment comparing Adaptive Pointing with pure absolute pointing using a laser-pointer as an example of an absolute device. The results show that Adaptive Pointing results in a significant improvement compared with absolute pointing in terms of movement time (19%), error rate (63%), and user satisfaction.
Dialekt im Kindergarten König, Werner; Pfeiffer, Christian; Maitz, Péter
Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik,
12/2019, Letnik:
86, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
In dem Beitrag werden die Ergebnisse einer Befragung von 173 Kindergärten in Bayerisch-Schwaben zur Dialektverwendung dargestellt. Es wurden von 380 Erzieherinnen 5 341 Kinder beurteilt. Nach einer ...Methodenreflexion werden die Ergebnisse dargestellt und interpretiert. Sie werden in Beziehung gesetzt unter anderem mit der Ortsgröße, mit der Sprachverwendung der Erzieherinnen und ihrer Einstellung zum Dialekt. Insgesamt ergibt sich, dass der Anteil an Dialekt sprechenden Kindern weit unter 20 % liegt.
In our paper, we discuss the results of a questionnaire survey on the use of regional dialects in 173 kindergartens in Bavaria-Swabia. The data relate to the dialect use of 5 341 children, assessed by 380 of their kindergarten teachers. After some methodological reflexions, we present and interpret the results of the survey. The results are correlated with different factors, such as community size, the teachers‘ language use, and their attitude towards regional dialects. The overall finding is that less than 20 per cent of all children in Bavaria-Swabia speak a regional dialect.
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