The Covid‐19 crisis has hit SMEs particularly hard. Numerous business models (BM) have been limited or rendered downright impossible due to decreased social contact. SMEs can respond to this ...exogenous crisis via temporary business model innovation (BMI). This empirical study investigates these temporary BMs using a multiple case study approach based on five SMEs in Austria, Germany, and Liechtenstein who within a short period of time applied their core competencies and networks to integrate new BMs, which were in some cases very different from existing ones. These had a positive effect on strategic flexibility, and if desired can also be incorporated into the firm long‐term. The paper contributes to SME crisis management during the Covid‐19 pandemic by pointing out and developing a successful management mechanism that allows to survive a crisis or even improve during this time. Moreover, we contribute to BMI literature by explaining temporary BMI as a new form of BMI. It also makes clear to managers that temporary BMs add value to firms and create new revenue streams.
The Austrian higher education system has consistently recognised the need to become more entrepreneurial and innovative with a view to supporting the economic, social and cultural development of the ...country and its regions. Over the past decades, the government has been implementing a broad reform agenda to provide strategic funding, diversify higher education institutions (HEIs) and promote an allocation of students that improves the quality of services and empowers them vis à vis the future of work and society. This review illustrates policy actions promoting the development of entrepreneurial and innovative activities in the Higher Education System and individual HEIs. In addition, based on information gathered during study visits, the review discusses strategies and practices adopted by Austrian HEIs to innovate, engage, and generate value for their own ecosystems and networks. The review is part of a series of national reports implementing the HEinnovate framework. HEinnovate is a holistic framework that the OECD and the European Commission have developed to promote the "entrepreneurial and innovation agenda" in higher education.
This analysis demonstrates the relevance and robustness of the theory of planned behavior in the prediction of business start–up intentions and subsequent behavior based on longitudinal survey data ...(2011 and 2012; n = 969) from the adult population in Austria and Finland. By doing so, the study addresses two weaknesses in current research: the limited scope of samples used in the majority of prior studies and the scarcity of investigations studying the translation of entrepreneurial intentions into behavior. The paper discusses conceptual and methodological issues related to studying the intention–behavior relationship and outlines avenues for future research.
This volume investigates educational inequalities among children of Turkish immigrants in Austria, France, and Sweden. One of the largest immigrant groups in these countries, Turks nonetheless face ...discrimination and limited opportunities, and this study shows how those problems play out in education. One of its key findings is that systems that provide more favorable institutional arrangements lead to greater economic mobility in the second generation.
Die Klimakrise und Landnutzung sind eng miteinander verwoben und betrifft uns alle. Die Landnutzung bietet aber ein großes PotenTial zur Bewältigung der Klimakrise. Wie können diese PotenTiale im ...Sinne einer nachhaltigen Entwicklung genutzt werden, die ganzheitlich die gesellschaftlichen und natürlichen Dimensionen berücksichtigt? Dies ist ein Open-Access-Buch. Landökosysteme erbringen verschiedene unersetzbare Ökosystemleistungen für die Gesellschaft, wie etwa Nahrungsmittel oder Schutz vor Naturgefahren. Sie können eine hohe Artenvielfalt haben, sie absorbieren und speichern Kohlenstoff und bilden die Grundlage für wirtschaftliche Aktivitäten. Die Landnutzung erhöht die Erbringung mancher Ökosystemleistungen auf Kosten anderer und birgt daher Zielkonflikte. Die landbasierte Produktion, die Produktverarbeitung und der Konsum verursachen Treibhausgasemissionen und Biodiversitätsverluste. Der Klimawandel und die gewählten Anpassungsmaßnahmen verschärfen die Konfliktpotentiale. Es bedarf wissensbasierter und gesellschaftlich akzeptierter politischer Entscheidungen, um die vorhandenen Synergien verschiedener Landnutzungsformen zu nutzen und auszubauen, und gleichzeitig Zielkonflikte und unerwünschte Effekte zu minimieren. Der APCC Special Report: Landnutzung und Klimawandel in Österreich wurde im Bewusstsein der Verflechtungen der Klima- und der Biodiversitätskrise mit geopolitischen Änderungen verfasst. Er dient der Zusammenfassung und Bewertung des gegenwärtigen Wissens zum Thema Landnutzung und Klimawandel und deren Verflechtungen. Es werden die Handlungsoptionen der Anpassung und der Minderung des Klimawandels unter Berücksichtigung von Produktion, gesellschaftlichen Ansprüchen, rechtlichen Rahmenbedingungen und dem Konsumverhalten vorgestellt und bewertet. Der Bericht gliedert sich in acht thematische Kapitel und eine Synopsis. Eine technische Zusammenfassung enthält die Kernbotschaften der Kapitel, und die Zusammenfassung für politische Entscheidungsträger bringt die Aussagen des Berichtes in knapper Form zur Kenntnis. Im APCC Special Report kommen 130 Autoren aus vielen wissenschaftlichen Disziplinen zu Wort. Der Bericht wurde in einem offenen und transparenten Begutachtungsprozess von mehr als 50 Personen und Stakeholdern kommentiert.
Electric power, as an efficient and clean energy, has considerable importance in industries and human lives. Electricity price is becoming increasingly crucial for balancing electricity generation ...and consumption. In this study, long short-term memory (LSTM) with the differential evolution (DE) algorithm, denoted as DE–LSTM, is used for electricity price prediction. Several recent studies have adopted LSTM with considerable success in certain applications, such as text recognition and speech recognition. However, problems in the application of LSTM to solving nonlinear regression and time series problems have been encountered. DE, a novel evolutionary algorithm that effectively obtains optimal solutions, is designed to identify suitable hyperparameters for LSTM. Experiments are conducted to verify the performance of the DE–LSTM model under the electricity prices in New South Wales, Germany/Austria, and France. Results indicate that the proposed DE–LSTM model outperforms existing forecasting models in terms of forecasting accuracies.
•Effective Long short-term Memory (LSTM) is proposed for electricity price forecasting.•Differential evolution helps selecting suitable hyper-parameters of LSTM.•The proposed method named DE-LSTM is the best for three cases in terms of accuracy.
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•The waste management system of plastic packaging in Austria in 2013 was analyzed.•This was done for seven product types as well as eight polymers.•The collection rate was 58% ± 3%, ...the sorting rate 34% ± 3%, the recycling rate 26% ± 7%.•Current targets were met, but future targets will require major additional efforts.•It is recommended that targets be calculated after the actual recycling process.
Plastics, especially from packaging, have gained increasing attention in waste management, driving many policy initiatives to improve the circularity of these materials in the economy to increase resource efficiency. In this context, the EU has proposed increasing targets to encourage the recycling of (plastic) packaging. To accurately calculate the recycling rates, detailed information on the flows of plastic packaging is needed. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to quantitatively and qualitatively investigate the waste management system for plastic packaging in Austria in 2013 using material flow analysis, taking into account the used product types and the polymer composition. The results show that 300,000 ± 3% t/a (35 kg/cap·a) of waste plastic packaging were produced, mainly composed of large and small films and small hollow bodies, including PET bottles. Correspondingly, the polymer composition of the waste stream was dominated by LDPE (46% ± 6%), PET (19% ± 4%) and PP (14% ± 6%). 58% ± 3% was collected separately, and regarding the final treatment, 26% ± 7% of the total waste stream was recovered as re-granulates, whereas the rest was thermally recovered in waste-to-energy plants (40% ± 3%) and the cement industry (33% ± 6%). The targets set by the EU and Austria were reached comfortably, although to reach the proposed future target major technological steps regarding collection and sorting will be needed. However, the current calculation point of the targets, i.e. on the input side of the recycling plant, is not deemed to be fully in line with the overall objective of the circular economy, namely to keep materials in the economy and prevent losses. It is therefore recommended that the targets be calculated with respect to the actual output of the recycling process, provided that the quality of the output products is maintained, to accurately assess the performance of the waste management system.
What types of asylum seekers are Europeans willing to accept? We conducted a conjoint experiment asking 18,000 eligible voters in 15 European countries to evaluate 180,000 profiles of asylum seekers ...that randomly varied on nine attributes. Asylum seekers who have higher employability, have more consistent asylum testimonies and severe vulnerabilities, and are Christian rather than Muslim received the greatest public support. These results suggest that public preferences over asylum seekers are shaped by sociotropic evaluations of their potential economic contributions, humanitarian concerns about the deservingness of their claims, and anti-Muslim bias. These preferences are similar across respondents of different ages, education levels, incomes, and political ideologies, as well as across the surveyed countries.This public consensus on what types of asylum seekers to accept has important implications for theory and policy.
Die Arbeit von Harald Bodenschatz (2011) und seinen Mitautor:innen zum Städtebau im faschistischen Italien hat vor zehn Jahren Wegweisendes in der Städtebauhistoriographie geleistet. Nun wurde das ...seit Jahren vergriffene Buch neu aufgelegt und behutsam erweitert. Es hat viele Folgestudien inspiriert. Eine davon ist die Arbeit der Denkmalpflegerin Birgit Knauer (2022), die sich mit der „Assanierung“ der Stadt Wien im Austrofaschismus auseinandersetzt. Die Werke zeigen, wie Städtebau durch diktatorische Regime benutzt wurde, um Repression auszuüben oder Konsens herzustellen, und als wirtschaftspolitisches Programm der beschleunigten industriellen Entwicklung sowie zur volkswirtschaftlichen Erholung in und nach Krisenzeiten diente. Dabei spielen Propaganda, Geschichtsbilder, Zukunftsverheißungen und nicht zuletzt europäische Netzwerke eine Rolle.
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