Intelligent und schön design im spannungsfeld zwischen Ausbildung und Praxis

Zwischen und Kunst und Kommerz — zwischen Technik und Trend; eine einfache Verortung des Designs scheitert an den vielf?ltigen Auspr?gungen der Disziplin. Design begegnet man, oft gleichzeitig, in Museen und Warenh?usern. Der Begriff „Design” wird dabei zum vermeintlichen Qualit?tsmerkmal: Nail-Design, Food-Design, Home-Design, Fashion-Design... Ob der inflation?ren Verwendung des Begriffes fragt man sich: „Was vermag Design wirklich zu leisten? Was kann von den Designerinnen und Designern erwartet werden?” Als Co-Leiter des Studienganges „Industrial Design” an der Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst Zürich und selbst als t?tiger Designer versucht der Autor in diesem Beitrag eine Verbindung von Ausbildung und Praxis in Richtung zukünftiger Szenarien zu schaffen.     

Cross-Cultural Perceptions of Business Ethics: Evidence from the United States and China

A number of empirical studies have examined business ethics across cultures, focusing primarily on differences in ethical profiles between cultures and groups. When managers consider whether or not to develop a business relationship with those from a different culture, their decision may be affected by actual differences in ethical profiles, but potentially even more so by their perceptions of ethicality in the counterpart culture. The latter issue has been largely ignored in extant empirical research regarding cross-cultural ethical profiles. In this study, we employ a design that allows for a more complete analysis of cross-cultural perspectives, examining both the manner in which selected cultures view themselves and the manner in which those same cultures perceive the ethical profiles of others. To this end, we surveyed master’s students in business fields at several universities in the United States and China—two countries/cultures that engage in a significant amount of business transactions—and examined differences in personal ethical profiles across cultures, differences in one group’s ethical profile and the way it is perceived by the other group, and differences in perceived ethical profiles across cultures; that is, differences in how groups view each other. Findings suggest meaningful discrepancies in the ethical perceptions formed toward the counterpart culture. Results support a role for ethical perceptions in future research, and further examination and inquiry into the development and adaptation of ethical perceptions in cross-cultural business dealings.     

Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants

The article looks at the differences between “digital natives” and “digital immigrants.” Digital natives are the new generation of young people born into the digital age, while “digital immigrants” are those who learnt to use computers at some stage during their adult life. Whereas digital natives are assumed to be inherently technology-savvy, digital immigrants are usually assumed to have some difficulty with information technology. The paper suggests that there is a continuum rather than a rigid dichotomy between digital natives and digital immigrants, and this continuum is best conceptualized as digital fluency. Digital fluency is the ability to reformulate knowledge and produce information to express oneself creatively and appropriately in a digital environment. The authors propose a tentative conceptual model of digital fluency that outlines factors that have a direct and indirect impact on digital fluency namely, demographic characteristics, organizational factors, psychological factors, social influence, opportunity, behavioral intention and actual use of digital technologies.     

Contextualizing the categorical imperative: Category linkages,technology focus,and resource acquisition in nanotechnology entrepreneurship

This paper examines the role of category affiliations in entrepreneurial resource acquisition. Pace existing studies, we suggest category spanning will cause firms to be overlooked or discounted because evaluators assume that they have less expertise than their category-focused competitors; a phenomenon known as the ‘categorical imperative’. We suggest, however, that categories can be related both vertically and horizontally, and that this has important implications for understanding how the actors that span between them are evaluated. Studying startup ventures in nanotube technology, we show that venture capital investments were affected by a firm's position across patent classes that were related at both of these levels of analysis and that the interaction between them had implications for which firms received the largest investments.     

Can socioeconomic heritage produce a lost generation with regard to entrepreneurship?

A considerable amount of literature deals with the influence of institutions on entrepreneurship. But for all that, little is known about the interplay between institutions and personal determinants of entrepreneurship. In this paper, the empirical evidence that older people in transition economies have low engagement in entrepreneurial activity is the starting point for analyzing how institutions moderate the relationship between individual characteristics and entrepreneurial choice. The results show that the socioeconomic heritage of being exposed to socialism deters entrepreneurship, an effect that is more pronounced for (high)-impact entrepreneurship. Detailed analyses reveal that the effect is driven by devaluation of socialist work experience and the influence of socialism on mindset.     

The Business Model and Firm Performance: The Case of Russian Food Service Ventures

Using a unique methodology for capturing the business model and drawing comparisons across larger samples of firms, we investigate the relationship between business model design and firm performance in a Russian context. The evolution of the business model concept and its components is reviewed. Empirical research was conducted on the basis of a cross‐sectional survey of firms in the food service industry. A typology of seven business models in this industry is produced, and linkages are established between model type and company performance.