Competition versus cooperation: How technology-facilitated social interdependence initiates the self-improvement chain

Consumers are increasingly using technologies such as wearables or mobile apps to achieve their self-improvement goals. Such technologies often contain features that enable social interdependence (competition or cooperation) among users to support them in improving their engagement, performance, and well-being (life satisfaction and personal growth). However, the critical question remains: does competition or cooperation best serve users in attaining these self-improvement goals? Evidence from an online experiment and a field study reveals that competition is more effective in driving performance and personal growth, while cooperation is superior in terms of behavioral engagement and life satisfaction. Furthermore, the results indicate that the effects are mediated by strive for success and fear of failure, two counteracting psychological processes. While competition is the stronger trigger for both pathways, downstream effects vary depending on the self-improvement goal considered. This research thus provides insights into whether and how users can best realize their self-improvement goals using technologies that include social features.     

Development of onshore wind energy utilisation in Germany

Onshore wind energy utilisation in Germany has developed very dynamically in the last decade. This has mainly been driven by the renewable energy laws that systematically support the expansion of renewable energy in the electricity sector. In 2009 a revised law with increased feed-in tariffs for wind energy has come into force. Existing studies already predict a wide range of development patterns under the Renewable Energy Sources Acts 2000 and 2004. This paper investigates the long term impact of different feed-in tariffs implemented by the legislative authorities and it provides corresponding future development patterns of onshore wind energy utilisation in Germany. The underlying System Dynamics model considers technical as well as economic conditions and constraints. The approach and the model’s results are contrasted with other published predictions qualitatively and quantitatively. This comparison shows that the model’s outcome lies in the range of predictions by existing studies, but also shows some interesting differences.

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Zusammenfassung  Die Entwicklung der Windenergienutzung in Deutschland wahrend der letzten Dekade verlief sehr dynamisch. MagBgeblich dafur war die systematische Forde-rung mittels der Erneuerbare Energien Gesetze (EEG) bzw. deren Vorlaufer. Vom Jahr 2009 an gilt ein uberarbeitetes Gesetz, welches u.a. erhohte Einspeisever-gutungen furWindenergie beinhaltet.Vorliegende Studien, die sich mit derzu-kunftigen Entwicklung auseinandersetzten, zeigen bereits deutlich unterschied-liche Szenarien fur die Entwicklung unter dem EEG 2000 und 2004. Diese Arbeit setzt sich mit den langfristigen Auswirkungen der verschiedenen vom Gesetz-geber festgelegten Einspeisetarife auseinander und stellt entsprechend unter-schiedliche Ausbauszenarien fur die deutsche Onshore Windenergienutzung dar. Das zugrunde liegende System Dynamics Modell berucksichtigt dabei sowohl technische als auch okonomische Parameter. Der Ansatz sowie die Ergebnisse werden anderen veroffentlichten Prognosen gegenubergestellt. Die Ergebnisse liegen innerhalb der Spannbreite der anderen berucksichtigten Studien, zei-gen jedoch auch interessante Unterschiede.

     

Der Relaunch des Journals für Betriebswirtschaft

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Book reviews

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Near‐sourcing UK apparel: value chain restructuring,productivity and the informal economy

Fast fashion's emphasis on quick response production and supply chain management is at the basis of renewed growth in UK apparel manufacturing. This article shows how increasing pressure from lead firms has resulted in manufacturers maintaining profit levels, mainly, through informal subcontracting and informal employment, as opposed to increasing productivity.     

The Social Network Position of Lead Users

The field of lead user research has seen a great deal of attention from academics and practitioners alike. However, we still lack a full understanding of the nature of users with high potential for innovation. In this paper, we employ a social network perspective on lead users. Increasing the realism of our research in three empirical studies with different empirical settings and methods, we provide robust evidence that lead users have a distinctive social network position: They exhibit an unusually high level of “betweenness centrality,” meaning that they are positioned as bridges between different social groups. This finding has two major implications for lead user theory. First, it consolidates seminal conceptual work on lead users and their embeddedness in social networks. And second, the findings extend and validate prior work on the social network perspective of lead users by combining theoretical insights from cognitive psychology, research on creativity, and network theory. As the social network positions of individuals can be mapped quickly and at low cost with modern Web mining tools, our findings may point to a new and readily applicable approach for the efficient and effective identification of lead users in real‐life projects, an aspect that is usually emphasized as the most crucial activity in lead user projects.