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ZusammenfassungDer enorme Stromverbrauch von Bitcoin hat dazu geführt, dass in Wissenschaft und Praxis oft eher undifferenziert Diskussionen über die Nachhaltigkeit von Blockchain- bzw. Distributed-Ledger-Technologie allgemein geführt werden. Allerdings ist die Blockchain-Technologie bereits heute alles andere als homogen – nicht nur hinsichtlich ihrer Anwendungen, die mittlerweile weit über Kryptowährungen hinaus in Wirtschaft und öffentlichen Sektor reichen, sondern auch bezüglich ihrer technischen Charakteristika und insbesondere ihres Stromverbrauchs. Dieser Beitrag fasst den Status quo des Stromverbrauchs verschiedener Implementierungen von Blockchain-Technologie zusammen und geht dabei besonders auf das kürzlich erfolgte Bitcoin Halving sowie sogenannte ZK-Rollups ein. Wir argumentieren, dass Bitcoin und andere Proof-of-Work-Blockchains zwar in der Tat sehr viel Strom verbrauchen, aber bereits heute alternative Blockchain-Lösungen mit deutlich geringerem Stromverbrauch verfügbar sind und weitere vielversprechende Konzepte erprobt werden, die gerade den Stromverbrauch von großen Blockchain-Netzwerken in naher Zukunft noch einmal deutlich senken könnten. Daraus schließen wir, dass die Kritik am Stromverbrauch von Bitcoin zwar legitim ist, jedoch daraus nicht eine Energieproblematik von Blockchain-Technologie generell abgeleitet werden darf. In vielen Fällen, in denen mithilfe von energieeffizienteren Blockchain-Varianten Prozesse digitalisiert oder verbessert werden können, darf sogar per Saldo durchaus mit Energieeinsparungen gerechnet werden.

When talking about blockchain technology in academia, business, and society, frequently generalizations are still heared about its – supposedly inherent – enormous energy consumption. This perception inevitably raises concerns about the further adoption of blockchain technology, a fact that inhibits rapid uptake of what is widely considered to be a groundbreaking and disruptive innovation. However, blockchain technology is far from homogeneous, meaning that blanket statements about its energy consumption should be reviewed with care. The article is meant to bring clarity to the topic in a holistic fashion, looking beyond claims regarding the energy consumption of Bitcoin, which have, so far, dominated the discussion.

In a decentralized and renewable energy system, reliable and economical solutions are necessary to adjust power demand to a volatile power supply by photovoltaic and wind energy plants. A high potential for the balancing of short and medium-term power supply fluctuations is seen in energy flexible factories. To leverage this potential, monetary incentives and technological enablers have to be developed. Apart from that, the ecological and social aspects of energy flexible factories have to be considered in transdisciplinary research, to achieve a broad public acceptance. To assess the complex interrelations between the technical, political, legal and social sector, a clear and accessible base for discussions is necessary. This paper presents an approach for a simulation based-analysis of energy flexible factories with focus on high applicability and comprehensibility for stakeholders from different disciplines. This paper presents the general structure of the simulation model including the operation module for the energy flexible region Augsburg.

This article constitutes an “editorialized”, partly shortened, and partly extended version of the paper “Business and information systems engineering: a complementary approach to information systems – what we can learn from the past and may conclude from present reflection on the future” by Hans Ulrich Buhl, Gunter Muller, Gilbert Fridgen, and Maximilian Roglinger that appeared in the Journal of the Association for Information Systems 13(4):236–253, April 2012. The editorial has been presented as a keynote on the BIS conference in Vilnius, Lithuania, in May 2012 and the BISE workshop in Hannover, Germany, in October 2012. An earlier version has been published in the BIS proceedings. Published online: 2012-11-03

Combining the efforts of physicists, materials scientists, economists and resource-strategy researchers opens up an interdisciplinary route enabling the substitution of rare elements by more abundant ones, serving as a guideline for the development of novel materials.

Automating business processes or relocating the processes to low-wage countries are two frequently used measures to decrease cost. With the main focus on cost reduction, however, productivity differences between locations as well as interdependencies between automation and sourcing are often inadequately considered. In fact, automation and sourcing opportunities are usually evaluated independently of each other. This common practice can systematically lead to decisions that consume expected savings. A decision model is proposed that is designed to simultaneously derive optimal degrees of automation and relocation for business processes. Our approach considers various process execution costs and productivity levels as well as the effects of business process automation on sourcing decisions in order to maximise the return of a firm. The model is illustrated with a real word case.

When the tsunami hit the Fukushima atomic plant in Japan in March 2011, causing the reactor disaster, it was impossible to predict the consequences for the future of energy supply. Many countries have considerably strengthened their activities since then to realize an energy turnaround, i.e., a switch from nuclear power and fossil fuels to a more sustainable energy supply with increased use of regenerative energy resources such as wind or sun. Whereas only 55 states had political ambitions to expand the use of renewable energies in 2005, this number has increased to about 190 states in 2012. Also a change in attitudes can be observed. Early in 2012, more than 70 % of the French supported a phase-out of nuclear power – even though France was worldwide frontrunner in this area with a 75 % nuclear powered energy supply in the end of 2010. Germany takes an uncompromising approach in that it has officially decided to phase out nuclear power completely by 2022, although the economically strong parts in the country’s south receive more than 50 % of their electricity from nuclear power plants. This development towards a nuclear phase-out, which can be observed in other countries to a lesser extent, can be considered – in the jargon of BISE – as a ‘revolution’ more than an ‘evolution’. A revolution always comes with risks, but also offers opportunities. In the following we will show that the energy turnaround opens up a wide range of opportunities – if it is addressed responsibly and with a well-conceived plan. First of all it should be mentioned that this ‘revolution’ may be a current topic, but in principle is not a new one. Business & Information Systems Engineering (BISE) addressed this issue in a very early stage. For example, in issue 4/2008, the high potential of IS beyond Green IT regarding an energy turnaround was pointed out. Exactly one year later, in BISE 4/2009, the responsibility of our discipline for our planet and the threat of a worldwide resource crisis were discussed. The editorial 1/2012 and the corresponding special focus issue focused on “Smart Grids” and their relevance for the energy turnaround. All in all, we can see that the international community was aware of the energy turnaround’s relevance even before the Fukushima reactor disaster. But this is not sufficient. Rather, to ensure the success of the energy turnaround it is essential that single countries do not indulge in blind activism. This is especially important because the aims associated with the energy turnaround, such as an increased use of regenerative energies, will lead to major challenges (e.g., it is Germany’s goal to increase the use of regenerative energies from 20 % in 2011 to at least 35 % in 2020). Some of these challenges are briefly mentioned in the following: • The yield of renewable energies is often difficult to plan and control – e.g., wind and solar energy can only be extracted during suitable weather conditions. This frequently leads to a mismatch between the times of supply and demand. • These supply risks require energy storage and conventional power plants. Construction projects for energy storage are often in conflict with current regulations concerning environmental protection or are unpopular with the public. Moreover, many concepts regarding the storage of energy are still in research and development phases and thus cannot yet be used commercially. Also, construction projects for conventional power plants are often highly unpopular within the local population. • Onshore wind parks also have a negative impact on nature and hence are more and more subject to critical valuation by the public. • The transport of renewable energy requires a massive expansion of the super grid at national as well as international levels. In Germany alone, about 400 kilometers of the current distribution system would have to be enhanced and further 850 kilometers would have to be newly built until 2015. This seems challenging considering that Germany constructed only 90 kilometers from 2006 until 2011. According to the “dena-Netzstudie II”, a further 3600 kilometers are supposedly needed by 2020. Also

By means of service-oriented architectures the IT support of processes can be designed as a portfolio of individual IT services provided by different suppliers. The processes are designed based on selection decisions between IT services that potentially have to be included. Many companies formulate a multitude of requirements for investments in IT services at ever shorter intervals. However, the scope of the desired investments usually exceeds the available budget. Thus, companies face the challenge of allocating the limited budget to investments in the most promising combination of IT services. This is hardly possible without methodical support. In addition, the allocation is often done intuitively and subject to the decision-makers’ affinity with IT. Therefore, this paper develops a quantitative, multi-period procedure model for the purpose of maximizing the enterprise value in accordance with value based management, which considers the dependencies of the periodical selection decisions. In the following, a decision logic for the heuristic solution to the selection problem is presented and its application is demonstrated by means of an illustrative case example.

“In memoriam Elena”. This was the headline of an article published in an important German weekly newspaper at the end of July this year. One can easily imagine this entitles the expected end of the governmental program for digital collection of employees’ data in Germany. This struggle to achieve an efficient governmental administration has now failed once and for all, which unfortunately is no global exception but represents numerous “well thought and badly realized” IT-projects of this kind within the public sector. But why are such mammoth projects initiated in the public sector and which role does IT play here? International debt crisis, financial crisis, or economic crisis, the demographic change, new technologies as well as increased safety demands are just some of the challenges the administrative organization of multiple countries need to take up. Additionally, the citizens’ level of expectation for higher performance and better service is increasing whereas – due to the pressure of rising costs – the governmental processes have to cope with the task of becoming more and more “efficient”. In this mesh of requirements, developments, and interest groups the idea of E-Government can be regarded as a practical attempt at a solution. The objective and vision behind IT-projects in E-Government contexts are clear and understandable: simplification and realization of information, communication, and transaction processes within and between governmental, local, and other official institutions as well as between these institutions and citizens and companies respectively by using digital information and communication technology. Here, IT can be seen as an enabler for a modern administration. Exemplarily, automation, streamlining, and harmonization of common governmental processes by means of building and developing shared service centers as well as the development and supply of portals can open potential for rationalization and finally ease the public budget. Although the underlying motivation is unambiguous and research as well as practice demonstrate lively interest in this objective – as many conferences (e.g., European Conference on E-Government, International Conference on E-Government) and journals (e.g., Electronic Journal of E-Government) in the context of E-Government indicate – realization is often a difficult, time-consuming, and scarcely accepted undertaking. What are the reasons that such projects in the administration – which is the sector with the highest IT-demand with expenditures of over $ 490 billion per anno worldwide (Gartner 2010) – do not receive public acceptance, although the objectives of cost reduction and more service for citizens are targeted? Why do E-Government efforts have to be postponed or even suspended in spite of immense investments? The answer to these questions requires a differentiated consideration. Exemplarily, a study conducted in 2010 shows (IDG NOA Sonderstudie 2010) that the public takes an extremely skeptical view on E-Government efforts. In particular, concerns about data protection and data security – especially the lacking transfer security and the conscientiousness when dealing with data – are described as critical aspects. First of all, the public is afraid to become “transparent citizens” and therefore takes a defensive position. Besides incidents in private enterprises – the hacker attack on the “playstation”network of Sony in spring 2011 caused an economic damage estimated at more than $ 170 million – of course other incidents within the governmental administration result in stirring up more (partly justified) misgivings. For example, in Estonia a “denial of service” attack in 2007 briefly paralyzed a majority of the IT-infrastructure of banks, authorities, the police, and the government, which naturally reduced the public trust in E-Government endeavors. Apart from such external attacks, also already failed projects or projects with a catastrophic cost-benefit-ratio increase the public concerns. Unfortunately, the above mentioned example Elena is no exception.

“Egypt is offline”. At the time when this news came over the ticker on 2011-01-28, the so-called “Facebook revolution” had already reached a new high. According to Hosni Mubarak, who was still president of Egypt to that time, and according to his regime, it was no longer sufficient to sporadically shut off cellular networks and social media services, such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. Instead, the entire Internet seemed to become an incontrollable threat to the governmental machinery of power which made it necessary to take this drastic step for the first time ever (Kremp 2011). What had happened? The phenomenon of disseminating information via social media services against the will of regimes of totalitarian states was not new. Subsequent to the presidential elections in Iran, for instance, in 2009 news concerning the opponent’s protests almost exclusively reached the foreign public via the micro-blogging platform Twitter and the video website Youtube (Meller 2011). While in Tunisia the video website Youtube had already been shut down in the end of the year 2007, in 2010 the population’s displeasure was increasingly channeled into the social network Facebook (Lobo 2011). Thereby at the beginning mainly information on the deplorable state of affairs within the country, which had been run down by the corrupt regime of Zine el-Abdine Ben Ali, was shared (e.g., on the social inequality, the huge number of (especially young) unemployed, the officials’ wide spread arbitrariness). In the course of time also protest meetings were specifically organized via social media services and news on their progress was spread. Thus Facebook became the central communication platform of the protests, with more than 300,000 Tunisians registering within two months (Lobo 2011). This represents an enormous number regarding the just four million people having Internet access in the country. Even while the regime was still attempting to stem the tide by stealing Facebook passwords and spreading targeted disinformation (Madrigal 2011), Tunisia’s president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali finally felt forced to flee on January 14th, 2011. Although social media services like Facebook are mainly ascribed the role of a catalyst for piledup public displeasure (Lobo 2011), it was precisely these that drew the accumulated attention of the traditional media like radio broadcast and television to these events. The subsequent wide dissemination of the news about the protest within the Arabic world was especially expedited by the Arabic news channel Al Jazeera (Meller 2011). Few weeks later, on February 11th, 2011, also Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak resigned as a consequence. With about 5.7 million registered Facebook users (n.a. 2011c) and a variety of other intensively used social media services like Twitter or Windows Live Messenger (formerly MSN), here again the digital networking played a decisive role (Meller 2011). For fear of the events in North Africa and the Middle East recurring, governments in many places react with preventive counteractions or try to exploit social media services for their own purposes. In analogy to China, where numerous social media services have been restricted or shut off for several years, shortly after the eruption of the protests the social network LinkedIn, which mainly aims at business contacts, was – among others – shut off in fear of the search item “Jasmine Revolution” (n.a. 2011a). Simultaneously several states focused on setting up such services themselves as usually such services can be more easily controlled and censored (Morozov 2011, p. 13). Examples for such services can be found, e.g., in Russia and several former GUS states (e.g., http://vkontakte.ru) as well as in Vietnam (e.g., http://go.vn). In contrast, the government of Bahrain tried to manipulate existing social media services, for example by flooding Twitter with pro-governmental news shortly after the first protest within the own country in order to undermine the credibility of this news service (Morozov 2011, p. 13). These arrangements demonstrate the immense respect of especially authoritarian regimes regarding a shift of power within society, away from individual information providers towards a close-knit and dynamic network composed of an arbitrary number of consumers and providers. These developments provide the possibility

The failure of IT projects has been subject to discussions for decades. For example, magazines report on historical failures of IT projects in the U.S. (Zeitler 2008), consulting firms analyze the failure of large-scale IT projects (Richter et al. 2008), and also science provides detailed studies about failures in selected major IT projects in Germany (Mertens 2009). Often, the so-called CHAOS report is used as a starting point for such analyses: according to this report, currently 24% of IT projects fail, 44% are considered to be challenged, and only 32% are successful (Eveleens and Verhoef 2010). From the perspective of business and information systems engineering (BISE), however, it is necessary to critically question the findings of the CHAOS report. The definition of “success” either remains unclear, or – if carried out – only the successful completion of the project’s implementation is assessed. However, it is not examined whether the project also helps to achieve the company’s objectives. This debate is not new. Already in 1998, Peter Mertens presented 15 theses in which he ultimately claimed that these analyses should focus on the overall objective of increasing corporate value, and derived what should actually be the proper goals of BISE. And yet there is still no single, accepted definition of when an IT project is to be considered a success. Against this background, the prudent scientist would do well to be careful with such general quantitative studies. Although the way of measuring success is controversial, it can be observed that still many large-scale IT projects face enormous problems or even fail. The direct and indirect effects are often dramatic and sometimes even threaten the existence of companies, as the following examples illustrate: In the first half of 2004, the supermarket chain Sainsbury’s had to record a profit decline of 88% compared to the previous year, after they failed to launch a new IT system. The new supply chain management system had proved inadequate so that the company had to let employees carry out processes instead of automating them. A total of 791 million U.S. dollars had to be charged off; Sainsbury’s decline to the third place in the British market has been blamed in large parts on the failure of the project. Toll Collect’s approach to establish a new system for track-based toll collection in Germany failed with great publicity effect with the termination letter from the Federal Transport Minister, stating that the offer is technically, legally, and economically unacceptable. This was preceded by months of quarrels due to numerous failures and ever-new delays. The system went live in early 2005 with a total delay of 16 months and limited functionality. On July, 29th 2005 the federal government therefore brought an action against the toll consortium and raised claims of 5.1 billion Euros. The dispute lasts until today. One of the largest IT projects in Europe with an estimated cost of up to 5.4 billion Euros, extensive requirements regarding data volume and protection is the introduction of the electronic health card in Germany. It was originally intended to replace the health insurance card on January 1st 2006 and now is several years behind schedule. The resulting loss of confidence of the public towards politics is enormous. Hence, the Chaos Computer Club summarized a study by Booz-Allen-Hamilton with the following words (translated): “In the best tradition of state-run large-scale software projects, another extremely expensive prestige project is consciously being approached here, the benefits of which are in no reasonable proportion to the risks and foreseeable problems. A first look at the data points to a massive explosion of costs through the introduction of the health card and to another technological disaster.” Such large-scale IT projects are likely to cause problems in future as well. Both, the increase in IT penetration of virtually all areas of life and their increasing interconnectedness, can be expected to increase the level of IT investments and the size of IT projects. This would also, unless countermeasures are taken, involve a higher number of failing projects, including – as mentioned above – huge tangible and intangible damage. Without a thorough performance analysis, largescale projects therefore continue to fail. Here, BISE as an interdisciplinary field of research is required to contribute to more success. In a first step, the following questions must be answered

In the section BISE – Discussion you usually find discussions of several distinguished experts on important and topical issues of the field. In addition, the section offers the possibility to publish letters to the editor (e.g., on recently published contributions), thereby promoting the scientific discourse. The following is a statement by the colleagues Peter Mertens and Matthias Schumann on the contribution “The State of Research on Information Systems Success – A Review of Existing Multidimensional Approaches” by Urbach et al. (2009b), which appeared in issue 4/2009 in the section BISE – State of the Art, and subsequent comments by the authors. The authors of the critical statement primarily focus on the question of which benefits result from the working results of researchers in business and information systems engineering (BISE) for economy and society. This fundamental issue certainly requires further discussion within the BISE community, which we intend to trigger by the presentation of the following two positions. If you would like to comment on this topic or another article of the journal Business & Information Systems Engineering (BISE), please send your contribution (max. 2 pages) to hansulrich.buhl@wiwi.uni-augsburg.de.

Im folgenden Beitrag wird ein Konzept für ein (Selbst-) Beratungssystem zur individualisierten Finanzdienstleistungsberatung für Privatkunden dargestellt und begründet, das finanzwirtschaftlich optimierte und individualisierte Beratungsvorschläge generiert. Ein derartiges System wird derzeit unter Beteiligung der Autoren im Rahmen des Forschungsverbundes für Situierung, Individualisierung und Personalisierung (FORSIP) entwickelt und prototypisch umgesetzt. Aus der Spezifikation der Anforderungen an eine individualisierte Beratung werden das betriebswirtschaftliche Konzept eines derartigen Beratungssystems für den Altersvorsorgekontext und deren fachliche Komponenten abgeleitet. Abschließend werden Möglichkeiten zur kundenverständlichen Visualisierung des Risikos eines Anlagevorschlags und deren systemtechnische Realisierung erörtert.

Within the upcoming “Multikonferenz Wirtschaftsinformatik” (MKWI) 2012 in Braunschweig, the journal Business & Information Systems Engineering (BISE) organizes a workshop on 2012-02-28. At this occasion, we would like to invite all authors who are currently working on submissions for BISE or are planning to submit a contribution to discuss their ideas with the Editor-in-Chief, the Department Editors, and other authors. The workshop’s objective is to elaborate on the scientifically interesting core by means of constructive feedback and to ensure the methodic quality of a paper even before submission. In doing so, the journal’s requirements on rigor and relevance can be taken into account at an early stage. Submission is open for extended abstracts with approx. 20,000 characters. Besides a motivation and clearly stated research questions, submissions should include an outline of the state of the art, a description of the research method to be used, and an outline regarding the expected results. Each abstract will be reviewed by the particular Department Editor and the Editor-in-Chief. The authors of the three best submissions will be invited to the workshop. The particular papers will be presented by the authors and discussed within the plenum of the workshop. Submissions from research and practice on the following (and related) topics are invited: Invited are papers dealing with theories, methods, tools, and intersubjectively verifiable insights regarding information and communication systems. This includes the fields of information management, applied computer science, business administration, economics, new media, and operations research, provided that the papers address modern concepts and solutions relating to information and communication systems or analyze the development of the information society. Moreover, topics referring to important peripheral areas are welcome, provided that developments with a closer reference to BISE are substantially affected. For example, addressing the impact of computer science on business, individuals, and society. The journal, and therefore the workshop as well, addresses the entire technoeconomically oriented community focusing on the combination of design science oriented and multidisciplinary research which is both rigorously conducted and relevant to business practice. The target audience comprises all authors dealing with BISE-related issues either from a (more) economic or (more) technical perspective. This also includes industrial engineers dealing with BISE-related issues.

© Gabler Verlag 2010 In issue 4/2010, I presented the first outcomes of our internationalization strategy, i.e. a strong increase in downloads of our journal. Additionally, our impact factor has more than doubled from 2007 to 2009, even before it is affected by our internationalization approach. Thus, we are confident that this trend will keep on in the future. Today, I am very happy to announce another important step towards the success of our strategy: On ICIS 2010, BISE was officially announced as AIS Affiliated Journal. Thereby, the Association for Information Systems (AIS) wishes to support and encourage BISE because of its innovative approach to improve the communication between the BISE and IS community. Hence, BISE will be able to use the term “AIS Affiliated Journal” as the first journal of its type. In the course of this affiliation BISE will be also available via AIS eLibrary (http://aisel.aisnet.org/bise) in the future. Thus, all AIS members have free access to the journal, which further increases our international visibility. On this occasion I would like to thank Jan vom Brocke, Guy Fitzgerald, Kalle Lyytinen, Dov Te’eni, Pete Tinsley, Cathy Urquhart, and Robert Winter for their valuable support. A very special thanks goes to Marco de Marco who supported us very strongly and helped us to hit the target.

BISE and WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK are also available via http://www.bise-journal. org and http://www.wirtschaftsinformatik.de, respectively. Additionally, all articles published in BISE since 2009 and all articles published in WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK since 2006 can be obtained via SpringerLink. This implies that all members of institutions with an appropriate licensing have access to our articles worldwide. In most countries, this also includes nearly all universities (and therefore all university employees and students).Thus, interested readers from all over the world are able to read articles published in BISE and WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK. Regarding the international market penetration we can record first successes over the last years: In 2009, the number of downloads conducted via SpringerLink stood at 37,493 for WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK and – for a journal only started in 2009 a really exceptional figure – at 6,336 for BISE. In the first quarter of 2010 WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK’s downloads increased up to 9,900 (+28% compared to the corresponding quarter of the previous year) after having gone up approx. 745% to a very high level within the two years from 2007 to 2009. For the English-language new BISE, downloads conducted via SpringerLink nearly exploded within the first quarter of 2010 with an increase of more than 600% compared to the corresponding quarter of the previous year – thus within one year – reaching 4,169 downloads. At the beginning of its second year BISE exceeded 40% of WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK’s – also very good – value with its 50 years of tradition. Thus WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK is further expanding its lead over other – much more broadly positioned – scholarly journals within the German-language area. And the internationalization strategy with BISE, more than a third of which was obtained already in its first year by the Asian-Pacific area, has experienced a better start than our greatest optimists could have imagined. Taken together, both journals already hold – again measured in downloads – the third position worldwide of all IS-journals available via SpringerLink. On this occasion I would like to thank all authors, reviewers, and readers. Besides our authors’ achievements I would particularly like to highlight the work of the reviewers who assure – usually keeping very short review cycles – that we obtain and present scientific findings at a constantly high quality level, working in close cooperation with our authors mostly in several iterations. Above all however, I thank you, dear readers, for contributing to such an extent to our journal’s increasing success.

Contrary to the variety of models and procedures for optimizing the ordering decision in inventory control theory, no comparable tools exist for the scrapping decision. Thus, the current paper constitutes a step in this direction. Using a simple deterministic model, the basic economics and structure of the problem are introduced first. Then we determine explicitly “scrap-optimal” turn-around-times as well as the corresponding scrap- and rest-quantities. Accounting for the stochastic nature of demand, the model is generalized and algorithms for determination of optimal scrapping decision are discussed. Finally we compare the results and discuss practical applications.

Contrary to most of the rich literature existing on location theory the paper emphasizes the discussion of adequate objective functions for multi-objective approaches. In particular, a number of theorems are presented characterizing single objective reductions of multi-objective problems. In doing so we show that objective functions employed in location theory contain both implicit and explicit value judgements and we hope to provide the reader with a better understanding of the economics and value judgements behind these objectives. Another benefit from the approach is the ability to derive desirable objective functions in Operations Research in general and in Location Theory in particular from desirable properties.

‘‘The times they are a-changin,’’ a famous song title by Bob Dylan, also applies to our profession and our subject of study. Information technology has always been a driver for innovation. The recent years, however, have seen IT-based innovations that truly impact everybody’s lives. Everything that can be digitized will be digitized, and this trend is continuing at an amazing speed. For a discipline that looks at the design and utilization of information systems these are exciting times. Yet, it is also a time full of challenges. While our discipline has much to contribute, it competes with other disciplines for topics and ideas. Also, the scope of topics studied has become broader and broader, and so have our methods. While initial work in Business and Information Systems Engineering (BISE) was often rooted in artificial intelligence, database systems, or operations research, the community has adopted new approaches to address new types of problems. Nowadays, we also have a strong group of academics working primarily with empirical methods or methods from microeconomics, to name just a few. This development towards a more multiparadigmatic discipline also had its challenges and there were controversial discussions along the way.