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Refugee integration, one long-term solution to the large number of people fleeing their home countries, constitutes a challenge for both refugees and host societies. ICT and especially online peer groups seem promising to support this process. Building on literature demonstrating the societal benefits of peer groups, this paper proposes a novel peer-group-based approach to address refugee integration and introduces both an online and offline realization. A randomized field experiment in cooperation with public (refugee) services and a non-governmental organization makes it possible to expand existing research by quantitatively demonstrating societal benefits of online peer groups and ICT for refugee integration. Further, this paper is the first to assess the effectiveness of online and offline peer groups in one experimental setup comparatively. Results show that peer groups provide substantial value with respect to the integration domains social bridges, social bonds, rights and citizenship as well as safety and stability. While the outcome of the various integration domains differs for online and offline peer groups, participants’ adoption rates were higher for online peer groups. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12599-021-00725-9.

The ongoing proliferation of digital technologies is reshaping the customer-firm relationship by providing new possibilities for companies and customers to interact with each other. Companies try to involve customers in firm-sponsored online customer networks to connect them more deeply with the brand. In this context, the impact of positive social influence induced among customers on their value contribution has been acknowledged, however, research often neglects the impact of negative social influence. We propose therefore a novel approach to account for direct and indirect as well as positive and negative social influence between customers in online customer networks to calculate customers’ integrated value contribution. We demonstrate the applicability of our approach using an illustrative online customer network. Our approach allows practitioners to evaluate customers’ “true” value in online customer networks by preventing over- and underestimation of customers’ value contribution., Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS), Seoul, South Korea, December 10-14, 2017.

With more companies using Enterprise Social Networks (ESN) for employee communication and collaboration, the influence of ESN on organizational hierarchies has been subject of discussions in science and practice. Conversely, the question if formal hierarchies affect interaction inside ESN and outside (i.e., personal interaction or interaction via traditional media) in the same way has not yet been addressed. The aim of our research is to analyse those hierarchical effects. By contrasting a rich dataset comprising two years of communication and collaboration inside an ESN with data from an online survey, we found significant differences between the hierarchical effects inside and outside the ESN and their impact on communication and collaboration. Although our findings indicate significant impact of formal hierarchy, we found it to be weaker inside the ESN. We conclude that interaction inside ESN is more inclusive and balanced across hierarchical levels.

The digital transformation leads to an enormous change in the customer-firm relationship. Recently launched firm-sponsored online customer networks enable customers to actively interact with the company and other customers in form of social engagement activities like asking and answering questions or receiving feedback. Despite the increasing importance of online customer networks, existing literature still lacks an in-depth understanding of the impact of social engagement on customer profitability based on real-world data regarding both customers’ social engagement activities and customers’ profitability. Our paper therefore aims at providing insights about the relationship between different forms of customers’ social engagement and customers’ profitability based on an extensive dataset of a German direct banking institution’s online customer network. We found, for example, that – in contrast to posting answers – raising questions in the online customer network is associated with significantly higher profitability of the respective customers. Our study leads to interesting results exceeding existing research and helping practitioners to manage online customer networks more effectively and to focus on and foster particularly promising forms of customers’ social engagement., Proceedings of the 25th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), Guimarães, Portugal, June 12-15, 2017 (pp. 2101-2118). ISBN 978-989-207655 Research Papers

The rapid growth of the Internet has led to a revolution in the relationship between customers and companies. After the first experiences on social media platforms, companies started hosting their own online customer networks where formerly passive consuming customers are able to connect, share, and cooperate with each other and the company. This social engagement of customers is generally considered as an incredible value for the hosting company. However, while previous research regularly takes a positive relationship between users’ social engagement and customer profitability in online customer networks for granted, there is still a lack of research rigorously analyzing this aspect in detail. Against this background, the aim of our paper is to provide an in-depth investigation of the relationship between users’ social engagement and customer profitability in online customer networks using a unique dataset of a German direct banking institution. This leads to interesting results that do not support either existing statements in literature or best current practices. Indeed, in our case we do not generally observe significant higher social engagement for “buyers” compared with “nonbuyers”., Proceedings of the 24th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), Istanbul, Turkey, June 12-15, 2016 (pp. 1-15). Research Papers

Customer self-service technologies (SST) have been gaining increasing economic importance given their proliferation in the customer service industry. Self-service kiosks have gradually been replacing traditional service employees and their progress is expected to continue. The growing relevance of SST results in the need for companies to understand why customers are willing to use SST and which motivations drive SST adoption. Two central constructs determine a customer’s willingness to use SST, namely utilitarian and hedonic value. Thus, the aim of this paper is twofold: first, we explore the multidimensional nature of utilitarian and especially hedonic value. Second, we examine their relative importance in determining repeat use intention, depending on a customer’s prior experience with SST. We develop a research model based on means-end chain (MEC) theory. The results underline that both values positively influence repeat use intention of SST. While hedonic value is prevalent for customers with little experience, utilitarian value weights stronger for customers with more experience.

In order to examine whether salinity-related phylogenetic shifts in microbial communities imply relevant functional changes it was planned to assess the structure and (selected) functions of pelagic prokaryotic communities (Bacteria, Archaea) along the whole lateral Baltic salinity gradient between the Skagerrak and the Bothnian Bay. This will provide the general background for the more specific question of decomposition dynamics of imported terrigenic organic compounds. The decomposition capacity for organic matter, particularly the degradation potential for introduced terrestrial dissolved organic matter (tDOM) was investigated both along the horizontal salinity and the vertical oxygen gradient of the Baltic Sea. The identification of microbial key organisms and the relation to functional characteristics in the vertical pelagic oxygen gradients of the central Baltic (Gotland Basin, Landsort Deep) includes the investigation of suboxic and anoxic conditions on organic matter degradation, specific processes within the nitrogen cycle, and an assessment of the general physico-chemical profiles, including nutrients and trace metals. Additionally, the significance of the newly identified groups of crenarchaea and epsilonproteobacteria for the nitrogen cycle (coupled nitrification/denitrification) and the carbon cycle were investigated. Finally, the historic, climate-driven shift of decomposition dynamics in the central basins, which is highly dependent on the temporal variability of bottom water inflow events, was accounted for by respective geological studies., METEOR-Berichte