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Examines computerised marketing information systems and considers the implications of their role and the major characteristics of such systems and discusses the DEMON model in detail. States that a system is a set of components which interact in a certain manner to achieve its goals; an open system is distinguished from a closed one by the fact that interaction exists with its environment; since most organisations must be considered as open systems, their environment becomes a dialectic part of any systems definition. Concludes that computerised marketing information systems will never be able to replace the questioning human mind.

In 1993, an innovative working time agreement was achieved at the Volkswagen (VW) Company. Its major aim was to save 30,000 jobs in VW's six German plants, which were endangered because of a severe crisis of the car manufacturer. The 2‐year agreement included as its major point a reduction of the weekly working hours by 20% to 28.8 hours/week without complete financial compensation for the employees. In the years following, the original agreement was renewed and amended several times whereby the amendments mainly included a considerable flexibility of the working time structures at Volkswagen. This paper discusses the different agreements and presents some findings of a representative empirical study among the VW employees about the effects of the 28.8‐hour per week agreement. Finally, the question will be answered whether the VW model could serve as a general model to redistribute an existing volume of work among more employees in order to reduce unemployment.

Gunther Anders in the 20th century and Hartmut Rosa in the 21st have argued that the technics of organization – that is, its physical and social technologies, have from acceleration become so uncontrollable and unpredictable that circumstances actually outstrip awareness to the degree that intentional “organizing” is more a fable than a reality, as stated in the quote from Rosa that forms the title of this article.

In this article, two critical theorists are examined who have fundamentally rejected the “control” thesis that dominates organization theory. It is a thesis that assumes that organizational change ought to be goal-directed, leadership driven and make use of soft and hard technologies to achieve defined objectives.

The prevailing “idea” of organizing has become illusionary. The technics of accelerationism have overpowered it. Not “organizing” but “ethic-sizing” is what remains as the: “What is to be done.”

The tradition of Gunther Anders and Hartmut Rosa (second and third generation Frankfurter School) and the implications of their work for our assumptions about the relations between technology, control and organization is for a first time evidenced in this article.

A method for the automatic selection of tools in a disassembly or assembly environment is described. The method uses a cluster graph to represent the product in a fashion suitable for the simple identification of part inter‐relationships within the product. This graphical representation of the product is then converted directly into a dynamic programming model. To this dynamic programming model cost data are added and the optimum tool selection path is produced.

In many industrial applications of magnetic fluid dynamics it is important to control the motion of the surface of liquids. In aluminium electrolysis cells, large surface deformations of the molten aluminium are undesired, and it would be useful to have the possibility to recognize the surface deviation. This includes the problem of reconstructing a free boundary between the conducting fluids. We have investigated how the interface between two fluids of different conductivity assumed in a highly simplified model of an aluminium electrolysis cell could be reconstructed by means of external magnetic field measurements. Forward simulations of the magnetic field generated by the impressed current are done by applying the FEM software code FEMLAB. Several interface shapes which can be realized in experiments are investigated and a strategy for identifying the main interface characteristics using magnetic field measurements as an initial guess to the solution of the inverse problem is proposed.

The importance of international markets has increased in the past years and will further increase in the future. This offers potential for being competitive, but especially for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is going along with a variety of risks, e.g. the competition in the domestic market intensifies. Nevertheless, in most cases, SMEs with foreign operations are more successful than SME operating solely in the domestic markets. Nevertheless, the internationalization activities of SME are often unsystematic and emotional, especially when looking for distribution partners. The research project “Empirical based development of an instrument for identifying and making decisions about the choice of market entry and the selection of distribution partners of SME of the tool and cutlery industry when developing foreign markets” deals with this topic. In this paper the results of a literature review and an expert discussion regarding market development and especially the process of finding distribution partners for foreign markets are presented. Also, further steps in the project dealing with aspects of realizing the detected success factors by using quality management methods are explained.

The first step comprises a literature review and an expert discussion with leading managers of SME, with the aim to receive information about market entry decisions and selection of distribution partners. Therefore, a literature review and an expert discussion with leading managers of SME are carried out. The discussions are evaluated with MAXQDA©, a software for qualitative data analysis. Next, a questionnaire is designed for a quantitative analysis of the topic and will be evaluated by using SMART-PLS. Then, the results will be used as input variable for a quality function deployment for identifying appropriate measures for implementing the prior identified success factors. Thereby, also quality management methods and techniques will be used for finding the “right” measures. In this context, also a method for selecting distribution partners will be developed which is based on the logic of supplier evaluation. Finally, an Excel-based tool will be developed which includes the results of the project and allows companies easily applying them.

A literature review and an expert discussion within the tool and cutlery industry have been carried out and analysed. Thereby, the need for action regarding the selection of distribution partners has been revealed as essential step for success in foreign markets. Literature mostly deals with aspects like choosing appropriate countries for market entry and market entry strategy but not with distribution partners. Expert discussion also has shown that choosing distribution partners is often managed with gut feel. It lacks a criteria-based approach for optimizing this step during the internalization process.

Finding adequate distribution partners for a successful entry into foreign markets has not been investigated thoroughly yet. The project offers insights into determining factors for the selection process and improves the distribution partner selection by using quality management methods, for instance, by adapting the fundamental procedure of supplier assessment for distribution partner assessment.

Big Data Analytics provides a multitude of opportunities for organizations to improve service operations, but it also increases the threat of external parties gaining unauthorized access to sensitive customer data. With data breaches now a common occurrence, it is becoming increasingly plain that while modern organizations need to put into place measures to try to prevent breaches, they must also put into place processes to deal with a breach once it occurs. Prior research on information technology security and services failures suggests that customer compensation can potentially restore customer sentiment after such data breaches. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In this study, the authors draw on the literature on personality traits and social influence to better understand the antecedents of perceived compensation and the effectiveness of compensation strategies. The authors studied the propositions using data collected in the context of Target’s large-scale data breach that occurred in December 2013 and affected the personal data of more than 70 million customers. In total, the authors collected data from 212 breached customers.

The results show that customers’ personality traits and their social environment significantly influences their perceptions of compensation. The authors also found that perceived compensation positively influences service recovery and customer experience.

The results add to the emerging literature on Big Data Analytics and will help organizations to more effectively manage compensation strategies in large-scale data breaches.

The recent unification of Germany produces the problem of how to integrate the considerably different education systems of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). The principles of the educational philosophies, the educational policies and the admission policies of both states, the impact of the control machinery on the citizens of the GDR, as well as the structural differences and similarities and the consequences for organisation from the nurseries to the universities are outlined. The prospects for the future of both the institutions and the personnel are examined. It is argued that, although the unification was made possible by the East Germans, the adaptation to the new situation has to be made mainly by them and their institutions.

The purpose of this paper is to study the optimization problem of low‐frequency magnetic shielding using the adjoint variable method (AVM). This method is compared with conventional methods to calculate the gradient.

The equation for the vector potential (eddy currents model) in appropriate Sobolev spaces is studied to obtain well‐posedness. The optimization problem is formulated in terms of a cost functional which depends on the vector potential and its rotation. Convergence of a steepest descent algorithm to a stationary point of this functional is proved. Finally, some numerical results for an axisymmetric induction heater are presented.

Using Friedrichs' inequality, the existence and uniqueness of the vector potential, its gradient and the corresponding adjoint variable can be proved. From the numerical results, it is concluded that the AVM is advantageous if the number of parameters to optimize is larger than two.

The AVM is only faster than conventional methods if the gradients can be calculated with sufficient accuracy.

Theoretical results for eddy currents model are often based on a non‐vanishing conductivity. The theoretical value of this paper is the presence of non‐conducting materials in the domain. From a practical viewpoint, it has been demonstrated that the AVM can yield a significant reduction of computational time for advanced optimization problems.

Flexible working time patterns have gained enormously in importance in recent years. Tins process has been accompanied by major changes in the area of industrial relations. The decision‐making power regarding working time issues is moving from the collective bargaining parties to the players at company level, namely management and works councils. How should we view these trends? How do they affect the options and freedom of action of companies and employees in the area of working hours? The article focuses on the options created by the introduction of working time accounts for the flexible oiganisation of work routines and the effects on the cost situation in modern companies as well as on the time‐based planning leeway it generates for employees. The available empirical findings support the hypothesis that the replacement of standard working time by time accounts can be described as a process of “controlled flexibility”. The introduction of time accounts is mainly observed within a regulatory framework that defines both bandwidths as well as rules for the variable organisation of working times. This practice enables companies to increase their internal flexibility and gives at least the majority of employees increased leeway to coordinate working and non‐working time.