Forschungsmethoden der Wirtschaftsinformatik

The german-speaking IS community sees itself as a methodological pluralist discipline. With respect to recent debates (e.g. on rigor versus relevance) an exact knowledge of its methodological profile becomes increasingly important. This contribution presents the findings of a content analysis of 300 articles published in the journal WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK in the last ten years. As one result, the study identified six major methods of the german-speaking IS community: argumentative, conceptional and formal deductive research, prototyping, case studies and quantitative cross sectional studies. It could also be shown, that the methodological profile continually changed during the last ten years. The article also compares its findings with the current methodological profile of the anglo-american IS community based on a secondary data analysis.     

A contingency model for the allocation of media content in publishing companies

Today, articles and papers can be published in many different media and the allocation of content by publishing firms is vital for their operational efficiency, time-to-market, and customer retention. Past studies in MIS research have focused on the allocation of other objects than content, e.g., data or hardware, with different distribution and integration requirements. Such studies have ignored the allocation of media content. We developed and tested a structural model of media content allocation behavior of publishing companies. Drawing on contingency theory, we hypothesized that organizational structure (centralization, formalization, and specialization), size, distribution of IT decision-making, and information processing requirements influenced the degree of content distribution and integration. The model was tested using data from a survey of 115 companies in the book, newspaper, and magazine publishing industries. While content distribution was primarily contingent upon organizational formalization, organizational specialization, IT decision-making, and information processing requirements, only organizational standardization and information processing requirements were found to be significant in affecting the way that publishing companies carried out content integration.     

Study of Martensitic Phase Transformation in a NiTiCu Thin‐Film Shape‐Memory Alloy Using Photoelectron Emission Microscopy

Thermally induced martensitic phase transformation in a polycrystalline NiTiCu thin‐film shape‐memory alloy is probed using photoelectron emission microscopy (PEEM). In situ PEEM images reveal distinct changes in microstructure and photoemission intensity at the phase‐transition temperatures. In particular, images of the low‐temperature, martensite phase are brighter than that of the high‐temperature, austenite phase, because of the lower work function of the martensite. UV photoelectron spectroscopy shows that the effective work‐function changes by about 0.16 eV during thermal cycling. In situ PEEM images also show that the network of trenches observed on the room‐temperature film disappears suddenly during heating and reappears suddenly during subsequent cooling. These trenches are also characterized using atomic force microscopy at selected temperatures. The implications of these observations with respect to the spatial distribution of phases during thermal cycling in this thin‐film shape‐memory alloy are discussed.     

A flexible algorithm for calculating pair interactions on SIMD architectures

Calculating interactions or correlations between pairs of particles is typically the most time-consuming task in particle simulation or correlation analysis. Straightforward implementations using a double loop over particle pairs have traditionally worked well, especially since compilers usually do a good job of unrolling the inner loop. In order to reach high performance on modern CPU and accelerator architectures, single-instruction multiple-data (SIMD) parallelization has become essential. Avoiding memory bottlenecks is also increasingly important and requires reducing the ratio of memory to arithmetic operations. Moreover, when pairs only interact within a certain cut-off distance, good SIMD utilization can only be achieved by reordering input and output data, which quickly becomes a limiting factor. Here we present an algorithm for SIMD parallelization based on grouping a fixed number of particles, e.g. 2, 4, or 8, into spatial clusters. Calculating all interactions between particles in a pair of such clusters improves data reuse compared to the traditional scheme and results in a more efficient SIMD parallelization. Adjusting the cluster size allows the algorithm to map to SIMD units of various widths. This flexibility not only enables fast and efficient implementation on current CPUs and accelerator architectures like GPUs or Intel MIC, but it also makes the algorithm future-proof. We present the algorithm with an application to molecular dynamics simulations, where we can also make use of the effective buffering the method introduces.     

Specific exemplar retention and prototype abstraction in young and old adults.

Examined the effects of age differences in retention of information about specific concept members on 40 older adults' (mean age 72.3 yrs) and 40 younger adults' (mean age 20.6 yrs) ability to abstract central tendency information. The mean Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale—Revised (WAIS—R) Vocabulary scaled score for the young adults was significantly lower than that of the older adults. Ss were presented with a series of visual patterns that were organized around a prototype and were then presented with these same patterns plus a set of new patterns varying in prototype similarity in a recognition test. It was found that young Ss retained more information about specific acquisition set exemplars, which resulted in slightly different recognition responses for new patterns. However, the recognition behavior of both young and older Ss appeared to be governed by the same rules. It is suggested that the organization of conceptual information does not change with age but that the poorer retention of specific item information in older adults may result in a less complete representation. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)