Process studies put movement, change and flow first; to study processually is to consider the world as restless, something underway, becoming and perishing, without end. To understand firms processually is to accept but also – and this is harder perhaps – to absorb this fluidity, to treat a variable as just that, a variable. The resonance with entrepreneurship studies is obvious. If any field is alive to, and fully resonant with, a processual understanding of, for example, the creation of firms, it is entrepreneurship studies. This special issue is an attempt to consider the promise and potential of processual approaches to studying, researching and practising entrepreneurship. The articles in the issue attest to an increasing sensitivity to processual thinking. We argue that appreciating entrepreneurial phenomena processually opens up the field to an understanding of entrepreneurship as organizational creation – not simply the creation of new organizations but also experiments in new organizational form
«Chi bler voul, poch piglia» ist Rätoromanisch und bedeutet: „Wer viel will, nimmt wenig.“ Dieses Sprichwort steht stellvertretend für das Selbstverständnis der Schweiz, bescheiden mit seinen Ressourcen umzugehen. Doch gerade die allumfassende Digitalisierung könnte diese Grundeinstellung bei Schweizer Käufern nachhaltig verändern. Schweizer Handelsunternehmen sollten den Sprung nach vorne hinzu mehr Innovationen wagen, denn auch die Käufer hierzulande werden anspruchsvoller.
Through the proliferation of channels and ways to engage in these channels, customers today have an unprecedented range of options to individualize their customer journeys. This study attends to the resulting complexity by investigating the overt and underlying reasons for customers’ interaction choices along the omnichannel customer journey. Data collected from focus groups, expert interviews, and laddering interviews with motor insurance customers illustrate that omnichannel customer journeys are inherently individualistic but driven by three types of effects. Some effects apply to singular interaction choices and are hence journey independent, while the strength of inertia between subsequent interactions depends on customers’ satisfaction with the interaction. Customer journey patterns, which pertain to specific portions of the journey, include research shopping and the novel impersonalization/ interactivity reduction effect. Our findings further provide additional explanations for these customer journey patterns and customers’ limited motor insurance search efforts. Based on the ultimate underlying motives for interaction choice, the four types of value-in-use customers seek in their interactions, a segmentation approach that is more effective than predominant efforts using observable interaction behavior is suggested.
Roboter haben sich in den letzten Jahren von einer kühnen Zukunftsvision hin zu einem festen Bestandteil unseres Alltags entwickelt. So werden sie bereits als Produktionsassistenten in der Industrie, als Staubsauger im Haushalt sowie als Drohnen im militärischen Bereich eingesetzt. Experten vergleichen die revolutionäre Wirkung von Robotern auf unsere Lebenswelt mit derjenigen von Computern. Die «Robolution» wirft zahlreiche juristische Fragen auf. Im vorliegenden Aufsatz soll in die Querschnittsdisziplin von Robotik und Recht eingeführt und dabei einige Fragen aufgegriffen werden. Im Fokus stehen zivilrechtliche Haftungsfragen und damit verbundene Möglichkeiten der Rechtsfortbildung. Ausserdem werden strafrechtliche und datenschutzrechtliche Bedenken im Zusammenhang mit dem Einsatz von Robotern thematisiert. Abschliessend wird in das Gebiet der «Roboethik», also die ethische Entwicklung, Herstellung und Verwendung der maschinellen Helfer, eingeführt.
This article deals with the civil liability issues that arise when self-driving vehicles are admitted to our streets. Firstly, it is explained why strict liability regimes for the vehicle holder, which are in place in several jurisdictions across Europe, are a workable foundation for ensuring compensation of the victim. However, accidents caused by highly automated vehicles will raise the question of the manufacturer’s liability for a defective product. Accordingly, this article examines the effects of the circumstance that accidents occurring with self-driving cars will no longer be caused by misconduct of the human driver, but often rather by a system malfunction. Thirdly, it is argued that preferably the manufacturer should be the risk bearer and that this shift in liability towards the manufacturer will result in an adequate allocation of liability.
