Open Access

In this cumulative thesis, I present four manuscripts and two appendixes. In the manuscripts I discuss mindsets and their relation to the effectiveness of negotiation training. My general claim is that mindsets promise to be relevant for training effectiveness. Still, more research needs to be done and my co-authors of chapter 3 and I present the Scale for the Integrative Mindset of Negotiators (SIM) that can be used for some of that research. In the appendixes, I present two negotiation training exercises. The first addresses an international refugee policy summit and the second a negotiation over the sale of a large solar pv park in Thailand.

Internet- and mobile technologies are increasingly used to deliver mental health care. E-Mental Health is promising for the prevention and treatment of mental disorders, in particular due to its wide population access, a low threshold, the active role of the client, lower costs compared to traditional care, and the possibility to integrate interventions in real-world settings. However, while E-Mental Health was shown to be an effective treatment tool, fewer studies investigated the prevention of mental health problems with E-Mental Health approaches. In a series of three studies, this dissertation examines internet- and mobile-based approaches for the early monitoring and supporting of mental health. First, a pilot study investigates the use of smartphone data as collected by daily self-reports and sensor information for the self-monitoring of bipolar disorder symptoms. It was found that some, but not all smartphone measurements predicted clinical symptoms of mania and depression, indicating that smartphones could be used as an earlywarning system for patients with bipolar disorder. Second, a randomized controlled trial evaluates the effectiveness of an internet-based intervention among persons with depression and sickness absence. The intervention was found to be effective in reducing depressive symptoms compared to a control group, suggesting that the internet can provide effective support for people with sickness absence due to depression. Third, a study protocol proposes to combine self-monitoring with a mobile intervention to support mental health in daily life. Supportive self-monitoring will be evaluated in a fully mobile randomized controlled trial among a sample of smartphone users with psychological distress. If supportive self-monitoring on the basis of a smartphone application is effective, it could be widely distributed to monitor and support mental health on a population level. Finally, the contribution of the presented studies to current research topics in E-Mental Health is discussed.

Online behaviors analysis consists of extracting patterns from server-logs. The works presented here were carried out within the “mBook” project which aimed to develop indicators of the quantity and quality of the learning process of pupils from their usage of an eponymous electronic textbook for History. In this thesis, we investigate several models that adopt different points of view on the data. The studied methods are either well established in the field of pattern mining or transferred from other fields of machine learning and data-mining. We improve the performance of archetypal analysis in large dimensions and apply it to unveil correlations between visibility time of particular objects in the e-textbook and pupils’ motivation. We present next two models based on mixtures of Markov chains. The first extracts users’weekly browsing patterns. The second is designed to process essions at a fine resolution, which is sine qua non to reveal the significance of scrolling behaviors. We also propose a new paradigm for online behaviors analysis that interprets sessions as trajectories within the page-graph. In this respect, we establish a general framework for the study of similarity measures between spatio-temporal trajectories, for which the study of sessions is a particular case. Finally, we construct two centroid-based clustering methods using neural networks and thus lay the foundations for unsupervised behaviors analysis using neural networks. Keywords: online behaviors analysis, educational data mining, Markov models, archetypal analysis, spatio-temporal trajectories, neural network

Mit dem Thema „Kultur- und Kreativwirtschaft“ kam ich zum ersten Mal 2009 im Rahmen eines Praktikums in der Staatskanzlei des Bundeslandes Nordrhein-Westfalen in Kontakt. Damals waren in der Kulturverwaltung des Landes alle Weichen auf die Vorbereitung und die politische sowie administrative Begleitung der Kulturhauptstadt Europas RUHR.2010 gestellt. Dass mit dem Ruhrgebiet eine gesamte Region den Zuschlag für die Ausrichtung des Jahres erhielt, war ein Novum. Von der Entwicklung diverser Vorgängerprojekte und - veranstaltungen über die tatsächliche Ausgestaltung des Rahmenprogramms bis hin zur anschließenden Nachbereitung und Evaluation der einzelnen Programmpunkte und des gesamten Jahres: Bei allen Projektschritten nahmen Unternehmen und Akteure der Kultur-und Kreativwirtschaft eine essenzielle Rolle ein. Besonders reizvoll an einer eingehenden Beschäftigung mit dem Thema „Kultur- und Kreativwirtschaft“ war für mich dessen Interdisziplinarität. Neben Fragen, die aus der Interdependenz von Kultur und Ökonomie hervorgehen, entwickelte ich spezielles Interesse an der Ausgestaltung einer Policy für diese neu limitierte Wirtschaftsbranche. Nach meiner Bachelor-Arbeit zu einer kulturpolitischen Fragestellung schloss ich während meines Master-Studiums an der Leuphana Universität Lüneburg eine Praxisphase in der Abteilung „Kulturelle Angelegenheiten“ der Senatskanzlei Berlin an. Während dieses Praktikums leitete ich in der Berliner Kulturverwaltung die Ausschreibung einer empirischen Erhebung ein, die die wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Rahmenbedingungen für Kultur- und Kreativschaffende in Berlin und Brandenburg misst und die in besonderer Weise die spezifischen Standortfaktoren für die Kultur- und Kreativwirtschaft in den beiden Bundesländern untersucht. Ziel des Projektes war es, fortan eine regelmäßige Befragung ins Leben zu rufen, um mittels Zeitreihen Entwicklungen festzuhalten und konstant Handlungsempfehlungen für kultur- und wirtschaftspolitisch Verantwortliche bereitstellen zu können. Während der Mitarbeit in der Senatskanzlei Berlin und der fokussierten Analyse der umtriebigen Kultur- und Kreativwirtschaft in der Bundeshauptstadt entstand die Idee einer Untersuchung von kultur- und kreativwirtschaftlichen Strukturen im ländlichen Raum. Meine Schwerpunktsetzung auf ländliche Regionen erklärt sich folgendermaßen: Zum einen blieb eine wissenschaftliche Betrachtung von Kultur- und Kreativwirtschaft bisher in 5 erster Linie städtischen Ballungsräumen vorbehalten. Zum anderen zeigt sich mit Blick auf den veröffentlichten Report zur Kultur- und Kreativwirtschaft in Nordrhein-Westfalen, dass bei der Betrachtung des Wirtschaftssektors bis dato ein starker Fokus auf das Ruhrgebiet, das Rheinland und mit einigen Einschränkungen auf das Münsterland gelegt wurde (vgl. Ministerium für Wirtschaft, Energie, Industrie, Mittelstand und Handwerk 2012: 16). Gezielte Analysen zu Entwicklungen und Potenzialen der Kultur- und Kreativwirtschaft in ländlich geprägten Räumen, zum Beispiel in ostwestfälischen Verwaltungsbezirken, gibt es bis dato nicht. Hier setzt mein Forschungsvorhaben an. Hinweisen möchte ich an dieser Stelle noch darauf, dass aus Gründen der Lesbarkeit in der Thesis auf die weibliche Form verzichtet wurde, diese jedoch selbstverständlich immer mit gemeint ist.

The process perspective provides a unifying framework that has substantially contributed to our understanding of entrepreneurship. However, much of the research up to now has neglected this process oriented conception of entrepreneurship. There is therefore a need for studies that take the inherent dynamic processes into account and analyze the underlying mechanisms when researching entrepreneurship. This dissertation aims to improve our understanding of the entrepreneurial process. Specifically, this dissertation focuses on new venture creation and the processes of sustainable opportunity identification and opportunity deviation. Chapter 1 provides a general introduction that highlights the theoretical contributions of this dissertation and gives an overview over the conducted studies. Chapter 2 argues for a process model of entrepreneurship that places entrepreneurs and their actions center stage. The model combines different perspectives and levels of analysis and provides an integrative framework for researching new venture creation. In chapter 3 we establish and test a theoretical model of sustainable opportunity identification. The chapter explains how younger generations identify sustainable opportunities. The findings indicate that sustainable opportunity identification is a process with two transitions from problem to solution identification and from solution identification to sustainable opportunity identification. These transitions are contingent on awareness of consequences and entrepreneurial attitude. Chapter 4 offers insights into how deviation from the original opportunity increases the performance of entrepreneurial teams. The findings indicate that entrepreneurial teams with a high level of error orientation set themselves higher goals when deviating from their original opportunity. Higher goals then lead to higher team performance. Chapter 5 summarizes the overall findings and outlines the general theoretical and practical implications. Each chapter thus contributes to the process perspective by focusing on how different phases of the entrepreneurial process unfold and develop over time. Thereby, this dissertation advances our understanding of entrepreneurship as a process.