Open Access

„Einfachheit“ gehört zu den maßgeblichen Begriffen, mit denen in der Kunst-, Kultur- und Literaturgeschichte unterschiedliche Wertzuschreibungen einhergehen. Seit Ende des 20. Jahrhundert setzt sich nebenher ein globalisierter Lifestyle durch, der mit geschickten Werbetriggern eine „Sehnsucht nach Einfachheit“ weckt und hohe Erwartungen an das Ideal der Komplexitätsbewältigung knüpft. Das damit einhergehende breite Funktionalisierungspotential wird hier aufgegriffen, um den neuen Fragen nachzugehen, warum die Einfachheit einen bemerkenswerten Erfolg in der deutschsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur feiert und was uns vergleichbare Bewegungen in Architektur, Design und den visuellen Künsten über den aktuellen Ruf nach Einfachheit erzählen. Am Beispiel des erzählerischen Werks von Judith Hermann, Peter Stamm und Robert Seethaler wird erstmalig gefragt, mit welcher Intention und Qualität sich die Einfachheit in den Texten dieser Autoren formiert und ob es sich bei der Kunst der erzählerischen Reduktion um ein spezifisch für die Gegenwart relevantes Konzept handelt. Die Studie leistet damit einen wesentlichen Beitrag zu der noch ausstehenden literaturwissenschaftlichen Systematisierung einer „Ästhetik der Einfachheit“.

Das Buch beinhaltet eine ganzheitliche Untersuchung von Musikclubs als Akteure der kulturellen Produktion. Die Einbettung von Clubs und ihre Reaktion auf Veränderungen in ihren sozialräumlichen Bezugsfeldern lokaler Musikszenen, des Stadtraums und der Music Industries stehen dabei im Zentrum der Analyse und werden empirisch durch drei Fallstudien der Hamburger Musikclubs Mojo, Molotow und Golden Pudel erfasst. Die Forschungsergebnisse zeigen, dass sich Musikclubs individuell und in Relation zu ihren räumlichen Strategien entwickeln und gegenüber Umfeldveränderungen verhalten. Ihr Agieren variiert zwischen pragmatischer Anpassung bis hin zur Durchsetzung subkultureller Strategien und lässt auf spezifische Typen schließen, deren Pfade trotz ähnlichem Entstehungskontext in unterschiedliche Richtungen verlaufen. Der Inhalt Stadtraum, lokale Szenen und der Club im Distributionssystem populärer Kultur Spannungsfelder DIY- und szenegeprägter Clubräume Drei Fallstudien exemplarischer Clubräume in Hamburg Clubräume zwischen DIY Ethos, Stadt und Music Industries Generalisierung und die Frage nach DIY basierten Clubtypen Die Zielgruppen Dozierende und Studierende der Musik- und Stadtsoziologie, Popular Music Studies sowie der Kulturwissenschaften Stadt- und Kulturpolitiker, Kultur-, Musik und Clubschaffende, Vertreter kultureller Interessen Der Autor Robin Kuchar ist Kulturwissenschaftler und arbeitet am Institut für Soziologie und Kulturorganisation der Leuphana Universität Lüneburg.

"Sustainable development: enough for everyone, forever" is the definition of sustainability. Sustainable landscape development is the main goal of decision makers worldwide. Achieving this goal in the long term leads to achieving social, economic and environmental sustainability. Remote sensing has been playing an essential role in monitoring remote areas. This study has employed part of the role of remote sensing in supporting the direction of decision makers towards sustainable landscape development. The study has focused on some of the main elements affecting sustainable environment as stated in Agenda 21. These elements are land uses, specifically agricultural land uses, water quality, forests, and water hazards such as floods. Three research programs were undertaken to investigate the role of Terrasar-x imagery, as a source of remote sensing data, in monitoring the environment and achieving the previous stated elements. The investigation was intended to investigate the effectiveness of TSX imagery in identifying the cropping pattern of selected study areas by employing a pixel-based supervised maximum likelihood classifier, as published in Paper I, assessment of the efficiency of using TSX imagery in determining land use and the flood risk maps by applying an object-based decision tree classifier as published in Paper II, and determination of the potential of inferential statistics tests such as the two samples Z-test and multivariate analysis, for example Factor Analysis, for identifying the kind of forest canopy, based on the backscattering coefficient of TSX imagery of forest plots, as presented in Paper III. Papers I and II covered two pilot areas in the Lower Saxonian Elbe Valley Biosphere Reserve “das Biosphärenreservat „Niedersächsische Elbtalaue„ around Walmsburger Werder between Elbe-Kilometer 533 - 543 and Wehninger Werder between Elbe-Kilometer 505 - 520. Paper III focused on the Fuhrberger Feld water protection area near Hanover in Germany. The inputs for this research were mainly SAR Imagery and the ground truth data collected from field surveys, in addition to databases, geo-databases and maps. The study presented in Paper I used two filters to decrease speckle noise namely De-Grandi as multi-temporal speckle filter, and Lee as an adaptive filter. A multi-temporal classification method was used to identify the different crops using a pixel-based maximum likelihood classifier. The classification accuracy was assessed based on the external user accuracy for each crop, the external producer accuracy for each crop, the Kappa index and the external total accuracy for the entire classification. Three cropping pattern maps were produced namely the cropping pattern map of Wehninger Werder in 2011 and the cropping pattern maps of Walmsburger Werder in 2010 and in 2011. The study showed that image filtering was essential for enhancing the accuracy of crop classification. The multi-temporal filter De-Grandi enhanced the producer accuracy by about 10% compared to the Lee filter. Furthermore, gathering and utilizing large ground truth data greatly enhanced the accuracy of the classification. The research verified that using sequence images covering the growing season usually improved the classification results. The results exposed the effect of the polarization, where using VV-polarized data enabled on average 5% higher classification accuracy than the HH-polarized data, however using dual polarized data enhanced the classification accuracy by 3%. The study demonstrated that the majority of the classifications produced according to the crop calendar had higher total producer accuracy than using all acquisitions. The study demonstrated undertaken in Paper II applied the decision tree object-based classifier in determining the major land uses and the inundation extent areas in 2011 and 2013 using the Lee-filtered imagery. Based on the maps produced for the land uses and inundation areas, the hazard areas due to the floods in 2011 and 2013 were identified. The study illustrated that 95% of the inundated area was classified correctly, that 90% of vegetated lands were accurately determined, and around 80% of the forest and the residential areas were correctly recognized. The study demonstrated that the residential areas did not experience any hazards in both pilot areas, however some cultivated lands were fully or partially submerged in 2011. These fields are in the high flood zone and therefore are expected to be entirely submerged during future high floods. Although, these fields were flooded in January 2011, they were cultivated with maize and potatoes in summer 2011 and in subsequent years and consequently were inundated in June 2013 with high economic losses to the owners of these fields. The research undertaken in Paper III statistically analyzed the backscattering coefficient of the Lee-filtered TSX in some forest plots by the Factor Analysis and two sample Z-test. The study showed that Factor analysis tools succeeded in differentiating between the coniferous forest and the deciduous forest and mixed forest, but failed to discriminate between the deciduous and the mixed forest. On one hand, only one factor was extracted for each sample plot of the coniferous forest with approximately equal loadings during the whole acquisition period from March 2008 to January 2009. On the other hand, two factors were extracted for each deciduous or mixed forest sample plot, where one factor had high loadings during the leaf-on period from May to October, and the other one had high loadings during the leaf-off period from November to April. Furthermore, the research revealed that the two sample Z-test enabled not only differentiation between the deciduous and the mixed forest against the coniferous forest, but also discrimination between deciduous forest and the mixed forest. Statistically significant differences were observed between the mean backscatter values of the HH-polarized acquisitions for the deciduous forest and the mixed forest during the leaf-off period, but no statistically significant difference was found during the leaf-on period. Moreover, plot samples for the deciduous forest had slightly higher mean backscattering coefficients than those for the mixed forest during the leaf-off period.

Drum-Machines sind spätestens seit den 80er Jahren allgegenwärtige Taktgeber aktueller musikalischer Gestaltung. Die kleinen, unscheinbaren Boxen, in denen sich Schlagzeug-Pattern programmieren lassen, haben bisher allerdings kaum wissenschaftliche Aufmerksamkeit erhalten. Hier werden erstmals nicht nur die verwobenen Technik- und Kulturgeschichte(n) dieser Maschinen skizziert, sondern die Geräte selbst werden als Wissensobjekte ernst genommen. Ihr Sound und ihre neuen technikkulturellen Zeitlichkeiten, entworfen durch Breakbeat- und Pattern-Labore des HipHop, House und Techno, lässt die Geradlinigkeit historischer Narrative selbst Geschichte werden. Sie werden als Akteure klanglicher Zukünftigkeit gehört – treffend benannt mit einem Begriff Kodwo Eshuns als Futurhythmaschinen.

The wide accessibility of the Internet and web-based programs enable an increased volume of online interventions for mental health treatment. In contrast to traditional face-to-face therapy, online treatment has the potential to overcome some of the barriers such as improved geographical accessibility, individual time planning, and reduced costs. The availability of clients’ treatment data fuels research to analyze the collected data to obtain a better understanding of the relationship among symptoms in mental disorders and derive outcome and symptom predictions. This research leads to predictive models that can be integrated into the online treatment process to assist clinicians and clients. This dissertation discusses different aspects of the development of predictive modeling in online treatment: Categorization of predictive models, data analyses for predictive purposes, and model evaluation. Specifically, the categorization of predictive models and barriers against the uptake of mental health treatment are discussed in the first part of this dissertation. Data analysis and predictive modeling are emphasized in the second part by presenting methods for inference and prediction of mood as well as the prediction of treatment outcome and costs. Prediction of future and current mood can be beneficial in many aspects. Inference of users’ mood levels based on unobtrusive measures or diary data can provide crucial information for intervention scheduling. Prediction of future mood can be used to assess clients’ response to the treatment and expected treatment outcome. Prediction of the expected treatment costs and outcomes for different treatment types allows simultaneous optimization of these objectives and to increase the cost-effectiveness of the treatment. In the third part, a systematic predictive model evaluation incorporating simulation analyses is demonstrated and a method for model parameter estimation for computationally limited devices is presented. This dissertation aims to overcome the current challenges of predictive model development and its use in online treatment. The development of predictive models for varies data collected in online treatment is demonstrated and how these models can be applied in practice. The derived results contribute to computer science and mental health research with client individual data analysis, the development ofpredictive models, and their statistical evaluation.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt bietet mit seinen Erweiterungen Hearts of Stone und Blood and Wine eine riesige digitale Welt voller komplexer Handlungsmuster, Charaktere und Orte. Gestützt auf die Lesart von Mendonça und Freitas versteht die vorliegende Arbeit das digitale Spiel als Text. In einem close reading werden in das Spiel integrierte Motive und Genrekonventionen anhand exemplarischer Beispiele herausgearbeitet. Durch die Analyse von referenziellen Versatzstücken wird der Frage nachgegangen, wo sich in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt kulturelle Konventionen und Innovationen finden und inwiefern mit gewohnten Mustern gespielt wird. Durch die Entschlüsselung von Codes wird beobachtet, wo durch dieses Spiel mit den Konventionen mit Erwartungen der Spieler*innen gebrochen wird, um so neue Bedeutung zu generieren. Den Landschaften und Bewohner*innen kommt eine genaue Untersuchung zu, wobei der Fokus dank Aussagen der Entwickler*innen auf den Konstrukten der „Polishness“ und „Slavicness“ liegt. Betrachtet werden Easter Eggs als intertextuelle Zitatebenen sowie die als polnisch behaupteten Landschaften, die Verhandlung des Fremden, die Konstruktion „slawischer“ Monster/Antagonist*innen und die Darstellung weiblicher Charaktere. Obwohl in einigen dieser Konzepte Widersprüchlichkeiten festgestellt werden, finden sich in ihnen auch Ansätze zur Innovation, die auf neue Muster in der Entwicklung zukünftiger digitaler Spiele hoffen lassen. Somit lohnt es, als „polnisch“ behauptete Landschaften, die nicht identitätsstiftenden wirken sollen, angeblich „slawische“ Monster und Antagonist*innen, die sich als transkulturelle Hybride entpuppen und Frauen, deren Stärke durch ihre Sexualisierung untergraben wird, näher zu betrachten. Schlüsselbegriffe The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Polishness, Codes, digitale Landschaft, Genrekonvention, Othering, monströse Weiblichkeit, Sexismus, Kulturschutt, Neomedievalismus

Since the middle of the 20th century, human society experiences a “Great Acceleration” manifesting in historically remarkable growth rates that create severe sustainability problems. The globally exploding potentials of information and knowledge exchange have been and are vital drivers for this acceleration. Society has now come to the point that it requires a “Great Transformation” towards sustainability to ensure the viability of the planet for a vital society. The energy transition plays a central role for this transformation. In this context, human society has developed a comparably good understanding of the necessary infrastructural changes of this transition. For transforming the patterns of energy production and use in an energy transition as part of the “Great Transformation”, this process of change now needs to strengthen its focus on information, communication, and knowledge systems. Human society needs to establish a knowledge system that has the potential to create usable knowledge for sustainability solutions. This requires organizing a communication system that is sufficiently complex, interconnected, and, at the same time, efficient for integrating reflexive, open-ended, inter- and transdisciplinary learning, evaluation, and knowledge co-production processes across multiple levels. This challenge opens a wide field of research. This cumulative dissertation contributes to research in this direction by applying a systemic sustainability perspective on the content and organization of communication in the field of research on sustainable energy and the operational level of municipal climate action as part of the energy transition. Regarding sustainability, this thesis uses strong sustainability and its principles as a frame for evaluating the content of communication. Regarding the systemic perspective, the thesis particularly relies on the following theories: (i) the human-environment system model by R. Scholz as an overarching framework regarding interactions between humans and nature, (ii) social systems theory by N. Luhmann to reflect the complexity of society, (iii) knowledge management to consider the human character of knowledge and a practice-oriented perspective, and (iv) management cybernetics, in particular, the Viable System Model by S. Beer as a framework to analyze and assess organizational structures. Furthermore, the thesis leverages the potential of text mining as a method to identify and visualize patterns in texts that reflect prevalent paradigms in communication. The thesis applies the above conceptual and methodological basis in three case studies. Case Study 1 investigates the measures proposed in 16 municipal climate action plans of regional centers in Lower Saxony, Germany. It uses a text mining approach in the form of an Summary interpretation network analysis. It analyzes how different societal subsystems are connected at the semantic level and to what extent sustainability principles can be recognized. Case Study 2 analyzes and reflects paradigms and discursive network structures in international scientific publications on sustainable energy. The study investigates 26533 abstracts published from 1990 to 2016 using a text mining approach, in particular topic modeling via latent Dirichlet allocation. Case Study 3 turns again to the cases of municipal climate action in Lower Saxony examined in Case Study 1. It examines the involvement of climate action managers of these cities in multilevel knowledge processes. Using design principles for knowledge systems, it evaluates to what extent knowledge is managed in this field across levels for supporting the energy transition and to what extent local innovation potential is leveraged or supported. The three case studies show that international research on sustainable energy and municipal climate action in Germany provide promising contributions to achieve a transformation towards sustainability but do not fully reflect the complexity of society and still support a growth paradigm, in contrast to a holistic sustainability paradigm. Further, the case studies show that research and local action are actively engaging with the diversity of energy technologies but are lagging in dealing with the socio-epistemic (communication) system, especially with regard to achieving cohesion. Using the example of German municipalities, Case Studies 1 and 3 highlight the challenges of achieving coherent local action for sustainability and bottom-up organizational learning due to incomplete or uncoordinated multilevel knowledge exchange. At the same time, the studies also point out opportunities for supporting the required coherent multilevel learning processes based on local knowledge. This can be achieved, for instance, by strengthening the coordinating role of intermediary organizational units or establishing closer interactions between the local operational units and the national level. The thesis interprets and synthesizes the results of the three case studies from its systemic sustainability perspective. On this basis, it provides several generalized recommendations that should be followed for establishing viable communication systems, especially but not exclusively in policy-making: Systemic holism: Consider matter, energy, and information flows as an integrated triplet in the context of scales, structures, and time in the various subsystems. Knowledge society: Focus on the socio-epistemic (communication) system, e.g., using the perspective of knowledge systems and associated design principles considering, for instance, working environments across horizontal and vertical levels, knowledge forms and types, and knowledge processes. Sufficiency communication: Emphasize sufficiency approaches, make it attractive, and find differentiated ways for communicating them. Multilevel cohesion and innovation: Achieve cohesion between the local and higher levels and leverage local innovations while avoiding isolated local action. Organizational interface design: Define the role of organizational units by the interactions they create at the interfaces with and between societal subsystems. Local transdisciplinarity: Support local transdisciplinary approaches integrating various subsystems, especially industry, while coordinating these approaches from a higher level for leveraging local innovation. Digital public system: Exploit existing digital technologies or infrastructures in the public system and recognize the value of data in the public sphere for achieving cohesion. Beyond the above recommendations, this thesis suggests that potential for further research lies in: Advancing nature-inspired systemic frameworks. Understanding the structure and creation of human knowledge. Developing text mining methodologies towards solution-oriented approaches.

Contemporary liberal-democracies are under stress and traditional political parties have become detached from their electorates. Since the 1980s, parties have been experiencing a crisis of legitimation, whose effects have become intensive especially in the early twenty-first century. New populist challengers have tried to fill the representative void left by mainstream parties; at the same time, technocracy has become one of the most prominent form of representation. Political responsibility and responsiveness appear often incompatible in the eyes of voters. Moreover, political personalization and processes of presidentialization have led to a situation where single political leaders have become the crucial political actors, to the detriment of party organizations. This Habilitation thesis investigates the linkage between representative democratic institutions in parliamentary and semi-presidential systems and political elites, trying to understand how this linkage has been affected by the change of party democracy. In particular, the thesis analyzes political institutions’ functioning in democratic contexts as well as parties’ responses and elites’ paths to power as indicators of a process of adaptation. Four main research questions inform the analysis: what structural opportunities and constraints do political elites meet when it comes to exercising political power?; how have the decline of party government and political personalization modified opportunity structures?; how do parties and elites cope with democratic change?; has democratic change produced new criteria for successful political careers? The institutional focus is on political executives and representative assemblies at different levels of government. Findings highlight that political elites adopts strategies of resistance and respond to democratic change through incremental steps. In other words, rather than anticipatory, political elites appear reactive, when they are confronted with substantial modifications of the political opportunity structure. Overall, the study contributes to the debate about the changing role of parties and political elites as connectors between the state and the society and provides insights about future developments.

Personally meaningful tourist experiences foster subjective mental wellbeing. Modern, human-centred technologies such as gamified technology have been recognised as a promising means to support tourists in their co-creation of meaningful tourist experiences. However, a deeper understanding and conceptualisation of tourists’ engagement with gamified technologies in the tourist experience has remained absent so far. This study draws on positive psychology as the guiding theoretical lens to conceptualise and explore tourists’ underlying motives for engaging with gamified technology, as well as the gratifications thereof for the tourist experience. In doing so, this thesis identifies how tourists generate meaning through interacting with gamified technology in the tourist experience, thereby fostering the co-creation of meaningful tourist experiences and contributing to subjective mental wellbeing. Being among the first studies to link the concepts of positive psychology, gamified technology, and tourist experiences, the results of this thesis provide rich findings on the underlying motives for tourists to engage with gamified technology during vacation, as well as the gratifications of gamified technology for the creation of meaning in the tourist experience. Using the theoretical lens of positive psychology and achievement motivation theory as the main theoretical underpinning, this study is positioned at the intersection of social psychology, human-computer interaction, and tourism as the field of application. Conceptually, this thesis provides an in-depth understanding of tourists’ engagement with gamified technology, including the socio-psychological motivators for engagement and the outcomes thereof for the tourist experience. This thesis contributes to the theoretical advancement of two principal streams: a) tourists’ motives for engaging with gamified technologies and the gratifications thereof in the vacation context and b) the understanding of motivational affordances of gamified technology in general. The substantial theoretical contribution of this study is the advancement of knowledge as it demonstrates the value of gamified technologies in the tourist experience. The findings eventually provide tourism destinations with nuanced insights into the feature-specific values of gamified technology to contribute to the co-creation of meaningful tourist experiences.

Die Beurteilung von Unterrichtsqualität stellt in der schulischen Praxis eine Schwierigkeit dar, weil sie eng mit der Frage danach, wer den Unterricht bewertet, verknüpft ist. Üblicherweise schätzen Lehrkräfte ihren Unterricht selbst ein. Seltener wird Unterrichtsqualität von geschulten, externen Beobachtern beurteilt. Eine weitere relevante Perspektive auf die Qualität des gehaltenen Unterrichts stellt die der Schülerinnen und Schüler dar. Die Qualität dieser Perspektive steht im Fokus dieser Arbeit. Der Begriff Unterrichtsqualität gliedert sich im deutschsprachigen Raum in drei Qualitätsdimensionen auf: die Kognitive Aktivierung, die Konstruktive Unterstützung und die Klassenführung. In dieser Arbeit wird die Unterstützungsdimension aufgefächert in zwei Qualitätsdimensionen, in die Instruktionale Unterstützung und die Emotionale Unterstützung. So ergeben sich vier Basisdimensionen von Unterrichtsqualität, die aus der Perspektive von Schülerinnen und Schülern in dieser Arbeit untersucht werden sollen. Die überwiegende Mehrheit von Studien zur Unterrichtsqualität geht davon aus, dass die Lehrqualität von Lehrerinnen und Lehrern ein stabiles Verhaltensmuster der Lehrperson ist (Wagner et al., 2015). Die Anzahl der beobachteten Stunden, die für die reliable und valide Feststellung der Lehrqualität nötig ist, wird in den verschiedenen Studien unterschiedlich eingeschätzt. Nach Brophy (2006) sind es mindestens 20 bis 30 Unterrichtsstunden. Praetorius (2014) kommt zu dem Ergebnis, dass die unterrichtliche basisdimension der Klassenführung sehr stabil ist und es zur Einschätzung nur einer einzigen Unterrichtsstunde bedarf. Die Basisdimension der Kognitiven Aktivierung hingegen benötigt mindestens 9 beobachtete Unterrichtsstunden, um ein verlässliches Reliabilitätsniveau zu erhalten. Die Validität solcher Aussagen wird dann nicht selten an ihrem Zusammenhang mit Leistungen der Schülerinnen und Schüler festgestellt. In aller Regel beziehen sich die gewonnenen Erkenntnisse auf die Klassenebene. Der bisherige Wissensstand zur Stabilität des Qualitätsniveaus von Unterricht in den einzelnen Qualitätsdimensionen ist noch unzureichend und nicht in jeder Qualitätsdimension umfassend erforscht. Weiterer Forschungsbedarf besteht in der Untersuchung der Stabilität der Rangfolge interindividueller Unterschiede zwischen den Qualitätsdimensionen bei der Beurteilung durch Schülerinnen und Schüler. Bisherige Studien haben bisher nur unzureichend untersucht, ob es einen Zusammenhang zwischen den Unterrichtsthemen und der Beurteilung der Qualitätsdimensionen durch Schülerinnen und Schüler gibt. Die meisten Studien in dem Forschungsfeld stützen ihre Ergebnisse auf Erkenntnisse, die auf Durchschnitten der gesamten Klasse beruhen, nicht auf Individualergebnissen. Die hier vorliegende Arbeit knüpft mit ihren Fragestellungen an diese Wissenslücken an. Es werden dabei zwei Hauptfragestellungen untersucht. Zum einen wird die Stabilität der Unterrichtswahrnehmung in folgenden drei Teilfragestellungen untersucht: - Wie stabil ist das beobachtete Qualitätsniveau in den einzelnen Dimensionen? - Wie stabil sind die Einschätzungen der Unterrichtsqualität in den vier Dimensionen Kognitive Aktivierung,Instruktionale Unterstützung, Emotionale Unterstützung und Klassenführung über die Zeit? - Sind die Beurteilungen der Unterrichtsqualität themenunabhängig? Zum anderen wird der Frage - Welchen Zusammenhang zeigen Mathematikleistungen und das mathematikbezogene Selbstkonzept mit den Unterrichtsbeurteilungen der Schülerinnen und Schüler? nachgegangen. Die vorliegende Arbeit wurde in 8 längsschnittlichen Erhebungen mit einer Gruppe von in drei Klassen parallel unterrichteten Fünftklässlerinnen und Fünftklässlern eines Hamburger Gymnasiums durchgeführt (N = 85). Das Instrument zur Erfassung der Unterrichtsqualität aus der Perspektive von Schülerinnen und Schülern in den vier Basisdimensionen Kognitive Aktivierung (7 Items), Instruktionale und Emotionale Unterstützung (9 Items und 5 Items) sowie Klassenführung (5 Items) wurde auf der Grundlage der Skalen Fauth, Decristan, Rieser, Klieme und Büttner (2014b) und Kauertz et al. (2011) entwickelt. Das Instrument kam zu acht Messzeitpunkten zum Einsatz. Die Skala zur Erfassung des mathematikbezogenen Selbstkonzeptes (4 Items) der Schülerinnen und Schüler stammt aus Bos, Dudas, Gröhlich, Guill und Scharenberg (2010) und wurde zu Beginn und am Ende der Messreihe einmal verwendet. Die Reliabilitäten der jeweiligen Skalen zu den jeweiligen Messzeitpunkten nimmt immer akzeptable (Cronbachs € α >.70), oft sogar gute Werte an (Cronbachs € α > .80). Die Leistungsfähigkeit in Mathematik wurde im Rahmen des standardisierten Tests KERMIT5 erfasst und auf der Grundlage von 4 Klassenarbeiten und Schulnoten im Laufe des Schuljahres durch die Lehrkraft eingeschätzt. Es wurden lineare Strukturgleichungsmodelle (LGM) zur Messung der Veränderungen der eingeschätzten Unterrichtsdimensionen über die acht Messzeitpunkte mit der Software Mplus (L. K. Muthén & Muthén, 2014) berechnet. In weiteren Schritten wurden dann die Mathematikleistung und das mathematikbezogene Selbstkonzept als Prädiktorvariablen eingefügt und ihr Effekt auf die Unterrichtsbeurteilungen untersucht. Es wurde die Korrelation zwischen der Mathematikleistung und dem mathematikbezogenen Selbstkonzept zu den linearen Strukturgleichungsmodellen hin untersucht. Der Zusammenhang zwischen Unterrichtswahrnehmung und Lernleistung wurde für jede Qualitätsdimension als Regressionsanalyse berechnet und jeweils als Pfaddiagramm dargestellt. Klassenspezifische Tendenzeffekte bei der Beantwortung der Items durch Schülerinnen und Schüler wurden herausgerechnet. Die Modellfits der berechneten linearen Strukturgleichungsmodelle zur Untersuchung der Beobachtungsstabilität weisen akzeptable Werte auf. Die Wachstumsanalysen zeigen, dass das Niveau der Kognitiven Aktivierung über die Zeit stabil bleibt. Beide Unterstützungsdimensionen werden mit zunehmender Zeit etwas niedriger beurteilt, gleiches gilt für die Klassenführung. weiterhin zeigen Stabilitätsanalysen, dass die Unterrichtsbeurteilungen über die Zeit eine relativ hohe interindividuelle Stabilität aufweisen. Höhere mathematische Leistungen (im Test) führen zu signifikant niedrigeren Beurteilungen der Kognitiven Aktivierung und der Emotionalen Unterstützung des Unterrichts. Bessere Noten gehen mit höherer wahrgenommener Unterstützung einher. Ein besseres mathematikbezogenes Selbstkonzept führt zu einer signifikant höheren Beurteilung der Kognitiven Aktivierung und zu einer signifikant niedrigeren Beurteilung der Klassenführung des Unterrichts. Insgesamt belegen die Ergebnisse, dass alle Basisdimensionen der Unterrichtsqualität relativ stabil von den Schülerinnen und Schülern und unabhängig von den unterrichteten Themen eingeschätzt werden. Die häufigere Erhebung erlaubt aber die bessere Modellierung von Niveauveränderungen über die Zeit.

It is understood among research and policy makers that addressing unsustainable individual consumption patterns is key for the vision of sustainable development. Education for Sustainable Consumption (ESC) is attributed a pivotal role for this purpose, aiming to improve the capacity of individuals to connect to and act upon knowledge, values and skills in order to respond successfully and purposefully to the demands of sustainable consumption. Yet despite growing political, scientific, and educational efforts to foster more sustainable consumption practices through ESC, and increasing awareness about the negative ecological and socio-economic impacts of individual consumer behavior in the general population, little has been achieved to substantially change behavioral patterns so far. As part of the explanation for this shortcoming, it has been argued that current ESC practices have neglected the personal dimension of sustainable consumption, especially the affective-motivational processes underlying unsustainable consumption patterns. Against this background, this cumulative thesis is guided by the question how personal competencies for sustainable consumption can be defined, observed, and developed within educational settings. Special attention is given to mindfulness practices, describing the practice of cultivating a deliberate, unbiased and openhearted awareness of perceptible experience in the present moment. These practices have received growing attention within ESC as a means to stimulate competencies for sustainable consumption. Drawing upon an explorative, qualitative research methodology, the thesis looks at three different mindfulness-based interventions aiming to stimulate competencies for sustainable consumption, reaching out to a total number of 321 participants (employees and university students). In this thesis, I suggests to define personal competencies for sustainable consumption as abilities, proficiencies, or skills related to inner states and processes that can be considered necessary or sufficient to engage with sustainable consumption (SC). These include ethics, self-awareness, emotional resilience, selfcare, access to and cultivation of personal resources, access to and cultivation of ethical qualities, and mindsets for sustainability. It is argued that these competencies directly relate to those challenges individuals face when attempting to consume in a way that corresponds to their sustainability-related intentions or engage in SC-related learning activities. It provides evidence that the cultivation of (some of) these competencies allows individuals to overcome (some of) these challenges. The thesis holds that the observation of personal competencies benefits from a combination of different methodological and methodical angles. When working with self-reports as empirical data, a pluralistic qualitative methods approach can help overcoming shortcomings that are specifically related to individual methods while increasing the self-reflexivity of the research. This is especially important in order to reduce the risk of looking for desired outcomes and misinterpreting statements of the inquired population. This risk can also be diminished by discussing and adjusting interim findings with this population. Moreover, it is suggested to let learners analyze their own personal statements in groups, applying scientific methods. The products of the group analyses represent data based on an inter-subjectively shared perspective of learners that goes beyond self-estimation of personal competencies. In terms of developing personal competencies for SC, it can be concluded that mindfulness practice alone is not sufficient to build personal competencies for SC. While it can stimulate generic personal competencies, individuals do not necessarily apply these competencies within the domain of their consumption. Furthermore, even though the practice increases individuals’ self-awareness for current inner states and processes, practitioners do not seem to become aware of and reflect upon the more latent, personal predispositions out of which the current sensations occur. Nevertheless, mindfulness practice can play an important role in ESC, insofar as it lays the inner foundation to engage with sustainability-related issues. More precisely, it allows learners to experience the relevance of their inner states and processes and the influence they have on actual behaviors, leading to a level of selfawareness that would not be accessible solely through discursive-intellectual means. Furthermore, participants experience mindfulness practice as a way to develop ethical qualities and access psychological resources, entailing stronger emotional resilience and improved well-being. In order to unleash its full potential for stimulating personal competencies for SC, however, the findings of the thesis suggest that mindfulness practice should be (a) complemented with methodically controlled self-inquiry and (b) related to a specific behavioral change. In this vein, self-inquiry-based and self-experience-based learning – two pedagogical approaches developed during the period of research for this thesis – turned out to be promising pedagogies for educational settings striving to stimulate the development of personal competencies for SC. Overall, the thesis makes a novel contribution to the field of competency-based ESC by suggesting personal competencies for sustainable consumption as important and desirable learning outcomes of ESC practices Furthermore, it provides specific pedagogies and learning activities in order to achieve these learning outcomes. As such, the thesis answers to general calls from education for sustainable development scholars to take the inner, affective-motivational dimension of individuals into consideration and makes a first suggestion as to how this can be systematically achieved.

The dissertation contains four journal articles which are embedded within a framework manuscript that interconnects the individual articles and provides relevant background information. The dissertation’s overall objective is to provide a multilayered and critical in-depth engagement with the timely phenomenon of integrated reporting (IR), a new reporting concept that is envisaged to revolutionize firms’ present reporting infrastructure. While extant corporate reports (e.g., annual financial- and CSR report) often are criticized for being disconnected and to suffer from a lack of coherence, IR intends to provide all information that is material to a firm’s short-, medium- und long-term value creation within one single, succinct document. To contribute to a set of previously defined relevant research gaps in literature, the dissertation makes use of a combined empirical-quantitative and explorative-qualitative research design. The first article entitled ‘Determinants of materiality disclosure quality in integrated reporting: Empirical evidence from an international setting’ investigates a set of different IR-, corporate governance and financial accounting-specific factors that are expected to determine European and South African firms’ materiality disclosure quality. To this purpose, an original, hand-collected materiality disclosure score was developed. The second article ‘Managers’ incentives and disincentives to engage with integrated reporting, or why managers might not adopt integrated reporting: an exploratory study in a nascent setting‘ explores IR perceptions of SME managers that have not embarked on IR, but are potential candidates to do so in future. Based on a review of extant literature, the article develops a theoretical framework to subsequently discuss motives for and barriers to IR adoption. The critical discussion contributes to the academic debate on incentives for and barriers to voluntary IR adoption. The third article named ‘Does it pay off? Integrated reporting and cost of debt: European evidence’ investigates whether voluntary IR adoption among European firms is associated with lower cost of public debt. While earlier studies suggest that IR leads to lower information asymmetries, increases analyst forecasts, and decreases cost of equity, corresponding evidence for the debt market is largely missing. Subsequent analyses test as to whether such an association is even more pronounced by a firm’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance or its belonging to an environmentally sensitive industry. The fourth article ‘Do nonprofessional investors value the assurance of integrated reports? Exploratory evidence’ uses an experimental design to investigate nonprofessional investors’ reactions to an IR assurance. To this purpose, two separate experiments with two different groups of nonprofessional investors were carried out: one with Masters students and one with managers of large corporations. Results help to answer the question as to whether an IR assurance as well as its determinants, namely the assurance provider and the assurance level, affect nonprofessional investors’ financial decision-making. In the second step, subsequent in-depth interviews reveal an IR assurance-critical attitude among managers, who draw upon their practical experience with assurance engagements.

When presidents try to expand their tenure in office, are protesting social movements, or even youth movements, able to stop them from candidating unconstitutionally and thus to prevent a democratic backslide? So far, the literature on term bids by presidents tends to focus on the institutional arrangements to hinder such term bids in the first place, on presidential strategies to circumvent the constitutional law, or on counteractions of political elites. Mobilizations against such attempts by presidents to run for office again, after reaching the end of their last allowed term, are often solely included as “pressures from below”. To address these shortcomings, this dissertation explores the issue of term amendment struggles through the lenses of contentious politics systematically combined with insights of revolution theories and democratization studies. Its conceptual perspective therefore lies on the interactions of actors and their constellations to each other as well as to institutions. The author deduces three diverse pathways to promote institutional change and prevent democratic backslidings – through political elites, (political) allies, and security forces. By selecting two cases that are most similar in terms of institutions and youth movements at the forefront, Senegal (2011-12) and Burkina Faso (2013-14), this analysis offers insight in the divergence of the struggles and their outcome. Because in both cases, the announcement of the presidents to run for another term in office led to broad mobilization led by youth movements against such tenure amendments, the political system in general and socioeconomic inequalities - but with diverging results. In Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaoré eventually resigned while Abdoulaye Wade in Senegal candidated again, legitimized by the Constitutional Court. Based on extensive fieldwork, including interviews with movement leaders and their allies, as well as a comprehensive media analysis and the SCAD databank for the analysis of protest events, the author differentiates and reconstructs the various phases of the conflict. The results of the dissertation point at two dimensions most relevant to comprehend the dissimilar pathways the struggles took – the reach of mobilization and, closely interlinked to the first, the refusal of soldiers to obey orders. It shows further that these differences go back to the respective history of each country, its former protest waves, and political culture. Although both presidents faced mass mobilization against their unconstitutional candidature, only in Burkina Faso it eventually led to an ungovernable situation. The dissertation concludes by reflecting on lessons learned for future democratic backslidings by presidents to come and avenues for future research – and thus offers fruitful insights not only for academics but for those who aim to save democratic norms and institutions.

In der Auseinandersetzung mit gesellschaftlichen Normen und für die Untersuchung der darin impliziten normativen Strukturen stellt Humor eine aufschlussreiche Quelle dar. Witze, humorvolle Darstellungen und Comedy sind dabei nützliche Instrumente, um jene Normen aufzudecken und ihre oftmals arbiträren und zum Teil unterdrückenden Ideologien zu entlarven. „Humor can disrupt ideas of what is ‚normal‘ and encourage people to question their assumptions.“2, erklärt die Kulturwissenschaftlerin Janet Bing. Laut der Linguistin Helga Kotthoff ist eine Analyse von expliziten Beispielen, in denen Humor praktiziert wird, ein aussagekräftiges Mittel, um Verständnis über Identitätskonstrukte zu erlangen, die innerhalb normativer Gesellschaftsstrukturen verhandelt werden: „Studies of humor in interaction can help us trace how ‚identities in interaction‘ are formed. For example, they can show how people negotiate and confirm specific gender identities in their humor.“3 Stand-up Comedy beispielsweise kann repräsentativ dafür sein, wie durch Humor Genderidentitäten verhandelt werden. Diesem Ansatz soll in der vorliegenden Arbeit am Beispiel von Hannah Gadsbys Stand-up Comedy-Show Nanette nachgegangen werden. In der Analyse von Nanette soll gezeigt werden, wie Gadsby die Erwartungen des Publikums an diese Unterhaltungsform unterläuft, gängige Methoden des Genres dekonstruiert und an zahlreichen Stellen explizit feministische Gesellschaftskritik formuliert.

Der vorliegende Beitrag befasst sich mit Typisierungen der Personalpolitik, die sich darauf rich-ten, charakteristische Muster der Personalpolitik zu identifizieren und deren Zustandekom-men zu erklären. Beschrieben werden der Erkenntniswert, der typologischen Ansätzen zu-kommt, und die Schwierigkeiten, die sich der Identifikation personalpolitischer Muster entge-genstellen. Ungeachtet der sich dabei stellenden Probleme erscheint es wünschenswert und möglich, über lediglich intuitiv plausible Ansätze hinauszugehen und theoretisch gut veran-kerte Typologien zu entwickeln. Einen breiten Raum nimmt im vorliegenden Beitrag die Darstellung der in der Literatur vor-findlichen Typisierungen der Personalpolitik ein. Zu unterscheiden ist hierbei zwischen Typo-logien, die sich auf das Gesamtsystem Organisation und Typologien, die sich, im engeren Sinne, auf einzelne Funktionsbereiche des Personalwesens beziehen. Das Spektrum der den Typisierungen zugrundeliegenden theoretischen Überlegungen erweist sich zwar als sehr breit, es wird aber dennoch von einigen wenigen Grundthemen bestimmt. Auch schließen sich die Typisierungen nicht gegenseitig aus, sie beleuchten oft einfach unterschiedliche Aspekte der Personalpolitik. Der Gedanke, dass sich verschiedenartige personalpolitische Ausrichtun-gen ergänzen und in ihrer Wirkung verstärken können, wird im Konzept der „Sozio-Bricks“ aufgenommen und vertieft. Hierauf wird gesondert eingegangen. Danach werden die Erfahrungen aus einer Reihe von empirischen Erkundungen beschrieben, die darauf abzielten, das komplexe Untersuchungsobjekt Personalpolitik näher zu charakteri-sieren und anschaulich zu machen. Als theoretische Referenz diente das Sozio-Bricks-Konzept und es wurde geprüft, ob sich mit dessen Hilfe stimmige, in der betrieblichen Realität vorfind-liche, personalpolitische Muster identifizieren lassen. Abschließend wird mit der Simulationsmethode noch ein Ansatz theoretischer Erkundungsar-beit skizziert. Der große Vorteil von Simulationsmodellen besteht darin, dass sie dazu zwingen, die Mechanismen zu operationalisieren, die man dafür verantwortlich macht, dass sich be-stimmte personalpolitische Muster herausbilden. Außerdem erlauben entsprechend konzi-pierte Modelle, den Wirkungsverbund der auf die Personalpolitik einwirkenden Kräfte zu un-tersuchen.

Mobilität und Tourismus gehören untrennbar zusammen, denn ohne einen Ortswechsel gibt es keine Urlaubsreise. Der Tourismus aber verursacht ca. 5 % der anthropogenen Kohlendioxidemissionen, von denen etwa 75% auf den touristischen Verkehr entfallen. Neben dem Flugverkehr trägt insbesondere der motorisierte Individualverkehr einen hohen Anteil an den Emissionen. Angesichts des deutlichen Beitrags des touristischen Verkehrs zum Klimawandel erscheint es notwendig, sich mit Wegen zu einer ökologischen touristischen Mobilität zu beschäftigen. Zur Untersuchung der Einflussfaktoren auf die touristische Verkehrsmittelwahl wurde ein Erklärungsmodell basierend auf der Theorie des geplanten Verhaltens entwickelt. Neben den Basiskonstrukten der Einstellung, der subjektiven Norm und der wahrgenommenen Verhaltenskontrolle wurden als ergänzende Modellkonstrukte die persönliche Norm, das allgemeine Umweltbewusstsein sowie gewohnheitsmäßiges Handeln hinzugefügt. Eine empirische Untersuchung mit n=738 ermittelte durch multiple lineare Regression wichtige Ansatzpunkte für die Gestaltung von Handlungsempfehlungen. Signifikante Ergebnisse konnten für die Konstrukte der Einstellung, der subjektiven Norm, der wahrgenommenen Verhaltenskontrolle, der persönlichen Norm, der Gewohnheit sowie der Kontrollvariablen Alter und Einkommen erreicht werden. An diesen Einflussfaktoren auf die Intention, zukünftig ein umweltfreundlicheres Verkehrsmittel zur Reise in den nächsten Städte-Kurzurlaub zu wählen, setzen die Implikationen für die Praxis an und zeigen Möglichkeiten auf, die touristische Mobilität ökologischer zu gestalten.

Empirische Studien aus dem Bereich der Lehrerbildungsforschung haben gezeigt, dass die Arbeit mit Unterrichtsvideos eine wirksame Möglichkeit darstellt, um professionelle Kompetenzen von Lehramtsstudierenden zu erweitern. In der Unterrichtsforschung werden Unterrichtsvideos darüber hinaus auch als Messinstrument zur Wahrnehmung von Unterrichtsqualität genutzt. Dabei werden meist Filmaufnahmen verwendet, die mit einer Überblicks- oder Lehrerkamera gefilmt wurden. In diesem Kontext äußern Bildungswissenschaftlerinnen und Bildungswissenschaftler die Annahme, dass die gefilmte Kameraperspektive einen Effekt auf die Beobachtung und Beurteilung der Unterrichtsvideos haben kann. Empirische Befunde sind zu dieser Hypothese bisher wenig vorhanden. Die vorliegende Dissertation hat sich daher - in der Tradition standardisierter Videostudien - das Ziel gesetzt, das bisherige standardisierte Kamerasetting inhaltlich-konzeptionell durch die Installierung mehrerer Schülerkameraperspektiven weiterzuentwickeln. Auf dieser Grundlage wurde geprüft, ob die Raterinnen und Rater durch den Einsatz multiperspektivischer Videos in ihrer Einschätzung der Unterrichtsqualität zu unterschiedlichen Ergebnissen gelangen. Die Befunde belegen, dass Raterinnen und Rater ein Unterrichtsgeschehen mit den etablierten Perspektiven der Überblicks- oder Lehrerkamera nahezu ähnlich einschätzen. Mit weiteren Kameraperspektiven, die auf die Schülerinnen und Schüler gerichtet sind, wird jedoch eine deutlich breitere Beurteilung in den Dimensionen „Kognitive Aktivierung“, „Klassenmanagement“ und „Individuelle Förderung“ deutlich. Mehrere Kameraperspektiven ermöglichen detaillierte Aussagen über Unterricht - von diesem Ergebnis können auch Studierende in der Lehrpersonenausbildung profitieren. Schülerkameraperspektiven eröffnen Dozierenden insbesondere zur Thematik „heterogene Schülerschaft“ ein didaktisches Lehrmittel und Werkzeug, das eine Videoanalyse zu Mikrointeraktionen zwischen Schülerinnen und Schülern-Lehrpersonen-Interaktionen dynamisch und simultan erlaubt. Die befragten Studierenden dieser Arbeit gaben an, gern in weiteren Lehrveranstaltungen mit mehrperspektivischen Unterrichtsvideos zu arbeiten.

Die vorliegende Simulationsstudie befasst sich mit der Etablierung und Veränderung der Personal-politik von Organisationen. Das den Simulationsrechnungen zugrunde liegende Modell beschreibt und erklärt den Einfluss personalpolitischer Kraftfelder auf die personalpolitischen Orientierungen von Organisationen. Berücksichtigt werden dabei die Rückwirkungen, die von der Personalpolitik auf die sie bestimmenden Kräfte ausgehen sowie die Beharrungskräfte, die einer einmal etablier-ten personalpolitischen Konstellation innewohnen. Und schließlich wird den Zufallsprozessen, die das personalpolitische Geschehen wesentlich mitbestimmen, die ihnen gebührende Beachtung ge-schenkt. Als theoretische Grundlage dient eine erweiterte und auf die Erklärung der Personalpolitik hin aus-gerichtete Version der Anreiz-Beitrags-Theorie, wonach sich, je nach den gegebenen Feldkraft-konstellationen, angepasste Sozialordnungen herausbilden. Die Elemente und Strukturen dieser Sozialordnungen sind aufeinander abgestimmt und stützen sich gegenseitig. Daraus entwickeln sich interne „Bindungskräfte“, die den verschiedenen Sozialordnungen ihre je eigene Stabilität ver-leihen. Die in dieser Theorie thematisierten Zusammenhänge werden in dem Simulationsmodell konkretisiert und in entsprechende Rechenvorschriften transformiert. Damit wird es möglich, den Ablauf und die Wirkung der von der Theorie unterstellten Mechanismen anhand von konkret be-nennbaren Vorgängen zu analysieren.

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

Network analysis methods have long been used in the social sciences. About 25 years ago, these methods gained popularity in various other domains and many real-world phenomena have been modeled using networks. Well-known examples include (online) social networks, economic networks, web graphs, metabolic networks, infrastructure networks, and many more. Technological development made it possible to store and process data on a scale not imaginable decades ago — a development that also includes network data. A particular characteristic of network data is that, unlike standard data, the objects of interest, called nodes, have relationships to (possibly all) other objects in the network. Collecting empirical data is often complicated and cumbersome, hence, the observed data are typically incomplete and might also contain other types of errors. Because of the interdependent structure of network data, these errors have a severe impact on network analysis methods. This cumulative dissertation is about the impact of erroneous network data on centrality measures, which are methods to assess the position of an object, for example a person, with respect to all other objects in a network. Existing studies have shown that even small errors can substantially alter these positions. The impact of errors on centrality measures is typically quantified using a concept called robustness. The articles included in this dissertation contribute to a better understanding of the robustness of centrality measures in several aspects. It is argued why the robustness needs to be estimated and a new method is proposed. This method allows researchers to estimate the robustness of a centrality measure in a specific network and can be used as a basis for decision making. The relationship between network properties and the robustness of centrality measures is analyzed. Experimental and analytical approaches show that centrality measures are often more robust in networks with a larger average degree. The study of the impact of non-random errors on the robustness suggests that centrality measures are often more robust if missing nodes are more likely to belong to the same community compared to missingness completely at random. For the development of imputation procedures based on machine learning techniques, a process for the evaluation of node embedding methods is proposed.

The world currently faces important issues concerning climate change and environmental sustainability, with the wellbeing of billions of people around the world at risk over the next decades. Existing institutions no longer appear to be sufficiently capable to deal with the complexity and uncertainty associated with the wicked problem of sustainability. Achieving the required sustainability transformation will thus require purposeful reform of existing institutional frameworks. However, existing research on the governance of sustainability of sustainability transformations has strongly focused on innovation and the more ‘creative’ aspects of these processes, blinding our view to the fact that they go hand with the failure, decline or dismantling of institutions that are no longer considered functional or desirable. This doctoral dissertation thus seeks to better understand how institutional failure and decline can contribute productively to sustainability transformations and how such dynamics in institutional arrangements can serve to restructure existing institutional systems. A systematic review of the conceptual literature served to provide a concise synthesis of the research on ‘failure’ and ‘decline’ in the institutional literature, providing important first insights into their potentially productive functions. This was followed up by an archetype analysis of the productive functions of failure and decline, drawing on a wide range of literatures. This research identified five archetypical pathways: (1) crises triggering institutional adaptations toward sustainability, (2) systematic learning from failure and breakdown, (3) the purposeful destabilisation of unsustainable institutions, (4) making a virtue of inevitable decline, and (5) active and reflective decision making in the face of decline instead of leaving it to chance. Empirical case studies looking at the German energy transition and efforts to phase out coal in the Powering Past Coal Alliance served to provide more insights on (a) how to effectively harness ‘windows of opportunity’ for change, and (b) the governance mechanisms used by governments to actively remove institutions. Results indicate that the lock-in of existing technologies, regulations and practices can throw up important obstacles for sustainability transformations. The intentional or unintentional destabilisation of the status quo may thus be required to enable healthy renewal within a system. This process required active and reflective management to avoid the irreversible loss of desirable institutional elements. Instruments such as ‘sunset clauses’ and ‘experimental legislation’ may serve as important tools to learn through ‘trial and error’, whilst limiting the possible damage done by failure. Focusing on the subject of scale, this analysis finds that the level at which failure occurs is likely to determine the degree of change that can be achieved. Failures at the policy-level are most likely to merely lead to changes to the tools and instruments used by policy makers. This research thus suggests that failures on the polity- and political level may be required to achieve transformative changes to existing power structures, belief-systems and paradigms. Finally, this research briefly touches on the role of actor and agency in the governance of sustainabilitytransformations through failure and decline. It finds that actors may play an important role in causing a system or one of its elements to fail and in shaping the way events are come to be perceived. Drawing on the findings of this research, this dissertation suggests a number of lessons policy makers and others seeking to revisit existing institutional arrangements may want to take into account. Actors should be prepared to harness the potential associated with failure and decline, preserve those institutional elements considered important, and take care to manage the tension between the need for ‘quick fixes’ to currently pressing problems and solution that maintain and protect the longterm sustainability of a system.

My dissertation embraces four empirical papers addressing socio-economic issues relevant to policy-makers and society as a whole. These papers cover important aspects of human life including health at birth, life satisfaction, unemployment periods and retirement decisions, and are intended to provide a contribution to the respective research areas. The analyses are carried out applying advanced econometric methods and are based on data sets consisting of survey data as well as administrative records. The joint paper with Alessandro Palma and Daniela Vuri "Prenatal Air Pollution Exposure and Neonatal Health" in Chapter 2 investigates the causal impact of prenatal exposure to air pollution on neonatal health in Italy in the 2000s combining detailed information on mother’s residential location from birth certificates with PM10 concentrations from air pollution monitors. Variation in local weekly rainfall is exploited as an instrumental variable for non-random air pollution exposure. Using quasi-experimental variation in rainfall shocks allows to identify the effect of PM10, ruling out potential bias due to confounder pollutants. The paper estimates the effect of exposure for both the entire pregnancy period and separately for each trimester to test whether the neonatal health effects are driven by pollution exposure during a particular gestation period. This information enhances our understanding of the mechanisms at work and help prevent pregnant mothers from most dangerous exposure periods. Additionally, the effects of prenatal exposure to PM10 are estimated by maternal labor market status and maternal education level to understand how the pollution burden is shared across different population groups. This decomposition allows to identify possible mechanisms through which environmental inequality reinforces the negative impact of early-life exposure to air pollution. This study finds that average PM10 and days with PM10 level above the hazard limit reduce birth weight, gestational age, and measures of overall newborn health. Effects are largest for third trimester exposure and for low-income and less educated mothers. These findings imply that further policy efforts are needed to fully protect fetuses from the adverse effects of air pollution and to mitigate the environmental inequality of health at birth. The joint paper with Christian Pfeifer "Life Satisfaction in Germany After Reunification: Additional Insights on the Pattern of Convergence" in Chapter 3 updates previous findings on the total East-West gap in overall life satisfaction and its trend by using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel for the years 1992 to 2013. Additionally, the effects are separately analyzed for men and women as well as for four birth cohorts. The results indicate that reported life satisfaction is, on average, significantly lower in East than in West German federal states and that part of the raw East-West gap is due to differences in household income and unemployment status. The conditional East-West gap decreased in the first years after the German reunification and remained quite stable and sizable since the mid-nineties. The results further indicate that gender differences are small. Finally, the East-West gap is significantly smaller and shows a trend towards convergence for younger birth cohorts. The joint paper with Christian Pfeifer "Unemployment Benefits Duration and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Germany" in Chapter 4 explores the effects 2 of a major reform of unemployment benefits in Germany on the labor market outcomes of individuals with some health impairment. The reform induced a substantial reduction in the potential duration of regular unemployment benefits for older workers. This work analyzes the reform in a wider framework of institutional interactions, which allows to distinguish between its intended and unintended effects. The results based on routine data collected by the German Statutory Pension Insurance and a Difference-in-Differences design provide causal evidence for a significant decrease in the number of days in unemployment benefits and increase in the number of days in employment. However, they also suggest a significant increase in the number of days in unemployment assistance, granted upon exhaustion of unemployment benefits. Transitions to unemployment assistance represent an unintended effect, limiting the success of a policy change that aims to increase labor supply via reductions in the generosity of the unemployment insurance system. The single-authored paper "How Older Workers Respond to Raised Early Retirement Age: Evidence from a Kink Design in Germany" in Chapter 5 explores how an increase in the early retirement age affects labor force participation of older workers. The analysis is based on a social security reform in Germany, which raised the early retirement age over several birth cohorts to boost employment of older people and ultimately alleviate the burden on the public pension system. Detailed administrative data from the Federal Employment Agency allow to distinguish between employment and unemployment as well as disability pensions and retirement benefits claims. Using a Regression Kink design in a quasi-experimental framework, I show that the raised early retirement age had positive employment effects and negative effects on retirement benefits claims. The reform did not affect unemployment benefits or disability pensions claims. My results also show that some population groups are more sensitive to a reduction in retirement options and more likely to seek benefits from other government programs. In this respect, I find that workers in manufacturing sector respond to the raised early retirement age by claiming benefits from the disability insurance program designed to compensate for reduced earnings capacity due to severe health problems. The treatment heterogeneity analysis further suggests that high-wage workers are more likely to delay exits from employment, which is in line with incentives but might also indicate an increased inequality within the affected birth cohorts induced by the reform. Finally, women seem to rely on alternative sources of income such as retirement benefits for women, or spouse's or partner's income not observed in the data. All things considered, workers did not adjust to the increased early retirement age by substituting early retirement with other government programs but rather responded to the reform in line with the policy intent. At the same time, the findings point to heterogeneous behavioral responses across different population groups. This implies that raising the early retirement age is an effective policy tool to increase employment only among older people who have the real choice to delay employment exits. Therefore, reforms that raise statutory ages should ensure social support for workers only marginally attached to the labor market or not able to work longer due to potential health problems or other circumstances.

Durch die Neufassung des § 68f Abs.1 Satz 1 StGB tritt die Führungsaufsicht bei vollverbüßter Strafe von zwei Jahren oder bei schwerwiegenden Taten gemäß § 181b StGB nach einem Jahr kraft Gesetzes ein. Diese Reform im Jahr 2007 hat zu einem enormen Anstieg von Führungsaufsichten nach vollverbüßter Jugendstrafe geführt. Die Regelungen und Aufgaben der Verantwortlichen der Führungsaufsicht nach Jugendstrafe sind vielfältig und anders als beispielsweise bei der Führungsaufsicht nach einer Maßregel der Besserung und Sicherung (gem. §§ 63f). Für die Arbeit mit straffälligen Jugendlichen und Heranwachsenden unter Führungsaufsicht nach vollverbüßter Jugendstrafe gibt es für die Justizsozialarbeitenden keine explizite Handreichung. Im Vordergrund der Arbeit liegt die Frage: „Welche Faktoren können, aus Sicht der beteiligten Akteure, die Legalbewährung jugendlicher und heranwachsender Vollverbüßer unter Führungsaufsicht begünstigen?“ Die Praxisforschung wird, anhand von 15 Interviews mit den Verantwortlichen der Führungsaufsicht dargestellt und nimmt Bezug auf das in der Praxis erprobte Modellprojekt RESI und das Lebenslagenkonzept.

Panic disorder is a common anxiety disorder, which is associated with high subjective burden as well as a high cost for the health economy. According to the National Treatment Guideline S3, cognitive behavior therapy is recommended as the most effective psychological treatment. However, many people in need do not have access to cognitive behavior therapy. Internet-based interventions have proven to be an effective way to provide access to evidence-based treatment to those affected, thereby reducing gaps in care. For anxiety disorders, such as panic disorder and agoraphobia, a good effectiveness of internet-based interventions has been proven in numerous international studies. However, the internet has changed over the last few years: mobile technologies have considerable potential to further improve the adherence and effectiveness of internet-based interventions. Against this background, we developed the hybrid online training

To improve the properties of thermochemical heat storage materials, salt mixtures were evaluated for their heat storage capacity and cycle stability as part of the innovation incubator project “Thermochemical battery” of the Leuphana university Lüneburg. Based on naturally occurring compound minerals, 16 sulfates, 18 chlorides and 5 chloride multi-mixtures, 18 bromides and 5 intermixtures between sulfates, chlorides and bromides were synthesized either from liquid solution or by dry mixing for TGA/DSC screening before continuing the heat storage evaluation with five different measurement setups at a laboratory scale. The TGA/DSC analysis served as a screening process to reduce the number of testing materials for the upscaled experiments. The evaluation process consisted of a three-cycle dehydration/hydration measurement at Tmax = 100°C and Tmax = 200°C. In case of the bromide samples a measurement of hydration conditions with Tmax = 110°C and a water flow at e = 18.68mbar, were added to the procedure to detect the maximum water uptake temperature. Also, a single dehydration to a temperature of Tmax = 500°C was implemented to observe melting behavior and to easier calculate the samples’ stages of hydration from the remaining anhydrous mass. Materials which showed high energy storage density and improved cycle stability during this first evaluation were cleared for multi-cycle measurements of 10 to 25 dehydration and hydration cycles at Tmax = 100 to 120°C and the evaluations at m = 20 to 100g scale. An estimate for the specific heat capacities at different temperatures of the materials which passed the initial stage was calculated from the TGA/DSC results as well. The laboratory scale measurement setup went through five stages of refining, which led to reducing the intended maximum sample mass from m = 100g to m = 20g. A switch from supplied liquid water to water vapor as the used reactant was also implemented in exchange for improved dehydration conditions. Introducing a vacuum pump for evaporating the water limited the influence of outside heat sources during hydration and in-situ dehydration was enabled as to not disturb the state the samples were settling in between measurements. Baseline calculation from blanc measurements with glass powder and attempts to calculate the specific heat capacity cp of the tested materials by 6 applying the Joule-Lenz-law to the measurement apparatus was another step of method development. The evaluation process of the laboratory scale tests at the final setting consisted of 1 to 5 cycle measurements of in-situ dehydration and hydrations with applied vacuum for t = 30 minutes at p ~ 30mbar. Upscaling the sample mass to m = 20g allowed for a close observation of different material behaviors. Agglomeration, melting and dissolving of the m = 10mg samples during the TGA/DSC analysis can be deducted from the recorded measurement curves and the state of the sample after measurement. However, at laboratory scale the visible volume changes, observed sample consistency after agglomeration and an automatic removal of molten and dissolved sample mass during the measurement allowed for a better characterization and understanding of the magnitude of the actual changes. This was done for the first time, particularly for mixed salts. Of the original number of 62 samples, 4 mixtures which passed the initial TGA/DSC screening namely {2MgCl2+ KCl}, {2MgCl2+CaCl2}, {5SrBr2+8CaCl2} and {2ZnCl2 + CaCl2} were chosen for further evaluation. The multi-cycle TGA/DSC measurements of {2MgCl2+ KCl}, {2MgCl2+CaCl2} and {5SrBr2+8CaCl2} showed an improved cycle stability for all three materials over the untreated educts. Of the four materials {2ZnCl2 + CaCl2} displayed the strongest deliquescence during hydration in the upscaled experimental setup. {2MgCl2+CaCl2} proved to be the most stable material regarding the heat storage density. The {MgCl2} content of the mixture is likely to partially or completely react to {Mg(OH)Cl} at temperatures of T > 110°C, which however does not impede the heat storage density. {5SrBr2+8CaCl2} displayed a low melting point in hydrated state, causing a fast material loss. This makes it an undesirable storage material. A lower heating rate may still help to avoid an early melting. The {2MgCl2+KCl} mixture was the most temperature stable of the mixtures showing no melting or dissolving behavior. A reaction of the {MgCl2} component of the mixture to {Mg(OH)Cl} was not observed within the applied temperature range of T = 25 to 200°C.