NEWS

The Doctoral School PLUS (DSP) “Organization Studies” is a research platform at the Paris Lodron University of Salzburg that focuses on the institutional expectations and demands placed on organizations and their responses to these.

Through interdisciplinary collaboration and a broad theoretical foundation from the fields of organizational and management research, communication science, psychology, and consumer behavior, the DSP “Organization Studies” examines the central role of organizations and organizational practices in shaping and adapting to dynamic challenges in business and society. A key goal of the DSP is to empirically test and further develop existing organizational theories.

The five research focuses of the DSP for Organization Studies are:
– Adoption of Structures and Practices
– Circular Economy and Organizations
– Psychological Diagnostics
– Human Resource Management (HRM)
– Organizational Communication

For more information, please visit the DSP College for Organization Studies page.

Functional control in webshops allows consumers to virtually experience the different functions of a product. To date, however, the potential benefits of enabling functional control in online product presentations in addition to standard visual control have only been studied and proven for non-immersive virtual environments but not for immersive virtual reality shopping experiences in webshops. We close this research gap by comparing an immersive product presentation format with visual control (grabbing a product and viewing it from different angles) to that of an immersive product presentation format with additional functional control (experiencing and inspecting the different functionalities of the product) by means of a between-subjects experiment. Our special focus is on the influence of functional control on the hedonic aspects of online shopping since interactive immersive webshops are known to offer particular potential to enhance the hedonistic shopping experience of consumers. Our findings suggest that (1) the possibility to try out product functions in an immersive environment can significantly increase the shopping experience of consumers and that (2) hedonic aspects like the enjoyment of consumers actually seem to play a highly important role in immersive webshops. Accordingly, as a practical implication of our study, companies should consider investing in functional control elements when presenting their products in immersive virtual reality webshops as a way to gain a competitive advantage.
You can find the full article at this  link.

This study examines the path towards climate-neutral energy supply and the associated challenges and potentials in the context of neighborhoods in peripheral settlement areas.

It highlights the paradigm shift from centralized to decentralized energy supply, focusing on aspects such as the development of energy infrastructure, the pursuit of energy self-sufficiency, the improvement of energy efficiency, and the implementation of energy storage systems. Societal challenges in the implementation of decentralized renewable energy systems are discussed, including the harmonization of different interests and the potentials of energy communities as alternative social forms.

Using the example of peripheral settlement areas in Salzburg, the contribution of neighborhoods to achieving climate goals is examined, presenting both methodological approaches and empirical results from a technical simulation and a survey. Finally, conclusions are drawn and recommendations for the further development and implementation of decentralized renewable energy supply systems are derived.

You can find the full report here.