Assessment of the German funding program to support innovative port technologies in German sea ports and inland ports (IHATEC) with the aim to increase and stabilize competitiveness. The KLU Hapag-Lloyd Center for Shipping and Global Logistics (CSGL) conducts the interviews with beneficiaries, and supports the mapping out of suggestions for improvement of the program.

In order to counteract disruptions in the transport process at seaports, the actors involved must be proactively informed about the disruption and the new estimated time of arrival. So far, however, there is a lack of comprehensive forecasting models, which can estimate the new times of arrival on the basis of planned and actual data. The SMECS research project, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI) will provide this estimation and support actors in their decisions. Initially, the project will focus on container transport on rail and will be extended to other modes of transport later.

The purpose of this German Research Foundation (DFG) funded research project is to advance our understanding of the cognitive bases of organizational leadership. Most leadership theories since the 60s have viewed the leader-follower relationship in isolation. We challenge this perspective by investigating the social embeddedness of this relation. In a nutshell, we argue (and find)  that followers form evaluations of their leaders based on comparisons with how their leader treats other coworkers. This simple but intriguing insight has the potential to change how leadership is theoretically conceived and may help gain new insights in how people should lead their subordinates.  

Social interactions among customers play a key role in the purchase and consumption process of hedonic media products (HMP) because the quality of HMP is difficult to assess. The emergence and dissemination of digitalsocial media (DSM) substantially change the nature of these interactions. The purpose of this research project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) is to focus on analyzing network structures in DSM. The objective is to model these structures and gain an understanding about how interactions emerge and develop. How and why do network activity affect individuals? What are market reactions to marketing activities in the age of DSM? And how does the DSM impact on firms in the HMP industry?

Hedonic media products (HMP) are mostly published with sequential distribution strategies. For example, motion pictures are typically displayed in movie theatres first before subsequent releases on DVD/ Blue-Ray, video-on-demand and TV. In this research project we explore the interdependencies of company generated contend (“paid media”), user generated content (“earned media”) and sales success, specifically in subsequent distribution channels. The project is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Given the number of disasters such as famine, earthquakes and floods in our world, there is a need for well-executed humanitarian aid. Yet, aid organizations continue to face many problems during their operations. While the field of humanitarian aid has traditionally been looked at from an operational angle this research project, financed by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, seeks to advance behavioral insights in the respective dynamics of the execution by leaders to better understand the organizational dynamics such as teamwork and communication  in order to make humanitarian  aid more effective.

The EURO HOpe mini-conferences aims to further exchange among researchers within the field of humanitarian operations. The project is financed by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and takes place in Hamburg (2016) and Vienna (2017). Several future goals for the conference working group have been defined: improving coordination within the research area, creating a shared database to benchmark the work, achieving higher practical relevance and direct cooperation with practitioners to get to the most pressing problems and generate interesting research in theory and practice, build trust and long-term relationships with humanitarian organizations, more collaboration within the group to generate big research projects, achieve more interdisciplinary work, and create a special issue to publish the specific papers on Humanitarian Operations.

The aim of this research project, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), is to efficiently identify the source of large-scale outbreaks of foodborne disease while contamination-caused illnesses are still occurring, in order to resolve investigations earlier and avert potential illnesses. It proposes a holistic system for real-time source detection, which combines a dynamic commodity flow model with a spatio-temporal method for source localization on networks. 

A recent study for the World Bank showed a shortage of people with the right skills to meet the needs of the logistics industry. A series of recommendations to governments wishing to raise the level of logistics skills in their countries was made. This research project aims to develop a toolkit that governments can use to (1) assess the availability of logistics skills, certifications and training in their countries and (2) find out how to deal with logistics skill shortages.

The project aims to make recommendations and offer a toolbox for European ports to be more environment-friendly. The project study showed how rebates on port fees to promote greener shipping have become common in the sector. If incentive schemes like this are to make a difference, they should be combined with other instruments and all ports in the EU should offer them. Funded by the European Commission.