A common strategy to boost user engagement on social media is to incorporate requests into posts. While previous research has focused on the effects of direct verbal requests (i.e., commands), the role of subtler, indirect verbal and visual requests remains underexplored. We address this gap through a quantitative content analysis of 2250 Facebook posts from the 100 largest U.S. nonprofit organizations. Using a social semiotics lens, we argue that both verbal and visual modes can convey requests, although each relies on distinct semiotic resources. The influence of requests on user engagement may thus be shaped by general semiotic principles applicable to both modes as well as modality-specific principles. In line with our assumptions, users prefer posts that clearly reveal a charity's persuasive intent through verbal and visual requests (general principle of clarity). Moreover, posts fostering clarity by exclusively featuring either direct or indirect verbal requests are associated with greater user engagement compared to those combining both types. However, users are more responsive to indirect than direct verbal requests (verbal principle of nuance) and tend to be distracted from the verbal text when posts include a direct gaze image (visual principle of captivation).

Although many persuasive messages include imagery, relatively little is known about the potential for the visual components to induce reactance. This research examined the effects of three message variations-camera angle (low vs. eye-level), antithesis (vs. thesis) (i.e., the juxtaposition of contrasting images), and facial expression of emotion (anger vs. happiness)-on reactance and subsequent persuasion. Two experiments (N = 240 and N = 259) using pro-environmental appeals found that variation in each of the visual features was associated with increased perception of threat to freedom, reactance and decreased persuasion. Political conservatives felt more threatened by any message than liberals, but were not differentially sensitive to image variations. This research opens the door for a programmatic analysis of imagery and reactance.

One of the key functions of verbal text in modern advertising is to anchor (i.e., constrain) the meaning of the accompanying image, thereby leading the audience toward a preferred interpretation. However, despite the importance of verbal anchoring, there is limited understanding of the various forms it can take and the related effects on audience responses. To address this gap, we propose a new typology that distinguishes verbal anchoring based on the underlying sense-giving strategy and degree of completeness. We then delineate a set of empirically testable predictions on how these verbal anchoring types may influence information processing and subsequent persuasion. The article concludes by discussing the contributions of the typology to communication research and by suggesting new avenues for future studies.

Throughout its history, Operational Research has evolved to include a variety of methods, models and algorithms that have been applied to a diverse and wide range of contexts. This encyclopedic article consists of two main sections: methods and applications. The first aims to summarise the up-to-date knowledge and provide an overview of the state-of-the-art methods and key developments in the various subdomains of the field. The second offers a wide-ranging list of areas where Operational Research has been applied. The article is meant to be read in a nonlinear fashion. It should be used as a point of reference or first-port-of-call for a diverse pool of readers: academics, researchers, students, and practitioners. The entries within the methods and applications sections are presented in alphabetical order. The authors dedicate this paper to the 2023 Turkey/Syria earthquake victims. We sincerely hope that advances in OR will play a role towards minimising the pain and suffering caused by this and future catastrophes.

Due to an increased competition for volunteers, nonprofit organizations have intensified efforts to recruit members as volunteers. But how to effectively persuade members to volunteer using visual communication? Research suggests that images are most persuasive when they demand something from the viewer. A demand is expressed through the depiction of a person who directly gazes at the viewer, whereas an offer is expressed through the depiction of a face with an averted gaze. Demands and offers can also be expressed verbally. A verbal demand is articulated through commands, whereas a verbal offer is conveyed through statements. This study examines whether NPOs should address their members using demands or offers and whether correspondence between image and text increases persuasion. An experiment among 205 members of a Swiss NPO finds that direct gaze images are most effective. However, image-text matching increases persuasion for campaigns that feature an averted gaze image.

This article explores the ingredients of effective business communication, presenting the extensive work of German psychologist and communication expert Friedemann Schulz von Thun. Over the course of his 50-year career, Schulz von Thun has developed numerous frameworks and tools that enhance our understanding of how to talk to one another to settle disagreements, promote strong relationships and foster individual as well as organizational success. We offer a concise synthesis of his most influential concepts (i.e., the square of communication, the inner team, and the value square) and illustrate their application in communication research and practice.

To enable students to deal with modern complexity and related challenges, curriculum development at today's universities is increasingly integrating more interdisciplinarity. In this context, lecturers play a relevant role as they implement the curriculum. However, disciplinary boundaries only provide promising learning opportunities if they are managed appropriately. This requires an engaged dialogue that facilitates collaboration and co-creation. Drawing on boundary crossing theory, we introduce our Concept Glancer prototype as a (work-in-progress) interactive visualization application. The tool serves as a boundary object to create common meanings. Applied to team-teaching activities, it aims to promote crossing disciplinary boundaries by considering knowledge integration as communicative process. To reflect on epistemological distances that define a narrow or wide interdisciplinarity, our tool visualizes so-called bridging concepts as a form of intermediate level knowledge that links disciplines actively. In its initial version, we refer to relevant concepts from an interdisciplinary first-year curriculum in business administration, law, and international affairs (e.g., bias, contract, sustainability, strategy). They are considered as descriptive, normative, and functional knowledge elements to reveal lecturers’ (implicit) assumptions and, with that, to facilitate exchange between disciplines as prominent dimensions of a connected curriculum. Translating and transforming knowledge thus overcomes communicative challenges in aligning interdisciplinary teaching (i.e., managing boundaries, forging a common ground, discovering new frontiers). We outline the Concept Glancer's didactical potentials for spanning disciplinary boundaries and conclude with an outlook on further research and opportunities for such knowledge visualization formats to align (innovative) teaching and learning.

Purpose- This paper aims to managerial decision styles, following the General Decision-Making Style Inventory, as potential predictors of individual bias awareness and bias blind spots, with a focus on the rational decision style. Design/methodology/approach- The research is based on a survey of 50 degrees C-1 level managers within Forbes 2000 companies. It explores their decision styles and their assessments of their own and others' decision behavior. Findings- The results show that the awareness of one's own susceptibility to biases and bias blind spots is highly dependent on an individual's (self-declared) decision style and type of cognitive bias; decision-makers with a strong tendency toward a rational or spontaneous decision style see themselves as less vulnerable to cognitive biases but also show a much stronger bias blind spot than those with a tendency toward other decision styles. Meanwhile, decision-makers with a strong tendency toward an intuitive decision style tend to recognize their own vulnerability to cognitive biases and even show a negative blind spot, thus seeing themselves as more affected by cognitive biases than others. Originality/value- To date, decision styles have not been used as a lens through which to view susceptibility to cognitive biases and bias blind spots in managerial decision-making. As demonstrated in this article, decision styles can serve as predictors of individual awareness and susceptibility to cognitive biases and bias blind spots for managers.

Purpose This article aims to explore the so-called illusion of explanatory depth (IOED) of managers regarding their understanding of digital technologies and examines the effect of knowledge visualization one’s current understanding and decision making. Its purpose is to show that managers think they know more than they do and that this affects decision making but can be reduced through knowledge visualization. Design/methodology/approach In two experiments with experienced managers, the authors investigate the size and impact of the IOED bias in decision making and examine if sketched self-explanations are as effective as written self-explanations to reduce the bias. Findings The findings show that experienced managers suffer from a significant illusion concerning their explanatory understanding of digital technologies and that sketching one’s current level of explanatory understanding of these technologies supports the accurate calibration of one’s knowledge. The findings indicate that sketching knowledge is a helpful modality for the detection and subsequent recalibration of biased knowledge in domain-dependent decision making. Originality/value This article is the first to explore the effect of sketched knowledge externalization on the calibration of explanatory knowledge of managers. It extends the literature on both, the IOED and on knowledge visualization as an instrument of knowledge calibration.

Lifelong learning requires the consistent and continued development of one’s knowledge, skills, and competencies. However, due to the extensive choice of courses offered at today’s institutions of higher learning, students face a risk of choice overload in their selection of (elective) courses. As current findings in choice overload literature do not refer to student samples in educational settings nor do they consider the use of interactive visualization formats, the use of interactive visualization in higher education organizations seems a promising way to support course selection that fits educational needs. All the more as previous visualization approaches to overcome table-based visualizations or online course catalogues primarily aim at communicating curricular content and structure to different university stakeholders, while disregarding students. We thus introduce our work-in-progress on an interactive visualization tool called the Course Glancer. The Course Glancer supports students’ decision-making ability when confronted with a variety of learning offers while taking electives of a bachelor’s degree program in business administration. The tool provides support for gaining an overview on all available courses and their categories, and for rapidly comparing course alternatives. In doing so, it can help to clarify course preferences and finally to foster students’ confidence of not having overlooked an important course option. This is in line with Shneiderman’s information-seeking mantra as a must-have for effective cognitive processing: Overview first, zoom and filter, then details-on-demand. We use this mantra in connection with Norman’s usability principles of discoverability, affordances, feedback, constraints, mapping, and consistency. An example of how we use constraints is that course comparison is limited to juxtaposing two courses only. This functionality considers latest evidence from using eye-tracking studies that revealed that human beings tend to distribute their attention in an unbalanced manner and focus mainly on the two options that seem the most promising alternatives. To enrich the empirical research on choice overload, we plan to focus on psychological effects in the use of the Course Glancer. These include subjective, moderating factors (e.g., decision style) and behavior-related measures. The latter refer to subjective states (choice satisfaction, decision regret, decision confidence) or behavioral outcomes (e.g., choice deferral, option selection). Beyond these, group-related effects should also be analyzed in future research, for example, if interacting with our tool can stimulate information exchange processes within expert groups of higher education organizations (e.g., in the context of accreditation procedures or curriculum planning).

In contexts of higher learning, students must be supported effectively in developing their knowledge, skills, and competencies. Thus, faculty members (incl. lecturers and administrators) are faced with the management task to organize and align innovative teaching and learning formats. As we know from research, the use of knowledge visualization is both a facilitating tool for cognitive processing and learning itself, and for strategic decision-making processes within organizations. However, the literature on the types of (IT-enabled) knowledge visualization for learning in higher education contexts is highly fragmented and dispersed and includes different branches for researchers and practitioners. This makes it difficult to achieve an overview and find systematic and consistent visual approaches along students’ learning paths. By highlighting the role of knowledge visualization to support organizing innovative teaching and learning, we provide a systematic, structured overview of such approaches. The goal of this paper is thus to structure the field of knowledge visualization for lifelong and university-based learning based on seminal papers. For this purpose, we present a segmentation approach with six areas to analyse the role of knowledge visualization for learning in higher education contexts, namely: Visualizing Learning Offers (e.g., Curriculum Visualization Tools), Visual Learning Environments (e.g., Metaverse), Learning Content Visualization (e.g., Visual Variation Patterns), Visual Techniques for Learning (e.g., Concept Mapping), Visual Learning Analytics (e.g., Learner Dashboards), and Visualizing Learning Outcomes (e.g., Digital Course Badges). Based on systemizing key concepts, our paper concludes with promising future research avenues for each of the six areas, as well as for the domain of knowledge visualization for higher learning itself. We conclude with specific ideas how the area of visualizing learning offers can act as a spearhead for empirical research (and practice transfer) in the knowledge visualization domain. This should help practitioners and researchers from higher education contexts who consider lifelong learning as knowledge management task.

IMPLEMENTING COURSE BADGES IN A SWISS UNIVERSITY: FIRST EXPERIENCES ALONG STUDENTS’ AND INSTRUCTORS’ PERCEPTIONS

The aim of this paper is to introduce a set of five versatile graphic representation formats called visual variations that allow anyone to represent qualitative insights systematically, concisely and in an expansive way. This “bar chart for knowledge” is based on Marton's seminal variation theory to improve learning and comprehension and makes its mechanisms actionable within the realm of a simple graphic notation consisting of five visual patterns: 1. The ‘Approaches’ pattern to visualize different fitting and problematic solutions to a problem. 2. The concise and expansive ‘Scenarios’ pattern to visualize possible futures. 3. The chronological ‘Segments’ pattern to visualize processes and events. 4. The powerful ‘Configurations’ pattern to depict solution architectures. 5. The memorable “Mutations” pattern based on visual metaphors to represent classifications. These patterns follow the principle that you only understand something if you understand it in more than one way. The paper describes the method's key idea, background, application areas, and evaluation results, as well as numerous examples from the realm of technology, business, and psychology. It concludes by pointing out future development directions for the visual variation methodology.

Life-Design;Actionbook;Motivation;Motivationtechniken;motivieren;Aktivierungstaktiken;Initiative;Kreativität;Neugierde;Knowing-Doing-Gap;Intention-Action-Gap;Ziele erreichen

This study investigates how digital technologies advance the dual goals of profitability and social impact in fast-expanding markets and the role of social networks in upscaling these markets. Digital financial services take on many forms, including long-distance remittances, micropayments, and other mobile financial services such as digital banking, digital transfers, and digital payments. Social networks, webs of social ties that bind individuals together based on factors such as friendships, common interests, and shared professional activities become even more dynamic when they evolve into social ecosystems, which are complex forms of overlapping social ties that interact with others in other social networks at the same or different times. Our research context is the fast-expanding markets of Ghana and Kenya. Digitisation in these markets has opened up several marketing opportunities in multiple tech hubs, working spaces, and accelerators that provide innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship in order to ensure sustainability. To answer our research question, we first conducted rigorous and systematic secondary research to expose key constructs related to the goals of profitability and digitisation of financial services firms. We followed up with a qualitative study in the form of phenomenological interviews conducted with 15 dyads of financial services providers and their microenterprise customers in Ghana and some microenterprises in Kenya. We contribute to the upscaling framework for financial services to meet the dual goals of profitability and social sustainability.

Zusammenfassung Stromtodesfälle in der Badewanne sind üblicherweise Folge suizidaler Handlungen oder ereignen sich unfallbedingt. Berichtet wird über einen letalen Stromunfall, bei dem über ein defektes, nicht den hiesigen Normen entsprechendes Ladegerät eines Smartphones, das während eines Vollbades in der Hand gehalten wurde, die volle Netzwechselspannung auf den Körper einer jungen Frau verschleppt wurde, der dadurch Teil eines geschlossenen Stromkreises wurde. Elektrogeräte von minderwertiger Qualität stellen ein nicht abschätzbares Gefährdungspotenzial für die Benutzer dar.

In this paper we develop a novel interactive and highly visual interface to make current research about cognitive biases in strategic decision-making processes widely available to non-experts in management, administration, and engineering. Cognitive biases play a major role in the process of strategic decision-making. Thus, the recognition, compilation, and understanding of these biases is crucial to develop approaches to debias decisions. The literature on cognitive biases is highly fragmented and includes various research fields. This makes it difficult to gain an overview or find relevant biases quickly. To structure this knowledge, we have developed a typology of cognitive biases based on existing classificatory frameworks and an integrative literature analysis. This led to a two-dimensional typology combining the psychological view on cognitive biases with a decision process-oriented perspective. As a result, knowledge about 187 cognitive biases that affects decision-making is presented in a practice-oriented structure (viewable at bias.visual-literacy.org).

We introduce a method in which instant data visualization facilitates real-time data integration and involves participants in data interpretation. The results of quantitative research (e.g., electronic card sorting) are represented visually (e.g., in a dendrogram) and fed back to research participants in follow-up focus group conversations. The visualized quantitative results are reviewed and discussed by participants. The visual display of the quantitative results is annotated with qualitative feedback generated by participants that explains, enriches, or challenges the quantitative results. We apply our method in a card sorting study of Fédération Internationale de Football Association’s (FIFA) stakeholders. An approach that facilitates real-time data integration that is participant driven and visually supported is the unique contribution of this article to mixed methods research.