In 2019 the number of individuals employed exceeded 45 million in Germany for the first time. Since 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic put another factor into play that influences job satisfaction of employees, as well as their organizational commitment to the current employer. Due to contact restrictions and temporary workplace closures, there was a need to rethink the way where work is performed. In 2019 12.8% of employees worked from home. In the course of the next two years this percentage almost doubled to 24.8% in 2021. This paper shows the influence of mobile working on job satisfaction and organizational commitment. A variety of factors is subjective and defined differently by different organizations and individuals.

With the growing need for digital business transformation, corporate venture capital (CVC) investors have been faced with the challenge of how to deal with this trend. Although digital business transformation and CVC are highly relevant, previous studies have investigated them separately instead of their relationships. Therefore, this research aimed to study the impact of CVC on digital business transformation to fill this research gap. Based on an exploratory research design, eleven experts from different industries were interviewed. The following results were found in this study: (1) after the CVC unit collaborated with an Open Innovation (OI) unit, the CVC activities were integrated into the decentralized OI activities, and a dedicated team in the CVC unit was responsible for OI and venture client-based OI activities, thus achieving digital OI; (2) CVC was used to pursue ambidexterity, digital exploration or exploitation; (3) CVC supported digital business transformation at the organizational, social, and technical levels, which provided an answer to the overarching research question of how CVC supported innovation processes. Theoretical implications of this study lied in enhancing the understanding between CVC and digital business transformation, thus extending the understanding of CVC organization and impact. Furthermore, this study provided practical implications and recommendations on organizing CVC and using it to achieve digital business transformation according to strategic objectives.

According to a study by the German Federal Printing Office (2022), every European lives with 90 digital identities on average, and the trend is rising. The German government has launched the innovation competition “Digital Identities Showcase” to select and promote identity projects for data security and sovereignty. The funding amount is 50 million EUR to develop software, research practical use cases and implement them by 2024. Of course, this large sum presupposes acceptance for the use of such digital identities, especially against the backdrop of critical opinions from the media and society, as already outlined in a Canadian study. However, there is little academic research on blockchain technology, but almost no article on the use of digital identities based on blockchain technology. This paper conducts a quantitative study on the social acceptance of digital identities using a questionnaire-based survey with 324 German participants on the social acceptance of the use of digital identities. The result of the study is that social acceptance of the use of digital identities is significantly influenced by demographics, citizens’ experience with blockchain products, affinity with financial products and privacy concerns.

Corporate venture capital (CVC) is on the rise. About 300 investments carried out by Google show the current relevance of CVC. Existing literature is focused on specific topics influencing the success of CVC and on the objectives pursued with CVC. In this paper, these factors are concluded. It is described what should be the main drivers to invest CVC. Moreover, this paper provides an answer to the question what is the best way to invest CVC, especially when it comes to structuring. It can be derived from a literature-based method that CVC is of particular importance for companies with a high need for innovation in a competitive environment. A second finding is that founding a CVC unit investing indirectly in venture capital (VC) funds first and after a certain amount of time, investing directly leads companies to success. While investing, corporate investors can use incentives in order to avoid principal-agent issues.

This work focuses on forecasting emerging technology trends in the insurance industry with the use of artificial intelligence (AI). In comparison to similar industries, the digital transformation of the insurance industry is progressing slowly. Traditional insurance organizations are struggling to gain an overview over emerging technologies to be used in their respective transformation journeys. New digital players such as Fresh, which has been successfully selling flat rate insurance offerings via WhatsApp in the German insurance market since 2021 are acting as first movers when it comes to emerging insurance technologies and are increasingly becoming a threat in the insurance market. Forecasting emerging technology trends can support traditional insurers in mitigating this threat. This work seeks to answer how artificial intelligence solutions can help insurers gain a competitive advantage and how beneficial it will be to substitute the proposed approach for conventional forecasting techniques. In this context, a topic clustering text mining algorithm based on patent and scientific journal publications is applied to detect emerging technology trends. This method identified sustainability and blockchain technology as emerging technology trends in the insurance industry. It furthermore partially outperformed industry expert opinions on the future insurance technologies. The proposed approach should be used as an additional tool to quick start the research and development process in the insurance industry instead of being substituted for forecasting methods used today.

Global warming forces consumer and corporate activities towards sustainability. During Covid-19, online shopping relevance also increased significantly. Anyway, there is no present research critically reviewing sustainability in online shopping directly. This research gap is filled with a literature review examining the sustainability in online shopping. The study focused on the aspect of sustainability, customer classification and some types of online shopping. To critically review the findings, they are applied to practical examples and discussed. This paper enhances scientific research on sustainability in the context of shareholder theory, stakeholder theory, and institutional theory. Furthermore, it provides practical implications on environmental development as conscious consumer behaviour positively influences delivery procedures and packing methods.