Private Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Technik

Collaboration and organizational structures in companies are changing, especially with the ‘New Way of Working’ post-COVID-19. From both a theoretical and practical perspective, a quantitative analysis of how skill levels evolve within the ‘New Way of Working’ provides valuable insights into power structures and potential changes. The expert system Shell-SPIRIT can be used to conduct these quantitative analyses. This system has already been applied to several articles to support faithful knowledge processing and to model power structures while measuring their power potentials. This article discusses the theoretical view and a case study about power structures modeled with an entropy-based approach using Shell-SPIRIT. Compared to previous studies, this article presents a novel approach that enhances realism by incorporating more variables. This means that participants’ skill levels are reflected directly in the quantitative model of quantitative power structures. • Show the interaction of the power modalization and the decision-making process to underline the theoretical and practical relevance. • Present a case study with a step-by-step explanation about the modalization of power structures. • Integrate more variables (Skill levels of meeting participants) into the power modalization in Shell-SPIRIT. • Identify the hierarchy of power in a social network. • Demonstrate social network analysis as a possible next step to use the possibilities of power analyses with Shell-SPIRIT.

The PDEVS formalism is widely used for the description and analysis of discrete event systems. But PDEVS has some drawbacks in modeling Mealy behavior. A revised version (RPDEVS) has been invented to resolve them, but it has problems of its own, mainly because its complicated simulator structure. The recently proposed NSA-DEVS scheme tries to unite the advantages of both formalisms by using infinitesimal time intervals. To further substantiate this claim we describe an abstract simulator for NSA-DEVS, implement it in Matlab and simulate a simple queue-server system. This shows that NSA-DEVS combines the Mealy-like model description of RPDEVS with the simple simulator structure of PDEVS, making it a promising approach to implement an improved modeling and simulation system.

Power in human societies is a central phenomenon. Even though, it took ages to understand it and – even more – to measure it. Only in the last decades attempts were made to model power relations and to assign respective power indices to actors in a network. The present work goes a step further. It measures power of actors and groups of actors in networks by means of conditional relations. In a probabilistic framework, such relations are specified as conditionals: Which actor receives power given that the adjacent actor has it, and which actor looses power given that the neighbour dominates. This pattern of power relations allows for an exact calculation of an actor’s and groups of actors’ power index. The new decision analytics tool for this is maximizing entropy for the whole net and evaluating each actor’s influence therein. The new concept is applied to a middle size Kronecker net of clans and subclans operating in a today’s society.

Ordoliberalizm i Społeczna Gospodarka Rynkowa są w literaturze oraz dyskusjach naukowych i publicystycznych bardzo różnie interpretowane, często z intencją woluntarystycznego dostosowywania sposobu rozumienia tych kategorii do celów i upodobań dyskutantów. Dlatego konieczne wydaje się podjęcie próby zaprezentowania kilku kwestii, które są istotne z punktu widzenia rozwiązywania obecnych egzystencjalnych problemów ludzkości. Narastający nieład w społeczno‑gospodarczej rzeczywistości wskazuje zatem na potrzebę powrotu do podwalin ordoliberalnej koncepcji Społecznej Gospodarki Rynkowej. ordoliberalizm z definicji bowiem ukierunkowany jest na uporządkowanie. jest to liberalizm uporządkowany. Praktyka jednak wykazuje, że coraz większy dynamizm przemian współczesnego świata i dokonujące się cywilizacyjne przesilenie oznaczają także konieczność modyfikacji polityki opartej na ordoliberalnej SGR, stosownie do wymogów zmieniającej się pod wpływem przesilenia cywilizacyjnego społeczno‑gospodarczej rzeczywistości. I tym właśnie zagadnieniom poświęcona jest niniejsza monografia. Jest to kolejna publikacja w cyklu wydawniczym Polskiego Towarzystwa Ekonomicznego na temat Społecznej Gospodarki Rynkowej.

This article presents a novel method for the detection of biofilms based on a heatable, capacitive sensor structure (CSS). Biofilms are capable of strongly binding large amounts of water to their extracellular biopolymer matrix, which is detectable via its dielectric properties. A main challenge is to determine the difference between the inherent occurring presence of moisture in the ecosystem, which is necessary to form a biofilm and an actual formed biofilm. Therefore, the CSS is carefully heated to evaporate unbound surface moisture and determine whether there is a remaining residual alternation of the capacitance in comparison to the dry state. As a reproduceable substitute for complex, real biofilms, a hygroscopic, medical hydrogel-based on polysaccharides was used and applied by spray coating. Printed circuit boards (PCB) in different geometries and materials were used as CSS and compared in terms of their performance. A layer-thickness of 20 µm for the hydrogel coating to be sufficiently detected was defined as a realistic condition based on known values for real biofilms cited in literature. For this thickness a double-meander structure proves to be preferable over interdigitating and spiral geometries. It does offer a 30% lower, yet sufficient sensitivity, but shows advantages in manufacturing (one layer instead of two) and conductive heating capability. In the experiments, free water showed virtually no residual change, while the hydrogel-coated CSS still shows an approx. 300% higher value compared to a dry capacity. Yet, the overall small capacities of about 6–30 pF in dry state are difficult to measure and therefore sensitive to interferences and noise, which results in a high deviation. The principle of measurement can be evaluated as proofed by the carried out experiments, though offering room for improvement in the design of the study. The new method might be especially useful for pipes (e.g., hydrodynamically ineffective sensors installed in a pipe wall) if they at least are not permanently flooded with an aqueous medium, but can occasionally dry. If the internal surface is still only moist, it can be dried by initial heating.

The paper focuses on damage detection of civil engineering structures and especially on concrete bridges. A method for structural health monitoring based on vibrational measurements is presented and discussed. Experimentally identified modal parameters (eigenfrequencies, mode shapes and modal masses) of bridge structures are used to calculate the inverse stiffness matrix, the so-called flexibility matrix. By monitoring of the stiffness matrix, damage can easily be detected, quantified and localized by tracking changes of its individual elements. However, based on dynamic field measurements, the acquisition of the flexibility matrix instead of the stiffness matrix is often the only choice and hence more relevant for practice. But the flexibility-based quantification and localisation of damage are often possible but more difficult, as it depends on the type of support and the location of the damage. These issues are discussed and synthetized, that is an originality of this paper and is believed useful for engineers in the damage detection of different bridge structures. First the theoretical background is briefly repeated prior to the illustration of the differences between stiffness and flexibility matrix on analytical and numerical examples. Then the flexibility-based detection is demonstrated on two true bridges with real-time measurement data and the results are promising.

W opracowaniu podjto kwesti oglnych koncepcji polityki adu gospodarczego i ich aplikacji na przykadzie regu fiskalnych stosowanych w

Gegenstand dieses Beitrags ist es aufzuzeigen, wie Wirtschaftseinheiten, sogenannte Decision Making Units (DMUs), ihre Effizienz aus Sicht eines Peers verbessern konnen. Die Autoren fokussieren dabei auf das outputorientierte Modell unter konstanten Skalenertragen und untersuchen, inwieweit Verbesserungen ineffizienter DMUs durch radiale Outputerhohung bzw. freie Outputvariation moglich sind. Dieser Denkansatz fuhrt zur Matrix verbesserter bzw. maximaler Kreuzeffizienzen. Solche Matrizen mogen als geeignete Instrumente fur eine konsensuale Auswahl eines Peers dienen – konsensual unter allen DMUs. Das Ganze wird an einem Beispiel ausfuhrlich beschrieben, und die Ergebnisse werden mit denen bei inputorientierter Sicht verglichen. Schlieslich wird der Effekt einer konsensualen Effizienzbewertung bei gleichzeitiger Input- und Outputvariation aufgezeigt.