University of Mannheim

About: University of Mannheim is a education organization based out in Mannheim, Germany. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Context (language use) & Politics. The organization has 4448 authors who have published 12918 publications receiving 446557 citations. The organization is also known as: Uni Mannheim & UMA.

Understanding and managing innovation processes

Abstract: The lecture was delivered at the Prize ceremony during the 19th International Conference of the System Dynamics Society in Atlanta, Georgia. It summarizes the Award winning article, published in the 1996 issue of System Dynamics Review, and discusses subsequent work. Comprehensive citations and quotations are found in the original publications. Shortened product life cycles, tight competition, and resource intensive research and development are some of the parameters that make innovation management a highly challenging endeavor. To succeed in such an environment, a solid understanding of the observed and the expected behavior is indispensable and can effectively be supported by modeling the object under investigation. The article analyzes strategies for new products, especially price strategies, and includes the processes of research and development in a comprehensive model, which then is disaggregated to explicitly take into consideration the actions of different competitors. Finally, a multi-person gaming version is presented. The article concludes with some thoughts about complexity, its dimensions and its challenges for system dynamics. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Creation and Empowerment of the European Parliament

Abstract: Up until now we have lacked a systematic, theoretically guided explanation of why the European Union, as the only system of international governance, contains a powerful representative institution, the European Parliament, and why it has been successively empowered by national governments over the past half century. It is argued that national governments' decisions to transfer sovereignty to a new supranational level of governance triggers an imbalance between procedural and consequentialist legitimacy which political elites are fully aware of. To repair this imbalance, proposals to empower the European Parliament play a prominent though not exclusive role. Three landmark events are analysed to assess the plausibility of the advanced theory: the creation of the Common Assembly of the European Coal and Steel Community, the acquisition of budgetary powers (Treaty of Luxembourg, 1970) and of legislative powers through the Single European Act (1986).

Donor-site morbidity in buccal mucosa urethroplasty : lower lip or inner cheek?

Abstract: Authors from Germany debate the issue as to whether the donor site for oral mucosa used in urethroplasty should be taken from the inner cheek or the lower lip, using morbidity as a deciding factor. As a result of their study they have changed their technique, now using the inner cheek as the donor site whenever possible. OBJECTIVE To evaluate donor-site complications of buccal mucosa urethroplasty and whether there is a difference in morbidity between harvesting the mucosa graft from the inner cheek or the lower lip. PATIENTS AND METHODS Twenty-four consecutive patients with recurrent urethral strictures were treated with buccal mucosa urethroplasty in our department between September 2002 and April 2004. In 12 patients the graft was harvested from the lower lip or cheek and lower lip (group 1), and in 12 patients from the cheek (group 2). The mean (range) age of patients was 51 (26–66) years in group 1 and 53 (32–75) years in group 2. The mean (range) graft length was 6.2 (2–16) cm in group 1 and 5.7 (2–13) cm in group 2. All patients were followed up using a mailed questionnaire that asked about pain, numbness, difficulties in mouth opening or ingestion, and satisfaction, monthly for the first 3 months and then every 6 months. The mean (range) follow-up was 12.5 (6–23) months. RESULTS There were no bleeding complications or disturbances in wound healing. All of the patients reported numbness in the area of the mental and buccal nerves, and graft-site tenderness after surgery. In group 1, the pain lasted for a mean (range) of 5.9 (0.5–22) months, compared to 1 (0.1–7) months in group 2 (P = 0.022). Perioral numbness lasted for a mean (range) of 10.3 (0.5–23) months in group 1 and 0.85 (0.1–3) months (P = 0.0027) in group 2. There were no statistically significant differences in problems with mouth opening or food intake between the two groups, but the patients in group 1 seemed to be less satisfied (6/12 patients satisfied) than those in group 2 (11/12 patients satisfied). CONCLUSIONS Buccal mucosa graft harvesting from the lower lip and the inner cheek are both feasible, but harvesting from the lower lip resulted in a significantly greater long-term morbidity, which resulted in a lower proportion of satisfied patients. This seems to be due to a long-lasting neuropathy of the mental nerve. We therefore have changed our technique entirely from lower lip to inner cheek graft harvesting, whenever possible.

Entertainment and Politics Revisited: How Non-Escapist Forms of Entertainment Can Stimulate Political Interest and Information Seeking

Abstract: This article revisits the controversial relationship of entertainment and political communication. On the basis of a theoretical integration of entertainment theory with theories of motivated information processing, we suggest that entertainment consumption can either be driven by hedonic, escapist motivations that are associated with a superficial mode of information processing, or by eudaimonic, truth-seeking motivations that prompt more elaborate forms of information processing. Results of two experiments indicate that eudaimonic forms of emotional involvement (characterized by negative valence, moderate arousal, and feeling moved) stimulated reflective thoughts about politically relevant content, issue interest, and information seeking. This pattern was consistent across two types of entertainment stimuli (fictional films and soft news) and two types of affect manipulations (moving film music and moving exemplars).