Hans Peter Rauer

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Mission statement

• The basic idea behind the exchange is to develop new opportunities for IS research in various disciplines in the future between Korea and Germany
• The focus of the new research ties lies on interdisciplinary ideas resulting from discussions with researchers from fields such as service sciinitiate work on joint publications with researchers from Yonsei University. 

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Research results

Yonsei University is a private research university, located in Seoul, the capital of South Korea. It was established in 1885 and is one of the oldest universities in South Korea. Throughout the years it has become widely regarded as the top private school in the country, according to a 2005 report from the Asia Times Online.

On May 9^th, I met the professors of the faculty of Information systems for lunch. Present was Professor Junho Choi, who is conducting research in communication, social networks and usability evaluation of smart phones, Professor Zoonky Lee, who is conducting research in E-business Strategy, Knowledge management, along with Professor Hee-Wong Kim, who is conducting research in social media, mobile services and social network services, and Professor Beomsoo Kim, who is conducting research in information security & privacy, business strategy and information economics as well as Professor Kyung Kyu Kim, who is conducting research in areas such as trust in B2C e-commerce, supply chain management and evaluation of industrial informatization. I introduced the topic of the ongoing research project ServDEA to the senior researchers. ServDEA is a joint research project that uses the operations-research method called data envelopment analysis (DEA). The aim of the project is to develop a software tool that is capable of benchmarking so-called product-service-systems and estimate the productivity of these units.

The aim of my stay was not only to present current IS research in Germany, but also to establish new opportunities with scholars from Yonsei University. I therefore made appointments with the professors from the IS department to present research results, handed over guest presents and also established new ways for cooperation. For instance, I met Professor Sung Joo Bae who is researching in the field of Product & Service Innovation, Production & Operations Management and also Technology-oriented Organization & Technology Strategy. Professor Bae and I discussed in detail about the following topics:

• Publishing together, e.g., on topics such as but not limited to Consumerization, Service Bundling or Service Benchmarking
• Writing a joint funding proposal, for example on Social Media Analysis
• Activities in the ERCIS (ERCIS - European Research Center for Information Systems) such as...
• The exchange of students between Korea and Germany. For instance, we have set up our IS Master’s program completely in English.
• Funding to spend on empirical studies, preferably in a global (Germany, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea) context.

Apart from these activities, I worked on methods for measuring service productivity during my stay at Yonsei. This research was motivated by today’s problems of service providers top measure productivity. Therefore I worked on adapting Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a well-known method for productivity measurement for more than thirty years, to scenarios in which multiple measurements are possible. Such measurements comprise of different factors that are, e.g., non-discretionary, qualitative or influenced by demand.