Global Brand, Local Flexibility: How Social Norms Can Help Guide Companies

Whether a French luxury brand displays the same handbags in the display windows of its stores around the world, or whether global fast-food chains adapt their product ranges to country-specific preferences and conditions, is a challenging management decision for companies that typically operate a large number of branches. A research team of business scholars has now investigated how these companies can find effective solutions when navigating the tension between flexibility and standardization. The findings were recently presented in the European Journal of Operational Research.

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“I do not subscribe to the dramatisation of claims that young people today are uninformed or misinformed.”

How are digital platforms reshaping the formation of public opinion? What role do Big Tech companies, peripheral actors, and new forms of media consumption play in this process? In this interview, Valerie Hase reflects on current developments and argues for a more nuanced understanding of today’s highly diverse media landscape.

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What constitutes a human being – and how do we differ from a “biological robot”? How artificial intelligence may become the ultimate interrogator of our age

Legal scholar and philosopher Andrej Zwitter identifies a profound crisis of meaning currently affecting many individuals across Western society. Potential solutions can be found within the framework of ‘human flourishing’, a concept dedicated to the core questions of existential purpose. However, how do emerging technologies like artificial intelligence intersect with these competing dynamics, and what can they genuinely contribute to the advancement of human prosperity?

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Klagenfurt AI solves industry’s “hard problems”

Researchers at the University of Klagenfurt have achieved a major breakthrough in automated problem-solving with “CheckMate”. This new AI-driven technology independently develops algorithms for complex combinatorial and optimisation problems – such as those encountered in the optimal planning of industrial plants and production processes – delivering significantly better results than existing methods for “hard problems” in industrial practice. A patent has already been filed for the invention, which represents a major step forward towards the “holy grail of problem-solving”.

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