Newest publications
Cultural change in servitization
(2025) Biesinger, Benjamin; Hadwich, Karsten
Manufacturers are increasingly transforming into industrial service providers. Driven by product commoditization and rapid technology cycles, they increasingly compete on value delivered to customers by shifting their business model to integrated solutions with advanced services. The phenomenon coined servitization can be a powerful engine for manufacturers to grow beyond their traditional product business. Since product and service businesses operate on a fundamentally different logic, servitization requires changes in manufacturers’ deep-rooted organizational beliefs, values and behaviors. Accordingly, creating a culture that supports servitization is critical. Cultural change is widely recognized in servitization research but remains poorly understood. While literature increasingly contributes to understanding “what” values and behaviors that support servitization, insights into “how” change processes shape servitization cultures remain limited. Aiming to support academics and practitioners addressing cultural change in servitization, this dissertation examines how manufacturers change their organizational culture as they transform into industrial service providers and the practices that facilitate the change process.
Section 1 presents an overview of industrial and academic perspective on the challenges of cultural change in servitization. Content challenges involve conceptualizing the multiple layers of servitization culture, synthesizing existing concepts and constructs, and expanding digital and learning culture frameworks. Process challenges focus on integrating organizational and sociocognitive theories while identifying holistic change practices. Context challenges center on understanding the role of service-driven mergers and acquisitions, digital technologies and ecosystems, and the transformative shift toward resilience and sustainability. Building on these academic challenges, the section concludes by outlining the dissertation’s aims and structure to address them.
Section 2, “Cultural change in servitization – a conceptual review and framework,” concerns the content and process of social construction as servitizing manufacturers change their culture. The article integrates organizational and sociopsychological theories to develop an organizational learning framework for cultural change, explaining the emergence and interaction of organizational and member-level concepts. Second, the framework guides a systematic literature review to integrate fragmented knowledge on cultural change in servitization and establish conceptual order. The article presents 12 propositions, revealing three major cultural orientations (service, digital and learning) and offering guidance for managing organizational and member-level change.
Section 3, “The role of strategic and learning orientation in creating competitive advantage through digital service innovation,” concerns fostering organizational learning to drive digital service innovation. The conceptual article integrates recent advances in digital servitization and organizational learning within the resource-based and dynamic capabilities view. It challenges prior assumptions in the field by conceptualizing learning orientation as a moderator of strategic digital, service and innovation orientation to drive servitization performance. The article presents four propositions on the cultural antecedents and conditions, offering guidance for change management to achieve competitive advantage and resilience through digital service innovation.
Section 4, “Path towards servitization culture: Unveiling the organizational learning practices to support the cultural change from product manufacturing to independent service
provision,” concerns a manufacturer’s cultural change to become a leading independent service provider through service-driven M&A, internationalization and corporate restructuring. The article gathers data from interviews and company documents to obtain a dynamic view of cultural change in servitization. The in-depth, long-term single case study identifies three cultural streams permeating culture during the transformation: independent service orientation, customer orientation and entrepreneurial learning orientation. The organizational learning practices to freeze the emerging ISP culture, rebalance the global ISP culture and unfreeze the ISP learning culture offer guidance for managing continuous change processes.
Section 5 provides a concluding analysis of the articles, deriving theoretical contributions, practical implications and a future research agenda. From a theoretical perspective, this dissertation introduces organizational learning as a framework to explore the emergent and human aspects of change in servitization and conceptualizes the servitization culture. Moreover, it extends the notion of continuous change, interorganizational change and servitization culture as a transformative response to technological and societal disruption. For practitioners, this research integrates its findings with prescriptive models of learning organizations to formulate principles for strategies and practices that support the creation of a servitization culture. The research agenda focuses on advancing research on servitization culture in Industry 5.0, extending multilevel research and introducing configuration and intervention as a research strategy for cultural change in servitization.
Influence of distillation parameters on the fractionation behaviour of aroma compounds in the production of Williams-Christ pear brandies and Golden Delicious apple brandies
(2025) Yagishita, Manami; Vetter, Walter
Aroma compounds are central to the sensory attributes and overall organoleptic quality of fruit brandies, yet their behavior during distillation remains insufficiently understood. The relative volatility of these compounds, a fundamental property that defines their evaporation tendency in relation to ethanol, plays a crucial role in distillation, governing their separation efficiency, distribution between vapor and liquid phases, and overall impact on the composition and sensory quality of the final product. Despite its importance, the concept of relative volatility has not been introduced in the production of fruit brandies. The aim of the first publication was to develop a quick and simple method using a basic distillation apparatus to determine the relative volatilities of flavor compounds in hydro-alcoholic solutions. This approach provides a practical alternative to the time-consuming and costly Gillespie dynamic recirculation method. Seventeen representative flavor compounds from apple and pear brandies were investigated, including unpublished data for five compounds. Relative volatilities of methanol, isobutanol, isoamyl alcohol, ethyl acetate, acetaldehyde, and 1,1-diethoxyethane were compared to reference data, showing high correlation for all compounds except 1,1-diethoxyethane. Vapor-liquid equilibrium data for an ethanol-water mixture also exhibited strong agreement with reference data. These results demonstrate that the proposed method is a reliable, fast, and cost-effective alternative to standard techniques for determining relative volatilities. The second publication investigated the impact of partial condensation in dephlegmators on the behavior of ethanol and flavor compounds, comparing setups with and without dephlegmators in both lab-scale and large-scale experiments. Lab-scale experiments demonstrated that dephlegmation led to significant enrichment of ethanol in the distillate through the selective condensation of water. The behavior of flavor compounds varied, with some showing enrichment, others depletion, and some remaining unaffected. In large-scale experiments, a distillation apparatus relying solely on dephlegmation was compared with a standard setup containing an enrichment section with three trays. The dephlegmator-based system exhibited less efficient separation of tail components, such as fusel alcohols, resulting in a lower yield of hearts fraction. Sensory triangle tests confirmed that the spirits from the two systems were distinguishable, though no clear preference emerged. This study provides the first detailed insights into the influence of dephlegmators on flavor compound behavior and separation efficiency during fruit brandy distillation, offering valuable guidance for optimizing distillation processes. The third publication explored distillation processes from the perspective of relative volatility, aiming to control behaviors of key odor-active compounds in pear brandies and enhance product quality through novel fractionation strategies. Two novel fractionation strategies were tested: one involving a high cooling water flow rate combined with a slow distillate flow, and the other employing a 12-tray distillation column. Both approaches successfully increased ethanol concentration on the top tray, altering the relative volatility of compounds in the liquid phase. Elevated ethanol concentrations reduced the relative volatility of higher alcohols, delaying their release and producing sharper, well defined peaks compared to broader profiles observed in the control distillation. This enabled selective separation of desirable compounds, such as beta-damascenone and ethyl (E,Z)-2,4-decadienoate (pear ester), from higher alcohols, resulting in an aroma-rich tails fraction. Blending this enriched tails fraction with the hearts fraction produced a final product that was significantly preferred in sensory evaluations over the standard hearts fraction. These findings demonstrate the importance of tailoring operational distillation conditions to exploit differential volatility, enabling more effective compound separation and improving the sensory quality of fruit brandies.
Reducing pesticide use in apple orchards through biological control and mechanical barriers
(2025) Bischoff, Robert Thomas; Petschenka, Georg
With over 20 applications per year, apple is the most pesticide-intensive crop in Germany. Growers are under increasing pressure as the use of pesticides in agriculture comes under greater scrutiny, resulting in more restrictive legislation and a national action plan that calls for a significant reduction in overall pesticide use.
Current reduction efforts are largely based on Integrated Pest Management (IPM), which essentially means that all non-chemical plant protection measures, including cultural practices, pest monitoring and biological control, should be used first, and only if pest problems persist is the use of chemical pesticides justified. While there are successful examples of IPM in fruit growing, such as the use of sexual pheromones and granuloviruses to control the codling moth, chemical control remains the dominant means of plant protection. Therefore, considering current political developments, there is a worrying lack of non-chemical control strategies for many important pathogens and pests in apple growing.
In this doctoral thesis, we investigated non-chemical alternatives for pest and pathogen control in apple growing and their potential as IPM approaches. The aim was to identify new methods that would provide growers with a realistic alternative to chemical pesticides. We focused on conservation and augmentation biological control and physical methods to assess their potential for reducing pesticide use in apple production.
Conservation biological control aims to enhance the biological control of pests by natural enemies and is influenced by a wide range of factors. We investigated the role of predator density, spatial complexity of apple branches and the provision of alternative food resources for predators for the effective control of apple pests.
Predator density and the spatial environment of apple branches were crucial components influencing the efficacy of earwig predation on woolly apple aphids. On spatially complex branches, low and medium densities of earwigs failed to fully locate and consume woolly apple aphids, while high earwig densities were able to eradicate woolly apple aphids, including those hidden in spatially complex environments.
Provisioning of additional food was investigated using predatory mites and their prey (such as apple rust mites) as a model system. Predatory mites are suspected to be prone to starvation, especially when prey is scarce. To avoid starvation and boost their populations, trees were sprayed with brine shrimp cysts, which are readily accepted as food by omnivorous predatory mites. Although no increase in predatory mites was observed, reduced populations of apple rust mites were found in plots sprayed with shrimp cysts. Other orchard predators, such as predatory flower bugs, may have been promoted and thus mediated the reduction in apple rust mites.
In the same trial, the effect of an augmentative release of a predatory mite species naturally occurring in orchards was investigated. No clear effect of the predatory mite release on pest mite populations could be detected.
Physical control measures are widely used in fruit growing to protect fruits from abiotic and biotic damage. While anti-hail nets are the dominant cover system used in apple orchards, plastic rain shields and exclusion nets have gained importance due to their ability to prevent scab infections and codling moth immigration, respectively. We compared chemical plant protection regimes under different cover systems, namely anti-hail nets, plastic rain shields, and plastic rain shields combined with exclusion nets, in an apple orchard.
Fungicide and insecticide use could be drastically reduced under plastic rain shields and within the exclusion nets, respectively. However, due to microclimatic changes, powdery mildew and secondary pests increased in plots covered with plastic rain shields and plastic rain shields combined with exclusion nets. Despite these side effects, total pesticide use was substantially reduced in the new cover systems without incurring yield losses.
These results show that a combination of conservation biological control focusing on predatory earwigs and physical control utilizing plastic rain shields and exclusion nets could be a promising approach to reduce pesticide use in apples. However, the increased costs of new plastic rain shields and exclusion nets compared to traditional anti-hail nets present a major obstacle to their large-scale adoption, and it remains unclear how apples could be produced economically using this approach.
A slow-fast trait continuum at the whole community level in relation to land-use intensification
(2024) Neyret, Margot; Le Provost, Gaëtane; Boesing, Andrea Larissa; Schneider, Florian D.; Baulechner, Dennis; Bergmann, Joana; de Vries, Franciska T.; Fiore-Donno, Anna Maria; Geisen, Stefan; Goldmann, Kezia; Merges, Anna; Saifutdinov, Ruslan A.; Simons, Nadja K.; Tobias, Joseph A.; Zaitsev, Andrey S.; Gossner, Martin M.; Jung, Kirsten; Kandeler, Ellen; Krauss, Jochen; Penone, Caterina; Schloter, Michael; Schulz, Stefanie; Staab, Michael; Wolters, Volkmar; Apostolakis, Antonios; Birkhofer, Klaus; Boch, Steffen; Boeddinghaus, Runa S.; Bolliger, Ralph; Bonkowski, Michael; Buscot, François; Dumack, Kenneth; Fischer, Markus; Gan, Huei Ying; Heinze, Johannes; Hölzel, Norbert; John, Katharina; Klaus, Valentin H.; Kleinebecker, Till; Marhan, Sven; Müller, Jörg; Renner, Swen C.; Rillig, Matthias C.; Schenk, Noëlle V.; Schöning, Ingo; Schrumpf, Marion; Seibold, Sebastian; Socher, Stephanie A.; Solly, Emily F.; Teuscher, Miriam; van Kleunen, Mark; Wubet, Tesfaye; Manning, Peter; Neyret, Margot; Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, Frankfurt, Germany; Le Provost, Gaëtane; INRAE, Bordeaux Sciences Agro, ISVV, SAVE, Villenave d’Ornon, France; Boesing, Andrea Larissa; Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, Frankfurt, Germany; Schneider, Florian D.; Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, Frankfurt, Germany; Baulechner, Dennis; Justus Liebig University, Department of Animal Ecology, Giessen, Germany; Bergmann, Joana; Leibniz Center for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Müncheberg, Germany; de Vries, Franciska T.; Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Fiore-Donno, Anna Maria; Terrestrial Ecology, Institute of Zoology, University of Cologne, Köln, Germany; Geisen, Stefan; Laboratory of Nematology, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands; Goldmann, Kezia; Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), Soil Ecology Department, Halle/Saale, Germany; Merges, Anna; Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, Frankfurt, Germany; Saifutdinov, Ruslan A.; A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia; Simons, Nadja K.; Ecological Networks, Technical University Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany; Tobias, Joseph A.; Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London, Ascot, UK; Zaitsev, Andrey S.; Justus Liebig University, Department of Animal Ecology, Giessen, Germany; Gossner, Martin M.; Forest Entomology, Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, Birmensdorf, Switzerland; Jung, Kirsten; Institut of Evolutionary Ecology and Conservation Genomics, Ulm University, Ulm, Germany; Kandeler, Ellen; Department of Soil Biology, Institute of Soil Science and Land Evaluation, University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany; Krauss, Jochen; Department of Animal Ecology and Tropical Biology, Biocenter, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany; Penone, Caterina; Institute of Plant Sciences, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland; Schloter, Michael; Helmholtz Zentrum Muenchen, Research Unit for Comparative Microbiome Analysis, Oberschleissheim, Germany; Schulz, Stefanie; Helmholtz Zentrum Muenchen, Research Unit for Comparative Microbiome Analysis, Oberschleissheim, Germany; Staab, Michael; Ecological Networks, Technical University Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany; Wolters, Volkmar; Justus Liebig University, Department of Animal Ecology, Giessen, Germany; Apostolakis, Antonios; Department of Biogeochemical Processes, Max-Planck-Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany; Birkhofer, Klaus; Department of Ecology, Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg, Cottbus, Germany; Boch, Steffen; Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, Birmensdorf, Switzerland; Boeddinghaus, Runa S.; Department of Soil Biology, Institute of Soil Science and Land Evaluation, University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany; Bolliger, Ralph; Institute of Plant Sciences, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland; Bonkowski, Michael; Terrestrial Ecology, Institute of Zoology, University of Cologne, Köln, Germany; Buscot, François; Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), Soil Ecology Department, Halle/Saale, Germany; Dumack, Kenneth; Terrestrial Ecology, Institute of Zoology, University of Cologne, Köln, Germany; Fischer, Markus; Institute of Plant Sciences, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland; Gan, Huei Ying; Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironments Tübingen (SHEP), Tübingen, Germany; Heinze, Johannes; Department of Biodiversity, Heinz Sielmann Foundation, Wustermark, Germany; Hölzel, Norbert; Institute of Landscape Ecology, University of Münster, Münster, Germany; John, Katharina; Justus Liebig University, Department of Animal Ecology, Giessen, Germany; Klaus, Valentin H.; Institute of Agricultural Sciences, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland; Kleinebecker, Till; Institute for Landscape Ecology and Resources Management (ILR), Research Centre for BioSystems, Land Use and Nutrition (iFZ), Justus Liebig University Giessen, Giessen, Germany; Marhan, Sven; Department of Soil Biology, Institute of Soil Science and Land Evaluation, University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany; Müller, Jörg; Department of Nature Conservation, Heinz Sielmann Foundation, Wustermark, Germany; Renner, Swen C.; Ornithology, Natural History Museum Vienna, Vienna, Autria, Germany; Rillig, Matthias C.; Freie Universität Berlin, Institute of Biology, Berlin, Germany; Schenk, Noëlle V.; Institute of Plant Sciences, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland; Schöning, Ingo; Department of Biogeochemical Processes, Max-Planck-Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany; Schrumpf, Marion; Department of Biogeochemical Processes, Max-Planck-Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany; Seibold, Sebastian; Technical University of Munich, TUM School of Life Sciences, Freising, Germany; Socher, Stephanie A.; Paris Lodron University Salzburg, Department Environment and Biodiversity, Salzburg, Austria; Solly, Emily F.; Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), Computation Hydrosystems Department, Leipzig, Germany; Teuscher, Miriam; University of Göttingen, Centre of Biodiversity and Sustainable Land Use, Göttingen, Germany; van Kleunen, Mark; Zhejiang Provincial Key Laboratory of Plant Evolutionary Ecology and Conservation, Taizhou University, Taizhou, China; Wubet, Tesfaye; German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle - Jena-, Leipzig, Germany; Manning, Peter; Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre, Frankfurt, Germany
Organismal functional strategies form a continuum from slow- to fast-growing organisms, in response to common drivers such as resource availability and disturbance. However, whether there is synchronisation of these strategies at the entire community level is unclear. Here, we combine trait data for >2800 above- and belowground taxa from 14 trophic guilds spanning a disturbance and resource availability gradient in German grasslands. The results indicate that most guilds consistently respond to these drivers through both direct and trophically mediated effects, resulting in a ‘slow-fast’ axis at the level of the entire community. Using 15 indicators of carbon and nutrient fluxes, biomass production and decomposition, we also show that fast trait communities are associated with faster rates of ecosystem functioning. These findings demonstrate that ‘slow’ and ‘fast’ strategies can be manifested at the level of whole communities, opening new avenues of ecosystem-level functional classification.
Impact of plastic rain shields and exclusion netting on pest dynamics and implications for pesticide use in apples
(2025) Bischoff, Robert; Piepho, Hans-Peter; Scheer, Christian; Petschenka, Georg
Apple production is among the most pesticide-intensive cultures. Recently, plastic rain shields and pest exclusion netting have emerged as potential measures to reduce the heavy reliance on chemical pesticides in apple, due to their inhibitory effect on pathogen and pest infestations. In a field trial, we compared yields, pest, and pathogen abundance in an orchard consisting of four plots, where two plots were covered with anti-hail net covers, one with plastic rain shields only, and one with plastic rain shields and exclusion netting. Pests and pathogens were assessed visually, and beating tray samples were collected to compare overall arthropod diversity between plots. We observed virtually no scab infections in both plastic rain shield plots, despite a more than 70% reduction of fungicides applied, when compared to anti-hail plots. Although no codling moth insecticides were sprayed in the plot with exclusion netting we found significantly reduced damage here, when compared to the anti-hail plots. However, likely due to microclimatic changes, we observed an increase of powdery mildew, woolly apple aphids, and spider mites under plastic rain shields. Modeling of metabolic rates of arthropod herbivores and predators revealed that there is an increased potential of herbivory under plastic rain shields. However, in terms of plant protection, the net effect of plastic rain shields and exclusion netting was a substantial reduction in chemical pesticide use, demonstrating that they represent a promising approach to minimize the use of chemical pesticides in apple production.