Hans-Werner Franz – författare

Personal stress has an enormous impact on organizational and employee performance. This book introduces the web-based diagnostic tool IMPRESS, which provides employees, managers and HR professionals with information about potential stress factors. The book describes the underlying methodology for this integrated approach and presents the tools and learning modules to support the methodology. A series of case studies from pilot implementations in companies and universities illustrate the application of the approach in a variety of work environments.  

The book is based on an international research project for a holistic approach to stress prevention by combining Human Systems Audit with the European Excellence approach as promoted by the Common Assessment Framework (CAF) and the EFQM Excellence Model. This approach is intended to contribute to organizational development that supports effective employee stress management.

In recent years, social innovation has experienced a steep career. Numerous national governments and large organisations like the OECD, the European Commission and UNESCO have adopted the term. Social innovation basically means that people adopt new social practices in order to meet social needs in a different or more effective way. Prominent examples of the past are the Red Cross and the social welfare state or, at present, the internet 2.0 transforming our communication and cooperation schemes, requiring new management concepts, even empowering social revolutions. The traditional concept of innovation as successful new technological products needs fundamental rethinking in a society marked by knowledge and services, leading to a new and enriched paradigm of innovation. There is multiple evidence that social innovation will become of growing importance not only concerning social integration, equal opportunities and dealing with the greenhouse effects but also with regard to preserving and expanding the innovative capacity of companies and societies. While political authorities stress the social facets of social innovation, this book also encompasses its societal and systemic dimensions, collecting the scientific expertise of renowned experts and scholars from all over the world. Based on the contributions of the first world-wide science convention on social innovation from September 2011 in Vienna, the book provides an overview of scientific approaches to this still relatively new field.

Forewords by Agnès HUBERT (Member of the Bureau of European Policy Advisers (BEPA) of the European Commission) and Antonella Noya (Senior Policy Analyst at OECD, manager of the OECD LEED Forum on Social Innovations)

Der Titel des Buches geht auf das Thema der 20. Tagung für Angewandte Sozialwissenschaften des Berufsverbandes Deutscher Soziologinnen und Soziologen zurück, die im Mai 2019 in München durchgeführt wurde. 

Die Frage, welche Beiträge soziale Innovationen beim Übergang zu Formen des nachhaltigen Zusammenlebens und Wirtschaftens konkret leisten können, steht in diesem Buch ebenso im Mittelpunkt wie die Frage, welchen Beitrag die Sozialwissenschaften leisten können. Es geht also zum einen um konkrete soziale Innovationen, die uns bei dem Ziel, nachhaltig zu leben und zu wirtschaften, weiterhelfen, zum anderen aber auch darum, in welcher Weise die Sozialwissenschaften – nicht zuletzt durch entsprechende theoretische und methodische Ausbildung – in die gesellschaftliche Verantwortung für das Gelingen solcher sozialinnovativen Prozesse genommen werden kann.

The title of the book derives from the theme of the 20th Conference on Applied Social Sciences of the Professional Association of German Sociologists, held in Munich in May 2019.

The question of what concrete contributions social innovations can make to the transition to forms of sustainable coexistence and economic activity is as much the focus of this book as the question of what contribution the social sciences can make. Thus, on the one hand, it is about concrete social innovations that help us to achieve the goal of living and doing business sustainably, but on the other hand, it is also about the way in which the social sciences - not least through appropriate theoretical and methodological training - can be made socially responsible for the success of such socially innovative processes.

This book is a translation of an original German edition. The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content, so that the book will read stylistically differently from a conventional translation.