The Schöller team at the WI2020 in Potsdam
At the beginning of March, the International Conference on Wirtschaftsinformatik (WI2020) was held in Potsdam. The Schöller team visited the conference together with the colleagues of the Chair of Digital Industrial Service Systems and contributed to the success of the conference by several own contributions.
Jessica Ochmann presented her work on the acceptance of AI-based procedures in recruitment by candidates. In the qualitative study, Jessica showed how the use of AI-based procedures for personnel selection by companies affects the application behaviour of candidates. In this context, it was shown that, in addition to a focus on the active use of digital technologies, the passive use also plays an important role in better understanding the attitudes and behaviour of individuals in relation to digital technologies.
In their contribution, Kian Schmalenbach and Sven Laumer discussed the extent to which technical possibilities help to reduce the risk of discrimination in AI-based personnel selection procedures. By developing a generic discrimination model and testing it with two algorithms for discrimination prevention, they were able to show that on the one hand the risk of discrimination can be reduced, but on the other hand the general explainability of the model suffers and discrimination cannot be completely eliminated from the data set. Dealing with bias in data in the context of data-driven recruitment practices thus remains a central challenge of using AI in recruitment.
Sven Laumer also addressed the “three halves on the road to a WI professorship” at the meeting of young researchers. It is a good tradition that post-doctoral students and junior professors come together during the conference to discuss career perspectives in IS research. Sven Laumer was invited by WkWi junior chairman Prof. Dr. Martin Matzner to talk about his own experiences on his way to a WI professorship and drew parallels to football. Just as a football match nowadays rarely lasts 90 minutes, there is no longer the classic way to a professorship. He discussed the different challenges such as objective agreements during the different career steps and also made clear that a good work-life balance is important on the way to a WI professorship.
The Schöller team was also responsible for the general conference program by the fact that Prof. Sven Laumer, together with Prof. Andreas Eckhardt and Dr. Christian Maier, was co-responsible for the track “Virtualisation of Work and Enterprises” and thus organised the review process for papers submitted to the conference in this track.