Open Access

Forest ecosystems are complex systems that develop inherent structures and processes relevant for their functioning and the provisioning of ecosystem services that contribute to human wellbeing. So far, forest management focused on timber production while other services were less rewarded. With increasing climate change impacts, especially regulating ecosystem services such as microclimate regulation are ever more relevant to maintain forest functions and services. A key question is how forest management supports or undermines the ecosystems’ capacity to maintain those functions and services. Forest management implies silvicultural interventions such as thinning and timber harvesting and ranges from single tree extraction to large clearcuts as well as forest reserves without active forest operations and shape the character of forest ecosystems (e.g. natural versus planted forests). Artificial plantings, monocultures and management for economic timber production simplify forest structures and impair ecosystem resilience, resistance and the existence of forests but also the services essential for the prosperity and health of humanity. Efforts to reduce the negative impacts and attempts to safeguard forest functions are manifold and include compulsory national and international guidelines and regulations for forest management, conventions, but also voluntary mechanisms such as certification systems. The main objective of this thesis was the development of a concept to assess the functionality of forests and to evaluate the effectiveness of forest ecosystem management including certification. An ecosystem-based and participatory methodology, named ECOSEFFECT, was developed. The method comprises a theoretical and an empirical plausibility analysis. It was applied to the Russian National FSC Standard in the Arkhangelsk Region of the Russian Federation – where boreal forests are exploited to meet Europe's demand for timber. In addition, the influence of forestry interventions on temperature regulation in Scots pine and European beech forests in Germany was assessed during two extreme hot and dry years in 2018 and 2019. Microclimate regulation is a suitable proxy for forest functionality and can be applied easily to evaluate the effectiveness of forest management in safeguarding regulating forest functions relevant under climate change. Microclimate represents the most decisive factor differentiating clearcuts and primary forests. Thus, the assessment of forest microclimate regulation serves as convenient tool to illustrate forest functionality. In the boreal and temperate forests studied in the frame of this thesis, timber harvesting reduced the capacity to self-regulate forests’ microclimate and thus impair a crucial part of ecosystem functionality. Changes in structural forest characteristics influenced by forest management and silviculture significantly affect microclimatic conditions and therefore forest ecosystems’ vulnerability to climate change. Canopy coverage and the number of cut trees were most relevant for cooling maximum summer temperature in pine and beech forests in northern Germany. Maximum temperature measured at ground level increased by 0.21 – 0.34 K when 100 trees were cut. Opening the forest canopy by 10 % caused an increase of maximum temperature at ground-level by 0.53 K (including pine and beech stands). Relative temperature cooling capacity decreased with increasing wood harvest activities and dropped below average values when more than 656 trees per hectare (in 2018; and 867 trees in 2019) were felled. In pine stands with a canopy cover below 82 % the relative temperature buffering capacity was lower than the average. Mean maximum temperature measured at ground-level and in 1.3 m was highest in a pine-dominated sample plots with relatively low stand volume (177 m3 ha-1) and 9 K lower in a sample plot with relatively high stock volumes of F. sylvatica (> 565 m3 ha-1). During the hottest day in 2019, the difference in temperature peaks was more than 13 K for pine-dominated sample plots with relatively dense (72 %) and low (46 %) canopy cover. The Russian FSC standard has the potential to improve forest management and ecological outcomes, but there are shortcomings in the precision of targeting actual problems and ecological commitment. In theory, FSC would transform forest management practices and induce positive changes and effective outcomes by addressing 75 % of the identified contributing factors including highly relevant factors and threats including large-scale (temporary) tree cover loss, which contributes to reducing about half of the identified stresses in the ecosystem. It is theoretically plausible that FSC prevents logging in high conservation value forests and intact forest landscapes, reduces the size and number of clearcuts, and prevents hydrological changes in the landscape. However, the standard was not sufficiently explicit and compulsory to generate a strong and positive influence on the identified problems and their drivers. Moreover, spatial data revealed, that the typical regular clearcut patterns of conventional timber harvesting continue to progress into the FSC-certified boreal forests, also if declared as ‘Intact Forest Landscape’. This results in the need to verify the assumptions and postulates on the ground as it remains unclear and questionable if functions and services of boreal forests are maintained when FSC-certified clearcutting continues. On the clearcuts, maximum temperature exceeded 36 °C and stayed below 30 °C in the closed primary forest. The number of days with temperatures above 25 °C at least doubled on clearcuts. Temperature cooling capacity was reduced by up to 14 % and temperature buffering capacity up to 60 %. The main reason why FSC-certified clearcuts do not differ from conventional clearcuts is that about 97 % of trees within equally large clearcut sites of up to 50 ha were removed. The spatial design of clearcuts, their size and the intensity of clearing as well as the density of skidding trails for timber extraction was not positively influenced by FSC-certification. Annual tree cover loss was lowest in non-certified areas. This means, that FSC may even contribute to an increased biomass removal within the clearcuts, which compromises the ecosystems’ capacity to recover and maintain ecological functions and services. The analysis of satellite-based data on tree cover loss showed that clearcutting causes secondary dieback in the surrounding of the cleared area. FSC-certification does not prevent the various negative impacts of clearcutting and thus fails to safeguard ecosystem functions. The postulated success in reducing identified environmental threats and stresses, e. g. through a smaller size of clearcuts, could not be verified on site. The empirical assessment does not support the hypothesis of effective improvements in the ecosystem. In practice, FSC-certification did not contribute to change clearcutting practices sufficiently to effectively improve the ecological performance. Sustainability standards that are unable to translate principles into effective outcomes fail in meeting the intended objectives of safeguarding ecosystem functioning. Clearcuts that carry sustainability labels are ecologically problematic and ineffective for the intended purpose of ecological sustainability. The overexploitation of provisioning services, i.e. timber extraction, diminishes the ecosystems’ capacity to maintain other services of global significance. It also impairs ecosystem functions relevant to cope with and adapt to other stresses and disturbances that are rapidly increasing under climate change. Forest management under climate change needs to apply precautionary principles and reduce further ecological risks such as secondary dieback and deterioration of regulating services that are relevant for the functioning of forests. Forest managers have to avoid ecological disimprovements by applying strict ecological principles with effective outcomes in order to maintain functional forests that regulate their own microclimate also as a basis for sustainable economic benefits.

This doctoral thesis deals with the topic of organizational misconduct and covers the three salient research streams in this area by addressing its performance outcomes, antecedents, and preventive measures. Specifically, it is concerned with the question of how different forms of misconduct are reflected in the stock performance of related organizations, thereby, covering the three pillars of corporate sustainability environmental, social, and governance (ESG). Furthermore, it aims to conceptualize how individual cognitive biases may lead to misconduct, therefore, potentially representing an antecedent and how existing management control systems can be enhanced to effectively address specific forms of misconduct, respectively. To these ends, I first review the research stream of stock price reactions to environmental pollution events in terms of the underlying research samples, methodological specifications, and theoretical underpinnings. Based on the findings of the systematic literature review (SLR), I perform three stock-based event studies of the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal (Dieselgate), workplace sexual harassment (#MeToo accusations), and the 2003 blackout in the US to cove the three ESG dimensions, respectively. In line with the SLR, my event studies reveal substantial stock losses to firms involved in misconduct that are eventually even accompanied by a spillover effect to uninvolved bystanders. Then, I review the extant literature conceptually to develop a framework outlining how moral licensing as an individual cognitive bias might lead to a self-attribution of corporate sustainability, a consecutive accumulation of moral credit, and a later exchange of this credit by engaging in misconduct afterward. Finally, I assess existing workplace sexual harassment management controls, such as awareness training and grievance procedures critically in another conceptual analysis. Based on the shortcomings stemming from management controls’ focus on compliance and negligence of moral duties, I introduce five specific nudges firms should consider to enhance their existing management controls and eventually prevent occurrences of workplace sexual harassment. Based on the six distinct articles within this doctoral thesis, I outline its limitations and point at directions for future research. These mainly address providing further evidence on the long-term performance effects of organizational misconduct, enriching our knowledge on further cognitive biases eventually leading to misconduct, and conceptualizing nudging beyond the use-case of workplace sexual harassment.

Organizational culture is widely acknowledged to be a driver of organizational effectiveness. However, existing empirical research tends to focus on investigating the links between individual, isolated culture dimensions and effectiveness outcomes. This approach is at odds with the theoretical roots of organizational culture and does not do justice to the complex reality that most organizations face. This issue is addressed by this dissertation, which is comprised of four studies. Study 1 investigated the psychometric quality and cultural equivalence of three culture measures in a German context, based on a sample of 172 employees in a bank. The results suggested that the German versions of the Denison Organizational Culture Survey and the Organizational Culture Profile performed satisfactorily, while results regarding the GLOBE survey fell short of expectations. The study contributes to facilitating cross-cultural research on organizational culture by providing evidence on instruments that can be applied in international settings, which is an important prerequisite for investigating relationships between culture and effectiveness in an increasingly globalized economy. Study 2 reviewed the literature on the link between culture and effectiveness with a focus on studies that treat organizational culture as a holistic phenomenon. The review yielded four kinds of holistic approaches (aggregation-based, agreement-based, moderation- or mediation-based, and configuration-based). For each approach, main findings, theoretical foundations, and specific avenues for future research are provided. Study 3 investigated how a change in organizational culture induced by an M&A project impacts employee commitment. Based on a sample of 180 employees in a German organization, the findings suggest that individuals perceive cultural change differently, that cultural stability is positively related to employee commitment, and that group-level leader-member exchange and individual self-efficacy moderate this relationship. The study thus contributes to the literature by enabling a better understanding of how cultural change affects employee-related effectiveness factors and by illuminating important contextual factors at the group and the individual level. Study 4 introduced a new theoretical perspective (set theory) and a novel methodology (fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis) to the field of organizational culture. Across two samples (1170 employees in a financial service provider and 998 employees in fashion retailer), results indicated that culture dimensions do not operate in isolation, but jointly work together in achieving different effectiveness outcomes. The study offers new theoretical and methodological impulses for investigating the culture-effectiveness link. In sum, this dissertation contributes to the literature by providing novel insights that can help researchers to analyze the relationship between organizational culture and effectiveness in a manner that acknowledges both the complexities of organizational reality and of organizational culture´s theoretical roots. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed, and promising directions for future research are identified.

Quality of life and satisfaction with life are of particular importance for individuals as well as for society concerning the “demographic change” with now longer retirement periods. This study will contribute to the life satisfaction discussion and quantifies life satisfaction and pattern of explanation before and after such a prominent life cycle event, the entrance into retirement. In particular, with the individual longitudinal data and 33 waves of the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and the appropriate microeconometric causal fixed effects robust panel methods we ask and quantify if actual life satisfaction indeed is decreasing before re-tirement, is increasing at the entrance into retirement, and is decreasing then after certain periods back to a foregoing level. Thus, we ask if such an anticipation and adaptation pattern– as known from other promi-nent events – is also to discover for life satisfaction before and after retirement in Germany. Main result: Individual and family situation lift life satisfaction after retirement for many years, the (former) occupational situation, however, absorbs this effect both for pensioners and civil service pensioners. It remains only one period of improvement with close anticipation and adaptation at entering retirement but no furthermore significant change compared to pre-retirement life satisfaction. This holds for pensioners (German pension insurance, GRV) but there is no significant effect at all for civil service pensioners.