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Institut
- Fakultät Wirtschaftswissenschaften (52) (entfernen)
The issue under investigation in this study is to explore the drivers and suggest methods for environmental managers to integrate environmental issues in the top management strategic decision-making. In order to make the reading easy the whole study has been written following the principle of providing the minimum information to clarify the point under discussion, no more, no less. The conclusions, the analysis, the implications and the limitations are discussed on a chapter by chapter basis, making it easier for the reader to remember the issue under discussion. The closing chapter brings together the conclusions of each chapter of the study. The study is divided into two parts. Part I: Planning describes the planning and preparation for the research and consists of the following chapters: Chapter 1 provides an overview of the interest, relevance and importance of this study. Also it proposes, through the introduction of the relevant literature, an exact wording for the research problem and a framework for evaluating the effectiveness of each process step. Chapters 2 and 3 describe and justify the chosen framework that prompts managers during interviewing and organises the resulting contents in a way that will support effective decision making. This is the end of the planning part of the study and we now move into the action part where the case studies are explained in full. Part II: Intervention comprises the following chapters: Chapter 4 is where the action begins, the first phase of the process. This chapter discusses the reasons selection and participation in the research and the process for choosing a business unit. Chapter 5 details, justifies and discusses the choices of who to interview. It outlines how the interviews were conducted and summarises the resulting contents. In Chapter 6 the general issue of who to involve in interviews is explored further for the specific case of the environmental manager. The main objective is to discuss whether and why the environmental manager had more/less/different ideas from the rest of the management team. Chapter 7 deals with the first time that the people meet as a group. For this process step the choices were about how to display and generate discussion on the contents gathered during the interviews. Chapter 8 focuses on the environmental manager’s contribution to the objective Fine-tuning discussion. Chapter 9 describes the Indicator Building process and how this may be relevant for the environmental manager. Concluding Remarks wraps up the results and discusses the need for extending this research further.
Space-related science and technologies affect our daily life dramatically. Many countries have already formulated national space regulations to regulate their space activities. China, as one space-faring country, has obtained impressive achievements in space science and technologies. In recent years, Chinese private space companies have sprung up quickly, which requires a stable and foreseeable legal framework to ensure development. However, compared to the other space powers, China is the only one that has not enacted any formal national space laws. Against the background of strengthening the rule of law in China, research on China´s domestic space legislation is valuable and significant. The purpose of this thesis is two-fold. First, to find the legal basis and necessity of national space legislation and to extract the basic content of the existing national space legislation, simultaneously, to identify the new developments in the content of other States´ legislative practices. Second, based on the study of national space legislation, to propose the essential content of China´s space legislation.
In sub-Saharan Africa, women own or partly own one third of all businesses, thereby having a large potential to contribute to the economic development and societal well-being in this region. However, women-owned businesses tend to lag behind men-owned businesses in that they make lower profits, grow more slowly, and create fewer jobs. To identify reasons for this gap and effective means to promote women entrepreneurs, large parts of the entrepreneurship literature have compared male and female entrepreneurs with regard to individual characteristics, paying only limited attention to the underlying environmental conditions. This is problematic as women entrepreneurs operate under different conditions than men, with particularly pronounced differences in sub-Saharan Africa. Against this backdrop, the goal of this dissertation is to contribute to a more profound understanding of women entrepreneurship in sub-Saharan Africa and its promotion through training by examining critical context factors. Specifically, I analyze two context factors that influence women’s entrepreneurial performance and the success of training interventions: 1) women entrepreneurs’ husbands and 2) the entrepreneurship trainer. These analyses are embedded in considerations of the cultural, social, and economic conditions women entrepreneurs in sub-Saharan Africa are facing. In Chapter 2, I conduct a systematic literature review on spousal influence in entrepreneurship and identify six recurrent types of influence. Complementing the literature originating from Western settings, I develop propositions on how the sub-Saharan context affects husbands’ influence on women entrepreneurship in this region. In Chapter 3, I build on a cultural theory and an economic theory of the household to develop and empirically test a theoretical model of husbands’ constraining and supportive influences on women entrepreneurship in sub-Saharan Africa. The empirical results point to three distinct types of husbands that differ significantly in their impact on women entrepreneurs’ business success. In Chapter 4, I explore the influence of the trainer on the effectiveness of entrepreneurship training in sub-Saharan Africa by drawing on an unsuccessful training implementation. Qualitative analyses indicate that the use of adequate teaching methods is critical towards training success. Overall, this dissertation makes an important contribution towards a better understanding of women entrepreneurs in sub-Saharan Africa and their promotion by shifting the perspective from a purely individualist to a more contextualized view of women entrepreneurship.
Consisting of three articles and a framework manuscript, this cumulative dissertation deals with sustainable compensation of chief executive officer (CEO) with a focus on climate-related aspects. Against the backdrop of the European action for sustainability and the EU Green Deal, the dissertation pays special attention to the consideration of climate-related aspects of corporate performance in CEO compensation. In this context, sustainable compensation is characterized by the consideration of long-term interests and sustainability of the company as well as by the inclusion of financial and non-financial aspects of environmental, social and governance performance (ESG) in compensation agreements. While this novel instrument of corporate governance aims to incentivize the implementation of sustainability-oriented corporate strategy, it is particularly important to unfold this incentive effect at the individual CEO level in view of their managerial discretion. The framework manuscript discusses the research objectives, the regulatory and theoretical background, the results of the dissertation and their implications in the context of regulation, research, and business practice. The essence of the dissertation are the three articles. The first article, "Determinants and effects of sustainable CEO compensation: a structured literature review of empirical evidence," examines the current state of empirical research based on 37 articles that were published between 1992 and 2018. Based on a multidimensional research framework, the structured literature review compiles past research findings, identifies contentual and methodological foci in the research area, and derives questions for future research. The second article, "Mapping the determinants of carbon-related CEO compensation: a multidimensional approach," addresses the topic from a conceptual perspective. Taking the existing work as a starting point, a conceptual framework is derived, which organizes the determinants of carbon-related CEO compensation at societal, organizational, group and individual levels of analysis. On this basis, eight propositions are presented that seek to distinguish between the determinants which support and challenge the implementation of carbon-related CEO compensation. The third article, "Climate change policies and carbon-related CEO compensation systems: an exploratory study of European companies," focuses on the use of CO2-oriented performance indicators in CEO compensation. The empirical-qualitative study analyzes corporate disclosure of the 65 largest companies in the EU for the years 2018 and 2019. The study addresses the use of CO2-oriented performance indicators in corporate strategy and CEO compensation. It also examines which compensation components are determined with the help of CO2-oriented performance indicators, which type of performance indicators are used, and whether CO2-intensive and less CO2-intensive companies differ in this regard.
Die Fragestellung dieses Forschungsvorhabens resultiert aus der Praxis: Was ist ein christliches Hotel? Wie konkretisieren sich die christlichen Wertehaltungen im betrieblichen Alltag eines Hotels in Deutschland? Gibt es in der betrieblichen Praxis Unterschiede zwischen christlichen und nicht christlichen Hotels aus Sicht der Mitarbeiter christlicher Hotels, und wenn ja, welche sind das? Können christliche Hotels ihre Werte im Personalmarketing als Anreize verwenden? Welche Anreize erwarten die Mitarbeiter christlicher Hotels grundsätzlich von ihren Arbeitgebern? Gibt es Unterschiede in den Bewertungen der Wichtigkeit der christlichen Ausrichtung christlicher Hotels je nach Glaubenszugehörigkeit (christlich, andere, ohne) der Mitarbeiter? Da die Anwendung bzw. Konkretion christlicher Werte im betrieblichen Kontext nicht vom kulturellen außerbetrieblichen Umfeld getrennt betrachtet werden kann, beziehen sich die vorliegenden Ausführungen allein auf christliche Hotels in Deutschland. Das Objekt „Christliches Hotel“ wurde bislang in der Forschungsliteratur noch nicht näher beschrieben. Um den Forschungsgegenstand "Christliches Hotel" zunächst näher zu beschreiben, wird das in der Qualitätsdiskussion bekannte EFQM Excellence Modell herangezogen und anhand des Werteinventars unternehmensrelevanter christlicher Werte auf die Hotellerie übertragen. Dieses entwickelte EFQM Excellence Modell - auch EFQM Excellence Modell Hotel "C" genannt - dient einer ersten Konkretion des Forschungsgegenstandes und bildet zum anderen die Basis für die empirische Studie. Hierfür wurden 276 Mitarbeiter christlicher Hotels befragt, wie sie die im Rahmen des EFQM Excellence Modell Hotel "C" konkretisierten Werte im Management ihres Arbeitgeberhotels wahrnehmen und im Vergleich zu nicht christlichen Hotels und zudem bezüglich der Wichtigkeit bewerten. Die Studienergebnisse zeigen, dass die befragten Mitarbeiter christliche Hotels in den EFQM Konstrukten Führung, Strategie, Mitarbeiter und Prozesse, Produkte und Dienstleistungen sowie in den kulturbezogenen Konstrukten Christliche Werte und Ergänzende christliche Werte im Vergleich zu nicht christlichen Hotels als signifikant besser bewerten. Christliche Werte, sofern sie nicht explizit als solche bezeichnet werden, sind den Mitarbeitern christlicher Hotels in Deutschland unabhängig von ihrer Glaubenszugehörigkeit gleich wichtig. Christlich gläubigen Mitarbeitern christlicher Hotels in Deutschland ist - explizit gefragt - die christliche Ausrichtung ihres Arbeitgebers signifikant wichtiger als Mitarbeitern ohne Glaubenszugehörigkeit. Christliche Werte spielen für die Mitarbeiter christlicher Hotels in Deutschland zusammenfassend eine wichtige Rolle. Diese immateriellen Werte sind starke Beitrags- und Bleibeanreize, die christliche Hotels im Personalmarketing verwenden können. Dies gilt umso mehr, wenn die christlichen Werte von den christlichen Hotels in Deutschland nicht nur explizit als solche zusammenfassend genannt, sondern konkret und vor allem realitätsgetreu dargestellt werden.
In the early 1990s the European Commission and the national governments of the EU member states initiated an extensive deregulation and liberalization process in the European railway industry. Prior to this process, the European railway industry was characterized by loosely connected national monopoly railway companies which faced severe losses of transportation market share and required increasing subsidies. Overall, this system was not what a single European market needed: an integrated transport system that provides reliable and fast cross-border transportation of goods, services, and people. The main elements of the reforms have been the separation of infrastructure management from transport operations, the implementation of interoperability among the national railway systems, the assurance of third-party access to the infrastructure, and the introduction of independent railway regulatory systems. In general, the intention of the reforms has been to enhance competition by opening the market and to improve the economic performance of the European railway industry. The objective of this thesis is to analyze the effectiveness of the European railway deregulation process in enhancing efficiency and productivity in the European railway industry. For that purpose three empirical papers are introduced that use non-parametric and parametric benchmarking methods to evaluate the impact of different production technologies and country- and firm-specific environmental and regulatory conditions on efficiency and productivity. The first paper, ‘Testing for Economies of Scope in European Railways: An Efficiency Analysis’, conducts a pan-European efficiency analysis to investigate the performance of European railways with a particular focus on economies of vertical integration. We test the hypothesis that integrated railways realize economies of scope and, thus, produce railway services with a higher level of efficiency. To determine whether joint or separate production is more efficient, we apply an innovative two-stage data envelopment analysis super-efficiency model which relates the efficiency for integrated production to a reference set consisting of separated firms which use a different production technology. We find that for a majority of European railways economies of scope exist. The second paper, ‘Productivity Growth in European Railways: Technological Progress, Efficiency Change and Scale Effects’, analyzes the efficiency and productivity of the European railway sector in the period of deregulation (1990-2005). Using a stochastic frontier panel data model that controls for unobserved heterogeneity a distance function model is estimated in order to evaluate the sources of productivity growth: technological progress, technical efficiency change and scale effects. The results indicate that technology improvements were by far the most important driver of productivity growth, followed by gains in technical efficiency, and to a lesser extent by exploitation of scale economies. Overall, we find an average productivity growth of 39 percent within the sample period. The third paper, ‘European Railway Deregulation: The Influence of Regulatory and Environmental Conditions on Efficiency’, investigates the impact of regulatory and environmental conditions on technical efficiency of European railways. Using a panel data set of 31 railway firms from 22 European countries from 1994 to 2005, a distance function model, including regulatory and environmental factors, is estimated using stochastic frontier analysis. The results obtained indicate positive and negative efficiency effects of different regulatory reforms. Furthermore, estimating models with and without regulatory and environmental factors indicates that the omission of environmental factors, such as network density, substantially changes parameter estimates and, hence, leads to biased estimation results. The last chapter of the thesis summarizes the results of the three empirical analyses. It contains overall conclusions, highlights implications for economic policy, and provides directions for further research.
Die vorliegende Arbeit untersucht das Reiseverhalten verschiedener Generationen in Deutschland (68er, Babyboomer, Generation X und Generation Y) anhand der Kohortenanalyse. Mit Hilfe des Intrinsic Estimators und der Rohdaten der Reiseanalyse für die Jahre 1971 bis 2012 wurden Kohorten-, Alters- und Periodeneffekte für die verschiedenen Merkmale des Reiseverhaltens geschätzt. Deutliche Unterschiede zwischen den Generationen, die unabhängig von Alter und Jahr bestand haben sollten, wurden in Bezug auf die Wahl des Verkehrsträgers, der Unterkunft, der Reiseart und der Destination identifiziert. Bei anderen Merkmalen gab es hingegen weniger oder nur geringe Generationenunterschiede. Die Ergebnisse ermöglichen einen genaueren Blick in die Zukunft des Reisens und geben wichtige Hinweise für die tourismuswirtschaftliche Praxis.
Due to increased life expectancy, a growing number of retirees are spending more and more time in retirement. Life satisfaction in later life therefore becomes an increasingly important societal issue. Good work ability and health are prerequisites for a self-determined transition to retirement, for example allowing for a continuation of gainful employment beyond retirement age. Such continued employment is one way of dealing with the consequences of a historically unique long retirement phase: a self-determined continued employment can have a positive effect on individual well-being, on societal level relieve the burden on the pension insurance system, and on meso-level provide companies with urgently needed human capital. The self-determination of life circumstances is postulated by Self-Determination Theory (SDT) as a basic psychological need with effects on individual well-being. This dissertation investigates work ability as a concept that supports workers, employers, and societies in the extension of working lives, and how work ability is related to the level of self-determination in the transition to retirement, and ultimately life satisfaction.
In the first study of this dissertation, the Work Ability Survey-R (WAS-R) was translated from English into German and then evaluated regarding its psychometric properties and construct validity. The WAS-R operationalizes work ability as the interplay of personal and organizational resources and thus allows companies to derive targeted interventions to maintain work ability.
In the second study, the WAS-R was examined together with the questionnaire Work-Related Behavior and Experience Pattern (Arbeitsbezogenes Verhaltens- und Erlebensmuster, AVEM) regarding its construct validity. A striking feature of this study was the high number of participants with the answering pattern indicating low work-related ambitions and protection. Persons with this pattern are in danger of entering the risk pattern for burnout in the future. The findings support the validity of the WAS-R.
In the third contribution, two studies examined the experience of control (i.e., autonomy) in the transition to retirement as a mediator between previous work ability, health, and financial well-being, and later life satisfaction in retirement. Control was found to partially mediate the relationship between work ability and later life satisfaction. Different mechanisms on later life satisfaction of work ability and health, and the subjective and objective financial situation were found.
This dissertation contributes to research on and practice with aging workers in two ways: (1) The German translation of the WAS-R is presented as a useful instrument for measuring work ability, assessing individual and organizational aspects and therefore enabling employers to make targeted interventions to maintain and improve work ability, and eventually enable control during later work life, the retirement transition and even old age. (2) This dissertation corroborates the importance of good work ability and health, even in old age, as well as control in these phases of life. Work ability is indirectly related to life satisfaction in the long period of retirement, mediated by a sense of control in the transition to retirement. This emphasizes the importance of the need for control as postulated by the SDT also in the transition to retirement.
This thesis deals with the influence of sustainability communication on the purchase decision of sustainable tourism products involving German specialist tour operators. Sustainability communication is a challenge, because sustainable tourism is an abstract and vague concept which consumers find it difficult to grasp and about which they are sceptical, and the service characteristics of tourism products complicate the decision making stage, which is a high-involvement situation of uncertainty to which sustainable product attributes add complexity. As an introduction, an interdisciplinary theory discussion reveals knowledge gaps in terms of the value-belief-norm theory and the elaboration likelihood model (ELM). The first article, which is the first systematic literature review on the topic, reveals that there is a limited theoretical understanding of sustainability communication, a lack of practical understanding of how to design sustainability messages, and an inadequate set of methodologies for its research. It identifies knowledge gaps concerning: the holistic approach to sustainability communication; its role in the attitude-behaviour gap; an interdisciplinary theoretical understanding focusing on belief-based social psychological theories and theories of persuasion; qualitative methods; and experimental design. The second article investigates the role of sustainability communication in the attitude-behaviour gap, employing the value-belief-norm theory to explain how information is processed by special interest customers. Interview findings show that ineffective sustainability communication is the reason for the gap and that customers unintentionally booked sustainably. The study identifies eight groups of beliefs which explain the processing of sustainability attributes. Sustainability information is effective when it is value-congruent, that is, when customers perceive they can make a difference, they begin to ascribe a responsibility to themselves. The third article investigates how to design an effective sustainability message in tour operator advertising. Drawing on the ELM, the study shows that appeal type does not significantly influence persuasion but the topic presented is important. Cultural sustainability is the sustainability topic that is most persuasive for cultural tourists, while consumer prior knowledge and issue-involvement with the topic promote successful information processing. The thesis has contributed to a target-group specific understanding of effective sustainability product communication and contributes to knowledge in terms of theory, methodology, and practical solutions.
Financial Decisions in Family Firms. Private Equity Investors, Capital Structures and Firm Identity
(2017)
This paper-based dissertation deals with financial issues of family businesses. These businesses are mainly characterized by the overlapping of the two social systems: family and business. Thus, the involvement of an owner family can have a significant impact on corporate decision-making, for instance in terms of corporate finance decisions. In Germany, the latter is dominated by a strong orientation towards banks. Nevertheless, the relevance of external equity, as source of funding, has increased during the last years due to regulatory interventions (Basel III) and a growing number of alternative private equity providers. Against this backdrop, the present dissertation and its four papers examine different research questions in the context of capital structure decisions of family firms. These decisions are related to external equity as well as debt financing. The first paper is a structured literature review concerning the interaction of family firms and external equity investors. The paper analyzes the current state of knowledge and points out directions for future research, which is particularly relevant for a young and recently growing field of research. The second paper is a conceptual paper that deals with the differences of various types of private equity investors from the perspective of family firms looking for funding. The literature review paper revealed that existing studies so far neglected the topic of heterogeneity among investor types. Thus, the second paper represents a first attempt to close this research gap. Paper three also takes up a research gap identified by the first paper and examines the exit of private equity minority investments in family-owned businesses. The paper applies a qualitative empirical research design, which includes fourteen cases and related six interviews. The results reveal that the disinvestment phase of private equity investors only rarely leads to conflicts with owner families. The fourth paper uses a quantitative research design with a comprehensive dataset of 691 companies. The paper aims to compare the capital structures of large family and non-family firms. Overall, the findings show that family firms have significantly higher overall and long-term debt levels compared to their non-family counterparts. The identity as a family firm, which leads to a leap of faith by banks, can be a possible explanation for these results.