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Institut
- Fakultät Wirtschaftswissenschaften (66) (entfernen)
This paper presents the first nonparametric test whether German works councils go hand in hand with higher labor productivity or not. It distinguishes between establishments that are covered by collective bargaining or not. Results from a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test for first order stochastic dominance tend to indicate that pro-productive effects are found in firms with collective bargaining only. However, the significance level of the test statistic is higher than a usually applied critical level. This somewhat weak evidence casts doubts on the validity of results from recent parametric approaches using a regression framework that point to high positive effects of works councils on productivity.
In the face of uncertainty, ecosystems can provide natural insurance to risk averse users of ecosystem services. We employ a conceptual ecological-economic model to analyze the allocation of (endogenous) risk and ecosystem quality by risk averse ecosystem managers who have access to financial insurance, and study the implications for individually and socially optimal ecosystem management, and policy design. We show that while an improved access to financial insurance leads to lower ecosystem quality, the effect on the free-rider problem and on welfare is determined by ecosystem properties. We derive conditions on ecosystem functioning under which, if financial insurance becomes more accessible, (i) the extent of optimal regulation increases or decreases; and (ii) welfare, in the absence of environmental regulation, increases or decreases.
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.
The present work introduces four theoretical papers, which primarily focus on R&D, interindustrial linkages, and their policy implications. All in all, three issues basically motivated conception and realization: At first, previous NEG models do not incorporate endogenous R&D activities of firms. Existing models include R&D only in a growth context, which increases the formal complexity and departs from the simple core-periphery formulation. Second, vertical linkages are extensively considered in the class of international models. In face of its formal simplicity, the majority of publications refer to the standard model of Krugman and Venables (1995) utilizing intra-industry trade in which the manufacturing sector produces its own intermediates. However, the results are similar to the core-periphery model, but the implications of vertical linkages, especially in terms of specialization, cannot be reproduced. In contrast, the more challenging version of Venables (1996), which considers an inter-industry framework of an explicit upstream and downstream sector, is often cited (143 citations according to IDEAS/RePEc), but only few papers were directly built on it: Puga and Venables (1996), Amiti (2005), Alonso-Villar (2005). The third issue concerns the calibration of real economies. Although, hundreds of numerical simulations have been done in order to display the modeling outcomes, an application to particular industries in terms of their spatial formation and evolution is still a neglected field of research. Against this background, the present work aims to make a contribution to these topics. For a summary, all four papers are briefly to be summarized at this point. The first paper, entitled 'Too Much R&D? – Vertical Differentiation and Monopolistic Competition,' discusses whether product R&D in developed economies tends to be too high compared with the socially desired level. In this context, a model of vertical and horizontal product differentiation within the Dixit-Stiglitz (1977) framework of monopolistic competition is set up where firms compete in horizontal attributes of their products, and also in quality that can be controlled by R&D investments. The paper reveals that in monopolistic-competitive industries, R&D intensity is positively correlated with market concentration. Furthermore, welfare and policy analysis demonstrate an overinvestment in R&D with the result that vertical differentiation is too high and horizontal differentiation is too low. The only effective policy instrument in order to contain welfare losses turns out to be a price control of R&D services. The main contribution of this closed economy model in the course of the present work is a modeling framework, which can easily be adapted to the New Economic Geography. This has been approached in the second paper: ‘R&D and the Agglomeration of Industries' in which the seminal core-periphery model of Krugman (1991) is extended by endogenous research activities. Beyond the common ‘anonymous' consideration of R&D expenditures within fixed costs, this model introduces vertical product differentiation, which requires services provided by an additional R&D sector. In the context of international factor mobility, the destabilizing effects of a mobile scientific workforce are analyzed. In combination with a welfare analysis and a consideration of R&D promoting policy instruments and their spatial implications, this paper also makes a contribution to the brain-drain debate. In contrast to this migration based approach, the third paper 'Agglomeration, Vertical Specialization, and the Strength of Industrial Linkages' focuses on vertical linkages in their capacity as an additional agglomeration force. The paper picks up the seminal model of Venables (1996) and provides a quantifying concept for the sectoral coherence in vertical-linkage models of the New Economic Geography. Based upon an alternative approach to solve the model and to determine critical trade cost values, this paper focuses on the interdependencies between agglomeration, specialization and the strength of vertical linkages. A central concern is the idea of an 'industrial base,' which is attracting linked industries but is persistent to relocation. As a main finding, the intermediate cost share and substitution elasticity basically determine the strength of linkages. Thus, these parameters affect how strong the industrial base responds to changes in trade costs, relative wages and market size. The fourth paper 'The Spatial Dynamics of the European Biotech Industry' presents a simulation study of the R&D intensive biotech industry using the standard Venables model. Thus, it connects all three preceding papers and puts them into the real economic context of the European integration. The paper reviews the potential development of the European biotech industry with respect to its spatial structure. On the first stage, the present industrial situation as object of investigation is described and evaluated with respect to a further model implementation. In this context, the article introduces the findings of an online survey concerning international trade, conducted with German biotech firms in 2006. On the second stage, the results are completed by the outcomes of a numerical simulation within the New Economic Geography (NEG), considering vertical linkages between the biotech and pharmaceutical industries as an agglomerative force. The analysis reveals only a slight relocation tendency to the European periphery, constrained by market size, infrastructure and factor supply. In the final conclusions, central results of all four papers are summarized with respect to economic policy. Against the background of general legitimization and the impact of political intervention, Chapter 6 draws the main conclusions for location and innovation policies. In this regard, the industrial-base concept as well as the mobility of R&D play a central role during this discussion.
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.
In my dissertation I explore conceptual and economic aspects of resilience, i.e. a system’s ability to maintain its basic functions and controls under disturbances. I provide methodological considerations on the conceptual level and general insights derived from stylized ecological-economic models. In doing so, I demonstrate how to frame resilience so as to economically evaluate and investigate it as an important property of ecological-economic systems. Is conceptual vagueness an asset or a liability? In chapter 1 I address this question by weighing arguments from philosophy of science and applying them to the concept of resilience. I first sketch the wide spectrum of resilience concepts that ranges from concise concepts to the vague perspective of “resilience thinking”. Subsequently, I set out the methodological arguments in favor and against conceptual vagueness. While traditional philosophy of science emphasizes precision and conceptual clarity as precondition for empirical science, alternative views highlight vagueness as fuel for creative and pragmatic problem-solving. Reviewing this discussion, I argue that a trade-off between vagueness and precision exists, which is to be solved differently depending on the research context. In some contexts research benefits from conceptual vagueness while in others it depends on precision. Assessing the specific example of “resilience thinking” in detail, I propose a restructuring of the conceptual framework which explicitly distinguishes descriptive and normative knowledge. Chapter 2 investigates the common assumption that the optimization problem within a simple selfprotection problem (spp) is convex. It is shown that the condition given in the literature to legitimate this assumption may have implausible consequences. Via a simple functional specification we analyze the (non-)convexity of the spp more thoroughly and find that for reasonable parameter values strict convexity may not be justified. In particular, we demonstrate numerically that full self-protection is often optimal. Neglecting these boundary solutions and analyzing only the comparative statics of interior maxima may entail misleading policy implications such as underinvestment in self-protection. Thus, we highlight the relevance of full self-protection as a policy option even for non-extreme losses. Chapter 3 starts from the observation that ecosystem resilience is often interpreted as insurance: by decreasing the probability of future drops in the provision of ecosystem services, resilience insures risk-averse ecosystem users against potential welfare losses. Using a general and stringent definition of “insurance” and a simple ecological-economic model, we derive the economic insurance value of ecosystem resilience and study how it depends on ecosystem properties, economic context, and the ecosystem user’s risk preferences. We show that (i) the insurance value of resilience is negative (positive) for low (high) levels of resilience, (ii) it increases with the level of resilience, and (iii) it is one additive component of the total economic value of resilience. Chapter 4 performs a model analysis to study the origins of limited resilience in coupled ecologicaleconomic systems. We demonstrate that under open access to ecosystems for profit-maximizing harvesting forms, the resilience properties of the system are essentially determined by consumer preferences for ecosystem services. In particular, we show that complementarity and relative importance of ecosystem services in consumption may significantly decrease the resilience of (almost) any given state of the system. We conclude that the role of consumer preferences and management institutions is not just to facilitate adaptation to, or transformation of, some natural dynamics of ecosystems. Rather, consumer preferences and management institutions are themselves important determinants of the fundamental dynamic characteristics of coupled ecological-economic systems, such as limited resilience. Chapter 5 describes how real option techniques and resilience thinking can be integrated to better understand and inform decision making around environmental risks within complex systems. Resilience thinking offers a promising framework for framing environmental risks posed through the non-linear responses of complex systems to natural and human-induced disturbance pressures. Real options techniques offer the potential to directly model such systems including consideration of the prospect that the passage of time opens new options while closing others. Examples are provided which illustrate the potential for integrated resilience and real options approaches to contribute to understanding and managing environmental risk.
Intelligent Product Design
(2012)
The aim of this thesis is to generate reality-based hypotheses about the opportunities and obstacles that create the implementation of Cradle to Cradle for the companies Jules Clarysse NV and Steelcase Inc. It discusses further which marketing-mix is appropriate for Cradle to Cradle products. Therefore exploratory expert interviews have been conducted with both companies. The empirical part is introduced by a literature study. From marketing perspective, the Cradle to Cradle approach for product design is investigated while taking into account that academic literature categorizes the concept on the one hand as consistent sustainability strategy, on the other hand as sustainable design. Moreover, the broad use of the expression design, within the literature of the Cradle to Cradle founders, is analyzed. Here, Cradle to Cradle design is holding out the prospect of Triple Top Line growth, rather than meeting only the economic bottom line. In regard of aesthetics, Cradle to Cradle aspires diversity in contrast to prevailing principles of Functionalism and universal design solutions. The ‘hidden‘ design assignment of Cradle to Cradle, service design, is highlighted as sphere that should be progressed. All these considerations form the interview guideline. The interviews serve as reality check whether there result Triple Top Lines and new service models for the companies and explore how aesthetics and tools of the marketing-mix are handled in Cradle to Cradle practice.
Due to the financial markets disturbances of 2007/2008, a considerable number of financial intermediaries such as banks, credit institutions and asset management companies noticed substantial liquidity shortages, difficulties to refinance their operations as a result of a drying out of appropriate refinancing sources, and withdrawals of deposits by consumers. These turbulences in the financial markets forced governments and central banks to increase liquidity provisions to ensure a sufficient aggregate liquidity of the financial industry. Furthermore, policy-makers decided on bailouts of banks or on supporting financial intermediaries by governmental warranties or liquidity provisions to avoid a substantial number of insolvencies of banks and other financial institutions that may have rapidly deteriorated the global financial industry. In the aftermath of the crisis, politicians and economists discussed these decisions controversially because interventions by governments and central banks appear to have a deep impact on the global economy particularly in the financial industry. Moreover, legislative and regulatory authorities decided on increasing their vigilance, particularly with focus on principal-agent problems within certain sectors of the financial industry. A considerable amount of recent research papers has focused on the dynamics of liquidity shortages that suggest the recent crisis being related to both an increasing funding liquidity risk and an emerging market liquidity risk. Self-amplifying interdependencies appear to connect these two dimensions of liquidity risk that during the period 2007 to 2008 have led to the contagion effects in the global financial industry. Only little research work so far has provided evidence from the financial crisis in 2007/2008 while focusing on the German financial industry. Thus, my doctoral dissertation covers three research papers that address the occurrence of substantial liquidity risk and default probability within the German financial industry over the course of the financial crisis of 2007/2008. My first publication co-authored with Daniel Schmidt, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, entitled ‘Consumer reaction to tumbling funds - Evidence from retail fund outflows during the financial crisis 2007/2008’ focuses on funding liquidity risk of German retail funds. Contrary to the findings reported in some of the extant literature, our study indicates that over the past few years a change in investors’ behavior patterns means that investment decisions are made at short notice, and that shares are redeemed in a discriminatory manner when funds perform poorly. By using data assembled from 1672 retail funds in Germany over the period March 2008 to April 2010, we are able to show that in general, both the prior fund performance and prior net redemptions have a statistically significant influence on fund outflows. Moreover, there are indications that in recent crises situations that have resulted in the withdrawal of shares investors react fast to market signals. My second research paper entitled ‘Leveraging and risk-taking within the German banking system: Evidence from the financial crisis in 2007 and 2008’ examines the risk-taking attitudes of distinguishable German banking sectors. This study intends to examine whether the German banking system displays pro-cyclical behavior during 2000 to 2011, and to what extent specific sectors of the German banking system show significant balance sheet operations to increase their leverage during years of booming asset prices. The results of this study demonstrate that different sectors of the German banking system did operate their business more or less pro-cyclical. It also provides empirical evidence that certain banking sectors did favor refinancing their assets by short-term borrowing in the interbank market to increase their leverage during periods of extraordinary high returns in financial markets. Moreover, this study shows that banks, which operate above average leverages, tend to report a high volatility of return on assets and low distances-to-default. Finally, my third paper entitled ‘Are private banks the better banks? An insight into the ownership structure and risk-taking attitudes of German banks.’, and co-authored with Thomas Wein, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, tries to enlighten the influence of the different principal-agent relationships on the risk-taking attitudes of German banks. In this study, we propose our hypothesis that the distinguishable principal-agent relationships of German banks are significantly influencing the risk-taking attitudes of bank managers. Particularly, we intend to substantiate the theory that banks owned by dispersed shareholders or federal state authorities face a higher relevance of principal-agent problems than other banking sectors due to a missing ability to monitor bank managers. Our results underline that these problems appear to mislead bank managers showing an unreasonable risk-taking behavior. In a first stage, we rely on a theoretical model explaining that from the bank owners’ viewpoint three factors of the principal-agent relationships are determining the probability of choosing the optimal portfolio of risky assets. These factors cover the ability to control bank managers, the risk pooling capabilities of bank owners and bank managers, and the incentives of seeking high returns. To support our hypothesis we apply an empirical study to the distances-to-default of different German banking sectors. This demonstrates that risk-taking attitudes of banks are closely related to banks’ ownership. Consequently, our findings offer evidence, that legislative and regulatory authorities should increase their vigilance in terms of principal-agent problems within certain sectors of the banking industry.
Entrepreneurship is an important means for economic development and poverty alleviation . Due to the relevance of entrepreneurship, scholars call for research that contributes to the understanding of successful business creation. In order to best understand new venture creation, research needs to investigate barriers of entrepreneurship. A barrier that has received wide attention in the literature on new venture creation is capital requirements. Scholars argue that capital requirements are an entry barrier for new venture creation, as most people who start businesses have difficulties in acquiring the necessary amount of capital needed for starting the businesses. Particularly in developing countries, scholars and practitioners regard improvements in access to capital as a major solution to support new venture creation. However, besides improving access to capital, there are alternative solutions that help to deal with the problems of capital requirements and capital constraints in the process of new venture creation. In this dissertation, I argue that a possible means to master capital requirements and capital constraints in business creation is action-oriented entrepreneurship training. I draw on actionregulation theory (Frese & Zapf, 1994), theories supporting an interactionist approach (Endler & Edwards, 1986; Terborg, 1981) and on theories about career development (Arthur, 1994; Briscoe & Hall, 2006) to reason that action-oriented entrepreneurship training allows for handling capital requirements and capital constraints with regard to business creation. Specifically, I argue that action-oriented entrepreneurship training helps to deal with financial requirements and capital constraints in two ways: First, the training reduces the negative effect of capital constraints on business creation through the development of financial mental models. Second, the training supports finding employment and receiving employment income, which enable businesses creation.
Since 2000, data generation has been growing rapidly from various sources, such as Internet usage, mobile devices and industrial sensors in manufacturing. As of 2011, these sources were responsible for a 1.4-fold annual data growth. This development influences practice and science equally and led to different notations, one of the most popular one is Big Data. Besides organization with a business model based solely on Big Data, companies have started to implement new technologies, methodologies and processes in order to deal with the influx of data from different sources and structures and benefit the most of it. As the progress of the implementation and the degree of professionalism regarding data analysis differs amongst industries and companies, latter ones are faced with a lack of orientation regarding their own stage of development and existing relevant capabilities in order to deal with the influx of data as only a few best practices exist. Therefore, this research project develops a maturity model for the assessment of companies capabilities in the field of data analysis with a focus on Big Data. Basis for the model development is a construction model, developed along the criteria of Design Science Research. The developed model contains the different levels of maturity and related measurements for the evaluation of a companies Big Data capabilities with a focus on topics along the dimensions data and organization. The developed model has been evaluated based an application to different companies in order to ensure the practical relevance. The structure of the thesis is the following: In a first step, a structured literature review is carried out, focussing on existing maturity models in the field of Big Data and nearby fields as Business Intelligence and Performance Management Systems. Based on the identified white spots, a design science research oriented construction model for the maturity model development is designed. This model is applied subsequently.
With this dissertation, I present a human resources approach to entrepreneurship through selection and training of small-business owners in developing countries. Entrepreneurship is an important source of employment, innovation, and general economic prosperity (Autio, 2005; Walter et al., 2005; Reynolds et al., 2005; Kuratko, 2003). In developing countries, job creation through business ownership is especially important because job opportunities are limited (Walter et al., 2005; Mead & Liedholm, 1998). Strengthening the small business sector is one of the best ways to reduce poverty and increase economic growth (Birch, 1987). Thus, this dissertation adds to the scientific literature in taking a human resources approach to entrepreneurship: selecting and training entrepreneurs. Selection has widely been researched on in various scientific fields like human resource management, industrial-, work-, and organizational psychology, but only partly focusing on selection of entrepreneurs. Regarding training, there exists a fair amount of studies that focus on entrepreneurship education, but a lot of them suffer from substantial heterogeneity and methodological flaws (Glaub & Frese (2011); McKenzie & Woodruff (2013)). The dissertation combines the ideas of using selection procedures for entrepreneurs with the idea of teaching entrepreneurial skills.
In addition to a short introduction, this thesis contains five chapters that discuss various topics in the context of labor economics in general and the manufacturing sector in Egypt in particular. Chapter one presents the institutional framework of the Egyptian labor market and the different datasets that could be used by researchers and summarizes some previous empirical studies. Then, different microeconometric methods are applied in the subsequent four chapters, using the World Bank firm-level data for the manufacturing sector in Egypt to get an empirical evidence for the following issues: determinants of using fixed-term contracts in the Egyptian labor market in the manufacturing sector in chapter two, determinants of female employment in Egyptian manufacturing firms in chapter three, ownership structure and productivity in the Egyptian manufacturing firms in chapter four and, finally, exporting behavior of the Egyptian manufacturing firms is analyzed with a special focus on the impact of workforce skills-intensity in chapter five.
To be prepared for one´s own career is a major task during career development. However, existing research has primarily focused on adolescence in the transition from school to work while research on career preparation among university students, that are challenged by successfully transiting from university to work, are lacking so far. Thus, this cumulative dissertation studies career preparation in terms of career decidedness, planning, confidence, and career engagement using large samples of German university students and alumni as well as a variety of quantitative methods like latent state-trait analysis, cross-lagged analysis, and mediation analysis with multiple mediators. In the first paper, the stable component of career indecision is investigated with longitudinal data stemming from two samples with different time lags (Sample 1: N = 363, 7 weeks; Sample 2: N = 591, 6 months). Furthermore, the combined and unique effects of career indecisiveness and generalized indecisiveness on life satisfaction are examined using a sample consisting of 469 university students. Results indicate that career indecision is determined by a stable component (i.e., trait career indecisiveness) that is associated with lower core self-evaluations, lower occupational self-efficacy, and higher perception of career barriers. Additionally, results indicate that the stable career indecision component explains 5% of the variance in student life satisfaction beyond self-evaluated generalized indecisiveness. The second paper deals with the relationships of vocational interest characteristics - interest congruence, interest differentiation, and general interest level (elevation) - with several indicators of career preparedness (i.e., career planning, occupational self-efficacy beliefs, career decidedness, and career engagement) among a sample of 239 university students. Controlling for sociodemographic variables, multiple regression analyses revealed that differentiation is positively associated with career decidedness and career engagement and elevation is positively related to occupational self-efficacy beliefs and career engagement. The third paper investigates how protean career orientation (PCO) is related to vocational identity clarity and occupational self-efficacy. Study 1 reports a 1-year, three-wave cross-lagged study among 563 university students and established that PCO preceded changes in identity and self-efficacy - but not the other way around. Based on a 6-month longitudinal study of 202 employees, Study 2 shows that identity clarity and self-efficacy mediated the effects of PCO on career satisfaction and proactive career behaviors. PCO only possessed incremental predictive validity regarding proactive career behaviors. However, specific direct or mediated effects of PCO on job satisfaction could not be confirmed. The fourth paper explores the relationships between narcissism and two indicators of career success (i.e., salary and career satisfaction) among a group of young professionals (N = 314). A model proposing that the effect of narcissism on career success is mediated by increased occupational self-efficacy beliefs and career engagement was assessed. While correlations between narcissism and the two indicators of career success were minimal, the results show a significant indirect effect on salary via occupational self-efficacy and indirect effects on career satisfaction via self-efficacy and career engagement. Overall, the different studies corroborate the crucial role of career preparation for a successful start into working life. In sum, this dissertation contributes to literature on vocational psychology by providing novel insights in terms of facilitators and outcomes of career preparation among university students and graduates. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed, and promising directions for future research are identified.
Derivatives are contracts between two parties, a buyer and a seller. The contract will be fulfilled in some point in the future at a predetermined price. The value of those contracts is based on an underlying entity which can be a traded asset or even the weather. Derivatives contain chances, but also risks, investor should be aware off. This thesis aims to deeply analyze two derivative products in the German market and one risk for each which influences the prices of those products. The first part of this thesis focuses on warrants and the issuer's credit risk involved. It finds evidence that the issuer's credit risk influences the connection between warrant characteristic and its prices. Over time this connection is unstable partly driven by the issuer's credit risk. The second paper of this thesis shows that issuers seem to use their credit risk systematically to influence warrant prices. Evidence is found that the changes in credit risk are not fully included in the prices directly, but that the adjustment to the new level of credit risk takes several days. In addition, the issuer's adjustment to changes in credit risk are different for credit risk increases than for credit risk decreases. Especially after financial crisis, in more stable times, evidence is found for such adverse pricing pattern. The third part of the thesis focuses on energy derivatives traded at the Europe Energy Exchange and analyses the influence of weather parameters on energy derivatives with different load profiles and time horizons. This part of the thesis finds that especially wind speed and sun hours have a strong influence on energy derivatives. However, not all products are influenced in the same manner. Products with a longer time horizon are influenced less than the product with a short horizon. Moreover, products comprising hours of the day where energy consumption is expected to be higher are influenced stronger than products comprising hours of a day with lower time consumption. The thesis shows that derivatives are not alike and that it is needed for future research to differentiate between products and the risks which are involved. Since even though we classify them all as derivatives the risks influencing the derivative´s prices do vary tremendously.
Research on motivational and cognitive processes in entrepreneurship has commonly relied on a static approach, investigating entrepreneurs' motivation and cognition at only one point in time. However, entrepreneurs' motivation and cognition are dynamic processes that considerably change over time. The goal of this dissertation is thus to adopt a dynamic perspective on motivational and cognitive processes in entrepreneurship. In three different chapters, the work examines dynamic changes in the level and impact of three different processes, i.e., creativity, entrepreneurial passion, and opportunity identification. In Chapter 2, the thesis develops a theoretical model on the alternating role of creativity in the course of the entrepreneurial process. The model emphasizes that the effects of two components underlying creativity, i.e., divergent and convergent thinking, considerably change both in magnitude and in direction throughout the entrepreneurial process. In Chapter 3, the author establishs and empirically tests a theoretical model on entrepreneurial passion. The theoretical analysis and empirical results show that the relationships between feelings of entrepreneurial passion, entrepreneurial self-efficacy, and entrepreneurial success are dynamic and reciprocal rather than static and unidirectional. In Chapter 4, the author develops and tests a theoretical model on the effect of entrepreneurship training on opportunity identification over time. The theoretical and empirical investigation indicates that entrepreneurship training effects systematically decay over time and that action planning and entrepreneurial action sustain the effects in the long term.
Micro- and small enterprises are of great importance for the economic growth in developing countries, as they contribute to employment creation and innovation. In light of their economic relevance, several approaches to support micro- and small enterprises have emerged, including building human capital through business trainings. However, the effects of existing business trainings on entrepreneurial success have so far been limited. One promising alternative training approach that has emerged in the last years is personal initiative training, which teaches self-starting, future-oriented, and persistent entrepreneurial behavior. This dissertation helps to improve the understanding of personal initiative training by shedding light on the mechanisms through which it affects business success, on supporting factors, and on its long-term impacts. Chapter 1 provides an overview on the topic of personal initiative training for entrepreneurs in developing countries. Chapter 2 introduces personal initiative training and other proactive behavior trainings in various contexts of work, including entrepreneurship. The chapter presents action regulation theory and the theory on personal initiative as the theoretical foundation of the training. In addition, the chapter provides insights into training and evaluation methods and makes recommendations for the successful implementation of personal initiative training. Chapter 3 offers a first answer to the question how personal initiative after training can be maintained over time. The chapter introduces training participants' need for cognition as beneficial factor for post-training personal initiative maintenance. Chapter 4 explains how action regulation trainings like personal initiative training contribute to poverty reduction in developing countries by supporting entrepreneurial success. Chapter 5 enlarges upon the topic of personal initiative training for entrepreneurial success in developing countries. The chapter focuses on how personal initiative training supports female entrepreneurs in developing countries by helping them to overcome the uncertainty involved in entrepreneurial actions. Chapter 6 summarizes the overall findings and illustrates the theoretical and practical implications that result from this dissertation. In sum, this dissertation makes a contribution to the better understanding of personal initiative training and its effects on entrepreneurship in developing countries and thereby helps to create effective interventions to combat poverty in developing countries.
In 2013, the European Commission adopted the so called "Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan" to ease the creation of new ventures and to support the takeover of existing firms. The goal is to create a supportive environment for entrepreneurs to thrive and grow (European Commission 2013). This shows that the European Union puts its efforts to support small firms as they are seen as means for Europe's sustainable economic growth. However, the successful processes of growth and investment are complex and depend on different determinants. The present thesis focuses on the firm level and analyzes in three independent articles: how small firms invest over time, how new ventures grow and which variables influence growth, how small firms grow after business takeover and which variables influence growth. The framework that connects these articles forms the content-related focus on the early stage of development of small firms and the methodological and analytical approaches that comply with up-to-date and adequate statistical analysis techniques. Supported by an extensive dataset, which is the foundation of all three articles, it is possible to investigate empirically different open research questions using bivariate and multivariate analysis techniques. Thus, this thesis also serves the research needs for more multivariate analyses for small firms, for which so far mainly cross-sectional studies have been conducted.
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. 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). 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. 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.
Online advertising has become one of the most important dimension of corporate communications. In recent years, a new form of advertising on the Internet has emerged: real-time advertising. Among others, it allows companies to identify potential customers and target them with respect to their interests. In this way, real-time advertising can increase advertising effectiveness and it could, at the same time, improve user experience. With the emerge of this new form of advertising, statistical models have become even more important because they are now being increasingly used to predict online user behavior. The articles included in this dissertation analyze user-level clickstream data generated during multi-channel advertising campaigns (including TV advertising) and during real-time auctions. The goal of the analyses conducted here is to better understand advertising effects and to support decision-making in this context. Most of the analyses are based on Bayesian models. These models allow for a very flexible structure, which enables researchers to model, for instance, heterogeneity across different types of users or non-linear parameters such as users´ reaction times and exponential decay of advertising effects. In addition, these models allow for the inclusion of prior knowledge of parameter distributions, and, therefore, they are well suited for iterative analyses based on clickstream data. Bayesian models can be evaluated in different ways. Instead of only relying on statistical metrics, the articles included in this dissertation aim to estimate the economic value of these models based on their predictive performance. Although this measure can only approximate their true economic value, this approach can be used to compare and evaluate different models and to illustrate the impact of predictive analyses for companies in the context of big data. This dissertation contributes to both information systems research and marketing research and has many managerial implications. First, a process is developed to determine optimal sample sizes representing the best balance between computational costs and predictive accuracy in e-commerce in particular and big data contexts in general. In practice, this process can be used to reduce infrastructure and computational costs. Second, the articles included here describe models that can be used to measure the impact of television ads on users' online shopping behavior. The models can provide insights concerning the effectiveness of individual television ads, the interactions between different advertising channels and the difference in user behavior of TV-induced customers and their non-TV-induced counterparts. Thereby, the models could support decision-making with respect to future advertising campaigns and targeting. Third, the articles describe several possibilities to extend and improve decision support systems currently used in e-commerce and marketing. These improvements enable practitioners to predict users´ interests for arbitrary products and services by using corresponding websites as dependent variables. This approach can be used to improve the effectiveness of real-time advertising campaigns, especially those intended to raise brand awareness among customers.
Members of Western organizations differ in various diversity attributes. In response, research aims to provide evidence-based recommendations on how to effectively manage diversity in teams. Within diversity research, the diversity faultlines approach has been particularly fruitful. It considers the impact of the alignment of multiple diversity attributes in teams. Strong diversity faultlines are associated with the emergence of relatively homogeneous subgroups in teams and have an overall negative impact on team processes and outcomes. This dissertation investigates factors that mitigate the detrimental consequences of strong diversity faultlines in teams, namely pro-diversity beliefs. It extends faultline literature beyond the conventional focus on processes and outcomes related to team members by emphasizing the leaders' perspective. The three empirical papers included in this dissertation systematically examine how strong pro-diversity beliefs can help unleashing the positive effects of team diversity despite strong faultlines. The first paper highlights the role of leaders' pro-diversity beliefs in mitigating the negative impact of diversity faultlines on two team processes: perceived cohesion and social loafing. Moreover, it compares the impact of socio-demographic faultlines (based on gender and age) and experience-based faultlines (based on team tenure and education level). Data was collected in a multisource field sample with 217 team members nested in 44 teams and the corresponding leaders. The second paper takes the impact of members' pro-diversity beliefs into account. It examines whether the impact of sociodemographic faultlines on performance is contingent on leaders' and members' pro-diversity beliefs. Moreover, the research group assumed that aggregate LMX would mediate this relationship. In a multisource data set obtained from 41 teams with 219 members and the corresponding leaders working for the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the investigators found partial support for their hypotheses. As expected, the impact of strong socio-demographic faultlines on diplomats' performance was least negative when both leaders and members held strong pro-diversity beliefs. The third paper zooms into processes and outcomes related to team leaders. It investigates how leaders' pro-diversity beliefs and their perceptions of members' prodiversity beliefs in teams with strong socio-demographic faultlines impact leaders´ task role assignment, performance expectation, and motivation. The research group conducted two experimental studies with students, one in Germany (N=55) and one in the US (N=134). Findings showed that strong pro-diversity beliefs held and perceived by leaders made them assign task roles that cross-cut rather than aligned with the subgroup structure created by faultlines. Moreover, leaders' perceptions of members' pro-diversity beliefs, but not their own beliefs, had a positive impact on their motivation, mediated by their performance expectation.
In this dissertation the relation between time headway in car following and the subjective experience of a driver was researched. Three experiments were conducted in a driving simulator. Time headways in a range of 0.5 to 4.0 seconds were investigated at 50km/h, 100km/h, and 150km/h under varied visibility conditions and at differing levels of driver control over the car. The main research questions addressed the possible existence of a threshold effect for the subjective experience of time headways and the influence of vehicle speed, forward visibility, and vehicle control on the position of time headway thresholds. Furthermore, the validity of zero-risk driver behavior models was investigated. Results suggest that a threshold exists for the subjective experience of time headways in car following. This implies that the subjective experience of time headways stays constant for a range of time headways above a critical threshold. The subjective experience of a driver is only influenced by time headway once this critical time headway threshold is passed. Speed does not influence preferred time headway distances in self- and assisted-driving, i.e. time headway thresholds are constant for different speeds. However, in completely automated driving preferred time headways are influenced by vehicle speed. For higher speeds preferred time headways decrease. A reduction of forward visibility leads to a shift in preferred time headways towards larger time headways. Results of this dissertation give credence to zero-risk models of driver behavior.
Internet- and mobile technologies are increasingly used to deliver mental health care. E-Mental Health is promising for the prevention and treatment of mental disorders. However, while E-Mental Health was shown to be an effective treatment tool, fewer studies investigated the prevention of mental health problems with E-Mental Health approaches. In a series of three studies, this dissertation examines internet- and mobile-based approaches for the early monitoring and supporting of mental health. First, a pilot study investigates the use of smartphone data as collected by daily self-reports and sensor information for the self-monitoring of bipolar disorder symptoms. It was found that some, but not all smartphone measurements predicted clinical symptoms of mania and depression, indicating that smartphones could be used as an earlywarning system for patients with bipolar disorder. Second, a randomized controlled trial evaluates the effectiveness of an internet-based intervention among persons with depression and sickness absence. The intervention was found to be effective in reducing depressive symptoms compared to a control group, suggesting that the internet can provide effective support for people with sickness absence due to depression. Third, a study protocol proposes to combine self-monitoring with a mobile intervention to support mental health in daily life. Supportive self-monitoring will be evaluated in a fully mobile randomized controlled trial among a sample of smartphone users with psychological distress. If supportive self-monitoring on the basis of a smartphone application is effective, it could be widely distributed to monitor and support mental health on a population level. Finally, the contribution of the presented studies to current research topics in E-Mental Health is discussed.
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.
This work investigates how managers/consultants (practitioners) of different ranks are engaged in patterns of behavior (practices) in socially situated contexts (practice) attempting to shape preferred shared interpretations of reality to achieve their goals. Following this line of inquiry, the work aims at (1) advancing our understanding of the role of practitioners in shaping managerial realities and (2) investigating how practitioners actually shape managerial realities, particularly focusing on "reality-shaping" practices and their content. The dissertation comprises a set of four complementary articles investigating these research questions empirically based on in-depth, empirical case studies and theoretically within various managerial contexts (client-consultant relationship, CEO post-succession strategic change process, evolutionary initiative development) and considering different actor perspectives (top managers, middle managers, consultants and clients). Resulting from this variety, the articles rely on and contribute to different, at times distant, research fields and therewith scholarly discussions. However, the literature on sensemaking and sensegiving offers a suitable overarching theoretical frame which is used in this work to synthesize the key contributions of the four articles.
The increasing perils of connectivity technologies in the context of large satellite constellations come alongside with legal aspects concerning the protection of the space environment. The interplay of connectivity and sustainability must be regulated. To analyse the legal measures and tools regulating the risks, both sides of the problem are taken into consideration. The technological side of large satellite constellations is summarized under the term cybersecurity. Cyber is a code-based system, i.e. at first sight it requires a specialized field of law. This holds true on space sustainability as well. Large satellite constellations raise the discussion on space debris and junk. The consensus on the LTS guidelines by COPUOS at UNISPACE+50 in 2018 constitutes a milestone in Space Law. Space sustainability requires a particular adoption of legal norms: the idea is very similar to the subject of cybersecurity. Since both areas of issue are internationally driven and have multilateral impact, self-regulation proves ineffective. The genesis of reliable and uniform legal rules requires a different approach considering the multilevel systems of obligations with different binding authority. This thesis evaluates the balance between the future of connectivity and space sustainability in the context of large satellite constellations by considering the impact of legal rules with different binding authority.
In this dissertation, the author focuses on the link between (internal) corporate governance structures and processes and firms financial reporting quality. Specifically, the dissertation aims to provide insights into the following general research question: What is the effect of different corporate governance stakeholders on the financial reporting quality of a firm? The author provides insights into this question through three different articles. Paper #1 explores the relationship between family firm status and earnings management and synthesizes and explains previous research findings with the help of meta-analytic methods that are still uncommon in financial accounting research. The authors find a negative relationship between family firms and earnings management on average across 37 primary studies (and 305 effect sizes in total). Furthermore, they show that the considerable variation in size and direction of primary effect sizes can be explained by researchers choice of study design, earnings management proxy and different institutional settings. The second paper explores institutional owners as a different set of shareholders and their impact on financial reporting quality. The study enables the authors to compare the results against the backdrop of the previous chapter and to see different rationales that managers in institutionally-owned companies might have to engage in earnings management. Here, the authors study 511 effect sizes from a total of 87 primary studies and find that the average effect is slightly negative, meaning institutional owners on average can get more transparent earnings figures from the companies they invest in. Similar to the work they did on family firms, they find considerable heterogeneity between results from primary studies. Specifically, their multivariate meta-regression models can explain 26% of the variability in effect sizes, mainly attributable to study design choices. The third paper is concerned with managers and how managerial personality drives the propensity to engage in fraudulent accounting activities. The author uses a primary sample of 956 professionals, who work in accounting and finance departments, and ask them to rate their immediate superior on dark triad personality traits, as well as common actions taken by management to obscure and manipulate earnings figures. He finds that managers with high ratings for dark triad personality traits engage to a greater extent in fraudulent accounting practices, than managers scoring low on the dark triad scale. Moreover, the author can show that traditional risk management mechanisms, like internal audit departments, are only partially effective. Specifically, he finds that only internal audit departments that are fully staffed by external personnel can curb the adverse effect of dark triad managers on financial reporting quality. This suggests that managers with dark personalities can take advantage of mixed or entirely in-house internal audit departments. Overall, this dissertation contributes significantly to both literature streams of corporate governance and financial reporting quality. This work can explain a significant degree of heterogeneity in previous findings on the link between different kinds of ownership and earnings management. Further, it stresses that the considerable variation in current findings is not mainly attributable to cross-country differences, as previously suggested, but in no small part attributable to study design features. Finally, the author can provide additional evidence on current research linking executive personality traits and financial reporting practices.
Corporate irresponsibility is often the result of intentionally irresponsible strategies, decisions, or actions, which negatively affect an identifiable stakeholder or environment. For instance, these range from the violation of the human rights and labor standards to environmental damages. Organizations enacting irresponsible practices rely on different factors upon multiple levels (field, organizational, individual) and its interrelations as well as processes evolving within the organization leading to such behavior. However, reasons for the occurrence of and explanations for corporate irresponsibility so far have been limited, leaving a fragmented understanding of this phenomenon. This dissertation helps to improve the understanding and explanation of corporate irresponsibility by identifying driving patterns of corporate irresponsibility and showing how the interactions across multiple levels add to this phenomenon. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the topic of corporate irresponsibility, the theoretical approaches of this dissertation and an introduction to the chapters. The second chapter offers a review and analysis of the corporate irresponsibility literature. The chapter presents a variance model outlining the concept, antecedents, moderators and outcomes of recent corporate irresponsibility literature as well as the different factors across levels (field, organizational, individual). Chapter 2 offers a critical analysis of what we know by referring to current literature and offers insights on what we don't know by deriving main implications for future research on corporate irresponsibility. Chapter 3 enlarges the understanding of corporate irresponsibility introducing a process approach to explain how corporate irresponsibility evolves over time and under which conditions. Based on a qualitative meta-analysis findings converge around two distinct process paths of corporate irresponsibility, the opportunistic-proactive, and, the emerging-reactive, subdivided into three phases. Chapter 3 sheds different lights upon the phases of corporate irresponsibility and its underlying mechanisms. The final chapter 4 focuses on different underlying mechanisms driving the final downfall or demise of organizations, organizational failure. Chapter 4 offers an alternative explanation to the competing extremism and inertia mechanisms driving organizational failure in recent studies by suggesting that these explanations are rather complementary. In addition, chapter 4 enlarges the explanation of organizational failure identifying the role of conflict mechanisms and its interplay with rigidity mechanisms. In sum, this dissertation contributes to a better understanding of what causes and increases corporate irresponsibility, and a better explanation of how and why corporate irresponsibility and organizational failure emerges, develops, grows or terminates over time.
In this cumulative thesis, the author presents four manuscripts and two appendixes. In the manuscripts he discusses mindsets and their relation to the effectiveness of negotiation training. His general claim is that mindsets promise to be relevant for training effectiveness. Still, more research needs to be done and chapter 3 presents the Scale for the Integrative Mindset of Negotiators (SIM) that can be used for some of that research. In the appendixes, the author presents two negotiation training exercises. The first addresses an international refugee policy summit and the second a negotiation over the sale of a large solar pv park in Thailand.
Employee health is an important factor for individual and organizational performance. In particular the healthcare sector is characterized by high physical and mental demands that result in poor employee health and high levels of sick leave. One way to support employee health at the workplace is through leadership. By creating a healthy work environment and climate, leadership can promote employee health and well-being, in particular health-specific leadership. However, there has been scant insights into contextual factors that are relevant for health-specific leadership. This dissertation aims to investigate the relevance of contextual factors for health-specific leadership and its relationship with employee health. Three studies were conducted to identify relevant individual and work-related characteristics for health-specific leadership as well as to investigate the influence of specific individual and organizational factors. The first study is a questionnaire-based survey with 861 healthcare employees. Its findings show a positive relationship between health-specific leadership and employee health in the healthcare sector. Social demands and social resources are analysed as mediating factors. Furthermore, the affective commitment of employees is considered as an additional outcome of health-specific leadership. The second study identifies drivers and barriers for health-specific leadership in an explorative design based on 51 interviews with healthcare managers and collates these factors with the theoretical background. The findings show various influencing factors relating to leadership, employees, and the organization. The third study investigates the influence of individual factors on health-specific leadership and is based on a questionnaire survey among 525 healthcare employees. Managers personal initiative and employee self-care influence the relationship between health-specific leadership and employee burnout in different ways. In summary, this dissertation contributes to the literature by putting health-specific leadership into context and providing insights into influencing factors. The findings broaden the understanding of how health-specific leadership can influence employee health. The implications for theory and practice are discussed and directions for future research are outlined.
The process perspective provides a unifying framework that has substantially contributed to our understanding of entrepreneurship. However, much of the research up to now has neglected this process oriented conception of entrepreneurship. There is therefore a need for studies that take the inherent dynamic processes into account and analyze the underlying mechanisms when researching entrepreneurship. This dissertation aims to improve our understanding of the entrepreneurial process. Specifically, this dissertation focuses on new venture creation and the processes of sustainable opportunity identification and opportunity deviation. Chapter 1 provides a general introduction that highlights the theoretical contributions of this dissertation and gives an overview over the conducted studies. Chapter 2 argues for a process model of entrepreneurship that places entrepreneurs and their actions center stage. The model combines different perspectives and levels of analysis and provides an integrative framework for researching new venture creation. In chapter 3 we establish and test a theoretical model of sustainable opportunity identification. The chapter explains how younger generations identify sustainable opportunities. The findings indicate that sustainable opportunity identification is a process with two transitions from problem to solution identification and from solution identification to sustainable opportunity identification. These transitions are contingent on awareness of consequences and entrepreneurial attitude. Chapter 4 offers insights into how deviation from the original opportunity increases the performance of entrepreneurial teams. The findings indicate that entrepreneurial teams with a high level of error orientation set themselves higher goals when deviating from their original opportunity. Higher goals then lead to higher team performance. Chapter 5 summarizes the overall findings and outlines the general theoretical and practical implications. Each chapter thus contributes to the process perspective by focusing on how different phases of the entrepreneurial process unfold and develop over time. Thereby, this dissertation advances our understanding of entrepreneurship as a process.
This dissertation analyses external appointees and successions on boards and consists of three papers which are all empirical in nature. It provides insights into the present literature from a meta-perspective, enlarges the understanding of external successions to German executive bank boards and extends the rare number of studies on the internal supervisory bodies of bank institutions. The first paper highlights the existing literature: conducting a literature search process, the paper aggregates 102 empirical results from 28 journal articles and working papers published between 1990 and 2017. The meta-analysis focuses on how researchers address the build-in issue that outsiders are not randomly assigned to firms. The results reveal that the relationship of outside successions and performance varies significantly with the methodological characteristics of the original studies. The following two papers concentrate on successions in banking institutions. More specifically, the second study examines the appointments of executive directors external to the bank and the consequences of that appointment on bank performance. The study addresses in particular alternative explanations, i.e. outside selection and/or joint endogeneity, while examining external executive appointments and their consequences on bank performance. The second empirical paper lend significant support to the view that some outsiders are better predisposed to helping the bank turn around poor performance and that the selected proxies of managerial ability, which are based on the historical return on assets and risk-return efficiency measured at outsiders' former banks, are able to identify such good outsiders. Finally, the third paper considers the link between the executive and the supervisory board. The study points to the conclusion that newly appointed executives to the supervisory board differ from their non-appointed counterparts with a particular set of experiences. The study provides evidence for the view that the pre-appointment financial situation, measured by several proxies of bank risk and performance, has significant influence on the decision to appoint such an experienced member to the supervisory board. This dissertation is framed by an introduction and concluding chapter where the author reflects on the research questions of her empirical studies, summarizes the results and identifies some possibilities for future research.
The concept of empowerment has gained considerable attention in the field of international development. Institutions such as the World Bank and the United Nations invest considerable funds and efforts trying to facilitate empowerment in developing countries. Thus, empowerment becomes important when people need to take action and be innovative in overcoming scarcity and fighting against poverty. Research shows the positive effects of empowerment on entrepreneurship-related behavior and outcomes such as proactive behavior, goal achievement, and innovation. Yet, there is a dearth of research addressing the phenomenon of empowerment in entrepreneurship. This dissertation aims to contribute to the understanding of the role of empowerment in entrepreneurship and its effects. Particularly, this dissertation targets the interplay between empowerment and entrepreneurship in the context of developing countries. Chapter 1 provides a general overview of the different topics of this dissertation. Chapter 2, introduces the construct of psychological empowerment at work as the theoretical foundation to advocate for the importance of empowerment in entrepreneurship. The chapter takes initial steps in drawing the rationale and identifying empirical evidence for the relationship between empowerment and entrepreneurial behavior and outcomes. Specifically, the chapter links the components of psychological empowerment to concrete action characteristics in entrepreneurship such as effectuation and experimentation. Chapter 3 establishes a first empirical link between empowerment and entrepreneurship. The chapter provides the construct of entrepreneurial empowerment and develops a multidimensional measure to measure its dimensions. By means of a nomological network, the chapter reveals the relations of entrepreneurial empowerment with relevant constructs and outcomes derived from entrepreneurship and empowerment research such as innovation, self-reliance, and decision-making. Chapter 4 posits entrepreneurship training, particularly personal initiative training and business literacy training, as effective means to facilitate entrepreneurial empowerment and its effect on business performance. The chapter uncovers the mechanisms accounting for the relationship between entrepreneurship training and entrepreneurial empowerment. Chapter 5 provides general theoretical and practical contributions and finishes with a general conclusion.
Online marketing, especially Paid Search Advertising, has become one of the most important paid media channels for companies to sell their products and services online. Despite being under intensive examination by a number of researchers for several years, this topic still offers interesting opportunities to contribute to the community, particularly because of its large economic impact and practical relevance as well as the detailed and widely unfiltered view of consumer behavior that such marketing offers. To provide answers to some of the important questions from advertisers in this context, the author present four papers in his thesis, in which he extends previous works on optimization topics such as click and conversion prediction. He applies and extends methods from other fields of research to specific problems in Paid Search. After a short introduction, the dissertation starts with a paper in which the authors illustrates a new method that helps advertisers to predict conversion probabilities in Paid Search using sparse keyword-level data. They address one of the central problems in Paid search advertising, which is optimizing own investments in this channel by placing bids in keyword auctions. In many cases, evaluations and decisions are made with extremely sparse data, although anecdotal evidence suggests that online marketing is a typical "Big Data" topic. In the developed algorithm presented in this paper, the authors use information such as the average time that users spend on the advertiser's website and bounce rates for every given keyword. This previously unused data set is shared between all keywords and used as prior knowledge in the proposed model. A modified version of this algorithm is now the core prediction engine in a productive Paid Search Bid Optimization System that calculates and places millions of bids every day for some of the most recognized retailers and service providers in the German market. Next, the author illustrates the development of a non-reactive experimental method for A/B testing of Paid Search Advertising activities. In that paper, the authors provide an answer to the question of whether and under what circumstances it makes economic sense for brand owners to pay for Paid Search ads for their own brand keywords in Google AdWords auctions. Finally, the author presents two consecutive papers with the same theoretical foundation in which he applies Bayesian methods to evaluate the impact of specific text features in Paid Search Advertisements.
The dissertation analyzes the role of large banks in the context of financial (in)stability. Based on the underlying "too big to fail"-problem (TBTF), the three included papers investigate the reasons for the instability of banking systems on a national and international level. Already in advance, but at least since the years 2007/2008 with the escalation of the financial crisis, especially large banks are under critical supervision of regulators and the society. There exist numerous aspects that should to be taken into account when addressing TBTF which complicates the finding of a solution to the problem. In particular, the thesis investigates three major issues in this context: (1) The contribution of the size of a bank to the development of financial crises or the exposure of large banks to systematic risk and contagious spillovers. (2) The spillover effects from one banking system to another and the importance of banks' foreign asset holdings for the transmission of sovereign risk on foreign banks. (3) The impact of the degree of competition in the German banking market on the stability of the banking system.
Essays on Say-on-Pay: theoretical analysis, literature review and empirical evidence from Germany
(2019)
The dissertation contains four journal articles together with a framework manuscript. The overall subject is the so-called Say-on-Pay (SOP) vote. SOP is a law that enables shareholders to vote on the appropriateness of executive compensation during the firms’ annual general meeting. The dissertation investigates SOP votes from different angles. While the framework provides a background for the relevance of the work, outlines existing research gaps, covers an in-depth discussion and concludes relevant research questions, the four articles present the essence of the dissertation. The first article is a theoretical paper on the recent advances of behavioural agency theory. It serves as a theoretical foundation for the empirical work of the dissertation. Although principal-agent theory has gained a prominent place in research, its negative image of self-serving managers is frequently criticized. Consequently, scholars advocate the utilization of positive management theories, such as stewardship theory. This paper reviews the literature of both theoretical concepts and describes how behavioural characteristics allow for a mutually beneficial symbiosis of the two theories. The second article establishes the foundation of the scholarly knowledge in the field by systematically reviewing the empirical literature. The review covers 71 empirical articles published between January 1995 and September 2017. The studies are reviewed within an empirical research framework that separates the reasons for shareholder activism and SOP voting dissent as input factor on the one hand and the consequences of shareholder pressure as output factor on the other. The implications are analysed, and new directions for further research are discussed by proposing 19 different research questions. Building on the research gaps defined in the literature review, the third article is an empirical manuscript. In this paper, a hand-selected sample of 1,676 annual general meetings with 268 management-sponsored SOP votes in 164 different companies between 2010 and 2015 in Germany is analysed. The analysis focused on the structure, rather than the level, of executive compensation by applying a sample-selection model and panel data regression. Finally, the fourth paper investigates the rare setting of voluntary SOP votes. Using 1,841 annual general meetings of listed firms in Germany between 2010 and 2016, the effects of financial and non-financial (sustainable) performance on SOP voting likelihood and voting results are tested.
This cumulative dissertation deals with the association between corporate governance, corporate finance and corporate tax avoidance in four scientific articles. The aim of this dissertation is to explain corporate tax avoidance by (a) focusing on corporate governance institutions as determinants of tax avoidance and (b) focusing on financial consequences of tax avoidance. Due to the close association between corporate governance and the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR), the relationship between CSR and tax avoidance is also addressed. The first article using structured literature review methodology, analyzes extant research on the association between corporate governance and tax avoidance based on stakeholder-agency theory. However, also classical principal-agent theory is taken into account as its classical foundation. The first article identifies a number of open research questions and thereby serves as a theoretical basis for the subsequent articles. The second article also using structured literature review methodology, analyzes extant research on the association between CSR and tax avoidance. This article is also based on stakeholder-agency theory and identifies open research questions. The third article based on results of the first article, investigates tax avoidance by German private family firms as a specific variant of corporate governance, using an empirical quantitative approach. The article finds that (a) German private family firms avoid more tax than non-family firms, that (b) tax avoidance is positively associated with the capital stake of the family and that (c) tax avoidance is positively associated with the number of shareholders in both family and non-family firms. Results reinforce that corporate tax avoidance is associated to conflicts among the shareholders of private firms. The fourth article investigates the cost of debt of German public firms as a function of tax avoidance and tax risk. The article finds that (a) tax avoidance is negatively associated to the cost of debt, that (b) tax risk is positively associated to the cost of debt and that (c) the association between tax avoidance and the cost of debt becomes negative when a high level of tax risk is present.
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, the author analyzes 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, the author conducts a systematic literature review on spousal influence in entrepreneurship and identifies six recurrent types of influence. Complementing the literature originating from Western settings, she develops propositions on how the sub-Saharan context affects husbands' influence on women entrepreneurship in this region. In Chapter 3, she builds 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, the author explores 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.
Space-related science and technologies affect our daily life. Many countries have already formulated national space regulations to regulate their space activities. China, as one space-faring country, has obtained several 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.
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. 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.
This cumulative thesis extends the econometric literature on testing for cointegration in nonstationary panel data with cross-sectional dependence. Its self-contained chapters consist of two publications and two publication manuscripts which present three new panel tests for the cointegrating rank and an empirical study of the exchange rate pass-through to import prices in Europe. The first chapter introduces a new cointegrating rank test for panel data where the dependence is assumed to be driven by unobserved common factors. The common factors are first estimated and subtracted from the observations. Then an existing likelihood-ratio panel cointegration test is applied to the defactored data. The distribution of the test statistic, computed from defactored data, is shown to be asymptotically equivalent to that of a test statistic computed from cross-sectionally independent data. The second chapter proposes a new panel cointegrating rank test based on a multiple testing procedure, which is robust to positive dependence between the individual units' test statistics. The assumption of a certain type of positive dependence is shown by simulations not to be violated in panels with dependence structures commonly assumed in practice. The new test is applied to find empirical support of the monetary exchange rate model in a panel of eight OECD countries. The third chapter puts forward a new panel cointegration test allowing for both cross-sectional dependence and structural breaks. It employs known individual likelihood-ratio test statistics accounting for breaks in the deterministic trend and combines their p-values by a novel modification of the Inverse Normal method. The average correlation between the probits is inferred from the average cross-sectional correlation between the residuals of the individual VAR models in first differences. The fourth chapter studies the exchange rate pass-through to import prices in a panel of nineteen European countries through the prism of panel cointegration. Empirical evidence supporting a theoretical long-run equilibrium relationship between the model's variables is found by the newly proposed panel cointegration tests. Two different panel regression models, which take both cointegration and cross-sectional dependence into account, provide most recent estimates of the exchange rate pass-through elasticities.
This paper-based dissertation deals with capital structures and tax policies of German family businesses. Family firms as the predominant company form in Germany are mainly characterized by the overlapping of the two spheres family and business, both having different goal systems and preferences. This also has an impact on decision making with regard to corporate finance including the application of tax avoidance policies. In Germany, bank finance is the dominant financing source for family firms but there is a preference for internal finance since it comes along with more external independency. Extant research usually bases its results on samples of publicly listed companies. These studies come up with different results regarding family firms' actual financing preferences and capture their heterogeneity only to a very little extent. In this light, the present dissertation and its three papers examine different research questions in the context of capital structure decisions and tax avoidance in family firms. All the three papers apply a quantitative empirical research design. The first paper is a comparison between capital structures of family firms and non-family firms. The paper examines differences in bank debt and trade credit ratios. 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. The second paper is an in-depth examination of drivers of bank debt levels within the group of family firms. Further, it addresses heterogeneity amongst family firms and combines survey results and corresponding financial information. This represents a first attempt to capture family firm heterogeneity and its link to financial issues. The study shows that the more power in the company is exerted via management or supervisory board by the family, the less bank debt is used. Paper three is an extension of the previous two studies as it sheds light on tax avoidance, a significant instrument to strengthen the internal financing capability of a firm. This also takes up a research gap as there is very little research on taxation in family firms. Contrary to the expectation, the study reveals that private family firms might pay less tax than their non-family peers.
On 25 October 2016, the European Commission presented a proposal for a directive on a Common Corporate Tax Base (CCTB Proposal), which contains a comprehensive concept for the harmonisation of profit calculation regulations within the EU. Against this current background, the objective of the present work is to contribute to the implementation of the CCTB by identifying ambiguities and conceptual weaknesses in the design of the profit determination system of the CCTB Proposal and developing concrete recommendations for action for adjustments in the course of the further legislative procedure. In the first article, selected profit calculation rules of the CCTB Proposal will be analysed in detail and compared with the provisions on profit calculation under German commercial and tax law and the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) recognised across member states. Based on the legal comparison, questions of interpretation and inadequacies of the profit calculation system will be considered and proposals for adjustments to various regulatory areas will be submitted. Furthermore, in the second article, within the framework of a holistic study, expert interviews will be used as an empirical-qualitative research design to generate reliable assessments on the part of the various stakeholder groups affected by the implementation of the future directive or involved in its elaboration. The results show the extent to which the profit determination rules of the CCTB Proposal in their current form are suitable for national and EU-wide implementation and in which areas the various expert groups still see concrete need for adaptation. Based on these expert assessments, the third article finally develops a proposal to reduce the threat of legal uncertainty in interpretation issues criticised by the experts. Based on economic maxims developed by the European Commission and existing accounting principles of the current CCTB Proposal, the EU Accounting Directive and IFRS, a system of specific European tax principles will be developed which could be implemented within the framework of the CCTB Proposal.
Decoding the psychological dimensions of human odor perception has long been a central issue of olfactory research. As odor percepts could not be linked to a few measurable physicochemical features of odorous compounds or physiological characteristics of the olfactory system, odor qualities have often been assessed by perception–based ratings. Although these approaches have been promising, none of the proposed system has sustained empirical validation. In a review of 28 studies, the authors assessed how basic characteristics of study design have been biasing perception–based classification systems: (1) interindividual differences in perceptual and verbal abilities of subjects, (2) stimuli characteristics, (3) approaches of data collection, and (4) methods of data analysis. Remarkably, many of the difficulties in establishing these systems have been rooted in one underlying issue: the puzzling relationship between language and olfaction in general. While the reference from odors to language is weak, the reverse impact of verbal processing on olfaction seems powerful. Odor perception is biased by verbal–semantic processes when cues of an odor's source are readily available from the context. At the same time, olfaction has been characterized as basically sensation driven when this information is absent. The authors examined whether language effects occur when verbal cues are absent and how expectations about an odor's identity shape odor evaluations. Subjects were asked to rate 20 unlabeled odor samples on perceptual dimensions as well as quality attributes and to eventually provide an odor source name. In a subsequent session, they performed the same rating tasks on a set of written odor labels that was compiled individually for each participant. It included both the 20 correct odor names (true labels) and – in any case of incorrect odor naming in the first session – the self–generated labels (identified labels). The authors compared odor ratings to ratings of both types of labels and found higher consistencies between the evaluation of an odor and its identified label than between the description of an odor and its true (yet not associated) label. These results indicate that basic perceptual as well as quality ratings are affected by semantic information about an odor's source – even in absence of source cues. That is, odor sensation may activate a semantic mental representation of an odorous object that affects odor processing and may in turn relate to further multimodal properties. That means, associations between odors and stimuli from other sensory modalities should not only be stable, but these mappings should be mediated by an odor’s identity. The authors asked subjects to visualize their odor associations on a drawing tablet, freely deciding on color and shape. Additionally, they provided a verbal label for each sample. Color mappings were odor-specific, they reflected the imagery of a natural source and seemed to change with assumed odor identity. Shape mappings changed with odor identifications as well, as drawings frequently displayed concrete objects that reflected visual features of an odor's source. The influence of verbal identity codes on quality ratings or crossmodal mappings is rooted in the very same problem that perception–based classification systems have tried to solve – a terminology that relates to abstract mental categories. The less specific we communicate, the more we need to resort to source–related analogies – in scientific endeavors and everyday life alike.
When Libet and colleagues published their results on the temporal order of movement preparation and the reported time of conscious will to move in 1983, they shed some doubt on the existence of free will. This marked the beginning of a controversial and still ongoing debate, not only about the existence of free will, but also about the appropriateness of methods and validity of results from research on free will. Belief in free will was also discovered as psychological research topic. Literature on belief in free will shows some evidence that most laypersons across different cultural backgrounds believe that they have free will and that a person's belief in free will might have an impact on cognition and behavior, tending to positive outcomes with a greater belief in free will. Empirical findings from the German-speaking area are sparse, probably due to a lack of validated measurements assessing belief in free will available in the German language. The aim of this dissertation is to critically examine some aspects in psychological research on free will and the belief in free will. Two studies are reported that aim to generalize the Libet paradigm for a free and voluntary decision with consequences for the acting person, as this was never reported to have been researched in literature before, and to test the critical objection that the measurement of reporting the conscious intention to move has a direct effect on the result in the Libet paradigm. Furthermore, the construction of the first inventory measuring belief in free will in the German language is described. This inventory was also created with the aim of overcoming some methodological problems in the existing instruments in English language. Furthermore, studies on the experimental manipulability of the belief in free will are reported. These findings provide implications in view of the current state of research on free will and belief in free will and its reliability.
The wide accessibility of the Internet and web-based programs enable an increased volume of online interventions for mental health treatment. In contrast to traditional face-to-face therapy, online treatment has the potential to overcome some of the barriers such as improved geographical accessibility, individual time planning, and reduced costs. The availability of clients' treatment data fuels research to analyze the collected data to obtain a better understanding of the relationship among symptoms in mental disorders and derive outcome and symptom predictions. This research leads to predictive models that can be integrated into the online treatment process to assist clinicians and clients. This dissertation discusses different aspects of the development of predictive modeling in online treatment: Categorization of predictive models, data analyses for predictive purposes, and model evaluation. Specifically, the categorization of predictive models and barriers against the uptake of mental health treatment are discussed in the first part of this dissertation. Data analysis and predictive modeling are emphasized in the second part by presenting methods for inference and prediction of mood as well as the prediction of treatment outcome and costs. Prediction of future and current mood can be beneficial in many aspects. Inference of users' mood levels based on unobtrusive measures or diary data can provide crucial information for intervention scheduling. Prediction of future mood can be used to assess clients' response to the treatment and expected treatment outcome. Prediction of the expected treatment costs and outcomes for different treatment types allows simultaneous optimization of these objectives and to increase the cost-effectiveness of the treatment. In the third part, a systematic predictive model evaluation incorporating simulation analyses is demonstrated and a method for model parameter estimation for computationally limited devices is presented. This dissertation aims to overcome the current challenges of predictive model development and its use in online treatment. The development of predictive models for varies data collected in online treatment is demonstrated and how these models can be applied in practice. The derived results contribute to computer science and mental health research with client individual data analysis, the development ofpredictive models, and their statistical evaluation.
Analysis of User Behavior
(2020)
Online behaviors analysis consists of extracting patterns from server-logs. The works presented here were carried out within the "mBook" project which aimed to develop indicators of the quantity and quality of the learning process of pupils from their usage of an eponymous electronic textbook for History. In this thesis, the research group investigates several models that adopt different points of view on the data. The studied methods are either well established in the field of pattern mining or transferred from other fields of machine learning and data mining. The authors improve the performance of archetypal analysis in large dimensions and apply it to unveil correlations between visibility time of particular objects in the e-textbook and pupils' motivation. They present next two models based on mixtures of Markov chains. The first extracts users' weekly browsing patterns. The second is designed to process essions at a fine resolution, which is sine qua non to reveal the significance of scrolling behaviors. The authors also propose a new paradigm for online behaviors analysis that interprets sessions as trajectories within the page-graph. In this respect, they establish a general framework for the study of similarity measures between spatio-temporal trajectories, for which the study of sessions is a particular case. Finally, they construct two centroid-based clustering methods using neural networks and thus lay the foundations for unsupervised behaviors analysis using neural networks.
This cumulative dissertation embraces four empirical papers addressing socio-economic issues relevant to policy-makers and society as a whole. These papers cover important aspects of human life including health at birth, life satisfaction, unemployment periods and retirement decisions. The analyses are carried out applying advanced econometric methods and are based on data sets consisting of survey data as well as administrative records. The first joint paper investigates the causal impact of prenatal exposure to air pollution on neonatal health in Italy in the 2000s combining detailed information on mother's residential location from birth certificates with PM10 concentrations from air pollution monitors. Variation in local weekly rainfall is exploited as an instrumental variable for non-random air pollution exposure. Using quasi-experimental variation in rainfall shocks allows to identify the effect of PM10, ruling out potential bias due to confounder pollutants. The paper estimates the effect of exposure for both the entire pregnancy period and separately for each trimester to test whether the neonatal health effects are driven by pollution exposure during a particular gestation period. This information enhances our understanding of the mechanisms at work and help prevent pregnant mothers from most dangerous exposure periods. Additionally, the effects of prenatal exposure to PM10 are estimated by maternal labor market status and maternal education level to understand how the pollution burden is shared across different population groups. This decomposition allows to identify possible mechanisms through which environmental inequality reinforces the negative impact of early-life exposure to air pollution. This study finds that average PM10 and days with PM10 level above the hazard limit reduce birth weight, gestational age, and measures of overall newborn health. Effects are largest for third trimester exposure and for low-income and less educated mothers. The second joint paper updates previous findings on the total East-West gap in overall life satisfaction and its trend by using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel for the years 1992 to 2013. Additionally, the effects are separately analyzed for men and women as well as for four birth cohorts. The results indicate that reported life satisfaction is, on average, significantly lower in East than in West German federal states and that part of the raw East-West gap is due to differences in household income and unemployment status. The conditional East-West gap decreased in the first years after the German reunification and remained quite stable and sizable since the mid-nineties. The results further indicate that gender differences are small. Finally, the East-West gap is significantly smaller and shows a trend towards convergence for younger birth cohorts. The third joint paper explores the effects of a major reform of unemployment benefits in Germany on the labor market outcomes of individuals with some health impairment. The reform induced a substantial reduction in the potential duration of regular unemployment benefits for older workers. This work analyzes the reform in a wider framework of institutional interactions, which allows to distinguish between its intended and unintended effects. The results based on routine data collected by the German Statutory Pension Insurance and a Difference-in-Differences design provide causal evidence for a significant decrease in the number of days in unemployment benefits and increase in the number of days in employment. However, they also suggest a significant increase in the number of days in unemployment assistance, granted upon exhaustion of unemployment benefits. Transitions to unemployment assistance represent an unintended effect, limiting the success of a policy change that aims to increase labor supply via reductions in the generosity of the unemployment insurance system. The fourth, single-authored paper explores how an increase in the early retirement age affects labor force participation of older workers. The analysis is based on a social security reform in Germany, which raised the early retirement age over several birth cohorts to boost employment of older people and ultimately alleviate the burden on the public pension system. Detailed administrative data from the Federal Employment Agency allow to distinguish between employment and unemployment as well as disability pensions and retirement benefits claims. Using a Regression Kink design in a quasi-experimental framework, the author shows that the raised early retirement age had positive employment effects and negative effects on retirement benefits claims. The results also show that some population groups are more sensitive to a reduction in retirement options and more likely to seek benefits from other government programs. In this respect, the author finds that workers in manufacturing sector respond to the raised early retirement age by claiming benefits from the disability insurance program designed to compensate for reduced earnings capacity due to severe health problems. The treatment heterogeneity analysis further suggests that high-wage workers are more likely to delay exits from employment, which is in line with incentives but might also indicate an increased inequality within the affected birth cohorts induced by the reform. Finally, women seem to rely on alternative sources of income such as retirement benefits for women, or spouse's or partner's income not observed in the data. All things considered, workers did not adjust to the increased early retirement age by substituting early retirement with other government programs but rather responded to the reform in line with the policy intent. At the same time, the findings point to heterogeneous behavioral responses across different population groups. This implies that raising the early retirement age is an effective policy tool to increase employment only among older people who have the real choice to delay employment exits. Therefore, reforms that raise statutory ages should ensure social support for workers only marginally attached to the labor market or not able to work longer due to potential health problems or other circumstances.
Technological development made it possible to store and process data on a scale not imaginable decades ago — a development that also includes network data. A particular characteristic of network data is that, unlike standard data, the objects of interest, called nodes, have relationships to (possibly all) other objects in the network. Collecting empirical data is often complicated and cumbersome, hence, the observed data are typically incomplete and might also contain other types of errors. Because of the interdependent structure of network data, these errors have a severe impact on network analysis methods. This cumulative dissertation is about the impact of erroneous network data on centrality measures, which are methods to assess the position of an object, for example a person, with respect to all other objects in a network. Existing studies have shown that even small errors can substantially alter these positions. The impact of errors on centrality measures is typically quantified using a concept called robustness. The articles included in this dissertation contribute to a better understanding of the robustness of centrality measures in several aspects. It is argued why the robustness needs to be estimated and a new method is proposed. This method allows researchers to estimate the robustness of a centrality measure in a specific network and can be used as a basis for decision making. The relationship between network properties and the robustness of centrality measures is analyzed. Experimental and analytical approaches show that centrality measures are often more robust in networks with a larger average degree. The study of the impact of non-random errors on the robustness suggests that centrality measures are often more robust if missing nodes are more likely to belong to the same community compared to missingness completely at random. For the development of imputation procedures based on machine learning techniques, a process for the evaluation of node embedding methods is proposed.
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.
In this dissertation, advanced nonlinear control strategies and nonlinear minimum-variance observation are combined, in order to improve the estimation and/or tracking quality within control and fault detection tasks, for several types of systems from the fields of electromobility and conventional drivetrain technology that have some potential for sustainability or performance improvements. The application-specific innovations in terms of nonlinear Kalman filter methods are: (1) Improved state of charge estimation for Lithium-ion battery cells, powered by a novel self-adaptive EKF that uses a high-order polynomial curve fit as a decomposition of the uncertain nonlinear output equation with intentionally redundant bases, and with a reduced number of polynomial parameters that are adapted online by the EKF itself. (2) Online estimation of the time delay between two periodic signals of roughly the same shape that have pronounced uncorrelated noise, based on a fractional-order approximation of the transcendent transfer function of the time delay which is used as a model in a novel kind of EKF. (3) Using two (E)KFs (one for the linear subsystem and one for the nonlinear subsystem of a new kind of multi-stage piezo-hydraulic actuator) in a cascaded loop structure in order to reduce the computation load of the estimation, by appropriate 'interfacing' between the two observers (using one shared system model equation, among other aspects). - The innovations in terms of nonlinear control methods are powered by observation, as well: (1) Sliding mode velocity control of a DC drive that is subject to nonlinear friction and unknown load torques, enhanced by an equivalent control law, and with a new intelligent switching gain adaptation scheme (for reduced control chattering and, thus, less energy consumption and actuator wear), which is powered by Taylor-linearized model predictive control, which in turn requires observer-based disturbance compensation (by a KF with a double-integrator disturbance model) for model-matching purposes in order to function correctly. (2) Direct speed control of permanent-magnet three-phase synchronous motors that have a high power-to-volume ratio, based on sliding mode control in a rotating d,q coordinate system, with a new equivalent control method that exploits both system inputs and with a secondary sliding surface to ensure compliance with the current-trajectory of maximum efficiency for the required torque, and which works without measurement of the rotor angle (thanks to a new kind of EKF that estimates all states in the stationary α,β coordinate system, as well as the disturbance/load torque and its derivative). In all instances, improvements (compared to methods existing in the literature) in terms of control and estimation performance have been achieved and confirmed using simulation studies or real experiments.
The dissertation contains four journal articles which are embedded within a framework manuscript that interconnects the individual articles and provides relevant background information. The dissertation's overall objective is to provide a multilayered and critical in-depth engagement with the timely phenomenon of integrated reporting (IR), a new reporting concept that is envisaged to revolutionize firms' present reporting infrastructure. While extant corporate reports (e.g., annual financial- and CSR report) often are criticized for being disconnected and to suffer from a lack of coherence, IR intends to provide all information that is material to a firm's short-, medium- und long-term value creation within one single, succinct document. To contribute to a set of previously defined relevant research gaps in literature, the dissertation makes use of a combined empirical-quantitative and explorative-qualitative research design. The first article entitled investigates a set of different IR-, corporate governance and financial accounting-specific factors that are expected to determine European and South African firms' materiality disclosure quality. To this purpose, an original, hand-collected materiality disclosure score was developed. The second article explores IR perceptions of SME managers that have not embarked on IR, but are potential candidates to do so in future. Based on a review of extant literature, the article develops a theoretical framework to subsequently discuss motives for and barriers to IR adoption. The critical discussion contributes to the academic debate on incentives for and barriers to voluntary IR adoption. The third article investigates whether voluntary IR adoption among European firms is associated with lower cost of public debt. While earlier studies suggest that IR leads to lower information asymmetries, increases analyst forecasts, and decreases cost of equity, corresponding evidence for the debt market is largely missing. Subsequent analyses test as to whether such an association is even more pronounced by a firm's environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance or its belonging to an environmentally sensitive industry. The fourth article uses an experimental design to investigate nonprofessional investors' reactions to an IR assurance. To this purpose, two separate experiments with two different groups of nonprofessional investors were carried out: one with Masters students and one with managers of large corporations. Results help to answer the question as to whether an IR assurance as well as its determinants, namely the assurance provider and the assurance level, affect nonprofessional investors' financial decision-making. In the second step, subsequent in-depth interviews reveal an IR assurance-critical attitude among managers, who draw upon their practical experience with assurance engagements.
This dissertation focused on the nature and role of organizational practices for the employment of older people and the extension of their working lives. The set of four articles is driven by the objective to further deepen our understanding of how organizations can facilitate ageing at work to the benefit of both, employees and employers. Findings are empirically based on qualitative expert interview data from Germany and the U.S. and several quantitative field studies among older employees in Germany. To bridge gaps in measurement of organizational practices related to aging at work, this dissertation proposes a new comprehensive, multifaceted, and thoroughly conceptualized measure of organizational practices related to aging at work, the Later Life Workplace Index (LLWI). Through the course of the four articles the LLWI is conceptually developed based on qualitative interview data, operationalized, validated based on multiple field studies among older workers, and applied in a multi-level study among older employees of 101 organizations. Results suggest that organizational practices are not uniform, but multifaceted in their presence within organizations and their effects for the employment of older workers. The LLWI distinguishes nine domains of practices including an age-friendly organizational climate, work design, individual development, and practices tailoring the retirement transition. Thus, it may lay the foundation for more granular organizational level research in the field. Further, this dissertation's fourth article applies the LLWI and argues based on person-environment fit and socio-emotional selectivity theory that organizational practices address different individual needs and, thus, affect employment depending on employees' individual characteristics. Results suggest that older employees' retirement intentions are effected by individual development, transition-to-retirement, and continued employment practices depending on their health resources. Application of the new measure in practice to improve organizations' response to the aging workforce and opportunities for future research based on the LLWI are discussed.
Mental health is an important factor in an individuals' life. Online-based interventions have been developed for the treatment of various mental disorders. During these interventions, a large amount of patient-specific data is gathered that can be utilized to increase treatment outcomes by informing decision-making processes of psychotherapists, experts in the field, and patients. The articles included in this dissertation focus on the analysis of such data collected in digital psychological treatments by using machine learning approaches. This dissertation utilizes various machine learning methods such as Bayesian models, regularization techniques, or decision trees to predict different psychological factors, such as mood or self-esteem, dropout of patients, or treatment outcomes and costs. These models are evaluated using a variety of performance metrics, for example, receiver operating characteristics curve, root mean square error, or specialized performance metrics for Bayesian inference. These types of analyses can support decision- making for psychologists and patients, which can, in turn, lead to better recommendations and subsequently to increased outcomes for patients and simultaneously more insight about the interplay between psychological factors. The analysis of user journey data has not yet been fully examined in the field of psychological research. A process for this endeavor is developed and a technical implementation is provided for the research community. The application of machine learning in this context is still in its infancy. Thus, another contribution is the exploration and application of machine learning techniques for the revelation of correlations between psychological factors or characteristics and treatment outcomes as well as their prediction. Additionally, economic factors are predicted to develop a process for treatment type recommendations. This approach can be utilized for finding the optimal treatment type for patients on an individual level considering predicted treatment outcomes and costs. By evaluating the predictive accuracy of multiple machine learning techniques based on various performance metrics, the importance of considering heterogeneity among patients' behavior and affect is highlighted in some articles. Furthermore, the potential of machine learning-based decision support systems in clinical practice has been examined from a psychotherapists' point of view.
This dissertation includes an introduction and five empirical papers focusing on the educational and career decision-making process of individuals in Germany. The five papers embrace different determinants of educational and career decisions including school performance, social background, leisure activities as well as professional expectations, and contribute to the existing literature in this research area. Chapter 2 of this dissertation begins by analysing the nexus between students’ time allocation and school performance in terms of grades and satisfaction with their own performance in mathematics, the German language and a first foreign language, as well as overall achievement. This chapter looks at the heterogeneity of three important extracurricular activities: student jobs, sports and participation in music. Moreover, the heterogeneity of each activity is addressed by accounting for different types of the particular activity and differences in the number of years the activity has been pursued. For this purpose, data from the German SOEP, as a representative panel survey of private households and people in Germany, in particular cross-sectional survey data of 3388 students who are about 17 years old and enrolled in a German secondary school, were used. The main findings are that having a job as a student is negatively correlated with school performance, whereas participation in sports and music is positively correlated. However, the results reveal heterogeneity in each activity, especially with respect to intensity. Chapter 3 addresses the concrete post-school decision of school students, in particular whether to study or to enter the German VET system (Vocational Education and Training). It focuses on individual risk preferences and the social background of individuals and how these determinants affect the ultimate decision to enrol in university or to start an apprenticeship given the same level of qualification. For the empirical approach data from the German SOEP were used, in particular information on individuals' educational decisions between 2007 and 2013. The results indicate that (i) individual risk preferences do not have an overall effect on the real transition; (ii) privileged individuals are more likely to take up higher education; and (iii) compared to highly educated parents, parents without an academic background are less likely to guide their children into tertiary education, regardless of how much they support their children with their school work. Chapter 4 deals with the reconsideration of educational decisions in terms of early contract cancellations in VET. In particular, the effects of a second job on the intention to cancel a VET contract early are analysed for apprentices in Germany. For the empirical approach the representative German firm-level study "BIBB Survey Vocational Training from the Trainee's Point of View 2008", conducted by the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB), is used. The survey contains 5901 apprentices that were interviewed during their second year of apprenticeship (205 schools, 340 classes, and 15 common occupations). Furthermore, it includes the design, procedures, basic conditions, and quality criteria of apprenticeships. The applied probit regressions show a higher intention to quit if apprentices require a secondary job to cover their living costs. In Chapter 5, new data on 191 apprentices from a vocational school, located in a northern German federal state, are used to validate the empirical results of Chapter 4. This chapter presents new insights into secondary-job-related burdens during apprenticeship. Due to limitations in the data, the applied empirical approach in Chapter 4 lacks to analyse how holding multiple jobs increases the intention to leave an apprenticeship early. Therefore, Chapter 5 includes the investigations of burdens related to the second job. The results indicate a lower intention to quit the apprenticeship if an apprentice holds a second job to cover living costs. However, secondary jobs are linked to lower quality of training, which, on the other hand, increases the intention to leave the apprenticeship early. Furthermore, the probability of secondary-job-related burdens increases with the number of working hours. Chapter 6 concludes the thesis by investigating subjective determinants of early contract cancellations in VET. It examines ten questions on what apprentices want to achieve and how unfulfilled expectations affect the intention to leave the apprenticeship early. The findings of this investigation contributes to the existing research on early contract cancellation. The questions considered include information on the performance, personal development, career development and prospects or position in society and their meaning to apprentices. For the research approach, the "BIBB Survey Vocational Training from the Trainee's Point of View 2008" is considered again. The probit and ordered probit regressions applied show significant effects of job characteristics that represent job security. The expectation of being retained after an apprenticeship and the encouragement to consistently train further decrease the intention to leave the apprenticeship early. Furthermore, women appear to be more affected by job security signals than men, but they also sort more often into occupations with lower retention probabilities. Consequently, this result may be an indication of occupational segregation rather than a sign of differences between sexes.
Detecting and Assessing Road Damages for Autonomous Driving Utilizing Conventional Vehicle Sensors
(2021)
Environmental perception is one of the biggest challenges in autonomous driving to move inside complex traffic situations properly. Perceiving the road's condition is necessary to calculate the drivable space; in manual driving, this is realized by the human visual cortex. Enabling the vehicle to detect road conditions is a critical and complex task from many perspectives. The complexity lies on the one hand in the development of tools for detecting damage, ideally using sensors already installed in the vehicle, and on the other hand, in integrating detected damages into the autonomous driving task and thus into the subsystems of autonomous driving. High-Definition Feature Maps, for instance, should be prepared for mapping road damages, which includes online and in-vehicle implementation. Furthermore, the motion planning system should react based on the detected damages to increase driving comfort and safety actively. Road damage detection is essential, especially in areas with poor infrastructure, and should be integrated as early as possible to enable even less developed countries to reap the benefits of autonomous driving systems. Besides the application in autonomous driving, an up-to-date solution on assessing road conditions is likewise desirable for the infrastructure planning of municipalities and federal states to make optimal use of the limited resources available for maintaining infrastructure quality. Addressing the challenges mentioned above, the research approach of this work is pragmatic and problem-solving. In designing technical solutions for road damage detection, the researchers conduct applied research methods in engineering, including modeling, prototyping, and field studies. They utilize design science research to integrate road damages in an end-to-end concept for autonomous driving while drawing on previous knowledge, the application domain requirements, and expert workshops. This thesis provides various contributions to theory and practice. The investigators design two individual solutions to assess road conditions with existing vehicle sensor technology. The first solution is based on calculating the quarter-vehicle model utilizing the vehicle level sensor and an acceleration sensor. The novel model-based calculation measures the road elevation under the tires, enabling common vehicles to assess road conditions with standard hardware. The second solution utilizes images from front-facing vehicle cameras to detect road damages with deep neural networks. Despite other research in this area, the algorithms are designed to be applicable on edge devices in autonomous vehicles with limited computational resources while still delivering cutting-edge performance. In addition, the analyses of deep learning tools and the introduction of new data into training provide valuable opportunities for researchers in other application areas to develop deep learning algorithms to optimize detection performance and runtime. Besides detecting road damages, the authors provide novel algorithms for classifying the severity of road damages to deliver additional information for improved motion planning. Alongside the technical solutions, they address the lack of an end-to-end solution for road damages in autonomous driving by providing a concept that starts from data generation and ends with servicing the vehicle motion planning. This includes solutions for detecting road damages, assessing their severity, aggregating the data in the vehicle and a cloud platform, and making the data available via that platform to other vehicles. Fundamental limitations in this dissertation are due to boundaries in modeling. The pragmatic approach simplifies reality, which always distorts the degree of truth in the result.
The dissertation consists of three scientific papers and a synopsis. The synopsis addresses the relevance of the dissertation and lists the key factors for the sustainability transition in the electricity system as a common denominator of the three papers. The relevance of the dissertation results, on the one hand, from the urgency of the sustainability transition in the electricity system and an insufficient transition willingness of the eastern European Member States. On the other hand, the Multi-Level-Perspective as one of the most important scientific frameworks to grasp transitions does not provide a sufficient explanation of its mechanisms. Moreover, Demand Response aggregators as new enterprises on the European electricity market and potential reform initiators are still under researched. The following key factors for the sustainability transition of the electricity system have been identified: supply security concerns, Europeanisation, policy making and the dominance of short-term oriented economic evaluation. Paper#1 sheds light on the roots of this problem in the context of Poland. It suggests that unfavorable regulation is symptomatic of the real, underlying barriers. In Poland, these barriers are coal dependence and political influence on energy enterprises. As main drivers, supply security concerns, EU regulatory pressure, and a positive cost-benefit profile of DR in comparison to alternatives, are revealed. A conceptual model of DR uptake in electricity systems is proposed. Applying a social mechanisms approach to the Multi-Level Perspective, paper#2 conceptualizes mechanisms of socio-technical transitions and of gaining legitimacy for transitions as co-evolutionary drivers and outcomes. Situational, action-formational, and transformational mechanisms that operate as drivers of change in a socio-technical transition require corresponding framing and framing contests to achieve legitimacy for that transition. The study illustrates the conceptual insight with the case of the coal dependent Polish electricity system. Paper #3, a qualitative study reveals Demand Response (DR) aggregators as institutional entrepreneurs that struggle to reform the still largely supply-oriented European electricity market. Unfavourable regulation, low value of flexibility, resource constraints, complexity, and customer acquisition are the key challenges DR aggregators face. To overcome them they apply a combination of strategies: lobbying, market education, technological proficiency, and upscaling the business. The study highlights DR aggregation as an architectural innovation that alters the interplay between key actors of the electricity system and provides policy recommendations including the necessity to assess the real value of DR in comparison to other flexibility sources by taking all externalities into account, a technology-neutral approach to market design and the need for simplification of DR programmes, and common standards to reduce complexity and uncertainty for DR providers.
This thesis analyses how European merger control law is applied to the energy sector and to which extent its application may facilitate the liberalisation of the electricity, natural gas and petroleum industries so that only these concentrations will be cleared that honour the principles of the liberalisation directives. After having discussed the complex micro- and macro-economic considerations which accompany any concentration of business activities, this thesis discusses the merger control regime of the European Community (EC) so as to establish whether the merger control under either Art. 66 Treaty Establishing the European Coal and Steal Community (ECSCT), the case law under Art. 101 and 102 Treaty on the functioning of the European Union (TFEU) and (Art. 81 and Art. 82 Treaty Establishing the European Economic Community (ECT), as it was introduced by the Commission and reviewed by the CJEU, the original Merger Regulation (MR1989) or the amended Merger Regulation of 1997 (MR1997) or the amended Merger Regulation of 2004 (MR2004) facilitate the liberalisation of European electricity and gas markets. Said liberalisation was introduced by the Internal Electricity Market Directive (IEMD), the Hydrocarbons Licensing Directive and the Internal Gas Market Directive (IGMD). The paper focuses on the contestable idea that regulatory amendments - especially the introduction of third party access by means of the directives - only form a first necessary condition for attaining economic alterations whereas pro-active conduct of the marketers is the second and decisive one in order to increase the competitive performance of the European energy supply industries. The analysis is supported by a second argument which relates closely to the ambivalent nature of concentrations: A concentration may be used to increase the process of market opening and the expansion into new markets by pooling of scarce resources. It may also be used as a retro -active means so as to create national champions, increase barriers to market entry of new competitors, enable cross-subsidisation so as to expand dominant positions on heretofore competitive up- and downstream markets.
Maximizing the value from data has become a key challenge for companies as it helps improve operations and decision making, enhances products and services, and, ultimately, leads to new business models. While enterprise architecture (EA) management and modeling have proven their value for IT-related projects, the support of enterprise architecture for data-driven business models (DDBMs) is a rather new and unexplored field. The research group argues that the current understanding of the intersection of data-driven business model innovation and enterprise architecture is incomplete because of five challenges that have not been addressed in existing research: (1) lack of knowledge of how companies design and realize data-driven business models from a process perspective, (2) lack of knowledge on the implementation phase of data-driven business models, (3) lack of knowledge on the potential support enterprise architecture modeling and management can provide to data-driven business model endeavors, (4) lack of knowledge on how enterprise architecture modeling and management support data-driven business model design and realization in practice, (5) lack of knowledge on how to deploy data-driven business models. The researchers address these challenges by examining how enterprise architecture modeling and management can benefit data-driven business model innovation. The mixed-method approach of this thesis draws on a systematic literature review, qualitative empirical research as well as the design science research paradigm. The investigators conducted a systematic literature search on data-driven business models and enterprise architecture. Considering the novelty of data-driven business models for academia and practice, they conducted explorative qualitative research to explain "why" and "how" companies embark on realizing data-driven business models. Throughout these studies, the primary data source was semi-structured interviews. In order to provide an artifact for DDBM innovation, the researchers developed a theory for design and action. The data-driven business model innovation artifact was inductively developed in two design iterations based on the design science paradigm and the design science research framework.
Many dynamics are reshaping the global macroeconomics and finance. This cumulative dissertation empirically examines the impacts of two major global dynamics, the disaster risks and the China's rise, on the global economy. Chapter 1 introduces the motivation and summarizes the dissertation. Chapter 2 investigates how geopolitical risks affect financial stress in the whole financial system and its sub-sectors (banking, stock, foreign exchange, bond) of major emerging economies. Chapter 3 shows how different disaster risks (financial, geopolitical, natural-technological) can explain the returns and risk premiums of stock and housing in advanced economies between 1870 and 2015. Chapter 4 examines how the rise of China is contributing to higher economic growth in emerging economies, especially after the Global financial crisis of 2007-2008. Chapter 5 illustrates how a close trade and investment relation with China has helped African countries to reduce poverty and to improve their income distribution.
Extracting meaningful representations of data is a fundamental problem in machine learning. Those representations can be viewed from two different perspectives. First, there is the representation of data in terms of the number of data points. Representative subsets that compactly summarize the data without superfluous redundancies help to reduce the data size. Those subsets allow for scaling existing learning algorithms up without approximating their solution. Second, there is the representation of every individual data point in terms of its dimensions. Often, not all dimensions carry meaningful information for the learning task, or the information is implicitly embedded in a low-dimensional subspace. A change of representation can also simplify important learning tasks such as density estimation and data generation. This thesis deals with the aforementioned views on data representation and contributes to them. The authors first focus on computing representative subsets for a matrix factorization technique called archetypal analysis and the setting of optimal experimental design. For these problems, they motivate and investigate the usability of the data boundary as a representative subset. The authors also present novel methods to efficiently compute the data boundary, even in kernel-induced feature spaces. Based on the coreset principle, they derive another representative subset for archetypal analysis, which provides additional theoretical guarantees on the approximation error. Empirical results confirm that all compact representations of data derived in this thesis perform significantly better than uniform subsets of data. In the second part of the thesis, the research group is concerned with efficient data representations for density estimation. The researchers analyze spatio-temporal problems, which arise, for example, in sports analytics, and demonstrate how to learn (contextual) probabilistic movement models of objects using trajectory data. Furthermore, they highlight issues of interpolating data in normalizing flows, a technique that changes the representation of data to follow a specific distribution. The authors show how to solve this issue and obtain more natural transitions on the example of image data.
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has been established in recent years as an essential component of the economic system, demanded and promoted by a wide variety of stakeholder groups. The present dissertation shows that organizations face major communicative challenges with regard to CSR. CSR is not only determined by organizations themselves, but rather arises in the interplay with economic and social discourses. It is assumed that boundarys of organizational action are under constant change, so that CSR actors inevitably initiate constitutive communication processes. The resulting polyphony requires an understanding of the underlying communication processes. Hence, the performative character of CSR communication is taken up by this dissertation and thus the constitution of both the communicating actors and their relationships in the network is illustrated. The presented scientific papers are united by the overarching assumption that communication does not accompany and describe organizational action, but unfolds its own power.
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 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 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 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.
Understanding that entrepreneurship can be better modeled from a systemic point of view is a primordial aspect that determines the important role of universities in entrepreneurial ecosystems. What makes the ecosystem approach a valuable tool for understanding social systems is that, from a holistic perspective, their behavior seems to have emerging characteristics. This dissertation presents a dual scientific account of the entrepreneurship phenomenon in universities. The work is divided into two equal parts, each of which is composed of two research papers. The narrative of the first half takes on a macro perspective view, consisting of one theoretical and one empirically-based conceptual case study. This part conceptually depicts a systematic approach to entrepreneurialism in higher education, namely an ecosystems perspective. The second half concentrates on the meso- and micro levels of study from the university's point of view, comprising of a case study as historical account for the emergence of the entrepreneurial university, and of a metasynthesis of empirical case studies in entrepreneurial universities, which serves as the basis for the development of entrepreneurial university archetypes. This doctoral work contributes to an in-depth understanding of Entrepreneurship in universities regarding its systemic qualities and archetypal characteristics of entrepreneurial universities. It argues for an ecosystem's perspective on the phenomenon of entrepreneurial activity, highlighting the fundamental role that universities play as the heart of entrepreneurial ecosystems. Furthermore, this research expands on the novel concept of the entrepreneurial university by using extensive case study literature to empirically identify distinct archetypes that better reflect the diverse reality of how universities engage as entrepreneurial actors by way of differentiated entrepreneurial structures, systems, and strategies.