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Institut
- Fakultät Nachhaltigkeit (106)
- Fakultät Wirtschaftswissenschaften (66)
- Frühere Fachbereiche (50)
- Institut für Ökologie (IE) (28)
- Nachhaltigkeitsmgmt./-ökologie (19)
- VWL (15)
- Fakultät Kulturwissenschaften (14)
- Institut für Nachhaltigkeitssteuerung (INSUGO) (14)
- BWL (12)
- Institut für Nachhaltige Chemie und Umweltchemie (INUC) (12)
This dissertation concerns the question of how economics can contribute to the analysis of trade-offs between values (or normative objectives). The analysis is illustrated for the case of policies that pursue the goal of sustainability. Methodologically, this is done by reflecting economic concepts in light of philosophical theories and using generic models to analyze trade-offs between particular values. In sum, the work shows how economics can help in analyzing the factual relationships between values by clarifying the set of feasible acts and outcomes. The first paper of this cumulative dissertation concerns the question what a general definition of efficiency with respect to normative objective implies about relationships between two values. In order to conceptualize relationships between values carefully, the analysis distinguishes instrumental from intrinsic values and discusses the question whether there is one intrinsic value (value monism) or many intrinsic values (value pluralism). Next, a small economic model is used to show that there can be different relationships between values such as win-win relationships and trade-offs in value-efficient states if there are three or more values. Further, the distinction between Pareto-efficiency (based on individual preferences) and value-efficiency (which can also include non-preference values) is used to study relationships between values. The second paper uses the definition of sustainability as inter- and intragenerational justice to discuss the relationship between these two objectives. The general aim of this paper is to discuss what economic concepts can contribute to the discussion of tradeoffs between justices. For this, a syntax of the concept of justice is employed, different relationships between justices are defined and economic concepts such as scarcity, efficiency and opportunity costs are transferred to the justice context. One result from this analysis is that there must be a trade-off between these two justices in such respective efficient outcomes. The third paper concerns an intertemporal mechanism leading to the well-known equity-efficiency trade-off in an intergenerational setting. For this, two central characteristics of intergenerational policy making are taken into account: irreversibility and ignorance (or unawareness). A pertinent example is the irreversible use of fossil fuels before and after the discovery of the effect of CO2 emissions on climate change. The trade-off between Pareto-efficiency and intergenerational equity that results from these two characteristics is shown in a model with two non-overlapping generations which use a non-renewable resource. In the model there is initial unawareness about an intergenerational externality from resource use that is only discovered after the irreversible use of the resource. A central result of the paper is the trade-off between intergenerational equity and efficiency that emerges if initially unknown sustainability problems arise after irreversible policies have been enacted. The fourth paper concerns the question what the concept of merit goods can contribute to discussions of sustainability. For this, the history of the concept is discussed, then merit goods are defined and connected to the philosophical literature on different conceptions of well-being. In the next step different challenges and opportunities of merit good arguments are discussed for the sustainability context. For example, it becomes clear that merit good arguments concern conceptions of well-being and do not directly concern the aspect of intergenerational distribution in sustainability problems.
Business Models for Sustainability Innovation: Conceptual Foundations and the Case of Solar Energy
(2013)
This dissertation deals with the relationships between the increasingly discussed business model notion, sustainability innovation, and the business case for sustainability concept. The main purpose of this research is to identify and define the so far insufficiently studied theoretical interrelations between these concepts. To this end, according theoretical foundations are developed and combined with empirical studies on selected aspects of the solar photovoltaic industry. This industry is particularly suitable for research on sustainability innovation and business models because of its increasing maturity paired with public policy and market dynamics that lead to a variety of business model-related managerial and entrepreneurial business case challenges. The overarching research question is: How can business models support the commercialisation of sustainability innovations and thus contribute to business cases for sustainability? A theoretical and conceptual foundation is developed based on a systematic literature review on the role of business models in the context of technological, organisational, and social sustainability innovation. Further, the importance of business model innovation is discussed and linked to sustainability strategies and the business case for sustainability concept. These theoretical foundations are applied in an in-depth case study on BP Solar, the former solar photovoltaic subsidiary of British Petroleum. Moreover, because supportive public policies and the availability of financial capital are known to be the most important preconditions for commercial success with innovations such as solar photovoltaic technologies, the solar studies include a comparative multiple-case study on the public policies of China, Germany, and the USA as well as a conjoint experiment to explore debt capital investors’ preferences for different types of photovoltaic projects and business models. As a result, the main contribution of this work is the business models for sustainability innovation (BMfSI) framework. This framework is based on the idea that the business model is an artificial and social construct that fulfils different functions resulting from social interaction and their deliberate construction. The BMfSI framework emphasises the so-called mediating function, i.e. the iterative alignment of business model elements with company-internal and external requirements as well as with the specific characteristics of environmentally and socially beneficial innovations. Against this backdrop, it becomes clear that practically-oriented knowledge based on BMfSI research might provide new and effective ways to support the achievement of corporate sustainability.
In theory we pursue a sustainable development, but in reality we do not. An economy based on continuous growth, which evidently is not sustainable, is however the priority model almost everywhere. If we really aim at implementing sustainability, then we must radically change our economic model. Sufficiency - which calls for individuals mainly from so-called “developed countries” not to consume more than is really needed - may offer a useful alternative. We can still find some - last - examples of indigenous peoples living in a sufficient manner, all of them nowadays in those “developing countries”. We could learn at least from them that it is possible to live differently, i.e., in harmony with ourselves and our environment. This would pave the way for their - and for our all - protection, as well as the manner in which we understand at present development politics.
Many fewer women than men try the entrepreneurial way in Germany. Any explanation for this phenomenon must be complex, as many factors are relevant for its production. Among other things, it is possible to speculate on sexual/gender discrimination, on more or less voluntary decisions of women or on different starting conditions for potential entrepreneurs. We assume that these options are closely related. This paper will concentrate, though, on the third alternative. Its focus will be set on the “family field,” or more precisely, on the role of family law in hindering women from trying self-employment. The family field in Germany has not evolved in the sense of gender equality along with all other areas of society - e.g., entrepreneurship. No gender equality is possible if the family field is not part of it. This paper analyses causes and consequences for this phenomenon.
Key Words: Gender studies, Family Law, Entrepreneurship, chance equality, social sustainability
Audit quality is of crucial importance because it underpins the integrity of financial markets and thus enables complex international transactions. However, despite extensive research on audit quality, the interaction between structures, practices, and behaviors within accounting firms still remains a ´black box´. To open up the ´black box´ I draw on insights from the field of error management which has been highlighted to be central to gain a better understanding of audit quality. In this dissertation, I develop my arguments in three articles that build on each other. In the first paper, I systematically review the literature on the antecedents of audit quality and I suggest future research directions. In the second paper, I take an inductive case study approach to gain an in-depth understanding of error management in accounting firms. The resulting socio-cognitive model of error management informs both the field of error management, as well as the field of audit quality. In the third paper, I examine a crucial component of the socio-cognitive model: the individual. In a two-phase mixed methods study I investigate individual differences in error management and their implications for learning and performance. Taken together, the three articles of this dissertation contribute by providing an innovative approach to our understanding of both error management and audit quality.
Against the background of recent economic attempts to explain individual economic decisions by structural and institutional factors, this thesis examined to what extent cultural norms exhibit quantitatively important explanatory power for individual economic outcomes, namely individual’s savings and working choices. While an extensive literature deals with the relation between culture and aggregate economic outcomes, those results obtained may reveal distorted cultural effects due to unobserved omitted variables at the country level. Thus, for the purpose of this thesis, four empirical studies were conducted based on individual and household level data for the USA and Germany, respectively. Due to difficulties in defining a coherent concept of culture, Chapters 2 to 4 use individual religiosity, as measured by one’s religious affiliation and religious involvement, as a proxy for culture. Using individual survey data for the USA, namely the PSID, for the years 2003 to 2009, the aim of Chapter 2 was, firstly, to analyze the extent to which religious beliefs and religious commitment are associated with distinct individual savings behavior as a basis for culture-induced heterogeneity in aggregate economic outcomes. One’s religiosity was found in the cross-sectional analysis to be a robust determinant of individual savings choices, even once I control for differences in individual characteristics. To identify the causal effect of religion on individual savings choices, secondly, the results from the multivariate analysis were verified by using the longitudinal structure of the PSID and by an instrumental variable approach, where own individual religious belief were instrumented with the share of one’s religious tradition in the region of ancestry. Neither of these approaches was able to replicate the positive relation between religious affiliation and savings behavior found in the cross-sectional analysis Although the estimates are subject to inefficiencies due to data limitations, this paper mainly sheds light on the endogeneity bias inherent in the relation between cultural factors and economic outcomes. However, taking actively part in religious activities was found to affect the amount saved positively. Thus, one may argue that religious traditions impose religious rules and establish social networks that enhance an individual’s ability and willingness to save money. As opposed to the vital religious market in the USA, Chapters 3 and 4 analyzed the relationship between individual religiosity and risk-taking preferences as well as individual financial behavior within Germany. Using German micro-data, namely the GSOEP, for the years 2003 and 2004, while controlling for the overall level of general risk assessment, evidence is provided that different religious affiliations are associated with distinct financial risk taking attitudes as well as with distinct individual propensities to trust strangers, another central determinant of a household’s financial choices. Further, the extent to which religion-induced heterogeneity in risk-taking preferences actually influences investment and trusting decisions of households in Germany was examined. As compared to the results obtained for the relation between religiosity and savings behavior in the USA, the main differences in economic attitudes and behavior in Germany occur between Christian and Non-Christian religions. However, religious networks were found in both countries to be more important for economic outcomes than religious belief. Chapter 5 purposed to replicate epidemiological studies conducted for North America (Fernández, 2007; Fernández and Fogli, 2009; Gevrek et al., 2011) in Germany using a quite smaller sample which were drawn from data provided by the GSOEP for the years 2001 to 2011. Applying probit and Tobit estimation techniques the results contradict the findings obtained by these previous contributions. While cultural norms towards labor market behavior of women, as measured by past female LFP rates in the country of own or parental origin, were found to be negatively associated with labor market outcomes for first-generation immigrant women in Germany, no statistically significant relation was revealed for the second generation. However, in accordance with the findings from Chapters 2 to 4, religiosity, and especially the Islamic belief, was showed to be negatively related to labor market outcomes of both generations.
In spite of growing interest in companies’ contribution to sustainable development, the implementation of corporate sustainability, i.e. the integration of environmental, social, and economic issues, is not well understood. This cumulative PhD thesis aims to answer the research question whether sustainability management is only a transitory management fashion, or whether an effective implementation is actually taking place. The thesis consists of five papers, which are either published in refereed academic journals, accepted to be published, or planned to be resubmitted. The papers analyze three important elements of the implementation of corporate sustainability: motivation (why?), organizational units (who?) and management tools (how?). Combining these three elements supplies a framework for discussing the implementation of corporate sustainability management. The results, which are mostly based on surveys of large German companies, reveal that companies predominantly manage corporate sustainability because they seek legitimacy, rather than a competitive advantage, and because they follow acknowledged standards, guidelines, or ratings (institutional isomorphism) – possibly out of uncertainty on how to best handle a concept so complex and novel. Public relations is the organizational unit engaging in sustainability management most strongly, whereas accounting, finance, and management control engage the least. Hence, corporate sustainability is currently not implemented as a crossfunctional approach. Yet, there is indication of a growing strategic relevance of corporate sustainability. This is also reflected in the awareness and application of sustainability management tools, which have been increasing continuously between 2002 and 2010 – especially in terms of integrative tools serving to balance environmental, social, and economic issues. Furthermore, market incentives are gaining in importance over time. The thesis relates these results to management fashion theory. Although there is some indication that sustainability management might in fact be a transitory fashion, an analysis over time reveals an ongoing development of the elements analyzed. Thereby, the thesis demonstrates that corporate sustainability management can be considered more than a management fashion. One implication of the analysis is that both companies and researchers are called upon to foster the implementation of corporate sustainability, with positive incentives, e.g. by markets and consumers, turning out to be promising starting points. As opposed to pressure and expectations by stakeholders, focusing on opportunities might be more suitable to induce actual change of processes, products, services, or even business models in companies. In conclusion, the author hopes to make a significant contribution to the discussion on the implementation of corporate sustainability and to stimulate the development of new theoretical approaches.
Research in work and organizational psychology frequently conducts studies based on self-report questionnaires. Evidence of the reliability and validity of these measures has to be provided based on thorough research in order to be certain that meaningful conclusions can be reached. Recently, latent variable approaches have been introduced that provide new opportunities to examine the instruments and determine if they are suitable to obtain meaningful results. They also offer new approaches to investigate the relationships between constructs, particularly when assessed over time. The research conducted in this PhD thesis and reported in three papers aims at utilizing these opportunities to examine the measurement properties of a selection of self-report questionnaires and to address conceptual questions regarding the validity of these instruments. In the first paper, the structure of two five-factor personality inventories was examined using Confirmatory Factor Analyses (CFA) and Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling (ESEM). Both methods were applied to construct better-fitting, though more complex models based on data from two questionnaires (NEO PI-R and 16PF) completed by 620 respondents. The impact on the construct validity of the inventories was assessed. Generally, scores derived from either method did not differ substantially. When applying ESEM, convergent validity declined but discriminant validity improved. When applying CFA, convergent and discriminant validity decreased. We conclude that using current personality questionnaires that utilize a simple structure is appropriate. In the second paper, the nature of and reason for the relationship between a presence of a calling and three aspects of career preparation (career planning, decidedness, and self-efficacy) were investigated. Data were collected in three waves of a diverse sample of German university students (N = 846) over one year. Latent growth analyses revealed that calling was positively related with all career preparation measures. The slope of calling was positively related to those of decidedness and self-efficacy but not to planning. Cross-lagged analyses showed that calling predicted a subsequent increase in planning and self-efficacy. Planning and decidedness predicted an increase in the presence of a calling. In the third paper, the measurement properties of an adapted protean career orientation scale were examined. We present a series of studies that (1) establish the scale’s unidimensionality and measurement invariance across gender within separate samples of students and working professionals as well as measurement invariance between both samples; (2) demonstrate measurement invariance and differential stability over six months among students and professionals; (3) show that a protean career orientation partially mediates the relationship between personality dispositions (i.e., proactive personality, core self-evaluations) and proactive career behaviors and career satisfaction among students and employees; (4) demonstrate that a protean career orientation possesses incremental predictive validity regarding proactive career behaviors and career satisfaction beyond personality dispositions among students and employees; and (5) based on a cross-lagged study among employees, we show that career satisfaction predicts a protean career orientation but not vice versa. In summary, the research presented here provides researchers in the field of work and organizational psychology with a thorough assessment of the measurement properties and aspects of validity of these self-report questionnaires. The findings demonstrate their suitability for future research studies conducted in work and organizational psychology as well as for practical applications.
The objective of the work described in this thesis is to improve our understanding of factors that affect the depletion of gaseous elemental mercury (GEM) from the atmosphere during the Arctic springtime. This was accomplished through research undertaken and described in three publications. Atmospheric mercury depletion events (AMDEs) are now an established phenomenon in the high Arctic whereby the long-lived GEM is oxidized in the air through a series of photochemically-initiated reactions involving halogens and ozone. This chemistry produces reactive gaseous mercury (RGM) and particulate bound mercury (PHg) which both have shorter atmospheric residence times than GEM and deposit more readily to the snow and ice surfaces. This is a means by which mercury can be transferred from the atmosphere to the Arctic environment that was unknown prior to 1995 when AMDEs were discovered. An extensive review paper was completed that summarizes mercury work in the high Arctic in the ten years following the discovery of AMDEs. This review was followed by two papers investigating the processes around atmospheric mercury in the Arctic springtime
The German market for corporate bonds has experienced an unprecedented growth over the last decade. As a growing number of German firms have seized the opportunity to issue debt securities to the market, the need arises to evaluate their attempts to provide bondholders with private corporate information. This doctoral thesis centers on a research interest concerning the extent and effectiveness of corporate disclosure directed at the German bond market. It delivers unprecedented insights into bondholder relations practices and is thought to establish this topic as a research field that is complementary to previous work on shareholder-related disclosure. Taking information asymmetries between firms and bondholders as a basis, the empirical analyses are based on various arguments from the voluntary disclosure theory as well as from principal-agency and related frameworks. In essence, most parts of the thesis follow the key assumption that bondholders demand higher premiums for opaqueness and potentially detrimental behavior on behalf of a bond issuer’s management. The analyses deliver new insights into the role of corporate disclosure and close a gap between bondholder relations and financial as well as shareholder-related disclosure. They contribute to the stream of research that is concerned with corporate disclosure and its relationship to the cost of capital, the cost of debt, and even more specifically the yield (spread) of corporate bonds.
Scaling Strategies of Social Entrepreneurship Organizations – an Actor-Motivation Perspective
(2014)
Despite their sometimes ingenious solutions, many social entrepreneurs fail to scale which is at odds with their overall objective of social change. Yet, though considered highly important in practice, scaling is still under-researched. Taking this imbalance as a starting point, my PhD thesis contributes to the social entrepreneurship literature by shedding new light on the role of the actor-motivation in scaling social ventures. Put together, papers 1-3 try to answer the general research questions of how do actors and their specific motivations, particularly the social entrepreneur, influence the scaling strategies (and success) of social ventures? Based on a brief review of the literature on scaling, I identify social franchising as a promising scaling strategy that requires more research. Here, paper 1 argues that the social mission of the involved actors can serve as an informal functional equivalent to formal contracts as well as a means to safeguard the local small group logic. Paper 2 discusses the effects of stewardship on social franchising coming to the conclusion that stewardship relationships may impede speed of and degree of scaling. Based on these insights, paper 3 more closely analyzes the motivations of social entrepreneurs in a post-founding stage. It empirically constructs a taxonomy of (social) entrepreneurs based on their motivations. To this end, paper 3 employs a three-step methodological approach that combines the inductive insights from 80 interviews with entrepreneurs with a statistical cluster analysis. Following, this paper then discusses contributions of and implications for scaling research as well as to social entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship, and management research.
During recent decades, the arenas of political decision-making have increasingly shifted from national governments to intergovernmental and transnational political forums. At the same time, the number and relevance of non-state actors in international politics is steadily growing. These trends have led political scientists to study and theorize about new forms of democracy beyond the national political arenas (Archibugi 2004, Bexell et al. 2010, Nasström 2010). However, democracy beyond the nation state is difficult to conceptualize with the idea of an institutionalized democracy within the borders of nation-states. Instead, many political scientists emphasize the role of civil society actors as a cure for the democratic deficit in inter-national politics (Steffek & Nanz 2008). Yet, normative and empirical problems arise over the extent of access, selection and role of civil society actors in international organizations (Tallberg et al. 2013). Furthermore, the normative relevance of transnational civil society actors makes it necessary to study their own democratic legitimacy. While international organizations are mostly institutionalized and hierarchical governing bodies, the ever growing diffuse conglomerate of non-state actors is characterized by fluid structures, blurry boundaries and a multi-level setting of interaction (Keck & Sikkink 1998). Thus, in studying democratic practice in transnational civil society networks, we must ask: How institutionalized do political practices have to be and how flexible can they be, to still be considered democratic? Normative theorists reconceptualized democracy in the light of this changing context (Bohman 2007). Recent concepts of participatory, deliberative and representative democracy attempt to reconfigure existing democratic institutions through procedural elements (Fung & Wright 2003, Dryzek 2006) or innovative forms of representation (Phillips 1998, Mansbridge 2003, Castiglione & Warren 2006). This emerging theoretical framework is well suited to analyze the extent, to which democratic practices exist within transnational civil society networks. By applying the concept of practice (Giddens 1984, Schatzki et al. 2005) as a bridging tool between the empirical reality of fluid, temporary and open transnational civil society networks on the one hand and the institution-oriented democratic theory on the other hand, this study explores the extent to which democratic practice develops in a field that lacks traditional institutions to guarantee citizen participation. As innovative transnational actors, civil society networks can bring up new forms of democratic practice (see Polletta 2006) that can potentially inspire the debate about transnational democracy as such. This study, with its innovate approach, hopes to invigorate the debate about transnational democracy and transnational civil society, which has stalled to some degree in recent years. The study is divided into three parts; first, a conceptual part that clarifies the question of how democracy as practice can be theoretically conceptualized in transnational civil society net-works, which is followed by an empirical exploration of political practices in the transnational civil society networks. In this second part, the main question is how participation, representation and deliberation practice develops in transnational civil society networks. Two cases of transnational civil society networks, the Clean Clothes Campaign and Friends of the Earth, are analyzed to provide insights into the democratic practice within transnational civil society. In the final part, the empirical findings are evaluated in the light of the outlined concepts of democratic theory in order to explore how democratic these political practices actually are. The study identifies implicit and in-process practices of democratic norms in transnational civil society networks. Political practice in transnational civil society networks can become demo-cratic through empowerment measures and trustful relationships. However, deliberate demo-cratic practice can be impeded by disembodied digital communication and complex decision-making. The study explores how new forms of democratic practice emerge in the interaction between political actors and the structural environments of actors and networks.
Recent studies have confirmed that the aquatic ecosystem is being polluted with an unknown cocktail of pharmaceuticals, their metabolites and/or their transformation products (TPs). Although individual pharmaceuticals are typically present at low concentrations, their continuous input into the aquatic ecosystem and their toxic and persistent presence are the major environmental concerns. Therefore, it is necessary to assess the environmental risk caused by these aquatic pollutants. Data on exposure are required for quantitative risk assessment of parent compounds and their transformation products (TPs) and/or metabolites. Such data are mostly missing, especially for TPs, because of the non-availability of TPs and very often metabolites for experimental testing. Therefore, the application of different in silico tools for qualitative risk assessment can be used. Also, the presence of these micro-pollutants (active pharmaceutical ingredients, APIs) in the aquatic cycle are increasingly seen as a challenge to the sustainable management of water resources worldwide due to ineffective effluent treatment and other measures for their input prevention. Given the poor prognosis for effluent treatment (‘end of the pipe’ approach) for input prevention of APIs in the environment, it is necessary to focus on the ‘beginning of the pipe’ strategy. The very beginning of the pipe is the molecules themselves. Therefore, novel approaches are needed like designing greener pharmaceuticals, i.e. better biodegradable ones in the aquatic environment after their release. Therefore, the present research work focused on two important topics a) assessment of the environmental risk associated with the presence of highly prescribed drugs and their TPs; b) demonstrating the feasibility of the ‘benign by design’ concept for designing biodegradable drug derivatives, which will have the better biodegradability in the environment after their release. The present thesis includes four research articles (1-4) which address these approaches. The first article is about the qualitative environmental risk assessment using the example of transformation products formed during photolysis (photo-TPs) of Diatrizoic acid (DIAT). Photolysis is the chemical reaction in which the compound is broken down by photons and often in combination with hydroxyl radicals. Photolysis is the most common abatement process of micro-pollutants in the environment. The qualitative risk assessment of DIAT and selected photo-TPs was performed by the PBT approach (i.e. Persistence, Bioaccumulation and Toxicity), using chemical analysis, experimental biodegradation test assays, QSAR models with several different toxicological endpoints and in silico read-across approaches. The second article addresses a tiered approach of implementing green and sustainable chemistry principles for theoretically designing better biodegradable and pharmacologically potent pharmaceuticals derivatives. Photodegradation process coupled with LC-MSn analysis, biodegradability testing and in silico tools such as quantitative structure-activity relationships (QSAR) analysis and molecular docking proved to be a very significant approach for the preliminary stages of designing chemical structures that would fit into the ´benign by design´ concept in the direction of green and sustainable pharmacy. Metoprolol (MTL) was used as an example. The third article was also the conceptual framework to get new drug derivatives that are biodegradable in order to tackle the global challenge of micro-pollutants in the aquatic cycle. This study increased the knowledge about the role of the attachment of certain functionalities to the parent drug molecule for its biodegradability whilst conserving drug-likeness. This approach was in the past a totally neglected issue within drug development. Atenolol (ATL), a selective β1 blocker, was selected as an example to incorporate the additional attribute such as biodegradability into its molecular structure while conserving its substructures responsible for β adrenergic receptor blocker activity. In fourth article, the concept of designing green biodegradable pharmaceuticals has been proven through expanded experimental analysis setting out from the experiences collected as described in article two and three. This study could be considered as a more extensive feasibility study of rational design of green drug derivatives. The non-selective β-blocker Propranolol (PPL) was used as an example. The risk assessment study (Article #1) contributes in enhancing the existing knowledge about the life cycle and behavior (fate) of pharmaceuticals with a special focus on photo-TPs which are generally formed during advanced effluent treatment and enter as such into the environment. Based on the obtained results, the application of the in silico tools for qualitative risk assessment analysis increased knowledge space about the environmental fate of TPs in case of their non-availability for experimental testing. The benign by design studies (Article #2-4) were based on the knowledge and experience collected during the work on DIAT. It demonstrated the feasibility of a novel approach of designing comparatively better degradable and pharmacological potent derivatives through the implementation of ´green chemistry´ principles. However, the present approach is in the juvenile stage and further knowledge has to be collected beforehand for the full implementation of this approach into drug development.
Sustainability and Justice: Conceptual Foundations and Cases in Biodiversity and Fishery Policy
(2014)
Sustainability aims at justice in a threefold sense: intragenerational justice, intergenerational justice, and justice towards nature. However, the justification, specific content and practical implications of justice claims and obligations in the sustainability context often remain underspecified. This dissertation therefore asks: How can the concept of justice be structured systematically? How can justice be specified in the context of sustainability? Which specific problems of justice arise in sustainability policy? And what are the respective contributions of (sustainability) economics and (sustainability) ethics? The five papers of this cumulative dissertation approach these issues from different angles, working at the conceptual level and at the level of cases from biodiversity and fishery policy. In Paper 1, a formal conceptual structure of justice is developed, which lists the conceptual elements of justice conceptions: the community of justice including claim holders and claim addressees, their claims (and corresponding obligations), the judicandum (that which is to be judged as just or unjust), the informational base for the assessment, the principles of justice, and on a more practical level, the instruments of justice. By specifying these conceptual elements of justice, it is possible to analyse and compare different conceptions of justice. In Paper 2, the normative dimension of sustainability is discussed in terms of justice. Based on the identification of certain core characteristics of the concept of sustainability, we determine the specific challenges of justice in the context of sustainability along the conceptual structure of justice (from Paper 1). Inter alia, we show that sustainability calls for the integration of justice claims in the relationships with contemporaries, future humans and nature in a non-ideal context characterized by uncertainty, systemic mediation and limits. Paper 3 addresses the contribution of economics to the assessment of trade-offs between intergenerational and intragenerational justice. Economic analysis can delineate the opportunity set of politics with respect to the two justice objectives and identify the opportunity cost of attaining one justice to a higher degree. While the two justices are primary normative objectives, the criterion of efficiency - when directed at the attainment of these justice objectives - has the status of a secondary normative objective. Paper 4 constitutes a case study, reconstructing the ´biopiracy´ debate from a justice perspective. The paper links to the so called Access and Benefit-Sharing framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity, and addresses the question, which problems of justice arise regarding the utilization of genetic resources and traditional knowledge, especially if associated with patenting. It is shown that the predominant perspective of justice-in-exchange is insufficient and therefore complementary conceptions, namely of distributive justice, corrective justice and structural justice have to be taken into account. Paper 5 empirically assesses the justice notions of stakeholders in the Newfoundland fishery, building on qualitative semi-structured interviews and a combination of inductive and deductive coding. A central result is that inshore fishers are seen as the main claim holders, with a claim to participate and being listened to, and the opportunity to make a living from the fishery. Recognition, participation and distribution are all important domains of justice in the context of the Newfoundland fishery. The paper also discusses the relationship between normative theorizing and empirical justice research. Overall, this thesis integrates ideal and non-ideal normative theorizing, economic analysis, empirical justice research and hints at institutional implementation in the debate on sustainability and justice.
The doctoral thesis deals with future challenges that the tourism market has to face on a global level. The problem is treated from different perspectives and with different thematic foci. Thematically, the thesis approaches both global changes in the tourism market and further developments of the research methodology. The methodological repertoire includes a Delphi survey in combination with a focus group, mobile ethnography in conjunction with participant observation and contextual interviews, and a quantitative online survey.
The postal sector has a long monopolistic tradition in many countries; however, since the 1990s it has undergone considerable changes. At the beginning of that decade, the European Commission abolished exclusive rights within the postal system and opened up the market to new private postal providers and changes have continued to accelerate after two important European directives. Both directives were intended to improve the quality of service in the industry and to open up the market to competition. What has changed since the opening of the German postal market? A look at market shares measured by volumes of processed postal items, or by revenue, quickly reveals the prevailing dominance of the former monopolist Deutsche Post AG (DPAG). Despite an increasing number of market entries by private postal providers, it seems the German postal market is still characterized by the old monopolistic structures and that the aim of creating a competitive environment has not been fully achieved. This thesis deals with different competition issues from an economics perspective. The analyses are based on self-collected data and in-depth interviews conducted during on-site visits and thus provide first empirical evidence regarding the status quo in the German postal market.
This dissertation offers three different perspectives on agency and institutional change. Within three different articles these perspectives are presented and discussed. In the following these three articles are introduced: Article I: Competing concepts of power in institutional theory make the analysis of institutional change challenging. On the one hand, the assumption of powerful institutions leaves little space for agency and institutional change; while on the other hand, the assumption of powerful actors allows for agency but contradicts the fundamental assumption of institutional theory as stated before. This article wishes to propose a concept of power that is consistent with institutional theory and preserves core institutionalist assumptions, but still offers an explanation for agency and institutional change. Article II: This study examines a case of embedded agency from the German accounting industry, which existing approaches of the paradox of embedded agency cannot explain. Based on an instrumental case study, this paper will provide a new explanation of embedded agency by highlighting the interaction between the different actors of an organizational field. Article III: Based on a dialectical perspective on institutional change, this paper studies the transformation of the German accounting industry covering the time period from 2000 to 2012. Corresponding to Seo and Creed (2002), this article identifies “intrainstitutional conformity that creates interinstitutional incompatibilities”, “legitimacy that undermines functional efficiency”, and “isomorphism that conflicts with divergent interests” (Seo & Creed, 2002, p. 226) as the drivers for recent change in this organizational field. The study provides an explanation of endogenous change that does not rely on institutional agency in explaining institutional change.
Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) have been widely used since 1950 in various consumer products as well as in industrial applications owing to their unique properties, e.g. being hydrophobic and lipophobic at the same time. Nowadays, some of these persistent and man-made PFASs can ubiquitously be found in humans, wildlife and various environmental media. One prominent representative of concern, belonging to the subgroup of perfluorocarboxylates (PFCs) and their conjugate acids (PFCAs), is perfluorooctanoat (PFO) and its conjugate acid (PFOA). Because of its adverse effects on human health and its persistency in the environment industry has started to replace PFO(A) and related long chain chemicals (with seven and more fully fluorinated carbon atoms) with so-called short chain PFASs (less than seven fully fluorinated carbon atoms), including precursors of PFC(A)s. Also these short chain PFC(A)s are persistent and can already be found in humans, ground- and drinking water and in remote regions. However, knowledge gaps exist in understanding the partitioning and the resulting mobility of short chain PFC(A)s in the environment. This is due to the fact that partitioning data of PFC(A)s from standardised experiments can easily be biased by various artefacts, e.g. self-aggregation of the molecules. Therefore, the objectives of this thesis are (i) to quantify the partitioning of PFC(A)s into mobile environmental media, (ii) to show how results from non-standard tests can be used to assess substance properties of concern and (iii) to conclude on whether the environmental exposure to short chain PFC(A)s is of concern from a regulatory point of view. In the first part of this thesis, the environmental mobility of short chain C4-7-PFC(A)s was investigated by quantifying their partitioning under non-standardised semi-environmental conditions into mobile environmental media, focusing on water and air, and comparing it to long chain PFC(A)s. Results are: Partitioning between water and particles in the aeration tank, primary and secondary clarifier of a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) showed no distinct differences for short chain PFC(A)s compared to their long chain homologues (Paper 1). In a water-saturated sandy sediment column short chain PFC(A)s were not retarded, whereas long chain homologues were retarded by sorption to the sediment (Paper 2). Atmospheric particle-gas partitioning showed a lower fraction sorbed to particles for short chain PFC(A)s compared to long chain ones in samples from a WWTP (Paper 3). Air-water concentration ratios based on samples from the tanks of a WWTP were found to be higher for short chain PFC(A)s compared to long chain PFC(A)s (Paper 1). Additionally, in a newly developed experimental set-up the water to air transfer was used to derive that the pKa of C4-11-PFCAs must be <1.6 instead of up to 3.8 as reported in the literature (Paper 4). Overall, in the investigated systems short chain PFC(A)s showed a higher mobility due to a more pronounced partitioning into mobile environmental media compared to long chain PFC(A)s. In the second part of the thesis it was shown how PFO(A) - owing to its persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic (PBT-)properties – was in the context of this thesis successfully assessed as a substance of very high concern according to the criteria of the European REACH Regulation (EC No 1907/2006) by using data from non-standard tests (Paper 5). In conclusion, based on the knowledge of the high environmental mobility of short chain PFC(A)s and taking into account the argumentation of the PBT-concern of PFO(A), environmental exposure to short chain PFC(A)s is of concern and existing knowledge is already sufficient to initiate measures to prevent emissions of short chain PFC(A)s and their precursors into the environment.
Die Entfernung von Phosphor aus Abwasser bleibt ein Forschungsthema, das in Zukunft nur an Wichtigkeit gewinnen kann. Das wird durch die Umweltauswirkungen der Eutrophierung und den Verlust eines essentiellen Nährstoffes für die Nahrungsmittelproduktion dessen Knappheit immer offensichtlicher wird, immer deutlicher. Auf Kläranlagen werden heute hauptsächlich zwei Techniken verwendet um Phosphor zu entfernen, biologisch aktive Verfahren wie das Enhanced Biological Phosphorus Removal (EBPR) Verfahren und Fällungstechniken unter Verwendung von Metallsalzen. Bei beiden Methoden gibt es gegenwärtig Schwierigkeiten wie z.B. die Instabilität des EBPR Prozesses wegen des Mangels an Wissen über die Grundlagen des Stoffwechselprozesses. Bei der Verwendung von Fällungsmitteln kommt es zu vielen Nachteilen im Zusammenhang mit der Nachbehandlung des Schlammes, bei der Entsorgung kommt es zu dem Verlust der Schlammmassen und damit auch des Phosphors aus dem Nährstoffkreislauf. Das Ergebnis dieser Forschung ist, dass es möglich ist, die Phosphorspeicherkapazität von Belebtschlamm zu erhöhen wenn dieser spezifische Anforderungen erfüllt. Diese Anforderungen werden wie folgt zusammengefasst: Die Schlammmasse muss in der Lage sein, EBPR Prozesse zu entwickeln, auch muss der Schlamm aus einem Belebungsbecken-System kommen, weil die Schlammflocken unter den Umgebungsbedingungen des Reaktors stabilisiert worden sind. Schließlich muss der Belebtschlamm aus einem Verfahren kommen, bei dem man für die Phosphorentfernung keine Metallsalze verwendet. Die erhöhte Phosphorstoffspeicherkapazität der Belebtschlammmassen in Verbindung mit der Möglichkeit den Phosphor aus dem Belebtschlamm über Rücklösung in die wässrige Phase wieder gewinnen zu können, bietet großes Potential in der Zukunft einen in der Abwasserwirtschaft geschlossenen Phosphorkreislauf zu entwickeln und so den Verlust des wichtigen Nährstoffes nachhaltig zu verhindern.
Human activities have converted natural ecosystems worldwide, mostly for agricultural purposes. This change in land use has been recognized as one of the key drivers causing mass extinction of biodiversity. Yet, there are species which persist particularly in traditional, low-intensity agricultural areas. However, this farmland biodiversity is increasingly threatened by the consequences of land-use intensification and land abandonment. One effect of these two processes is the change in existing landscape structures. This dissertation aimed at quantifying the relationship between biodiversity and landscape structures because a better understanding of current biodiversity patterns and their drivers is needed to navigate biodiversity conservation for a sustainable development. Specifically, this dissertation anticipates the impacts of land-use change on biodiversity in Southern Transylvania, focusing on butterflies and plants as study groups. In a first step, a methodological baseline for subsequent biodiversity studies is developed by exploring an optimal survey strategy, allocating the available resources in a study design that enables high statistical power and covers a wide range of environmental conditions. This study shows that in the highly heterogeneous farmland mosaic of Southern Transylvania, survey effort can be moderately reduced while still showing similar patterns of species richness, species turnover and species composition (Chapter 2). In a second step, biodiversity patterns of plants and butterflies are empirically investigated in response to different landscape structures, particularly towards heterogeneity and woody vegetation cover. These studies provide evidence that all main land-use types in Southern Transylvania, namely arable land, grassland and forests, contribute to an overall landscape pool. Species richness of plants, but not of butterflies, differed significantly between arable land and grassland. Presence of woody vegetation in farmland had a positive effect on plant species richness. Heterogeneity has been found beneficial for butterfly species richness in arable land, but not in grasslands. Species composition of plants was determined by land-use, but butterfly species composition was widely overlapping in arable land and grassland (Chapters 3 & 4). Investigations on the potential spread of invasive plant species in the Transylvanian landscape exhibited that distance to roads and heterogeneity, especially in arable land, were key variables determining the invasibility of the landscape (Chapter 5). By studying movement patterns of butterflies in agricultural landscapes, land-use intensity could be revealed having an impact on butterfly movements. Furthermore, butterflies were found to prefer non-arable patches within farmland (Chapter 6). In a third step, this dissertation conceptually embeds socio-economic considerations into the local and international discourse on sustainable rural development: Reflections on a participatory projects on establishing butterfly monitoring in Romania conclude that involving citizens in biodiversity conservation is possible in Romania, but need tailored approaches which consider the unique social and cultural settings (Chapter 7). Current recommendations from scientific literature to increase the agricultural yield, for example in Eastern European landscapes, through ´sustainable intensification´ for global food security are scrutinized for their engagement with sustainability. This dissertation concludes that genuine sustainable solutions need to respect the various aspects of sustainability, including procedural and distributive justice. Furthermore, it is clarified that general recommendations for agricultural intensification, for instance in Romania, may lead to devastating impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem functions (Chapter 8). This dissertation provides evidence that the beneficial characteristics of the Translvanian farmland are linked to the fine spatial scale of the agricultural mosaic, the amount and distribution of semi-natural elements and the scattered woody vegetation throughout the landscape. Hence, the future of biodiversity depends on human interventions in the ancient cultural landscape. Navigating biodiversity conservation in Southern Transylvania thus needs genuine sustainable solutions, which integrate socially acceptable and ecological meaningful landscape management.
The concept of corporate entrepreneurship continues to occupy the minds of scholars and practitioners alike. This is not surprising as corporate entrepreneurship constitutes a major driver of organizational revitalization, learning, and growth within large and medium size organizations. However, despite extensive research on corporate entrepreneurship, there is still confusion about the interplay of its macro- and micro-level constituents. To unveil how the structures, practices, and behaviors, which constitute entrepreneurship in large, diversified firms, interact, I utilize a systemic reasoning and link the notion of corporate entrepreneurship to diverse theoretical positions in the strategic management field including intraorganizational ecology, institutional theory, and configuration theory - links that have been so far neglected in the literature on corporate entrepreneurship. I develop my arguments in three complementary articles. In the first article, I provide a review of the theoretical framework that to a large extent underpins my research: the Bower-Burgelman process model. In the second article, I take a qualitative case study approach to analyze how micro-level practices affect the intraorganizational and external environment in favor of an entrepreneurial initiative. In the third article, I identify four different design types on the basis of a qualitative meta-synthesis, which reflect coherent constellations of managerial interpretive-schemes, structures, and systems that cultivate entrepreneurial behavior. In sum, this dissertation contributes to a new understanding of corporate entrepreneurship as a system of entrepreneurially behaving actors who are constrained and simultaneously enabled by a set of social, cultural, political, and structural context factors.
This paper-based dissertation deals with the concepts of economic heterogeneity and environmental uncertainty from different perspectives, and at multiple levels of abstraction. At its core sits the observation that heterogeneity and uncertainty are deeply entangled, for there would be no uncertainty without heterogeneity of options to act regarding multiple future states of the world. At the same time, heterogeneity - in the form of diversification - has been suggested as a way to reduce uncertainty in portfolio theory (Markowitz 1952). The dissertation evolves around two research foci: (1) methodological implications of heterogeneity of scientific theories in the face of empirical data (Paper 1), and (2) two different forms of uncertainty are considered, environmental risk (Paper 2) and Knightian uncertainty (Paper 3). Paper 1 develops a new framework for model selection for the special case of fitting size distribution models to empirical data. It combines Bayesian and frequentist statistical approaches with the criterion of model microfoundation, which is to select, all other things considered being equal, the model that comes with a suitable micromodel, that explains, from the perspective of the individual constituent, the genesis of the overall size distribution. The approach is subsequently illustrated with size distribution data on commercial cattle farms in Namibia. We find that the double-Pareto lognormal distribution fits the data best. Our approach might have the potential to reconcile one of the oldest debates in current economics, i.e. the one about the best model to describe and explain the distribution of economic key variables such as income, wealth and city sizes in a country. The second paper revisits the Namibian commercial cattle farm data and uses it to put some theories from the agricultural economics literature regarding farm management under environmental risk to an empirical test. We focus on the relations between inter-annual variability in rainfall (environmental risk), risk preferences, farm size and stocking rate. We demonstrate that the Pareto distribution - which separates the distribution into two parts - is a statistically plausible description of the empirical farm size distribution when ´farm size´ is operationalized by herd size, but not by rangeland area. A statistical group comparison based on the two parts of the Pareto distribution shows that large farms are on average exposed to significantly lower environmental risk. Regarding risk preferences, we do not find any significant differences in mean risk attitude between the two branches. Our analysis confirms the central role of the stocking rate as farm management parameter, and shows that environmental risk and the farmer´s gender are key variables in explaining stocking rates in our data. Paper 3 develops a non-expected-utility approach to decision making under Knightian uncertainty which circumvents some of the conceptual problems of existing approaches. We understand Knightian uncertainty as income lotteries with known payoffs but unknown probabilities in each outcome. Based on seven axioms, we show that there uniquely (up to linear-affine transformations) exists an additive and extensive function from the set of Knightian lotteries to the real numbers that represents uncertainty preferences on the subset of lotteries with fixed positive sum of payoffs over all possible states of the world. We define the concept of uncertainty aversion such that it allows for interpersonal comparison of uncertainty attitudes. Furthermore, we propose Renyi´s (1961) generalized entropy as a one-parameter preference function, where the parameter measures the degree of uncertainty aversion. We illustrate it with a simple decision problem and compare it to other decision rules under uncertainty (maximin, maximax, Laplacian expected utility, minimum regret, Hurwicz).
Rethinking Gamification
(2014)
Gamification marks a major change to everyday life. It describes the permeation of economic, political, and social contexts by game-elements such as awards, rule structures, and interfaces that are inspired by video games. Sometimes the term is reduced to the implementation of points, badges, and leaderboards as incentives and motivations to be productive. Sometimes it is envisioned as a universal remedy to deeply transform society toward more humane and playful ends. Despite its use by corporations to manage brand communities and personnel, however, gamification is more than just a marketing buzzword. States are beginning to use it as a new tool for governing populations more effectively. It promises to fix what is wrong with reality by making every single one of us fitter, happier, and healthier. Indeed, it seems like all of society is up for being transformed into one massive game. The contributions in this book offer a candid assessment of the gamification hype. They trace back the historical roots of the phenomenon and explore novel design practices and methods. They critically discuss its social implications and even present artistic tactics for resistance. It is time to rethink gamification!
This thesis makes an important contribution to better understanding biodiversity and ecosystem function relationships across trophic levels in forests - aspects that are still underrepresented in BEF research. Ongoing biodiversity loss can be expected to change important trophic interaction pathways in these ecosystems, making increased efforts in exploring the mechanisms underlying, and the drivers determining, the impact of trophic complexity on the relationships between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning a crucial objective for holistic approaches to BEF research.
Corruption as “the abuse of entrusted power for private gain” (Transparency International, 2013) is detrimental to economic, social and political development. It intensively violates the fundamental principles of democracy such as equality, fairness, transparency and accountability (Sandholtz and Taagepera, 2005). Europe exhibits a wide spectrum of corrupt activities and is characterized by large differences as to the extent and dynamics of corruption. Thus, it is astonishing that there is still little knowledge about the region-specific factors that determine corruption. Considering corruption as a multilevel phenomenon that takes place at the country level and is often measured by certain aggregated indices, this project examines corruption also at the individual level with data from the World Values Survey. The study includes 37 European countries at the macro level and 20 countries at the micro level (1995-2010). For comparative purposes and in order to uncover specific European determinants of corruption, all statistical calculations are run with an additional sample (“non-European country sample”), including countries world-wide. The results of the panel and multilevel analysis indicate that a country’s rate of inflation, international integration, the degree and duration of democracy, anti-corruption policy, the percentage of women in parliaments, religion, society’s history of corruption strongly influence the extent and dynamics of corruption at the country-level. At the individual level, an individual’s employment status, satisfaction with the financial situation, emancipative values, interpersonal trust and the justification of bribery are significant causes of corruption across and within European countries. A comparison of these results with the findings of the “world sample” clearly demonstrates that there are regional differences.
The importance of a social perspective on the relationships between humans and nature has longbeen acknowledged. The field of social-ecological systems research in particular is striving toachieve a holistic understanding of human-nature relationships by balancing social andecological perspectives. Here I sought to develop a social understanding of the Saxon area inCentral Romania, by exploring aspects of human-nature relationships as seen from theperspective of local people. To this end, I employed the concepts of social-ecological systems(SES), ecosystem services (ES) and cultural landscapes to assess perceptions of locals throughempirical case studies.I first conducted a literature review to acquire an overview of a particular type of human-naturerelationship mediated by non-consumptive use and non-use values (“cultural ecosystemservices”). Second, to isolate and address the interaction from the social system to the ecologicalsystem, I investigated the different ways locals perceived the role of landscapes in SouthernTransylvania. I conceptually mapped these landscape preferences by revealing their potentialland use and management implications. Third, to approach the human-nature relationship fromthe ecological system to the social system, I studied the flow of ES to disaggregated humanbeneficiaries. Specifically, I studied which factors, beyond ecosystem processes and functions,influenced nature derived human well-being from the perspective of potential beneficiaries. Iconceptualised the mediating role of a range of contextual factors underpinning the currentdistribution of ES, with regard to the relation between ES and human well-being. Fourth, inorder to explore an example of bidirectional human-nature relationship, I studied the particularcase of human-carnivore coexistence and the suite of mechanisms shaping it.Despite building throughout this thesis a more complex and in-depth understanding of the humandimensions of the studied system, I chose four main cross-cutting themes to explain the human-nature connection in Southern Transylvania. These four themes may serve as pillars of a sociallyminded understanding, as well as potential research and policy foci. First, the values held bylocals are key for understanding the endemic human-nature relationships and should not beoverlooked in future social-ecological assessments or policy interventions. Second, the culturallandscape of Southern Transylvania is both a physical and virtual space of social-ecologicalinteraction fostering human-nature experiences and social-ecological knowledge integration.Third, the identified diversity of the social system in terms of landscape aspirations and ESbeneficiaries is expanding the range of human-nature connections, but at the same time, may infuture be a source of conflict or disconnection if not managed appropriately. Finally, small-scalefarmers, through their interactions with the land and resultant belief system, play a major role inmaintaining the human-nature relationships, but their values and lifestyle are threatened.
Traditional farming landscapes typically support exceptional biodiversity. They evolved as tightly coupled social-ecological systems, in which traditional human land-use shaped highly heterogeneous landscapes. However, these landscapes are under severe threats of land-use change which potentially pose direct threats to biodiversity, in particular through land-use intensification and land abandonment. Navigating biodiversity conservation in such changing landscapes requires a thorough understanding of the drivers that maintain the social-ecological system. This dissertation aimed to identify system properties that facilitate biodiversity conservation in traditional farming landscape, focusing specifically on birds and large carnivores in the rapidly changing traditional farmland region of Southern Transylvania, Romania. In order to identify these properties, I first examined the effects of local and landscape scale land-use patterns on birds and large carnivores and how they may be affected by future land-use change (Chapters II-V). Second, to gauge the role of particular traditional land-use elements for biodiversity I focused on the conservation value of traditional wood pastures (Chapters VI-VIII). Third, I took a social-ecological systems approach to understand how links between the social and ecological parts of the system affect human-bear coexistence (Chapters IV and IX). Bird diversity was supported by the broad gradients of woody vegetation cover and compositional heterogeneity. Land-use intensification, and hence the loss of woody vegetation cover and homogenization of land covers, would thus negatively affect biodiversity. This was especially evident from predictions on the distribution of the corncrake (Crex crex) in response to potential future land cover homogenization. Here, a moderate reduction of land cover diversity could drastically reduce the extent of corncrake habitat. Further results showed that the brown bear (Ursus arctos) would mainly be affected by land-use change through the fragmentation of large forest blocks, especially if land-use change would reduce habitat connectivity to the presumed source population in the Carpathian Mountains. Moreover, this dissertation revealed that large carnivores (brown bear and wolf, Canis lupus) may have important and often ignored roles in structuring the ecosystem of traditional farming landscapes by limiting herbivores. Wood pastures were found to have a high conservation value. The combination of low-intensity used grasslands with old scattered trees provided important supplementary habitat for different forest species such as woodpeckers and the brown bear. Worryingly, current management of wood pastures differed from traditional techniques in several aspects, which may threaten their persistence in the landscape. The majority of people had a positive perception on human-bear coexistence. The use of traditional sheep herding techniques combined with the tolerance of some shepherds to occasional livestock predation facilitated coexistence in a region where both carnivores and livestock are present. More generally, the genuine links between people and their environment were important drivers of people´s positive views on coexistence. However, perceived failures of top-down managing institutions could potentially erode these links and reduce people´s tolerance towards bears. Through the consideration of two different animal taxa, this dissertation revealed six important system properties facilitating biodiversity conservation in traditional farming landscapes. Similar proportions of the main land-use types (arable land, grassland, and forests) support species richness at the regional scale possible through habitat connectivity and continuous spill-over between land-use types. Heterogeneous landscapes can further support biodiversity through complementation and supplementation of habitat at the landscape scale. Gradients of woody vegetation cover and heterogeneity, supported biodiversity at both local and landscape scales possibly through the provision of a wide range of resources. The heterogeneous character of the landscape is tightly linked to traditional land-use practices, which also maintain specific traditional land-use elements and facilitate human-carnivore coexistence. Top-down limitation of large carnivores on herbivores possibly enhances vegetation growth and tree regeneration. The genuine links between humans and nature support human-bear coexistence, and these links may form the core of people´s values and sustainable use of natural resources.
This PhD thesis examines the connections between sustainability knowledge management (SKM) and sustainability management tools in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). While previous literature has established that knowledge is essential for the application of sustainability management tools, the effects of such tools on knowledge management are under-researched in the sustainability context. Drawing on multiple academic papers and utilizing various research methods, including a systematic literature review, several quantitative surveys and a multiple case study approach, the thesis systematically examines how such tools can facilitate the identification, acquisition, conversion, application and retention of sustainability knowledge, and potentially lead to the improvement of SKM effectiveness in SMEs. Furthermore, it examines how support functions for sustainability management tools and SKM correspond with each other. The findings reveal that sustainability management tools facilitate the SKM processes (identification, acquisition, conversion, application and retention), and align with the support factors (e.g. top management support, shared vision, employee qualifications) to advance SKM in SMEs. Particularly, such tools permit the institutionalization of sustainability knowledge into the daily routines and practices in SMEs. Additionally, tools create a support structure for SKM, embedding and preserving sustainability knowledge in documents, policies, procedures and norms for an enterprise´s collective knowledge for sustainability management. The thesis concludes with complementing areas of future research and offers practical implications for SME management.
Fire plays an important role in the earth system by influencing ecosystems and climate, but climate in turn also influences fire. The system became more complex when humans started using fire as a tool. Understanding the interaction between humans, fire and climate is the major aim of paleofire research. Understanding changes in these three aspects in the past will help predicting future climate, fire and human interactions. The use of lake sediment cores as natural archives for reconstructing past fire activity by counting charcoal particles is well established. This present dissertation is dedicated to the evaluation and application of specific organic molecular markers for biomass burning: levoglucosan, mannosan and galactosan were used as proxies for reconstructing past fire activity in lake sediments thorough the entire Holocene. First, a new analytical method was developed using high-performance anion exchange chromatography combined with mass spectrometry to separate and detect these three monosaccharide anhydrides in lake sediments. The suitability of this analytical method was proven by comparing the levoglucosan, mannosan and galactosan results in selected lake sediment samples from Lake Kirkpatrick, New Zealand and by correlating the results with macroscopic charcoal. Furthermore, the method was successfully applied to a lake sediment core from Lake Petén Itzá, Guatemala to reconstruct regional Holocene fire history. The analyses of levoglucosan were combined with fecal sterols to reconstruct late Holocene human fire interactions at Lake Trasimeno, Italy, demonstrating low fire activity during the Roman period. This combination of studies proves that these molecular markers are valid fire proxies in sediments from multiple locations around the globe. Comparison of levoglucosan, mannosan and galactosan concentrations with macroscopic charcoal trends in Lake Kirkpatrick and Lake Petén Itzá, suggests that the molecular markers represent more regional fire history and low temperature fires in contrast to macroscopic charcoal, which is a local fire proxy. In addition, vegetation changes (Lake Kirkpatrick and Lake Petén Itzá) and charcoal morphotypes (Lake Petén Itzá) were compared to the levoglucosan/mannosan and levoglucosan/(mannosan+galactosan) ratios suggesting that these ratios may be a suitable tool to track burned fuel. Biodegradation tests demonstrate the potential degradation of levoglucosan, mannosan and galactosan if dissolved in water, but findings in ancient sediment samples suggest that particle-bound levoglucosan, mannosan and galactosan can be buried in sediments over millennial time scales. Although uncertainties still exist, the results of this research suggests that organic molecular markers are a suitable regional fire proxy and isomer ratios may help understand changes in burned vegetation.
This dissertation deals with the investigation of success factors in the field of entrepreneurship, especially entrepreneurship training, from a psychological perspective. In particular, I argue that the identification of certain psychological aspects helps to better understand the underlying mechanisms for successful entrepreneurship trainings and thus, enables successful entrepreneurship. In the second chapter I theoretically examined planning as a fundamental action an entrepreneur hast to undertake in order to succeed. Scholars are in disagreement about the question if planning is crucial for the entrepreneurship. Thus, I provide a comprehensive overview of the advantages and disadvantages of planning in entrepreneurship from a psychological perspective. I explain negative aspects (e.g., lack of knowledge, difficulty to predict the future, and inflexibility) as well as positive aspects (e.g., legitimating, action-regulatory, and learning function) about planning in entrepreneurship. Furthermore, I develop a theoretical model that combines both the positive and negative aspects of planning in entrepreneurship. With this theoretical model, I integrate different types of planning (e.g., formal and informal plans) as well as positive and negative functions of planning (e.g., learning or stickiness, inflexibility) to provide a first approximation for a theory of entrepreneurial planning. In the third chapter, to focus on the field of entrepreneurial trainings, I empirically examine the under-researched field of the relation between trainer and trainee. I use the transformational leadership theory (Bass, 1985) and a theory of learning outcome (Kraiger, Ford, & Salas, 1993), to hypothesize that the trainers´ charisma has a positive effect on the trainees´ entrepreneurial self-efficacy. Additionally, I search for possible moderators for the hypothesized trainer-trainee-relationship in an explorative manner, using insight from different research areas (e.g., pedagogy, philosophy). To test the hypotheses, I conducted a 12-week entrepreneurship training by which I had 12 measurement waves across four classes with 161 students and 12 trainers, which lead to 919 observations. In the fourth chapter, to broaden the perspective on the mechanisms within entrepreneurship training, which lead to a successful outcome, I empirically examined the short- and long-term effects of entrepreneurship training on life satisfaction. To do so, I developed a theoretical model based on theories of life satisfaction, that explain the underlying mechanisms of the short- and long-term effects of the entrepreneurship training on life satisfaction. With this model I hypothesize, that entrepreneurship training has a positive short- effect on life satisfaction, which is mediated through entrepreneurial self-efficacy. I furthermore hypothesize, that the long-term effect of the entrepreneurship training is mediated through self-employment. The short term-effect acts like a boost and vanishes over time, whereas the long-term effect holds in the long run. To test these hypotheses, I conducted entrepreneurship training as part of a randomized controlled field experiment with five measurement waves over a total period of 2.5 years. Using discontinuous growth modeling to take into account the temporality of our hypothesized effects we statistically analyzed the 1,092 observations from 312 students. Chapter 5 concludes this dissertation with general discussion of the three chapters.
The future of forests is closely linked to climate change and energy transition because the preconditions for forest management are changed through climate and energy policies (Beland Lindahl and Westholm 2012). Forest management has multiple objectives, and different stakeholders have competing interests in forests. A strong dichotomy between environmental and economic interests has characterized forest policy and most conflicts about forests in the past (Winkel and Sotirow 2011). Climate change and energy transition modify this established conflict line because new conflicts related to climate mitigation, climate adaptation, and renewable energies have blurred the clear opposition between environmental and economic interest (Mautz 2010). In the context of the new challenges of climate change and energy transition, the need for effective, efficient and legitimate forest governance is gaining a new importance. Based on 86 qualitative interviews about forest conflicts and forest governance in five qualitative case studies, theoretical approaches focusing on multi-level and multi-scale governance are merged with the field of environmental and natural resource conflict research in this thesis. Forest conflicts and their governance are a multi-level and multi-scale issue. However, not so much is known about how collective and individual state and non-state actors act in complex governance systems and how they perceive governance systems. In order to contribute to the understanding of these knowledge gaps, this thesis tests the applicability of three theoretical perspectives on multiple scales and levels of decision-making (multi-level governance, polycentricity, politics of scale) to fruitfully study forest conflicts. Furthermore, the thesis provides empirical insights about forest conflicts in the face of energy transition and climate change. Based on the theoretical and empirical findings, this thesis provides practical recommendations to policy makers and practitioners on how to improve governance in forestry and the management of other natural resources. For example, this thesis shows the importance of considering different actor constellations in participatory processes at different governance levels, and that not every actor will react the same way to a certain method of decision-making. Furthermore, this thesis illustrates how trust building measures, such as enhanced communication between stakeholders, transparency in decision-making and forest education can reduce the risk of destructive conflict escalation. This thesis also demonstrates that energy transition and the discussion about climate change are sources of new conflicts, can change old conflicts, and add new, additional levels to forest governance. Thus, climate change and energy transition cause further fragmentation of forest governance and make forest governance more multi-level, create additional venue-shopping opportunities, and bring new actors into forest governance, causing new power constellations in the policy field. Forest governance is in a reconfiguration process which can be conceptualized as shift towards multi-level governance. Level choice and the relation of state and non-state actors in decision-making are important aspects of governance, thus the theoretical approach has yielded valuable insights in forest conflicts and the importance of scale construction in conflict discourses can be illustrated. Different levels are associated with different functions, strengths, and weaknesses of stakeholders; the perceptions of appropriate scale choice are often based on frames. The empirical findings have shown that level choice is often a normative and/or cultural decision, often no objective ´best´ decision-making level exists. Some actors consider different competing, overlapping, and nested decision-making levels to be an opportunity for interest realization; others feel helpless and overwhelmed in complex, multi-level systems. Different re-scaling strategies (up-scaling, down-scaling, fit re-scaling) are applied by actors to realize their interests. Non-state actors have an important function in linking processes from different levels. However, multi-level governance and related concepts have their limits for the explanation of forest conflict processes because some important factors cannot be captured with this approach. For example, social-psychological factors and conflict frames are important for the understanding of conflict development and governance and at a local level individual action and the relations between individuals crucially set the preconditions for the governance of conflicts.
Prospective students´ choice of their university is a topic of rising relevance worldwide. As competition on the higher education market and the resultant fight for students increases, universities need to deal with questions of how, when, and why young people decide where to study. This knowledge forms the basis for developing adequate and effective communication strategies enabling university marketers to recruit the best and most suitable students for their institutions. Despite extensive research on these questions, there still are fundamental gaps like the nonobservance of sense making activities, the neglected role of emotions and higher education policies, the suboptimal choice of research methods as well as problematic theoretical assumptions previous research is based upon. In this dissertation, I address all of these gaps in three complementary articles. In the first paper, I compare American with German research on university choice by focusing on the three aspects of theoretical approaches applied in previous studies, choice factors, and information sources prospective students use. On the basis of this literature review, I identify major research gaps with a focus on, but not limited to, the German context. In the second article, by using the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET), I identify mental models of prospective students that represent their sense making activities. Through this, I get a profound understanding of which rational and especially emotional issues are relevant for the students when they try to make sense of the marketing messages they are confronted with during their university choice process. In the third paper, I challenge the theoretical approaches previous research is based upon by identifying two very different types of decision-makers with their respective choice strategies and logics. Overall, this dissertation contributes to a much more detailed understanding of prospective students´ university choices by identifying their sense-making activities and choice styles, highlighting the role of emotions and context factors, and refining the theoretical foundations university choice research is based upon.
Despite the great progress that has been made in the prophylaxis of oral diseases over the past decades, dental caries and periodontal diseases remain major challenges in the field of dentistry. Biofilm formation on dental hard tissues is strongly associated with the etiology of these oral diseases. Therefore, the process of bioadhesion and biofilm formation on tooth surfaces is of particular interest for dental research. The first stage of bioadhesion on dental surfaces is the formation of the pellicle layer. This mainly acellular film, composed largely of adsorbed proteins, glycoproteins, and lipids, is distinguished from the microbial biofilm (plaque). As the interface between teeth and the oral environment, the pellicle plays a key role in the maintenance of oral health and is of great physiological and pathophysiological importance. On the one hand, the pellicle shows protective properties for the underlying dental hard tissues. On the other hand, it also serves as the basis for dental plaque and therefore, for the development of oral diseases such as caries and periodontitis. Hydrophobic interactions, which are governed by lipophilic substances, are of high relevance for bacterial adherence. Therefore, pellicle lipids, which are a significant constituent of this biological structure, are an interesting target for dental research, as they could modulate oral surfaces, influence microbial interactions, and potentially impede bacterial adherence. Compared to the extensive work on the pellicle´s ultrastructure and protein/amino acid composition, little attention has been given to its lipid profile. Knowledge of the lipid composition of the pellicle may provide insight into several oral pathological states, including caries, dental erosion, and periodontal disease processes and could contribute to novel approaches in preventive dentistry. The principle aim of this thesis was the comprehensive characterization of the fatty acid (FA) profile of the in situ formed pellicle layer. This includes the influence of pellicle maturation on the FA profile as well as intra- and interindividual differences. Furthermore, investigations on the effect of rinses with edible oils on the pellicle´s FA composition were a focus of this work. For these purposes, an analytical method based on a combination of innovative specimen generation and convenient sample preparation with sensitive mass spectrometric analysis was successfully developed and comprehensively validated within this thesis. Pellicle samples were formed in situ on bovine enamel slabs mounted on individual upper jaw splints. After a comprehensive sample preparation, gas chromatography coupled with electron impact ionization mass spectrometry (GC-EI/MS) was used in order to characterize qualitatively and quantitatively a wide range of FA (C12-C24). The individual FA profiles of pellicle and saliva samples collected from ten research participants were investigated. The relative FA profiles of the pellicle samples gained from the different subjects were very similar, whereas the amount of FAs showed significant interindividual variability. Compared to the pellicle´s characteristic FA profile, higher proportions of unsaturated FAs were detected in the saliva samples, highlighting that FAs available in saliva are not adsorbed equivalently to the pellicle layer. This, in turn, shows that pellicle formation is a highly selective process that does not correlate directly with salivary composition. Additionally, pellicle samples collected after 3, 30, 60, 120, and 240 min of intraoral exposure were analyzed. It could be shown that pellicle maturation has only a minor impact on the FA composition. However, the FA content increased substantially with increasing oral exposure time. Modifying the pellicle´s lipid composition by using edible oils as a mouthwash could alter the physicochemical characteristics of the pellicle and strengthen its protective properties by delaying bacterial adhesion. Therefore, the impact of rinses with safflower oil on the pellicle´s FA composition was determined. The application of rinses with safflower oil resulted in an accumulation of its specific FAs in the pellicle, thus representing a possibility for modifying the pellicle´s lipid profile. The present work is the first to apply a validated method that combines in situ pellicle formation, sample preparation, and the comprehensive determination of FAs via a sensitive analytical method. The results provide valuable information regarding the pellicle´s FA composition which closes an existing knowledge gap in pellicle research. A broader knowledge of the lipid composition of the pellicle contributes to the understanding of oral bioadhesion processes and may help facilitate novel approaches in preventive dentistry.
A characteristic of the German health care market is the high complexity, amongst others due to the plurality of actors and interest groups. With so many players involved, health care reforms necessarily are the outcome of a quest for influence reflecting the relative power of interest groups. However, in much of the health economics literature, this fact is neglected, with the consequence that public regulation fails to have the intended effect. The treatment of social (interest) groups is central to understand political economic processes. Basic models in this area are the models of Olson (1965), Peltzman (1976) and Becker (1983). The objective of such model considerations in the health care market is to maximize efficiency and quality of care and thereby reduce expenditures. The section “The German health care market and its players: An overview from an economic perspective” analyses the structure of the health care market in Germany together with selected health challenges of the last decade. It questions to which extent the new political economy in contrast to welfare economy is able to explain health economic aspects. The section “Drug Prices and Pressure Group Activities in the German Health Care Market: An Application of the Becker Model” analyses the shift of power and influence among the pharmaceutical industry, the pharmacies and the social health insurers (SHI). Since the health care reform in 2004, these interest groups have been negotiating the structure of surcharges and discounts among each other without any intervention from the government. This reflects the assumption of a passive government in the Becker (1983) model and makes this model to a good choice for application. The negotiations and the resulting amendments of this ordinance express the shift of power and influence among the involved interest groups in the German health care market after 2004. The first assumption is a closed system based on the theoretical work by Becker. The amount of total budget and the amount of total influence is constant and defined as 10. In such a standardized system, the influence by producers and pharmacies decreases about 0.007 units of political pressure to the value 9.989, whereas the influence by SHI increases about 0.007 units to the value 0.011 between 2008 and 2010. More realistic is the second assumption, the assumption of an open system where the amount of total budget and the amount of total influence can change over the years. With this assumption a trend becomes apparent which shows an increase in political pressure by SHI about 0.015 units to the value 0.036 and a decrease of political pressure by pharmacies and producers about 18.326 units to the value 34.022 between 2008 and 2010. This reflects the cost control trend in combination with the empowerment incentives for SHI. Noteworthy is the high pressure level of producers compared to the other interest groups. As a conclusion one can say that the last years show a movement to more competition between the interest groups. This leads to more balanced power relations. But nevertheless, the most powerful group is still the producer group and the influence of the SHI is still very low. However, the government does not always behave passively. On sensitive issues for voters such as co-payments, the government tries to maximize votes. So, in the section “Drug Prices, Rents, and Votes in the German Health Care Market: An Application of the Peltzman Model”, the reaction of consumers (insured persons) and producers (pharmaceutical industry) based on electoral behavior and relating to drug prices and co-payments imposed on drugs is analyzed, using the health care reform of 2004 as an experience. The changes in prices and medications after this reform make it to a natural choice. For the analysis, the interest group model by Peltzman (1976) is applied to the German health care market. The vote-maximizing government has to find the optimal combination of rent and price of regulation. For the optimum solution, the variation of votes on the part of pharmaceutical industry has to equal the variation of votes on the part of consumers. Reflecting different power structures leads to drug prices ranging from 5 to 50 Euros, associated with a co-payment of 5 Euros. Prices between 50 and 100 Euros are possible as well, reflecting a balance of power facing the pharmaceutical industry. These prices are associated with a co-payment of 10% of the selling price. Concerning the transition from 1989 reference price regime to the 2004 reform one can say that producers who had accepted the reference price had an incentive to increase their price while lowering their sales volume.
Agricultural production of smallholder farmers in Myanmar is facing soil fertility degradation and in consequence, crop yields decline due to the imbalances of nutrient supply. In most cases, all above ground biomass is removed from the fields after harvesting the crops and during land preparation for the next crop. Higher temperatures also stimulate the higher mineralisation rates and released mineral nutrients are lost from fallow lands before sowing the next crops. Regarding the addition of mineral fertilizers, except for cash crops, farmers are reluctant to apply fertilizers for the crops that are sown for household’s self-sufficiency. In the Dry Zone, irrigated agriculture is available in recent years and farmers could overcome water scarcity through irrigation. With the availability of irrigation water, farmers could prolong the cropping period, nevertheless crop yields are decreasing year by year. In recent decades, research findings are indicating the benefits of biochar application for soil fertility improvement and food security. Smallholder farmers can produce biochar from agricultural by-products such as pigeon pea stems, cotton stems and rice husks by using biochar stoves. Large-scale production is possible by producing both biochar and thermal energy simultaneously, such as getting rice husk biochar and producing thermal energy by burning rice husks. By those means, environmental pollution due to the smokes from stubble burnings and the health hazards from smokes arise from kitchens can also be reduced. Present research was conducted to test the effects of the application of biochars produced from different crop residues together with NPK fertilizers on crop yields and soil properties in the rice-chickpea-cotton cropping system of the Central Dry Zone area of Myanmar during 2012 and 2013 cropping seasons at Shwe Daung Farm, Mandalay Division, Myanmar. Effects of biochar applications in combination with NPK fertilizers were compared with NPK fertilizer (without biochar) application and the control (without biochar and NPK fertilizers). Biochars used in the experiments were produced from three kinds of locally available raw materials (rice husk, rice straw and, pigeon pea stem) at temperature above 550°C by using a kiln made from a 200-Liter diesel barrel. Field experiments were conducted on sandy loam soil in the Central Dry Zone of Myanmar. After harvesting rice in 2012, chickpea was sown without application of both organic and inorganic fertilizers. After harvesting chickpea in 2013, cotton was sown on the same experimental plots. Treatments were rice husk biochar (Rh) 20 Mg ha-1 + NPK fertilizers; rice straw biochar (Rs) 20 Mg ha-1 + NPK fertilizers; pigeon pea stem biochar (Ps) 20 Mg ha-1 + NPK fertilizers; rice husk biochar and farmyard manure mixture (Rh biochar + FYM) 10 Mg ha-1 + NPK fertilizers; NPK fertilizers (without biochar); and the control (without fertilizer and biochar). Biochar weights represented fresh biochar weights. Equal rate of NPK fertilizers were applied in all treatments. However, fertilizer rates were different with respect to the crops. In rice experiment, 100:50:50 kg ha-1 rate of Urea (N): Triple Super Phosphate (P): Muriate of potash (K) was applied. In cotton experiment, 100:30:117 kg ha-1 rate of Urea (N): Triple Super Phosphate (P): Muriate of potash (K) was applied. Crop growth data, yield component data and yield data of each treatment were recorded. Soil samples from topsoil (0-0.2 m) were taken before starting the experiments, after harvesting rice and cotton, respectively, and analysed. A biogeochemical model, denitrification decomposition (DNDC) model, was used to estimate soil organic carbon storage and greenhouse gas emissions during crop growing seasons and to quantify the long-term impact of biochar applications on rice, chickpea and cotton yields.The results from soil analyses indicated that although initial soil pH was at 8.0 and pH values of biochars ranged between 8.0 and 10.0 soil pH after two years of biochar application did not increase. pH values were below 8.0. That value was lower than initial soil pH. That could be due to the effect of the change of cropping system from upland to lowland rice cultivation and the effects of biochar additions to the alkaline sandy loamy soil of the experimental site. Although total exchangeable cation value was not significantly different among the treatments, compositions of major cations were significantly different among the treatments. Exchangeable potassium increased in Rs biochar + NPK applied soils. Exchangeable sodium increased in control, and conventional NPK fertilizer applied soils. Reduction of soil bulk density from 1.8 g cm-3 to 1.6-1.7 g cm-3 occurred in biochar treatments compared to control and conventional NPK fertilizer application treatments. Positive changes of total carbon and total nitrogen of soils were found in biochar treatments compared to control and conventional NPK fertilizer application. Application of pigeon pea stem biochar + NPK fertilizers showed the highest crop growth and the highest yield in rice. The highest chickpea yield was obtained from the plot that applied rice husk biochar + NPK fertilizers. Cotton crop growth and yield was the highest in rice husk biochar and farmyard manure mixture + NPK fertilizer application. The lowest crop growth and yield was obtained from the control in cotton. The results of this study suggested that biochars from different biomass materials had different effects on soil properties and crop yields under different growing conditions and cultivated crops. Although the applied biochars had a high pH, soil pH did not increase after biochar applications. The growth and yield of tested crops were higher than that of the control and conventional NPK fertilizer application. Rice husk biochar and farmyard manure mixture + NPK fertilizer application can be assumed as a suitable soil amendment application under upland crop cultivation. Pigeon pea stems biochar + NPK fertilizers should be applied in rice cultivation. Rice husk biochar + NPK fertilizers and rice husk biochar-farmyard manure mixture + NPK fertilizers showed as the appropriate biochar soil amendments for the study area compared to rice straw biochar + NPK fertilizers and pigeon pea stem biochar + NPK fertilizers. Application of these biochars increased total exchangeable cations, reduced bulk density, increased organic carbon, regulated soil pH and, can easily be accessed by smallholder farmers by promising crop yields for sustainable agricultural production. Rice straw biochar + NPK fertilizers and pigeon pea stem biochar + NPK fertilizers also showed positive influences on soil fertility and crop growth. However, extensive application of those biochars might require large-scale productions and distributions. To obtain the detail information regarding the impact of biochar application on the agro-ecosystem and surrounding atmosphere, further research activities may need to carry out under different agricultural production conditions. When model fitness was tested, it was found that DNDC model was fit for the simulation of crop yields and soil organic carbon under the conditions of the experimental site. Simulation of soil organic carbon dynamics and crop yields for 30 years and 50 years after the addition of biochars in combination with NPK fertilizers showed that such applications could maintain the crop yields at the same level up to 50 years. That could maintain soil organic carbon at a level higher than conventional NPK fertilizer application. Regarding the simulation of GHGs emissions, the model simulated nitrous oxide emission close to actual emissions of agricultural soils of Myanmar. Simulated CH4 emissions from control and conventional NPK fertilizer application variant were consistent with the well-known emissions of Myanmar rice fields. To confirm the accuracy of simulated CH4 emissions from biochar applied soils, it may need field investigations and validations of model results. Simulated effects of rice husk-, rice straw- and pigeon pea stem fresh biomass applications and that of rice husk-, rice straw- and pigeon pea stem biochar applications on rice, chickpea, cotton yields and soil organic carbon (SOC) were compared. Objective of this simulation was to compare the effects of fresh biomass-applications and the application of biochars produced from the same biomass on crop yields and SOC by using DNDC model. The results showed that simulated rice yields of rice husk biochar and rice straw biochar applications were 33% and 31%, respectively, higher than that of pigeon pea green manure applications. However, simulated rice yield from pigeon pea stem biochar application was 4% higher than that of iv pigeon pea stem green manure application. Simulated chickpea yield from pigeon pea green manure treatment was the highest among all of biochar and biomass applications. Simulated cotton yields obtained from fresh biomass applications were lower than that of biochar applications. In estimating the future yields, all crop yields from rice husk and rice straw biomass applications were lower than that of rice husk and rice straw biochar applications in the initial year of simulation. However, in the following years, the yields remained at the same level up to the end of simulated years. In pigeon pea stem green manure application, crop yields were higher than the other treatments since the initial year up to the end of simulated years. Simulated SOC was lower in fresh biomass applications compared to biochar applications.
Biodiversity loss could jeopardize ecosystem functioning. Yet, the evidences that support this demonstration have been mostly obtained in aquatic and grassland ecosystems. Howbiodiversity affects ecosystem functioning still remain largely unanswered in forests, particularly in subtropical broad-leaved evergreen forests (EBLF). Tree productivity, among a wealth of forest ecosystem functioning, is of particular interest because it reflects the carbon sink capacity and wood productivity. Biodiversity-productivity relationships have been usually investigated at community level. However, tree-tree interactions occur at small scale. Thus, local neighborhood approach may allow a better understanding of tree-tree interactions and their contributions to the effects of biodiversity on tree productivity / growth rates. This thesis aims to analyze the effects of biodiversity and the abiotic environmental factors on the tree growth rates using both local neighborhood and community-based approaches. Furthermore, tree growth rates vary among different tree species. Functional traits have been related to the species-specific growth rates to understand the effects of species identity. Therefore, I also evaluated the crown- and leaf traits to predict the interspecific difference in growth rates. For a better understanding of the mechanisms that underline the relationships of biodiversity and tree growth rates, data of high solution and along time series is required to scrutinize the tree-tree interactions. Thereupon, I evaluated the applicability of terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) in assessing the tree dendrometrics. This thesis was conducted in the Biodiversity Ecosystem Functioning (BEF)–China experiment, which is located in a mountainous subtropical region in southeast China. A total of 40 native broad-leaved tree species were planted. In the first study, I used the local neighborhood approach to analyze how local abiotic conditions (i.e. topographic and edaphic conditions) and local neighborhood (i.e. species diversity and competition by neighborhood) affect the annual growth rates of 6723 individual trees. The second study used the community approach to partition the effects of environmental factors (i.e. topographic and edaphic), functional diversity according to Rao’s quadratic entropy (FDQ) and community weight mean (CWM) of 41 functional traits on community tree growth rates. The main question of the third study was how the species-specific growth rates are related to five crown- and 12 leaf traits.
In the fourth study, I investigated 438 tree individuals for the congruence between the conventional direct field measurements and TLS measurements. It was found that tree growth rates were strongly influenced by the local topographic and edaphic conditions but not affected by the diversity of local neighborhood. In contrast, results obtained by using the community-based approach showed that FDQ and CWMs of various leaf traits rather than abiotic environmental factors had significant impact on the community means of growth rates. Tree-tree interactions already occur in early life stages of trees, which were evidenced by the significant effect of competition by local neighborhood. These findings imply that the effects of abiotic environmental factors may be more evident at local scale and biodiversity effects may vary at different spatial scales. The species-specific growth rates were found to be related to specific leaf traits but not to crown traits and were best explained by both types of traits in combination. This finding supports the niche theory and provides the evidence for using functional diversity to examine the BEF relationships. The TLS-retrieved total tree height, stem diameter at 5 cm above ground, and length and height of the longest branch were highly congruent with those obtained from direct measurements. It indicates that TLS is a promising tool for high resolution, non-destructive analyses of tree structures in young tree plantations. Being one of very few studies to incorporate the individual tree scale in examining the biodiversity-productivity relationships within the BEF researches, this thesis stresses the importance of using individual-tree based approach, functional diversity and TLS to find the evidences of explanatory mechanisms of the observed biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (e.g. tree growth rates) relationships. Biodiversity effects may evolve along the successional stages. Therefore, incorporating the interaction between biodiversity and time in analyzing BEF relationship is also encouraged.
Heating is most important part of thermal energy demand, and accounts for large amounts ofenergy consumption in cold regions. Renewable energy sources will be of great importance inorder to cover future energy demands. However, their intermittency is rightly considered asinconvenient. Thus, a more effective management of demand, coupled with efficient storagesystems is required. Based on this perception, thermal systems coupled with electricityproduction have been efficiently designed, they are the so called “combined heat and power”(micro-CHP). Nonetheless, heat losses from the thermal part of their system lead to electricityfluctuation. Therefore, the use of micro-CHP in combination with a volume-efficient and nearlylossless heat storage system to counteract electricity fluctuations is a viable solution.The heat storage system in this work is based on reversible thermochemical reactions, suchas dehydration and hydration of inorganic salts, which exhibits very high energy density (up to628 kWh·m-3 of storage material). The chosen inorganic salt (SrBr2·6H2O) reacting with purewater vapour operates within a closed system. The objective of this work is to design a systemthat thermodynamically matches the combination with micro-CHP. Therefore, investigationshave been performed from the material at micro-scale to the system at lab-scale. Models weredeveloped on the basis of heat and mass transfer with chemical reaction and were done in orderto numerically analyse the system. Experiments were additionally performed to consolidate thenumerical tools for future studies. Characterization experiments have been designed and tested.Thermo-physical properties (thermal conductivity, specific heat capacity, permeability, chemicalkinetics) of the reactive salt were then determined to be used as parameters into the sodeveloped models.The numerical simulations lead to the time-space evolution of heating fluid, reactive bedtemperatures and reactor pressure. The originality of this study is to model the coupled heat andmass transfer with chemical reaction on a 3D geometry to be close to the reality. Results help tonumerically and experimentally analyse the thermochemical heat storage performances. Thebed energy density is experimentally found to be 531 kWh·m-3 of salt hydrate. Based on thecondensation temperature during the experimentation, a reactor energy density of 140 kWh·m-3and a storage capacity of 65 kWh with a thermal efficiency of 0.78 are obtained. This systemproves the recovery capacity of more than 2/3 of the input energy. Various aspects of design andrecommendation for optimisation aspect that could help during prototype development aretaken into account and addressed. Comparison simulation-experiment is then performed anddiscussed, showing encouraging results, even if limited at lab-scale.
In the discourse on pharmaceuticals in the environment, hardly any attention has been paid to anticancer drugs. Because of their none-selective modes of action, that is, because they affect both cancerous and healthy cells, these drugs are regarded as potentially carcinogenic, genotoxic, mutagenic, and teratogenic substances. It is, however, not known how and to what extent these substances affect organisms and the environment in the long run. For this reason, this dissertation evaluated, addressing several endpoints and using organisms from different trophic levels and in silico predictions, the fate (bio- and photo degradation) and ecotoxicity of these substances. Four anticancer drugs (cyclophosphamide (CP), 5-fluorouracil (5-FU), methotrexate (MTX), and imatinib (IM) were selected. None of these anticancer compounds can be classified as ´readily biodegradable,´ a classification that indicates that biodegradation will only play a minor role in the elimination of these compounds and that they cannot be removed by the conventional processes used in sewage treatment plants and will most likely remain in the water cycle. Despite the high degrees of mineralization achieved in advanced (photo)oxidation processes, it was not possible to fully mineralize the compounds, a result that indicates that transformation products were created during these reactions. The ecotoxicity assays performed with V. fischeri indicated that 5-FU was, of all the substances tested, likely to be the most toxic (very toxic), followed by MTX (toxic) and IM (toxic/harmful), whereas CP was nontoxic. MTX presented the highest phytoxicity activity in the Lactuca sativa assay, followed by 5-FU, IM, and CP. The results of the tests performed with A. cepa showed cytotoxic (5-FU, MTX, and CP) and genotoxic effects (5-FU, CP, and IM) and mutagenic activity (5-FU, MTX, CP, and IM) of the compounds. Photo transformation products (PTPs) of CP, MTX, and 5-FU were nontoxic towards V. fischeri. However, some PTPs formed during the photodegradation of 5-FU led to positive mutagenic and genotoxic alerts in several in silico models. Not one of the compounds examined in this dissertation is likely to be fully eliminated from the water cycle by (natural) photolysis and/or advanced oxidation. Moreover, some of the treatments resulted in the formation of stable intermediates that were even less biodegradable than parent compounds. This finding shows that it is not enough to focus on primary elimination because TPs are not necessarily better biodegradable than their respective parent compounds. As indicated by the genotoxic and mutagenic positive alerts presented by different in silico models, the PTPs observed here are likely to require, despite their lower toxicity in comparison to the parent compounds, screening after treatments.
Traditional farming landscapes have been created in coexistence of rural dwellers and local ecosystems over long time spans, and can be considered tightly coupled ´social-ecological systems´ (SES). Since these landscapes typically embody exceptionally high levels of biological diversity and multiple socio-cultural values, their protection is critical from a sustainability perspective. Due to the pressures of globalization and social change, however, rural livelihoods and farmland biodiversity are at risk. While the focus of research is often on the Southern hemisphere, there are traditional farming landscapes in the former socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) which are equally affected by rapid change, and thus deserve particular attention. Since the institutional breakdown of socialism in 1989, the CEE states have not only been confronted with an unprecedented socio-economic and environmental transition. Their integration into the multi-level governance regime of the European Union (EU) further resulted in the transformation of decision-making structures and competition within the EU common market. In light of the profound changes traditional farming landscapes of Central and Eastern Europe are confronted with, they serve as a valuable source of learning about the institutional design necessary to harmonize socio-economic development and biodiversity conservation within regional social-ecological systems worldwide. This thesis is the result of an in-depth analysis of one traditional farming landscape of Central and Eastern Europe, namely Southern Transylvania (Romania). Based on empirical research involving diverse stakeholder groups, this thesis assessed the impact of EU policy on the area, the institutional features characterizing local-level governance in Southern Transylvania, and the barriers and bridges towards sustainable rural development. This thesis finds that while rural dwellers are highly dependent on smallholder farming and local ecosystems for their livelihoods, Southern Transylvania is currently confronted with a range of structural development barriers. These are likely to be exacerbated by a governance system consisting of historically grounded ´elite social networks´, and by EU policies which often do not fit rural realities. The findings of this dissertation underline that entrenched informal institutions, political will, and historical legacies play a critical role for the governance of traditional social-ecological systems since these ´social system features´ do not only mediate how external policies act on the local level. They may further restrict local adaptive and innovation capacities which, however, are critical for the transformation towards sustainable development. This thesis further finds that there are no blueprint solutions for the design of rural development strategies. Instead, (supra-) national policies should take better account of local socio-economic and cultural particularities.
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.
Uranine (sodium fluorescein, UR) has been routinely used in hydrological research to monitor surface and subsurface water flow, transport and mixing processes since the end of nineteenth century. Based on such obtained data, further conclusions can be drawn on the spread and behavior of pollutants (partly on models). Use of UR for qualitative (visual) studies of underground contamination is common, however data available on its environmental behavior (e.g., conversion, degradation or formation and fate of the transformation products, TPs) are incomplete or not readily comparable. UR observations of biodegradation are still speculative. S-metolachlor (SM) is a popular worldwide chloroacetamide herbicide, which highly correspond to the global pesticide use. It is offered on the French market as an effective multicrop herbicide against annual grasses and certain broadleaf weeds under the trade name Mercantor Gold (MG). Photodegradation contributes to the fate of SM in the aquatic environment. TPs were already found in surface and groundwater. However, further fate and assessment of the TPs was not done. Moreover, adjuvants in MG´s formula can affect the solubility, biodegradation, photolysis and sorption properties of the active compound SM. TPs can have different properties (e.g. more mobile, toxic or present at higher concentrations) that enable them to reach the environmental compartments not affected by the parent compound (PC) itself. To assess the ecological impact of pesticides, tracers, and their respective TPs on water organisms, their behavior can be investigated in laboratory screening biodegradation tests. Yet, incomplete data was available on SM, MG and UR transformation or their photo- TPs´ fate in surface and water-sediment systems. The combination of photolysis with aerobic biodegradation in order to identify persistent photo-TPs could provide new insight into the environmental behavior of the selected compounds. Therefore, principle of this thesis was to 1) identify the impact of MG´s adjuvants on the biodegradation, photolysis (Xe lamp) and sorption compared to the SM alone, 2) examine the photolysis and biodegradability of UR 3) monitor the primary elimination (photolysis) of the PCs by HPLC (-UV, -FLD) and measure the degree of mineralization by means of nonpurgeable organic carbon (NPOC) 4) elucidate the photo-TPs of SM, MG and UR by using LCMS/ MS 5) analyze biodegradability of the photo-TPs in order to determine their fate and persistence in aquatic environment 6) conduct in silico toxicity predictions (pesticides) in human (carcinogenicity, genotoxicity and mutagenicity) and eco-toxicity (microtoxicity, bioconcentration factor and toxicity in rainbow trouts). SM, MG and UR were found not readily biodegradable in Closed Bottle test (CBT), Manometric Respiratory test (MRT) and in water-sediment test (WST). Chemical analysis of photolysis samples showed higher elimination of SM in MG compared to SM alone whereas UR displayed high primary elimination rate in general. The overall low degree of mineralization indicated that abundant photo-TPs were formed. Furthermore, the photo-TPs were found not biodegradable in performed biodegradation tests. Only small degradation rates for UR could be observed in the CBT and WST. Additionally, in the MRT and WST new bio-TPs were generated from the photo-TPs of SM and SM in MG. Obtained results suggest that the MG formulation did not significantly affect the biodegradation, however it influenced the diffusion of the active substance (SM) to sediment and potentially affected the photolysis efficiency, which might result in faster formation of photo-TPs in the environment. In silico predictions showed that for many endpoints, biotransformation might lead to an increased toxicity in humans and to water organisms compared with the parent compound SM. No indications were found for UR toxicity. Still, target-oriented investigations on long term impacts of photo-TPs from UR are warranted. The present work demonstrates that a combination of laboratory tests, analytical analysis and in silico tools result in valuable information regarding environmental fate of the TPs from selected compounds. Furthermore, it was shown that photo-TPs formed in the aquatic environment should be taken into account not only the parent compound and its decay.
The Ili Delta in Kazakhstan is an important ecosystem that offers crucial wetland habitats for several bird species. However, the Ili River, the Ili Delta and the Balkhash Lake are suffering from water shortage due to climate change and human activities. The desertification of the Aral Sea, an obvious point of comparison to the Balkhash region, also involved the degradation of wetland habitats and the related loss of many bird species relying on these habitats. Therefore, water shortage at the Ili Delta may also be the reason for the loss of wetland habitats and bird species. In this study, bird species numbers, species abundances as well as bird diversity at different habitats in the Ili Delta were examined. There are many habitat types provided by the Ili Delta, for example reed bed vegetation, Tugay forest, bare soil floodplains along rivers and steppe. The results of this study showed that the central delta region with habitats of submerged reed vegetation showed the highest number of bird species and the greatest diversity. Threatened bird species at the Ili Delta were also observed only in these wetland habitats. Steppe habitats showed the lowest numbers of bird species and the lowest bird diversity. In general, all habitats at the Ili Delta are important for the ecosystem and essential for the bird species that depend on them for their survival. With expansion of arid steppe habitats due to water shortage, however, previous wetland habitats may be lost. Moreover, bird species that depend on these wetland habitats may also be lost. Therefore, protective measures for the Balkhash region in general and the wetland habitats at the Ili Delta and its distinct avifauna in particular are urgently needed.
In 1999 David Elstein delivered a lecture series examining the evolvement of UK broadcasting policy from 1949 to 1999. His sharp analysis is a valuable contribution to the post-war devel-opment of the British broadcasting system and unfolds many topical issues in current media policy debates.
Loss of natural and semi-natural habitat due to increasing human land use for agriculture and housing has led to widespread declines in bee pollinator diversity and abundance, which raised global concerns about the stability of pollination services. Bee population dynamics depend on floral resource diversity and availability in the surrounding landscape, and loss of plant biodiversity may thus directly impair the fitness of individual bee species. However, whether and how plant and resource diversity and availability affect foraging patterns, resource intake, resource quantity and nutrient quality and ultimately fitness of generalist social bees remains unclear. In this thesis, we placed hives of the Australian eusocial stingless bee Tetragonula carbonaria (Apidae, Meliponini) in natural habitat (subtropical forests) and two landscapes differently altered by humans (suburban gardens and macadamia plantations), varying in plant species richness, resource abundance and respective habitat patch size. Foraging patterns and resource intake were compared between landscapes in different seasons and colony growth and fitness were monitored over two and a half years. Bee foraging activity, pollen and sugar intake, diversity of collected pollen and resin resources, resource quantity (colony food stores), colony fitness (brood volume, queenand worker reproduction) and colony growth overwhelmingly increased with plant species richness in the surrounding habitat. However, plant species richness and thus bee fitness was highest in gardens, not in natural forests, as bees in gardens benefited from the continuous floral resource availability of both natural and exotic plants across seasons. In contrast, foraging rates and success, forager orientation and consequently colony fitness was largely reduced in plantations. While bees maximized diversity of collected resources, collecting more diverse resources did however not increase resource functionality and nutritional quality, which appeared to be primarily driven by the surrounding plant community in our study. Conversely, individual worker fitness (body fat and size) was not affected by available resource diversity and abundance, showing that colonies seem not to increase the nutritional investment in single workers, but in overall worker population size. This thesis consequently revealed the outstanding role of plant biodiversity as a key driver of (social) bee fitness by providing more foraging resources, even when only small but florally diverse patches are available.
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.
This study aims to answer four main research questions regarding the roles, strategies, barriers, and representation of the media and environmental nongovernmental organisations (ENGOs) in environmental communication in Malaysia. From a theoretical lens, this study has incorporated the essential concepts of media, ENGOs, and environmental communication from both Western and Asian, particularly Malaysian perspectives as primary points of reference. For the purpose of this study, a total of 13 interviewees from Media A and Media B and 11 interviewees from ENGO A and ENGO B were chosen for the qualitative interview while 2,050 environmental articles were collected as samples from Media A´s and Media B´s newspapers along with ENGO A´s and ENGO B´s newsletters from the period 2012 to 2014 for the quantitative content analysis. Specifically, the findings from interview confirmed that both the Malaysian media and ENGOs have shared quite similar roles in environmental communication, particularly in environmental legitimacy (creating trust, credibility, and relationships with the public), in democracy (acting as a watchdog and mobilising the public sphere), and in constructing public mind about environmental problems. Pictures undoubtedly were one of the most vital tools in social construction, especially for presenting the reality of the environmental problems to the public. This was in harmony with the results of the quantitative content analysis, where more than 60% of pictures were found on environmental articles in media newspapers and ENGOs newsletters. Malaysian media and ENGOs have shared two common strategies in environmental communication, namely campaigning and collaboration with other stakeholders, while the ENGOs have two extra strategies: advocacy and lobbying strategies. Malaysian media and ENGOs also have collaborated with each other and the level of collaboration between them was at the coordination (medium) level. Both social actors especially the media were also relied heavily on their sources for environmental articles and the result of quantitative content analysis showed that the government was the main source for media newspapers, whereas other ENGOs and laypersons were the main sources for ENGOs´ newsletters. There are also colossal barriers faced by both Malaysian media and ENGOs throughout the process of environmental communication and some of the barriers faced by both media and ENGOs include the problem with limited knowledge of the environment, while some other barriers, like media laws and ownership, were only faced by the media; other barriers such as funding problems were specifically faced by the ENGOs. In terms of representation of environmental information, the Malaysian media make more presentations on environmental problems, especially on topics like floods, wildlife and water crises in their newspapers, while ENGOs have given more attention to environmental effort topics such as conservation and sustainable living in their newsletters. Surprisingly, not only the media but also the ENGOs used the same (news) values like timeliness, proximity, and impact as criteria for the selection of environmental issues for their publications. Other factors such as the background of the organisation and the interest of journalists or editors also influence the selection of environmental issues. It is hoped that the proposed theoretical framework of this study can serve as a crucial guideline for the development of environmental communication studies, especially among the media and ENGOs not only in Malaysia but also in other (Southeast) Asian regions that share a similar background.
After being administrated to humans or animals, pharmaceuticals may be metabolized by a variety of mechanisms and pathways within the body. Once these compounds and/or their metabolites are excreted, they may undergo degradation in the aquatic environment. Unfortunately, a rapid and complete mineralization cannot always be guaranteed, whereas relatively stable transformation products (TPs) may be formed. The largest part of older studies focused on investigation of the elimination kinetics of parent compounds without considering the amount and chemical structure of individual TPs. Only recently, there is an increasing trend to deliver such information. Nevertheless, since drugs are defined as significant environmental pollutants, it is not only important to elucidate their TPs, but also necessary to investigate whether these formed compounds preserve the same mode of action as the parent compound or are even more toxic. Thus, two main objectives of this thesis can be formulated. Firstly, to highlight the concern originated by metabolites and transformation products of pharmaceuticals that contaminate the environment. Hereby, the already-published knowledge on TPs within a certain selection of drugs is assessed to exemplify the number and quality of the existing information on their TPs. Secondly, to particularly investigate the fate of the antibiotic ciprofloxacin (CIP). This is done by (a) evaluating the suitability and sustainability of the photolytic decomposition as an advanced water treatment technique, (b) monitoring the course of genotoxicity of the irradiated mixtures using a battery of genotoxicity and cytoxicity in vitro assays, and (c) considering the potential genotoxicity for CIP´s individual TPs by the employment of in silico approaches using quantitative structure activity relationships (QSAR) models. This thesis based on the results and conclusions of five articles, which can be found in the appendix. A systematic literature review was conducted on the current state of knowledge on pharmaceuticals and its derivatives in the environment. Two groups, namely antibiotics and anticancer drugs, were considered more closely with respect to the availability of chemical structures for their TPs. Furthermore, the photodegradation of CIP as well as a preliminary toxicity assessment of its identified TPs were investigated in three research papers. An extensive review with a table at its core shows the existing data on 158 TPs, which already have an assigned registry number in chemical abstracts service (CAS-RN), was presented. In total, 294 TPs, identified with chemical structures in the literature, were found for 15 compounds out of the 21 that were selected as target compounds. Eleven TPs, created from CIP, were identified by high-performance liquid chromatography/high-resolution multiple-stage mass spectrometry. It was detected that the transformation of CIP mainly occurred through substitution of fluorine, defluorination, hydroxylation of the quinolone core and the breakdown of the piperazine ring. Some of the identified TPs of CIP were predicted as genotoxic by QSAR analysis, while the experimental testing for a few genotoxic and cytotoxic endpoints showed that the potential of the resultant mixtures could be primarily dependent on the concentration of residual CIP. In contrast, irradiation mixtures were neither mutagenic in the Ames Test nor genotoxic in the in vitro Micronucleus Test. It is possible that the effect of the TPs was masked by antagonistic mixture interactions and/or they were not formed at effectively concentrations. Nevertheless, all of the identified TPs of CIP still retained the core quinolone moiety, which is responsible for the biological activity. Thus, a more comprehensive assessment, encompassing more genotoxic endpoints, chemical analysis characterization and exposure analyses, needs to be conducted. Information available on TPs demonstrates that already slight changes in treatment conditions and processes result in the formation of different TPs. Nevertheless, most of the transformation products could neither be identified nor fully assessed regarding their toxicity. This, in turn, presents a major challenge for the identification and assessment of TPs. Hence, from a practical and sustainability point of view, limiting the input of pharmaceuticals into effluents as well as improving their (bio)degradability and elimination behavior, instead of only relying on advanced effluent treatments, is urgently needed. Solutions that focus on this
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.
Water is an essential natural resource, yet we are experiencing a global water crisis. This crisis is first and foremost a crisis of governance rather than of actual physical resources. Capacities of single, unitary states are severely challenged by the complex, multi-scalar, and dynamic structure of contemporary problems in water resource management. New modes of governance stress the potential of public participation and scalar restructuring for effective and legitimate environmental decision-making. However, a lack evidence on the actual implementation and instrumental value of novel governance modes stands in stark contrast to the strong beliefs and assumptions that often see these being propagated as ´panaceas´ or ´universal remedies´. With this doctoral dissertation I aim to contribute to a deeper understanding of the implementation and performance of public participation and scalar restructuring in environmental governance, and particularly to engage in systematic research into the contextual factors that shape the performance of such governance innovations. Based on the conceptual approaches of participatory, multi-level governance and scale, I advance a conceptual framework specifying mechanisms and important contextual factors describing the potential of participation and rescaling to impact on the efficacy of environmental decision-making. Applying this framework, I employ a mixed-methods approach combining qualitative, quantitative, set-theoretic, and review methods, with the aim of maximising the validity of results. Drawing on the institutional frame of the European Water Framework Directive (WFD), I first assess the extent and conditions under which participation and rescaling are actually implemented in the European water resource management regime. Subsequent analyses examine whether these governance shifts, where implemented, actually lead to environmentally effective and legitimate political decisions, and foster social outcomes. Results indicate that actual changes in governance structures remain modest, whereas previous institutional structures and experiences prove rather durable. Hence, despite recent shifts distributing authority towards alternative actors and scales, the state has persisted in its role as central authority in the European water resource management regime. To the extent that they were implemented, public participation and rescaling were generally positively related with the environmental effectiveness and legitimacy of political outcomes. The analysis provides a context-sensitive understanding, by unravelling the supposedly linear relationship between governance inputs and outputs to develop a more nuanced picture of the governance process rather as a composition of multiple, interdependent causal mechanisms that, depending on their actual configuration, lead to various outcomes. In this way, particularly the tension between legitimacy and effectiveness of political outcomes is disentangled, with both being seen as the result of distinct but interrelated properties of the governance system and its contextual circumstances. The thesis furthermore provides insights of practical and policy relevance, highlighting the need and potential to take a context-sensitive perspective in policy design and decision-making. The framework paper and the Ph.D. thesis thus together enhance academic understanding of environmental governance and its potential contributions to sustainability transitions.
The agreement on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the UN General Assembly in September 2015 was a milestone in the common history of international development and sustainability governance. However, in order to be effective, it is necessary to identify and to define suitable instruments that can be applied in order to fulfill the ambitious goal catalogue. Therefore, the underlying thesis examines the concept of Village Savings and Loan associations (VSLAs) with regard to its mechanisms that operate towards an attainment of the respective goal category. VSLAs are self-government, autonomous and democratically organized Microfinance Institutions (MFIs). They consist of a maximum of 25 mostly female members, who know and trust each other. The work is carried out within a qualitative-empirical research design applied in central Cameroon, which has to some extent exemplary character for sub-Saharan Africa. In this manner, guided experts interviews were conducted with VSLA-presidents as well as with field officers that are creating and accompanying VSLAs. A first part addresses the historical evolution of the SDGs and the theoretical and actual implications of Microfinance and the VSLA-methodology. After considering the methodological proceeding, the results are presented, discussed and summarized in a conclusion. All in all, 22 mechanisms for the attainment of nine SDG-categories are identified and described. Of particular importance is the key role of the credits to trigger fruitful activities that generate financial wealth, economic growth and employment. Furthermore, the savings of the members are an important factor for the school enrollment of the members´ children. Additionally, a combination of the credits and the solidarity fund improves the medical treatment of the members and their families. In contrast to that, direct mechanisms supporting the nutritional situation or gender equality in the research field are found to have a limited importance. Moreover, none of the identified mechanisms targets the environmental sphere of the SDG-catalogue. This is weighty in light of an increasing noticeability of the impacts of climate change for the involved population group. Nonetheless, the VSLA-concept is a simple way to effectively address the social and the economic aspects of the SDG-catalogue. In this manner, a further development of the instrument could include the canalization of the capital of international de-velopment cooperation through the VSLAs as democratic and transparent grassroots-institutions.
Entrepreneurs and Freelancers: Are They Time and Income Multidimensional Poor? - The German Case
(2016)
Entrepreneurs and freelancers, the self-employed, commonly are characterized as not only to be relatively rich in income but also as to be rich in time because of their time-sovereignty in principle. Our introducing study scrutinises these results and notions about the well-being situation of self-employed persons not only by asking about traditional single income poverty but also by considering time poverty within the framework of a new interdependent multidimensional (IMD) poverty concept. The German Socio-economic panel with satisfaction data serves as the data base for the population wide evaluation of the substitution/compensation between genuine, personal leisure time and income. The available detailed Time Use Surveys of 1991/92 and 2001/2 of the Federal Statistics Office provide the data to quantify the multidimensional poverty in all the IMD poverty regimes. Important result: self-employed with regard to single income poverty, single time poverty and interdependent multidimensional time and income poverty in both years are much more affected by time and income poverty than all other active persons defining the working poor. A significant proportion of non-income-poor but time poor of the active population are not able to compensate their time deficit even by an above poverty income. These people are neglected so far within the poverty and well-being discussion, the discussion about the ´working poor´ and in the discussion about time squeeze and time pressure in general and in particular for the self-employed as entrepreneurs and freelancers.
Among all attenuation processes, biodegradation plays one of the most important role and is one of the most desirable processes in the environment. To assess biodegradation, a variety of biodegradation test procedures have been developed by several international organizations. OECD guidelines for ready biodegradability testing represent one of the most prominent group of internationally used screening biodegradation tests (series 301A-F). These tests are usually very simple in their designs and allow for the fast and cheap screening of biodegradability. However, because of their stringency, the test conditions are not close to simulating environmental conditions and may lead to unrealistic results. To overcome these limitations, OECD introduced simulation tests which are designed to investigate the behavior of chemicals in specified environmentally relevant compartments. Despite the fact that simulation tests give more insight into the fate of chemicals in the environment, they are not applied frequently as they are often tedious, time consuming and expensive. Consequently, there is a need to provide a new biodegradation testing method that would combine complex testing environment as in simulation tests, easiness in handling and good data repeatability as in screening biodegradation tests. Another challenge is an adaption of the existing biodegradation testing methods to new types of samples, i.e. mixtures of transformation products (TPs). The research on the presence of pharmaceuticals in the environment gained momentum in the 1990s; since then, it has been growing. Their presence in the environment is a wellestablished fact. A wide range of pharmaceuticals is continuously detected in many environmental compartments such as surface waters, soils, sediments, or ground waters. After pharmaceuticals reach the natural aquatic environment they may undergo a number of processes such as: photolysis (under direct sunlight), hydrolysis, oxidation and reduction reactions, sorption, biodegradation (by bacteria of fungi), and bioaccumulation. These processes, may cause their elimination from aquatic environment, if reaction is complete, or creation of new compounds i.e., transformation products (TPs). What is more, processes, like chlorination and advanced oxidation processes (AOPs), such as H2O2/UV, O3/UV, TiO2/UV, Fenton, and photo-Fenton, or UV treatment which might be applied in water or wastewater treatment, may also lead to the TPs introduction into aquatic environment. The research on the TPs brings many new challenges. From one side, there is a constant need for the the development of a sensitive and reliable analytical separation, detection, and structure elucidation methods. Additionally, there is a need for the preparation of appropriate assays for the investigation of properties of new compounds, especially those answering the question if TPs pose a higher risk to the aquatic ecosystems than their parent compounds. Among numerous groups of pharmaceuticals, two are of great importance: antibiotics since they might promote emergence and maintenance of antimicrobial resistance in the aquatic environment; and cytostatic drugs. Cytostatic drugs can exert carcinogenic, mutagenic and/or teratogenic effects in animals and humans. The challenges of biodegradation testing presented in this thesis, encompasses these different areas of interest and was divided into three objectives: 1) Identification of the knowledge gaps and data distribution of the two groups of pharmaceuticals antibiotics and cytostatic drugs (article I); 2) Increasing the knowledge on biodegradation of cytostatic drugs and their TPs (articles II, III, and IV) and 3) Establishment of a biodegradation test with closer to simulation tests conditions, that could be affordable and to support better understanding on processes in water sediment interface construction - screening water-sediment test. Further validation of the test with an insight into sorption and desorption processes (articles V and VI).
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.
The dissertation project focuses on empirically investigating consumers' attitudes, motivations and purchasing decisions regarding sustainable products. The focus on this micro perspective, however, does not reflect consumers' roles within the transformation towards sustainable consumption. Therefore, the present framework paper puts the included papers into a greater context and evaluates the findings on a meta-level by applying an enhanced transition management theory. The analysis underlines that consumers' limited personal capabilities are an underlying reason for unsustainable practices. Therefore, the active engagement not only of consumers, but also of companies is required if the transformation is to be successful. If companies actively support consumers in making sustainable choices, consumers can engage in sustainable consumption with only low cognitive efforts. On this basis, genuine sustainable choices are enabled. The dissertation provides practical implications by highlighting potential measures which will help to promote sustainable products from niches to mainstream. In sum, the dissertation project enhances academic understanding of consumers´ sustainable purchasing behavior and reveals the potential of integrating such insights into the management of transformations towards sustainable consumption.
This thesis aims at contributing to the better understanding of the roles of international and domestic institutional and governance patterns for corporate sustainability practices. By combining governance and new institutionalism approaches it bridges the gap between the close look at specific corporate sustainability (CS) policies and the broader view on institutional frameworks. The qualitative comparative approach aims to provide deeper insights on the implementation of different governance schemes by transnational corporations ((TNC). Finally, the conclusions might allow for the development of a) recommendations for the balancing of TNCs' CS management between global and domestic requirements, and b) policy recommendations in the field of CS governance. The overarching research question is as follows: What role do national governance patterns play in comparison to global governance practices in shaping the corporate sustainability (CS) management of transnational corporations (TNCs)? In order to further operationalize this research objective, it is structured into three subquestions: (1) What are relevant institutional factors and global governance patterns for corporate sustainability/ Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)? (2) What are relevant institutional factors and national governance patterns for corporate sustainability/CSR in Germany, the US, and India? (3) How do these national and global governance patterns influence TNCs' CS management? The first two questions aim at tracing the institutional framework and governance patterns at both national and international levels by identifying norms, stakeholder expectations, prevalent modes of governance and actors involved in governance processes. On this basis, the third question targets TNCs' reaction to internationally varying governance patterns. Here, it is of main interest how relevant governance instruments are perceived by business actors and to which extent their sustainability management at the companies' headquarters and subsidiaries reflect global and national institutional and governance patterns. In order to answer these questions, literature research and a structured qualitative analysis have been conducted. The concepts of CS and CSR build the basis to analyze how TNCs and their subsidiaries manage their social and ecological corporate responsibilities. Against this conceptual background, the research question is approached empirically by the means of an international comparison. Three institutionally highly diverse countries were chosen: Germany, India and the US. India, an emerging market economy, was included to increase the diversity of the sample and to close the research gap indicated above. In order to identify the differences in governance for CS in these three countries, document analyses and 42 guideline-based interviews with experts from governments, NGOs, trade unions and trade associations were carried out. At the same time, global governance instruments for corporate sustainability – which are already relatively well researched - were identified by analyzing the relevant secondary literature. In a second step, in order to explore how TNCs strategically deal with the multitude of different governance approaches at their headquarters and subsidiaries, three case studies of Germany-headquartered transnational corporations in the chemical and engineering industries (Siemens, BASF and Bayer) 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.
The effects of habitat fragmentation and land use changes are usually studied by relating patterns of genetic diversity and differentiation to environmental factors, habitat history, landscape structure, or to a combination thereof. However, these three drivers are rarely addressed simultaneously. In addition, these studies are usually carried out in conservation-driven contexts, and therefore tend to concentrate on hyper-fragmented landscapes and on rare or endangered species. However, how habitat fragmentation and land use affect widespread species in more typical landscapes has not been fully investigated. This thesis addresses these two gaps. Abax parallelepipedus, a flightless ground beetle with low dispersal power, was used as a model species to test how environmental factors, habitat history, and landscape structure affect genetic diversity and genetic differentiation in three study regions located across Germany. Although all of the study regions represent fairly typical rural landscapes for central Europe, each consisting of a complex matrix of land uses, they differ from one another in terms of environmental factors, habitat history, and landscape structure, and thus can serve as three test cases. In the first stage of the work, the investigator identified polymorphic microsatellite loci which could potentially be used to study genetic diversity and differentiation in A. parallelepipedus. She then developed PCR and genotyping protocols for two suites of loci, in the end selecting to use the set of 14 fully multiplexed loci for the study. After having developed the needed study system, she genotyped over 3300 beetles from 142 study sites. In her investigation of how environmental factors and habitat history affect genetic diversity and genetic differentiation, and found that genetic diversity was being driven by variables that could be related to population sizes rather than by habitat history. She also did not find evidence of an influence of habitat history on the genetic differentiation patterns. Although populations of A. parallelepipedus in the past were probably smaller due to deforestation, they apparently remained large enough to prevent rapid genetic drift. In addition, the researcher carried out a landscape genetics analysis of the genetic differentiation patterns found in each of her study regions, in which she examined the relationship between genetic differentiation and landscape structure. She tested whether she could find patterns of isolation by distance, isolation by resistance, or isolation by barriers in the study regions. No effects of land use or of fragmentation were found. Based on the importance of population sizes found in the previous study, combined with the beetle's known avoidance of non-wooded areas and its inability to cross roads, the investigator concludes that although there is probably little gene flow across the study regions, large population sizes are preventing the rapid development of genetic differentiation. Models simulating the development of genetic differentiation over time in populations of different starting sizes support this conclusion.
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.
The research aims to assess the sustainability of rural electrification efforts based on off-grid photovoltaic (PV) systems in three Andean countries: Chile, Ecuador, and Peru. Although deployment of off-grid PV solutions for rural electrification began in the early 1990s in the Andean region, most of the projects turned out to be unsustainable and did not last. Prior efforts have addressed the different issues and barriers that plagued these projects and inhibited their sustainability. However, these prior analyses were mostly quantitative; systematic qualitative evaluations have been scarce. In this thesis, the researcher addresses the following research question: "Are the rural electrification programs (based on off-grid PV Systems) in the Andean countries sustainable?" In order to answer this research question, he conducted an exhaustive qualitative document analysis complemented by semi-structured expert interviews. The interviewees included experts from different ministries, project managers from leading Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), public and private companies ' representatives, supervisors, and researchers. Although the author also describes several relevant PV-based electrification efforts in the Andean countries, the research was aimed at providing an overall picture of the rural electrification efforts in these countries, rather than measuring the success or failure of specific projects. The gathered information allowed me to assess the sustainability of rural electrification efforts in the Andean countries. This assessment was based on a set of indicators corresponding to the four dimensions of sustainability considered in this thesis: institutional, economical, environmental, and socio-cultural. It was found that Ecuador and Chile have consistently failed to ensure mechanisms for the operation and maintenance of the deployed off-grid systems, which has made these solutions in poor Chilean and Ecuadorian communities inevitably unsustainable. Although Peru has adopted a cross-tariff scheme, the Peruvian case shows that ensuring the funding of off-grid PV solutions is not enough. Peruvian officials appear to be unaware of the importance of local participation (local values and lifestyles are constantly disregarded) and most of the projects have been designed without the participation and engagement of the communities, which has often led to project failures and payment defaults. Although each country has its particular challenges, it was found that the three Andean countries have consistently neglected the importance of strong formal institutions with a flexible and decentralized structure, which in turn significantly compromised the rural electrification effort in these countries.
Various researchers have been hypothesizing on and agreeing that, in negotiations, resources play a fundamental role in parties' behaviors and outcomes. Paradoxically, empirical findings that provide insights into the effects of resources are scarce. The current research seeks to shed light on the overwhelming consensus that resources may shape negotiations. Specifically, in a series of four original research articles, we systematically examine the overarching question of how tangible and even intangible resources affect parties' attitudes, behaviors, and outcomes. Resources in negotiations can be characterized as all the tangible and intangible aspects of the negotiation that are related to the negotiators' interests. Thus, the central activity of the bargaining relationship is the allocation of tangible resources, while intangibles are simultaneously involved. Consistent with this basic idea, we assume that whether parties focus on catching hold of obtaining their adversaries' tangible resources or on losing grip of their own tangibles impacts their concession behavior and outcomes. Parties with a focus on losing their own tangible resources should experience more loss aversion, concede less, and should achieve better outcomes than parties who focus on catching hold of obtaining their counterpart's tangibles. It follows that what should be essential in the ongoing negotiation process should apply to the first move at the bargaining table as well. When first-movers lead responders to focus on catching hold of tangible resources, the well-documented anchoring effect should occur, benefitting the first-mover. Contrarily, when the first-mover induces a focus on the resource the responder is about to lose, responders should be motivated to adjust their counterproposal far away from the opening anchor. Responders' motivation to adjust should leverage the anchoring effect in negotiations. Further, we outline the very special role of money in negotiations, that is perceived as likely the most important tangible resource. Ultimately, we address the important role of intangible resources, in addition to that of tangible resources, and suggest that the intangible resource of professional experience is related to the negotiator´s attitudes towards unethical bargaining tactics. Overall, the findings of these research projects suggest that not only tangible but also intangible resources do in fact have the fundamental impact on negotiators' behavior and outcomes that has been hypothesized for a long time. Parties who focus on losing grip of their own tangible resources concede less and are better off at the end of the negotiations than parties who focus on catching hold of their counterparts' resources. The researchers report evidence for this basic finding, from the first move at the bargaining table to the final agreement. Their findings help to better understand the key role of money in negotiations and to highlight the "mythical" components of this legendary resource. In addition to the findings on tangible resources, the study reveals a strong negative relationship between negotiators' intangible resource of professional experience and their tendency to endorse unethical bargaining tactics. The research work concludes that losing tangible resources and keeping sight of intangible resources may have profound effects on parties' negotiation attitudes, behaviors, and outcomes.
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.
Wood-pastures have been present in Europe for thousands of years. This form of grazed landscape, combining herbaceous vegetation with trees and shrubs, has often co-evolved with its human users into complex social-ecological systems (SES). Wood-pastures are associated with high cultural and biodiversity values and are an example of the sustainable use of resources. However, due to their often relatively labour-intensive management and low productivity, large areas of wood-pastures have been lost over the last century. The loss of these areas means not only the loss of biodiversity on both local and landscape scales, but also the loss of traditional farming and cultural heritage in some regions. Across the European Union, wood-pastures are facing different problems and are embedded in different social systems and ecological environments. Yet they are all affected by global change and common European policies. To understand the challenges for wood-pastures in a changing world, a holistic approach combining different disciplines is needed. This dissertation therefore is analyzing wood-pastures across Europe as a Social-ecological System, combining ecology and social science with the aim to identify the barriers and drivers for wood-pastures persistence into the future.
European species-rich grasslands are threatened both by land use intensification as well as land abandonment. The studies shown in this thesis tested the possible use of ecological knowledge to ensure hay productivity whilst maintaining diversity of grasslands, with a view to informing ecological restoration. The overall approach was to understand interactions between plants, to study diversity effects on productivity, and mainly investigate how plant functional groups that arrive first in the system can create priority effects that influence community productivity both above- and belowground. A grassland field experiment was established and monitored for four years, in order to verify the effects of manipulating the order of arrival of different plant functional groups, as well as the sown diversity level on productivity and methane yield. The overall findings were: a) sowing legumes first created priority effects aboveground (higher biomass) and belowground (lower root length), plants invested less in roots and more in shoots, b) priority effects were more consistent below than aboveground, c) sown diversity did not affect aboveground biomass, d) the order of arrival treatments indirectly affected methane yield by affecting the relative dominance of plant functional groups. Since the researchers lack information on how legumes and non-legumes interact spatially belowground, (particularly related to root foraging) a controlled experiment was performed, using two grass species and one legume. The identity and location of the neighbours played a role in interactions, and the order plants arrived modulated it. When the focal species (grass) was growing with a legume it generally equated to the same outcome as not having a neighbour. Roots from the focal species grew more toward the legume than the grass neighbour, indicating a spatial component of facilitation. Since these studies involved root measurements, a method study was also conducted to verify how comparable and accurate are root length estimates obtained from different techniques. Results showed that the use of different methods can lead to different results, the studied methods did not have the same accuracy, and the automated methods can underestimate the root length. Overall, the results allow to conclude that different groups of plants arriving before others affected above and belowground biomass, roots may be key drivers during the creation of these priority effects, and interaction outcomes between plants depended on neighbour identity and location, modulated by the order they arrive in. The results suggest that priority effects can be used by sowing different species or plant functional groups at different time to steer a community to a desired trajectory depending on the restoration goal. However, there is a need to test contingency, potential, and long term impacts of such possible tools for restoration.
A solid knowledge about nature is essential to understand the consequences of biodiversity loss, the limitation of natural resources and the need for a sustainable development. Inspired by these challenges, the researcher investigated in her dissertation seed predation, an important ecosystem function, as part of citizen science project. As seed predation has only rarely been investigated along urban-rural gradients and to integrate the question if the background (urban vs. rural) of primary school children affects their environmental knowledge, she selected study sites in and around Lüneburg and Hamburg, in Northern Germany. In her ecological experiments, it was found that slugs are important seed predators that independently of urbanization predated about 30% of all seeds in the anthropogenically used landscapes investigated. Also, for the first time, primary school children could be integrated in a citizen science approach into this research and it could be shown that even seven year old children can record data as reliable as a scientist. Finally, the researcher investigated the native species knowledge from the children taking part as citizen scientists in her research, considering possible differences due to their urban or rural background. Contrary to her expectation, the urban or rural background had no significant effect on the species knowledge. However, the work provides a good foundation to transfer the approach of introducing a basic foundation of a taxonomical species concept in primary school to foster further understanding on biodiversity and ecosystem functions.
Smartphones make intensive use of precious metals and so called conflict minerals in order to reach their high performance in a compact size. In recent times, sustainability challenges related to production, use and disposal of smartphones are increasingly a topic of public debate. Thus, established industry actors and newly emerging firms are driven to engage in more sustainable practices, such as sustainable sourcing of materials, maintenance services or take-back schemes for discarded mobile phones. Many of these latter efforts can be related to the concept of a circular economy (CE). This thesis explores how CE-related value creation architectures (VCAs) in the smartphone industry contribute to slowing and closing resource loops in a CE. In order to analyze these new industry arrangements, transaction cost theory (TCT) is used as a guiding theory for a make-or-buy analysis. Combining TCT with the concept of a CE is a novel research approach that enables the empirical analysis of relationships between focal actors (e.g. manufacturers) and newly emerging loop operators (e.g. recycling firms) in the smartphone industry. Case studies of such VCAs are conducted with case companies drawn from the Innovation Network on Sustainable Smartphones (INaS) at Leuphana Universtity of Lüneburg and analyzed regarding their involved actors, partnerships, circular activities, motivation and perceived barriers. Evidence from the conducted case studies suggests that asset specificity for circular practices increases for higher order CE-loops such as maintenance or reuse, therefore long-term partnerships between focal actors and loop operators or vertical integration of CE practices are beneficial strategies to reach a sophisticated CE. Similarly, circular practices that go beyond recycling require a strong motivation, either through integration in the focal firm´s quality commitment or through business model recognition. It is further suggested that the circular design of products and services could reduce necessary transaction costs and thus overall costs of a circular economy. Four different integration strategies for circular economy practices have been derived from the conducted case studies. These are: 1) vertically integrated loops, 2) cooperative loop-networks, 3) outsourcing to loop operators and 4) independent loop operators. This work thus provides evidence that circular economy activities do not necessarily have to be managed by focal actors in the value chain. Rather, circular practices can also be put forward by specialized loop operators or even independent actors such as repair shops.
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 Subaltern will never speak - Critical Reflection on Mill's Thoughts of Political Representation
(2018)
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.
Quality of life and satisfaction with life are of particular importance for individuals as well as for society concerning the “demographic change” with now longer retirement periods. This study will contribute to the life satisfaction discussion and quantifies life satisfaction and pattern of explanation before and after such a prominent life cycle event, the entrance into retirement. In particular, with the individual longitudinal data and 33 waves of the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and the appropriate microeconometric causal fixed effects robust panel methods we ask and quantify if actual life satisfaction indeed is decreasing before re-tirement, is increasing at the entrance into retirement, and is decreasing then after certain periods back to a foregoing level. Thus, we ask if such an anticipation and adaptation pattern– as known from other promi-nent events – is also to discover for life satisfaction before and after retirement in Germany. Main result: Individual and family situation lift life satisfaction after retirement for many years, the (former) occupational situation, however, absorbs this effect both for pensioners and civil service pensioners. It remains only one period of improvement with close anticipation and adaptation at entering retirement but no furthermore significant change compared to pre-retirement life satisfaction. This holds for pensioners (German pension insurance, GRV) but there is no significant effect at all for civil service pensioners.
Sustainability transitions research proposes fundamental changes of societal systems' organisation to overcome persistent societal challenges, such as climate change or biodiversity loss, and allowing systems to become more sustainable. This thesis adresses an underlying tension in sustainability transitions research: between transitions as an open-ended process of fundamental change and the normative direction of this change: sustainability. In doing so, three themes are in the focus of the research: individual agency, normativity and transdisciplinary collaboration. Thereby, the thesis aims to strengthen process-oriented and potentially transformative approaches to sustainability transition research, in contrast to primarily descriptive-analitical approaches. Transition management as a recent and salient example of transdisciplinary transition research is chosen to provide research framework and application context. Based on conceptual-theoretic, empirical case study and reflexive work, three main results are contributed: First, a psychologically enriched understanding of individual and sustainability related agency in conceptual and empirical understandings of transition management is developed. This builds on two perspectives: a psychologically enriched capability approach as well as the analysis of social effects (social learning, empowerment and social capital development) of transition management to capture sustainability oriented agency increases. As second main result, normative considerations, namely sustainability, are included into transition management on conceptual and empirical levels. Therein, substantive, procedural and intentional aspects of sustainability are combined: Substantive aspects are covered by proposing capabilities, behavioral freedoms to live a valuable life, as normative yardsticks to measure developments. Procedural aspects include a detailed understanding of facilitating a learning journey towards making sustainability meaningful in the local transition management cases and setting up experiments for its realiziation. Intentional aspects are addressed by linking social effects of transition management to awareness, motivations and feelings of responsibility towards sustainability. As a third main result, the transdisciplinary collaboration in transition management of creating an arena as an interactive learning space is conceptualized and explored, as well as the roles of the researchers therein. Key issues of this learning space, the community arena, are drawn out and ideal-type roles and activities of researchers in addressing these issues are proposed and empirically analysed. As synthesis of thesis results, ten principles of sustainability transition management are proposed.
Restoration and management of abandoned, dry Continental heathland and sandy grassland communities
(2018)
Whereas heathlands in the Atlantic biogeographical region have been in the centre of interest, dry heathland communities in the Continental biogeographical region have been widely neglected. Thereby, the conservation status of both habitat types is listed as unfavourable-bad across the Continental biogeographical region. Surprisingly, no detailed studies are available on cost-efficient and sustainable restoration and management schemes to successfully restore and maintain highly degraded, long-abandoned Continental heaths and sandy grasslands, and thus, to counteract the poor conservation status of the habitat types. This shows the great need for research for the Continental biogeographical region. Thus, the present thesis provides substantial knowledge about the population dynamics of the key plant species of dry heaths Calluna vulgaris (L.) HULL by investigating key processes in the biology of the species as well as about the restoration and management of long-abandoned, dry Continental heathland and sandy grassland communities. In order to better understand the process of successful Continental heathland restoration, I analysed the reproductive potential (seed production, soil seed bank, and germination ability of seeds) of degenerate Calluna stands as well as the effects of single and combined management options on the generative rejuvenation (i.e., recruitment and survival) of Calluna. The results are based on a comprehensive three-year field experiment including the management options year-round, low-intensity cattle and horse grazing, one-time mowing and one-time shallow soil disturbances combined with greenhouse investigations on the soil seed bank content and germination ability of Calluna seeds. The results showed that even after long-term abandonment, seed production of degenerate Calluna stands and the germination ability of seeds proved to be high, being similar to Atlantic heathlands, whereas the soil seed bank is considerably reduced probably due to the dry conditions in the Continental region. In addition, low-intensity grazing with free-ranging robust breeds and the combination with one-time mowing at the beginning of the restoration process is an effective means of supporting the generative rejuvenation of this key plant species in degraded Continental heaths. The second study of this thesis focussed on the first-year establishment of Calluna in managed and unmanaged dry heaths and heaths in mosaics with dry sandy grasslands. The germination ability of seeds of different life-history phases of Calluna was analysed to determine if the predominance of the late life-history phase restricts the rejuvenation process of this key plant species. In addition, beside effects of management measures (year-round, low-intensity grazing, one-time mowing, one-time shallow soil disturbances) the author analysed the most important safe site conditions that possibly influenced the germination and the first-year survival of Calluna. The results of the study combine field experiments with growth chamber investigations. The author found that life-history phase of Calluna did not significantly affect seed germination and thus, the predominance of the degenerate life-history phase does not restrict the rejuvenation process. In addition, the results of the study revealed that grazing and thus trampling intensity must be temporarily and locally enhanced at the beginning of the restoration process of highly degraded heaths to increase safe site availability for successful Calluna establishment. Thereby, shadowing is the most important safe site condition. In the third study, the author investigated the impacts of year-round low-intensity cattle and horse grazing on the development of the highly competitive grass Calamagrostis epigejos (henceforth referred to as Calamagrostis), as well as the vegetation structure and plant species richness of long-abandoned but nutrient-poor dry heathland and sandy grassland communities, their mosaics and Calamagrostis stands. Finally, I assessed the local conservation status of the habitat types after seven years of grazing in comparison to long-abandoned sites. The results are based on a comprehensive field study on two spatial scales (plot-level: 25 square meters, macroplot-level: 1 ha). The author found that grazing successfully reduced the coverage and prevented the further spread of Calamagrostis, while simultaneously maintained or improved characteristic species richness and vegetation structure across the different nutrient-poor vegetation types over time, and thus enhanced the local conservation status of habitat types of community interest. In conclusion, the results of the studies considerably improved the understanding of dry, Continental heathland and sandy grassland restoration and management. They provide evidence that even after long-term management abandonment, year-round low-intensity cattle and horse grazing is a suitable management tool for restoring, maintaining and even improving nutrient-poor heathland and sandy grassland communities. However, at the beginning of the restoration process, additional management measures are necessary to faster restore abandoned habitats, especially highly degraded heaths.
The fact that digitalization comes along with a lot of negative effects onto the environment is slightly known in the case of energy consumption by hardware, especially regarding mobile devices, having a limited battery life. However, awareness of environmental issues of software, being the driver of hardware, is mainly missing, even if the research field addressing corresponding issues is growing. Thus, the doctoral thesis at hand addresses the question How to draw (a) developers and (b) usersattention to environmental issues of software? By presenting (a) a calculation method of the carbon footprint of software projects and (b) a concept for an eco-label for software products, evaluated by a user survey, the doctoral thesis provides two strategies how to draw the attention to environmental issues of software. Summarizing, this thesis can act as a basis for further research in bridging from science to society in the context of environmental issues of software. Its findings can be seen as starting points for practical implementations of methods and tools supporting a more environmentally friendly way of developing software and informing about environmental issues of software usage. In order to get the implementation of the research results of the thesis going, it highlights practical implications for diverse groups of stakeholders - researchers, certifiers, public administration and professional purchasers, and environmental associations - that have been identified as being important for the practical implementation of the presented concepts and, thus, represent the target group of the doctoral thesis.
In this dissertation, a multi-proxy study, which included palaeoecological, lithological, geochemical and geochronological methods, was carried out to investigate climatic and environmental changes and their interaction during the Quaternary in formerly glaciated and non-glaciated areas. The information obtained will be used to provide a better understanding of the regional stratigraphic framework and to establish broader regional terrestrial correlations within the global marine isotope stage (MIS) framework. This study was conducted on two key drillings, the Garding-2 research drill core in the German North Sea coastal area of Schleswig-Holstein and the GBY#2 archaeological core at the Gesher Benot Ya'aqov (GBY) site, in the Upper Jordan Valley in Israel. The results of this study are presented in three papers. Papers I and II focus on the study of the Garding-2 core, while the multi-proxy study of the GBY#2 core is presented in Paper III. The results of a variety of analyses conducted on the 240 m long Garding-2 sequence show interglacial-glacial cycles that are mainly controlled by variations in temperature. This sequence is composed of mainly fluvial-shallow marine sediments intercalated by muddy-peaty deposits. Based on the palynological and lithological findings, the Pliocene-Pleistocene transition was observed at 182.87 m. It is overlain by Praetiglian and the subsequent sediments of the Waalian and Bavelian Complexes. The boundary of either the second or third Cromerian Interglacial with younger sediments, which still belong to MIS 19, is marked by the last occurrence of Tsuga at 119.50 m and the development of mixed-deciduous forests. The palynologically equivalent sediments of the Bilshausen Interglacial were found below two Elsterian till layers, at 89.00 m-82.00 m. These sediments showed high and increased percentages of Pinus and Picea and scattered occurrences of Abies and Carpinus, which are similar to the features of the beginning of the Bilshausen or Rhume interglacial. An unconformity occurred at 80.29 m, at the bottom of late Holsteinian deposits, characterised by the occurrences of Fagus and Pterocarya, with low percentages of Abies and Carpinus and the absence of Buxus. These deposits are succeeded by sediments of the Fuhne cold period that shows higher percentages of NAP and occurrences of Ericales, Helianthemum and Selaginella selaginoides, which are unconformably overlain by Drenthian till at 73.00 m-71.00 m. A single peaty sample at 69.25 m with Pinus-Picea-Abies assemblage is correlated with the late Eemian Interglacial. This deposit is overlain by Weichselian glaciofluvial sediments. Middle-late Holocene sediments occurred from 20 m upwards, following a hiatus, which was caused by the Early Holocene transgression. A subsequent thin layer of marine Atlantic sediments is unconformably overlain by marine-tidal flat deposits up to 11.00 m. The first occurrence of Fagus (at 15.97 m) and Carpinus (at 15.03 m), which was optically stimulated luminescence (OSL)-dated to 3130 +/- 260 BP (at 16.22 m, Zhang et al., 2014), gives evidence for a Subboreal age for these deposits. Sandy sediments of the early Subatlantic, which were deposited between 11.00 m and the top of the Garding-2 sequence, indicate that local salt marshes, dunes and tidal flat vegetation expanded during this period. Due to regional features and the peculiarities of the local coastal environment, the expansions of Fagus and Carpinus, which are characteristic for the Subboreal-Subatlantic transition at about 2700 BP in northern Germany, are not clearly reflected in the Garding-2 pollen diagram. In the Mediterranean area, a 50 m long core of GBY#2, was drilled at the Acheulian site of Gesher Benot Ya'akov. The GBY#2 core provides a long Early-Middle Pleistocene geological, environmental and climatological record, which also enriches the knowledge of hominin-habitat relationships documented at the margins of the Hula Palaeo-lake. The sediment sequence of GBY#2 is under- and overlain by two basalt flows that are 40Ar/39Ar dated: two samples at the bottom of the core dated to 1195 +/- 67 ka (at 48.30 m) and 1137 +/- 69 ka (at 45.30 m), and another one at the top dated to 659 +/- 85 ka (at 14.90 m). With the additional chronological identification of the Matuyama Brunhes Boundary (MBB) and the correlation with the GBY excavation sites, the sedimentary sequence of GBY#2 provides the climatic history during the late part of the mid-Pleistocene transition (MPT, 1.2 Ma-0.5 Ma). Multi-proxy analyses including those of pollen and non-pollen palynomorphs, macro botanical remains, molluscs, ostracods, fish, amphibians and micromammals provide evidence for lake and lake-margin environments during MIS 20 and MIS 19. During MIS 20, relatively cool semi-moist conditions were followed by a pronounced dry phase. During the subsequent MIS 19, warm and moist interglacial conditions were characterised by Quercus-Pistacia woodlands in this area. The depositional environment changed from an open water lake during MIS 20 to a lake margin environment in MIS 19. This finding is at odds with changing climate conditions from relatively dry to moist. This discrepancy could be explained by the prograding pattern of the lake shore due to the infilling of the basin, which resulted in shallower water. Climatic changes during the Late Tertiary and the Quaternary in the high latitude regions in northwest Europe and during the Early-Middle Pleistocene in the mid latitude regions of the Middle East follow the patterns of global climatic changes, which are mainly controlled by orbital obliquity (+/-41 ka cycle) during the Early Pleistocene and by orbital eccentricity (+/-100 ka cycle) during the MPT (1.2 Ma-0.5 Ma) and the younger periods of the Quaternary. The results of this study also provide reliable evidence for long distance correlation of stratigraphic and climatic events of the Quaternary, which extends knowledge of regional and global impact of climatic fluctuations on the environment.
The German energy system is under transformation. The so-called Energiewende (in English, Energy turn) relies, among other things, on renewable energies for building a more sustainable energy system. Regions (Landkreise) are one relevant level where different administrative bodies make decisions and plans both for the implementation and for the use of renewable energies. However, in order to realize the goals of the Energiewende, developments in the wider society are necessary. This is why scientific research can and should foster such developments with more research on the social aspects of energy-related topics. The present work contributes to the understanding of transition processes towards a sustainable use of regional renewable energy by focusing on the role of contextual conditions, practical experiences, and temporal dynamics in the implementation and use of renewable energy in German regions. In this way, this work wants to contribute fostering the development of regional energy transition strategies for the realization of the Energiewende. The conceptual background for this piece of transformation research lies in three bodies of literature dealing respectively with transitions of socio-technical systems, transformations of socioecological systems, and time ecology. From a critical engagement with this literature, three main results have emerged. First, an evidence-based, spatially distinct analysis of contextual conditions for the use of renewable energy in all German regions has resulted in the identification of nine types of regions, so-called energy context types. Second, empirical research on practices in regional settings learned from the knowhow of actors from regional administration has shown that political and economic conditions are crucial as well as that process management, exchange, and learning are helpful for renewable energy implementation. Third, conceptual work about a deeper understanding of the temporal dimensions of transformation processes has made it possible to point out a three-step approach to include temporal dynamics into sustainability transformations management - the time-in-transformations-approach. The literature suggests that regions need to be treated individually; but developing an energy transition strategy for each region individually would be extremely resource intensive. Overall, this work outlines a compromise for a more efficient approach towards regional energy transition strategies which still considers the individuality of regions. As a result, the author suggests to develop generic regional energy transition strategies that are adapted to each of the nine energy context types of German regions, that include the experiences of practitioners, and that consider temporal dynamics of transformation processes. Transdisciplinary research is a promising approach to meet many of the challenges for the realization of the Energiewende.
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.
This research work aims to create a theoretical base for new urban planning guidelines involving a comprehensive study of housing in Damascus with emphasis on social and cultural factors. The research starts with a historical review of the Muslim City in general and distinguishes between cities that existed before Islam and then were conquered and modified by Muslims and cities established by Muslim Authority. The focus is only on the residential quarters in the city and the local market, mosque and etc (outside the old walled city of Damascus). Other Muslim city urban elements such as Grand mosque, caliph's residency, Citadel and etc. are not in the scope of this study. A brief historical review of Damascus before and during Islam and the development of residential quarters are illustrated. Later, the study analyzes the traditional residential quarter and explores the building guidelines that governed the evolution of the built form of the quarter. Then, the study explores the multi-faceted changes (economic, social and political) that the Middle Eastern region went through, in the last century, in general and the effect of those changes on the city form, case of Damascus. The effect will be traced through examining the decrees that the Authority issued in order to govern land reform and manage public and private domains. Then, the study looks at the ramifications of those decrees on the urban form of Damascus. It also investigates the decrees that were the guide for new planning and organizing developments. The study will inspect the end products of the planning and organizing process by studying several cases of building permits. Then, provides morphology of the new residential sub-quarter and its urban form. Based on lessons learned from the previous decades of housing policy, the study will recommend foundation for governmental norms to produce responsive physical and social urban forms.
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.