Filtern
Erscheinungsjahr
Dokumenttyp
- Dissertation (257) (entfernen)
Sprache
- Englisch (257) (entfernen)
Schlagworte
- Nachhaltigkeit (20)
- Biodiversität (8)
- Entrepreneurship (8)
- Sustainability (7)
- Landwirtschaft (6)
- sustainability (5)
- Tourismus (4)
- Transformation (4)
- biodiversity (4)
- Agriculture (3)
- Arzneimittel (3)
- Energiewende (3)
- Entwicklungsländer (3)
- Governance (3)
- Kulturlandschaft (3)
- Negotiation (3)
- Steuerungsprozesse (3)
- Unternehmensgründung (3)
- social-ecological systems (3)
- Ökosystem (3)
- Abwasseranalyse (2)
- Arbeitsmotivation (2)
- Autonomes Fahren (2)
- Biodegradation (2)
- Energiepolitik (2)
- Energy Policy (2)
- Ethiopia (2)
- Europäische Union (2)
- Gesundheitswesen (2)
- Healthcare (2)
- Internationaler Vergleich (2)
- Israel (2)
- Management (2)
- Nachhaltige Entwicklung (2)
- Nutzerverhalten (2)
- Pestizid (2)
- Pharmaceuticals (2)
- Photolysis (2)
- Sediment (2)
- Training (2)
- Umweltbezogenes Management (2)
- Unternehmen (2)
- Verantwortung (2)
- Verhandlung (2)
- Vorstand (2)
- cultural landscape (2)
- developing countries (2)
- entrepreneurship (2)
- landscape ecology (2)
- Äthiopien (2)
- Ökologie (2)
- Abbau (1)
- Abwassermarkierungsstoffe (1)
- Abwasserreinigung (1)
- Activated Sludge (1)
- Afghanistan (1)
- African Union (1)
- Agency-Theorie (1)
- Agrarsystem (1)
- Algenkultur (1)
- Anden (1)
- Antibiotikum (1)
- Anticancer Drug (1)
- Antriebstechnik (1)
- Aquatic environment (1)
- Arbeitsbedingungen (1)
- Arbeitsmarkt (1)
- Arbeitsökonomie (1)
- Arctic Atmosphere (1)
- Arktis (1)
- Artenreichtum (1)
- Atmosphäre (1)
- Auditing (1)
- Aufsichtsrat (1)
- Bakterien (1)
- Bank (1)
- Bank Bailout (1)
- Bankenkrise (1)
- Bankenrettung (1)
- Banking Crisis (1)
- Baum (1)
- Bee (1)
- Bees (1)
- Benzopyrane (1)
- Berufsvorbereitung (1)
- Beschäftigungspflicht (1)
- Bestäuber (1)
- Betrieb / Umwelt (1)
- Bevölkerungsökonomie (1)
- Biene (1)
- Bienen (1)
- Big Data (1)
- Biochar (1)
- Biodegradability (1)
- Biodiversity (1)
- Biofilm (1)
- Biologische Abbaubarkeit (1)
- Biomass burning (1)
- Biotechnologie (1)
- Bondholder Relations (1)
- China (1)
- Citizen Science (1)
- Civic Engagement (1)
- Climate Simulation (1)
- Coastel environment (1)
- Cognition (1)
- Collaborative Initiative (1)
- Compensation (1)
- Computerspiel (1)
- Consumer Behaviour (1)
- Consumer Protection (1)
- Controlling (1)
- Corporate Bond (1)
- Corporate Disclosure (1)
- Corporate Entrepreneurship (1)
- Damascus (1)
- Damaskus (1)
- Data Mining (1)
- Datenanalyse (1)
- Decision-Making (1)
- Degradation (1)
- Depression (1)
- Derivate (1)
- Derivatives (1)
- Deutschland (1)
- Developing countries (1)
- Digital Learning (1)
- Digitales Lernen (1)
- Digitalisierung (1)
- Discourse Studies (1)
- Discrimination (1)
- Disease Resistance (1)
- Diskriminierung (1)
- Diversität (1)
- Driving Behaviour (1)
- E-Learning (1)
- EU Water Framework Directive (1)
- Economic behavior (1)
- Ecosystem services (1)
- Ecuador (1)
- Effizienzanalyse (1)
- Egypt (1)
- Eigeninitiative (1)
- Eisenbahn (1)
- Elektrifizierung (1)
- Elektromobilität (1)
- Emission (1)
- Emission model (1)
- Emissionsmodell (1)
- Employee Health (1)
- Employee Management (1)
- Energie (1)
- Energieeffizienz (1)
- Energiepreis (1)
- Energy Prices (1)
- Energy Transition (1)
- Entrepeneurship (1)
- Entscheidungsprozess (1)
- Environmental Communication (1)
- Environmental Monitoring (1)
- Environmental governance (1)
- Erneuerbare Energien (1)
- Ernährungslage (1)
- Error Management (1)
- Europa (1)
- European Union (1)
- Exportverhalten (1)
- Fahrerverhalten (1)
- Familienbetrieb (1)
- Familienunternehmen (1)
- Family Firm (1)
- Fatty Acids (1)
- Fehleranalyse (1)
- Fehlerbehandlung (1)
- Fehlermanagement (1)
- Fehlerverhütung (1)
- Ferntourismus (1)
- Feuchtgebiet (1)
- Financial Reporting (1)
- Financial Stability (1)
- Finanzierung (1)
- Finanzstabilität (1)
- Fischerei (1)
- Flammschutzmittel (1)
- Flood (1)
- Fonds (1)
- Food Security (1)
- Forschung und Entwicklung (1)
- Forschungsevaluation (1)
- Franchising (1)
- Fremdkapital (1)
- Fremdsprachenlernen (1)
- Führung (1)
- Führungskräfte (1)
- GIS (1)
- Gamification (1)
- Gamifizierung (1)
- Gender Roles (1)
- Generationengerechtigkeit (1)
- Geoinformationssystem (1)
- Gerechtigkeit (1)
- Geschlechterrollen (1)
- Geschäftsführung (1)
- Gesetzgebung (1)
- Gesundheitspolitik (1)
- Gewässer (1)
- Gewässerbelastung (1)
- Globalisierung (1)
- Graslandschaft (1)
- Grundschüler (1)
- Harz (1)
- Heide (1)
- Hochschulwahl (1)
- Holocene (1)
- Hydrological tracers (1)
- Immunity (1)
- Indien (1)
- Informationsmanagement (1)
- Insekten (1)
- Institutional Change (1)
- Institutional change (1)
- Institutioneller Wandel (1)
- Insurance (1)
- Interessenverband (1)
- Intergenerational justice (1)
- Internationale Organisation (1)
- Internet (1)
- Investition (1)
- Jordan (1)
- Kleinbauer (1)
- Kleinunternehmen (1)
- Klimamodell (1)
- Klimasimulation (1)
- Klimaänderung (1)
- Kläranlage (1)
- Kognition (1)
- Kollaborative Initiative (1)
- Kommunikationstraining (1)
- Konsum (1)
- Konsumentenverhalten (1)
- Krankheitsresistenz (1)
- Kulturelle Entwicklung (1)
- Kulturraum (1)
- Kulturwirtschaft (1)
- Käfer (1)
- Künstliche Intelligenz (1)
- Küstengebiet (1)
- Labor Economics (1)
- Labor market (1)
- Landnutzung (1)
- Landschaftsschutz (1)
- Landschaftsökologie (1)
- Laufkäfer (1)
- Learning Process (1)
- Lebensraum (1)
- Lebensunterhalt (1)
- Legislation (1)
- Leistungsbewertung (1)
- Lernprozess (1)
- Lernsoftware (1)
- Leverage-Effekt (1)
- Lieferketten (1)
- Lipids (1)
- Liquiditätsrisiko (1)
- Lobbyismus (1)
- Luftaustausch (1)
- Ländlicher Raum (1)
- Löhne (1)
- Machine Learning (1)
- Marketing (1)
- Meereis (1)
- Meerwasser (1)
- Menschenhandel (1)
- Mental Disorder (1)
- Mental Health (1)
- Mercury (1)
- Mindset (1)
- Mitarbeiterführung (1)
- Mitarbeitergesundheit (1)
- Monitoring (1)
- Motivation (1)
- Nachfolge (1)
- Namibia (1)
- Natural Language Processing (1)
- Naturschutz (1)
- Neoinstitutionalismus (1)
- Network Analysis (1)
- Network Data (1)
- Netzwerkanalyse (1)
- Netzwerkdaten (1)
- New Economy (1)
- Nichtstaatliche Organisation (1)
- Niederschlag (1)
- Non-Governmental Organisation (1)
- Nordseeküste (1)
- Nährstoffmangel (1)
- Older Workers (1)
- Online Behaviour (1)
- Online-Marketing (1)
- Onlineverhalten (1)
- Optionsschein (1)
- Organisationswandel (1)
- Ozonisierung (1)
- Ozonungsprodukte (1)
- PFCs (1)
- Palaeoclimate (1)
- Paläoklima (1)
- Participation (1)
- Partizipation (1)
- Peru (1)
- Pesticide formulation (1)
- Pflanzen (1)
- Pflege (1)
- Philippinen (1)
- Philippines (1)
- Photodegradation (1)
- Pleistozän (1)
- Polarraum (1)
- Population Economics (1)
- Post (1)
- Postal sector (1)
- Precipitation (1)
- Preisrisiko (1)
- Prestige (1)
- Product Marketing (1)
- Produktivität (1)
- Produktmarketing (1)
- Prüfungsqualität (1)
- Psychische Gesundheit (1)
- Psychische Störung (1)
- Pupils (1)
- Quartär (1)
- Quaternary (1)
- Quecksilber (1)
- Regionalentwicklung (1)
- Regionalism (1)
- Reisen (1)
- Reiseveranstalter (1)
- Reiseverhalten (1)
- Religion (1)
- Renaturierung <Ökologie> (1)
- Renewable Energies (1)
- Research Evaluation (1)
- Research and Development (1)
- Resin (1)
- Restoration <Ecology> (1)
- Retirement (1)
- Risikobewertung (1)
- Risikokapital (1)
- Ruhestand (1)
- Räumliche Verteilung (1)
- Samen (1)
- Saving (1)
- Schadstoff (1)
- Schwerbehinderter (1)
- Schädlingsbekämpfung (1)
- Schüler (1)
- Sea Ice (1)
- Selbstdarstellung (1)
- Selbstregulation (1)
- Selbstschutz (1)
- Selbständigkeit (1)
- Social entrepreneurship (1)
- Social standards (1)
- Software (1)
- Soil quality (1)
- Soziales Engagement (1)
- Soziales System (1)
- Space Policy (1)
- Sparen (1)
- Stickstoffbelastung (1)
- Strukturfonds (1)
- Städtebau (1)
- Städtische Bauplanung (1)
- Sub-Saharan Africa (1)
- Subsaharisches Afrika (1)
- Sustainability Research (1)
- Syrien (1)
- Süßstoff (1)
- Teamführung (1)
- Terrorismus (1)
- Textilindustrie (1)
- Theater (1)
- Thermal energy storage (1)
- Totholz (1)
- Tourism (1)
- Toxicity (1)
- Transdisciplinarity (1)
- Transition Management (1)
- Transitionsmanagement (1)
- Transnational civil society (1)
- Trinkwasser (1)
- UV photolysis (1)
- Umweltbelastung (1)
- Umweltbildung (1)
- Umweltgefährdung (1)
- Umweltkommunikation (1)
- Umweltplanung (1)
- Umweltüberwachung (1)
- University Choice (1)
- Unternehmensbezogene Dienstleistung (1)
- Unternehmenserfolg (1)
- Unternehmenskultur (1)
- Unternehmensperformance (1)
- Unternehmensplanung (1)
- Unternehmer (1)
- Unternehmertum (1)
- Unternehmerverhalten (1)
- Urban Planning (1)
- User Behaviour (1)
- Vagheit (1)
- Verbraucherschutz (1)
- Verbundwirtschaft (1)
- Vereinigte Staaten (1)
- Vergütung (1)
- Verhalten (1)
- Verhandlungsergebnis (1)
- Verhandlungsführung (1)
- Versicherung (1)
- Versicherungswert (1)
- Verteilungsgerechtigkeit (1)
- Vertical Linkages (1)
- Vertikale Bindung (1)
- Vertikale Verknüpfungen (1)
- Verwaltung (1)
- Wald (1)
- Waldökosystem (1)
- Warrants (1)
- Wasserbehandlung (1)
- Wasserqualität (1)
- Wasserverschmutzung (1)
- Wasserwirtschaft (1)
- Wasserzyklus (1)
- Wastewater treatment plant (1)
- Water Pollution (1)
- Water Quality (1)
- Water Recycling (1)
- Water Resources Management (1)
- Water treatment (1)
- Weather Parameter (1)
- Weide (1)
- Weltraumpolitik (1)
- Werbewirkung (1)
- Werbung (1)
- Wetter (1)
- Widerstandsfähigkeit (1)
- Windenergie (1)
- Wirtschaftliches Wachstum (1)
- Wirtschaftsbericht (1)
- Wirtschaftsprüfung (1)
- Wissensmanagement (1)
- Work Motivation (1)
- Wärmespeicher (1)
- Zahnschmelz (1)
- Zugeständnis (1)
- agriculture (1)
- algal-bacterial culture (1)
- atmosphere (1)
- bacterial composition (1)
- biotechnology (1)
- business creation (1)
- business services (1)
- calluna vulgaris (1)
- capital requirements (1)
- career (1)
- career preparation (1)
- challenge (1)
- climate change (1)
- conceptual vagueness (1)
- cultural landscapes (1)
- democratic theory (1)
- disability (1)
- dstributive justice (1)
- ecosystem functioning (1)
- emerging pollutants (1)
- employment quota (1)
- energy efficiency (1)
- energy transition (1)
- environmental management (1)
- environmental manager (1)
- environmental risk (1)
- environmental strategy (1)
- farmland birds (1)
- fishery (1)
- forest ecology (1)
- genotoxicity (1)
- global tourism (1)
- governance (1)
- health care market (1)
- heathland ecosystems (1)
- information management (1)
- insurance value (1)
- justice (1)
- knowledge management (1)
- land-use change (1)
- leadership (1)
- lobbyism (1)
- management control (1)
- nitrogen deposition (1)
- nutrient limitation (1)
- nutrient removal (1)
- ozonation products (1)
- parasitoids (1)
- pesticides (1)
- rangelands (1)
- resilience (1)
- responsibility (1)
- seawater (1)
- seed predation (1)
- self-protection (1)
- self-regulation (1)
- spatial distribution (1)
- species diversity (1)
- startup (1)
- sustainability accounting (1)
- sustainibility (1)
- temporal trends (1)
- terrorism (1)
- textile supply chain (1)
- tourism future (1)
- training (1)
- transformation (1)
- transformation products (1)
- travel behavior (1)
- venture capital (1)
- wages (1)
- wastewater tracers (1)
- wastewater treatment (1)
- water resources management (1)
- wetlands (1)
- whole mixture toxicity (1)
- wind energy (1)
- work engagement (1)
- Ägypten (1)
- Älterer Arbeitnehmer (1)
- Ökosystemmanagement (1)
- Überschwemmung (1)
- Überzeugung (1)
Institut
- Fakultät Nachhaltigkeit (92)
- Fakultät Wirtschaftswissenschaften (60)
- Institut für Ökologie (IE) (27)
- Nachhaltigkeitsmgmt./-ökologie (18)
- Institut für Nachhaltigkeitssteuerung (INSUGO) (12)
- BWL (11)
- Institut für Nachhaltige Chemie und Umweltchemie (INUC) (11)
- Chemie (10)
- Fakultät Kulturwissenschaften (10)
- Fakultät Management und Technologie (9)
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.
Tropical ecosystems are critical for biodiversity conservation and local people’s livelihood sustenance. However, these ecosystems are under high pressure from land-use and land cover (LULC) change, which is further projected to intensify and increase rapidly, thereby affecting biodiversity and the provisioning of vital ecosystem services (ES). It is thus important to understand how LULC might change in the future and how such changes could affect biodiversity and ES provisioning in a given landscape of tropical ecosystems. Scenario planning has become an increasingly popular tool and technique to produce narrative scenarios of the future landscape change. Thus, quantifying changes under different land-use scenarios could be a means to elucidate the synergies and trade-offs within the scenarios. In this dissertation, the author examines the future of biodiversity and ES provisioning for different plausible land-use scenarios in southwestern Ethiopia. First, he translates four future plausible narrative social-ecological land-use scenarios ("Gain over grain", "Coffee and conservation", "Mining green gold" and "Food first") developed for southwestern Ethiopia by participatory scenario planning into spatially explicit LULC scenario maps. Results showed distinct LULC changes under each scenario. Second, the author investigates the impact of these land-use scenarios on biodiversity by specifically modelling woody plant species richness in farmland and forest. Both indicators of human disturbance and environmental conditions were used. Third, he also investigates the effect of these land-use scenarios on woody plant-based ES provisioning by combining woody plant species with household surveys on how woody plants were used by the local community. He models and predicts the current and future availability of woody plant-based ES under the four scenarios of landscape change. Overall, the findings of this dissertation show the importance of integrating future land-use mapping with participatory, narrative-based scenarios to assess the social-ecological outcomes of alternative futures. The spatially explicit maps of LULC change, biodiversity and ES (at different scales) could be used as a valuable input to support stakeholders and decision-makers to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of different development trajectories on ecosystems and human well-being and to avoid or minimize future undesirable consequences. To this end, apart from the benefits of coffee production under "Mining green gold" and crop production under "Food first" scenarios, the findings under these scenarios of large-scale agricultural intensification point to a potentially high loss of biodiversity and ES. These two scenarios could have a negative long-term impact on ecosystems and human well-being. Finally, the "Coffee and conservation" scenario, which involves the creation of a new biosphere reserve, appears to be the most sustainable scenario. This scenario could result in a sustainably managed, diversified landscape which could make major contributions to biodiversity conservation and human well-being in the region and beyond.
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.
Protected areas are an essential tool for conserving biodiversity. However, their ecological effectiveness is contested and their capacity to resist human pressures differ. This dissertation aimed to assess the ecological effectiveness of different protection levels (from strict to less strictly protected: national park, game reserve, forest reserve, game-controlled area, and unprotected areas) in biodiversity (both mega diverse butterflies and mammals), maintaining habitat connectivity, and reducing anthropogenic threats at the wider landscape in the Katavi-Rukwa Ecosystem of southwestern Tanzania. To achieve this overarching goal, the researcher employed an interdisciplinary approach. First, he analyzed butterfly diversity and community composition patterns across protection levels in the Katavi-Rukwa Ecosystem. He found that species richness and abundance were highest in the game reserves and game-controlled areas, intermediate in the forest reserves, national park and unprotected areas. Species composition differed significantly among protection levels. Landscape heterogeneity, forest cover, and primary productivity influenced species composition. Land-use, burned areas, forest cover, and primary productivity explained the richness of species and functional traits. Game reserves hosted most indicator species. Second, the author modelled the spatial distribution of six large mammal target species (buffalo Syncerus caffer, elephant Loxodonta africana, giraffe Giraffa camelopardalis, hartebeest Alcelaphus buselaphus, topi Damaliscus korrigum, and zebra Equus burchellii) across environmental and protection gradients in the Katavi-Rukwa Ecosystem. Based on species-specific density surface models, he found relatively consistent effects of protection level and land-use variables on the spatial distribution of the target mammal species: relative densities were highest in the national park and game reserves, intermediate in forest reserves and game-controlled areas and lowest in un-protected areas. Beyond species-specific environmental predictors for relative densities, the results highlight consistent negative associations between relative densities of the target species and distance to cropland and avoidance of areas in proximity to houses. Third, the author examined temporal changes in land-use, population densities and distribution of six large mammal target species across protection levels between 1991 and 2018. During the surveyed period, cropland increased. Wildlife densities of most, but not all target species declined across the entire landscape. Based on logistic regression models, target species preferred the national park over less strictly protection levels and areas distant to cropland. Fourth, he quantified land-use changes, modelled habitat suitability and connectivity of elephant over time across a large protected area network in southwestern Tanzania. Based on analyses of remotely-sensed data, cropland increased from 7% in 2000 to 13% in 2019. Based on ensemble models, distance from cropland influenced survey-specific habitat suitability for elephant the most. Despite cropland expansion, the locations of the modelled elephant corridors (n=10) remained similar throughout the survey period. Based on circuit theory, the author prioritizes three corridors for protected area connectivity. Key indicators of corridor quality varied over time, whereas elephant movement through some corridors appears to have increased over time. Overall, this dissertation underpins differences in ecological effectiveness of protected areas within one ecosystem. It highlights the need to utilize a landscape conservation approach to guide effective conservation across the entire protection gradient. It also suggests the need to enforcing land use plans and having alternative and sustainable forms for generating income from the land without impairing wildlife habitat.
Through the expansion of human activities, humanity has evolved to become a driving force of global environmental change and influences a substantial and growing part of natural ecosystem trophic interactions and energy flows. However, by constructing and building its own niche, human distance from nature increased remarkably during the last decades due to processes of globalization and urbanization. This increasing disconnect has both material and immaterial consequences for how humans interact and connect with nature. Indeed, many regions across the world have disconnected themselves from the productivity of their regional environment by: (1) accessing biological products from distant places through international trade, and (2) using non-renewable resources from outside the biosphere to boost the productivity of their natural environment. Both mechanisms allow for greater resource use then would be possible otherwise, but also involve complex sustainability challenges and lead to fundamentally different feedbacks between humans and the environment. This dissertation empirically investigates the sustainability of biophysical human-nature connections and disconnections from a social-ecological systems perspective. The results provide new insights and concrete knowledge about biophysical human-nature disconnections and its sustainability implications, including pervasive issues of injustice. Through international trade and reliance on non-renewables, particularly higher-income regions appropriate an unproportional large share of global resources. Moreover, by enabling seemingly unconstrained consumption of resources and simultaneous conservation of regional ecosystems, increasing regional disconnectedness stimulates the misconception of decoupling. Whereas, in fact, the biophysically most disconnected regions exhibit the highest resource footprints and are, therefore, responsible for the largest environmental damages. The increasing biophysical disconnect between humans and nature effectively works to circumvent limitations and self-constraining feedbacks of natural cycles. The circumvention of environmental constraints is a crucial feature of niche construction. Human niche construction refers to the process of modifying natural environments to make them more useful for society. To ease integration of the chapters in this thesis, the framework paper uses human niche construction theory to understand the mechanisms and drivers behind increasing biophysical disconnections. The theory is employed to explain causal relationships and unsustainable trajectories from a holistic perspective. Moreover, as a process-oriented approach, it allows connecting the empirically assessed states of disconnectedness with insights about interventions and change for sustainability. For a sustainability transformation already entered paths of disconnectedness must be reversed to enable a genuine reconnection of human activities to the biosphere and its natural cycles. This thesis highlights the unsustainability of disconnectedness and opens up debate about how knowledge around sustainable human niche construction can be leveraged for a reconnection of humans to nature.
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.
Despite growing research on sustainability transformations, our understanding of how transformative transdisciplinary research can support local actors who foster change towards sustainability is still somewhat limited. To contribute to this research question, the investigator conducted research in a transdisciplinary case study in Southern Transylvania, where non-governmental organizations (NGO) drive sustainability initiatives to foster desired changes (e.g., supporting small-scale farmers or conserving natural and cultural heritage). Interactions with these local actors and reflections on the research question shaped the research of this dissertation. In paper 1, the author conducted a literature review on amplification processes that describe actions, which local actors can apply to increase the impact of their sustainability initiatives. In paper 2, he conducted a literature review on the application of indigenous and local knowledge (ILK) in sustainability transformations research to understand whether this research engages with the conceptualization of transformations from local actors. The results show that ILK is generally applied to confirm and complement scientific knowledge in contexts of environmental, climate, social-ecological, and species change. In paper 3, the author derived principles that provide guidance for how to integrate sustainability initiatives from local actors in transformative transdisciplinary research. Based on his transdisciplinary research with the NGOs in Southern Transylvania and by using systems and futures thinking as an approach for analysis, he derived three principles that provide guidance for the co-design of sustainability intervention strategies that build on, strengthen, and complement existing initiatives from local actors. In paper 4, the author explored empirically how to identify relevant local actors for collaborations that seek to intervene in specific characteristics of a system (e.g., parameters or design of a system). He applied a leverage points' perspective to analyse the social networks of the NGOs in Southern Transylvania that amplify the impact of their initiatives. This dissertation as a whole contributes insights to three recommendations of how transformative transdisciplinary research can support local actors fostering change towards sustainability: First, by conducting research that studies and supports local actors who increase the impact of their sustainability initiatives via amplification processes (Paper 1 and 4); Second, by engaging specifically with the initiatives, networks, and knowledge from local actors, who foster bottom-up, place-based transformations (Paper 1-4); Third, by identifying and collaborating with local actors that are relevant for strategic systems interventions that build on, strengthen, and complement existing initiatives (Paper 3-4).
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.
Crowdfunding is considered a promising instrument for transforming existing socio-technical regimes by financing radical innovations of such entrepreneurs. However, this potential has not yet been fully explored. Therefore, this dissertation addresses the overarching research question of how sustainable entrepreneurs can exploit the full potential of investment-based crowdfunding to develop from niche operators to actors in the socio-technical regime. Five journal articles and one book chapter are included in this PhD project, which use a wide range of quantitative methodologies. In the framework paper, the findings are conceptually evaluated on a meta-level by applying the multi-level perspective. The key insights can be assigned to four categories, including the financing and marketing function, the target group, and the project presentation. The analysis shows that investment-based crowdfunding is suitable to equally fund and market the business ideas of environmental entrepreneurs, since the quest for entering the mass market is highest for such ventures. In contrast, purely social entrepreneurs tend to conduct crowdfunding projects on a smaller scale and probably aim to stay in the niche. Nevertheless, profit-oriented social entrepreneurs are still encouraged to use investment-based crowdfunding for funding and marketing purposes. The prominent display of environmental effects (e.g. the amount of compensated greenhouse gases) and financial incentives (e.g. high interest rates) has a high impact on the investment decision of individuals on investment-based crowdfunding platforms. The case of fairafric is used as a best practice example to demonstrate how crowdfunding can be a stepping stone for sustainability-oriented niche actors to enter the mass market. The fair-trade and organic chocolate manufacturer has undergone six crowdfunding campaigns which enabled it to grow and build a strong community of supporters. The outcomes of this dissertation clarify how sustainable entrepreneurs can unleash the potential of investment-based crowdfunding for financing and marketing purposes.
This paper-based dissertation deals with capital structures and tax policies of German family businesses. Family firms as the predominant company form in Germany are mainly characterized by the overlapping of the two spheres family and business, both having different goal systems and preferences. This also has an impact on decision making with regard to corporate finance including the application of tax avoidance policies. In Germany, bank finance is the dominant financing source for family firms but there is a preference for internal finance since it comes along with more external independency. Extant research usually bases its results on samples of publicly listed companies. These studies come up with different results regarding family firms' actual financing preferences and capture their heterogeneity only to a very little extent. In this light, the present dissertation and its three papers examine different research questions in the context of capital structure decisions and tax avoidance in family firms. All the three papers apply a quantitative empirical research design. The first paper is a comparison between capital structures of family firms and non-family firms. The paper examines differences in bank debt and trade credit ratios. Overall, the findings show that family firms have significantly higher overall and long-term debt levels compared to their non-family counterparts. The identity as a family firm, which leads to a leap of faith by banks, can be a possible explanation for these results. The second paper is an in-depth examination of drivers of bank debt levels within the group of family firms. Further, it addresses heterogeneity amongst family firms and combines survey results and corresponding financial information. This represents a first attempt to capture family firm heterogeneity and its link to financial issues. The study shows that the more power in the company is exerted via management or supervisory board by the family, the less bank debt is used. Paper three is an extension of the previous two studies as it sheds light on tax avoidance, a significant instrument to strengthen the internal financing capability of a firm. This also takes up a research gap as there is very little research on taxation in family firms. Contrary to the expectation, the study reveals that private family firms might pay less tax than their non-family peers.
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.
Does grass-roots civic engagement improve the quality of public services in countries in which formal oversight institutions are weak? It is obvious that formal oversight institutions are weak in developing countries, which causes low-quality public services. This weakness is particularly critical in the health sector - a service domain of crucial relevance for development. This observation has led practitioners to believe that the direct engagement of the beneficiaries of public services is a means to compensate the weakness of oversight institutions and to improve the quality of these services. Given that beneficiaries have incentives to demand good quality services, it is indeed logical to assume that their participation in the monitoring of public services helps to improve the quality of these very services. This positive view of grass-roots civic engagement resonates with the idea that an active civil society helps a political system to build up and sustain a high institutional performance In the eyes of the donors of development aid, this idea nurtures the expectation that strengthening civic engagement contributes to increased aid effectiveness. Accordingly, donor countries have increased their efforts to strengthen beneficiary participation since the 1990s, which moved the concepts of voice and accountability center-stage in the international development discourse. However, whether citizens' capacity to exercise pressure on service providers and public officials really improves the effectiveness of development aid remains an unresolved question. Building upon recent experimental and comparative case study evidence, the thesis examines the role of citizens' engagement in the effectiveness of development interventions. The focus is on such interventions in the health sector because population health is particularly critical for prosperity and development, and ultimately for democratization. The key question addressed is if and under what conditions ordinary people's engagement in collective action and their inclination to raise their voice improves the effectiveness of development assistance for health (DAH). I analyze this question from an interactionist viewpoint, unraveling the complex interplay of civic engagement and health aid with three key institutional variables: (i) state capacity, (ii) liberal democracy and (iii) decentralized government. Drawing upon social capital theory, principal-agent theory, and selectorate theory, I provide compelling evidence that health aid effectiveness depends on (a) bottom-up processes of demand from service users as well as (b) formal processes of top-down monitoring and horizontal oversight arrangements. In other words, the very interaction of behavioral and institutional factors drives the accountability in public service provision and thus the effectiveness of development assistance for health in recipient countries.
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.
Rangelands are the most widespread land-use systems in drylands, where they often represent the only sustainable form of land-use due to the limited water availability. The intensity of the land-use of such rangeland ecosystems in drylands depends to a large extent on the climatic variability in time and space. Rangeland systems are seriously threatened by climate change, because climate change will alternate the availability of water in time and space. This dissertation therefore deals with the question which role climatic variability plays for the effects of grazing on vegetation in dry rangelands. The relatively intact steppes in central Mongolia were chosen as a model system. They are characterised by low precipitation and high climatic variability in the south (100mm annual precipitation), and comparatively high precipitation and low climatic variability in the north (250mm). The effects of grazing on vegetation on 15 grazing transects were investigated along the climatic gradient. The central elements were the plant species and their abundances on 10m x 10m areas, for which functional characteristics such as height, affiliation of functional groups or leaf nutrients were recorded. The main hypothesis of this dissertation is that grazing has a greater impact on vegetation communities with increasing rainfall. To test this hypothesis, three studies were carried out. In a first study, the research group found that the vegetation communities in the dry area differ strongly along the climatic gradient, while the plant communities in the wetter area differ more strongly along the grazing gradient. The results of the second study suggested that this difference can be explained by a functional environmental filter that becomes weaker from south to north as the niche spectrum increases. The third study has shown that this is likely a function of the higher availability of resources, which at the same time leads to higher grazing pressure, therewith stressing the vegetation especially in years with droughts. In summary, the author concludes that the climate gradient also represents an environmental filter that filters species for certain characteristics, thus having a significant influence on the vegetation. Climatic variability influences the effect of grazing on vegetation, which is particularly problematic where the grazing intensity is high and the species are less adapted to strong climatic fluctuations. Future scenarios predict increasing productivity and therefore increasing livestock density. This may lead to an increase in floristic and functional diversity across the climate gradient, but also to increasing grazing effects and therefore threads for overgrazing. Increasing climatic variability is likely to intensify this thread, especially in the moister regions, whereas the dry rangelands are likely to be more resilient due to the adaptation of the plants to non-equilibrium dynamics.
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.
The wide accessibility of the Internet and web-based programs enable an increased volume of online interventions for mental health treatment. In contrast to traditional face-to-face therapy, online treatment has the potential to overcome some of the barriers such as improved geographical accessibility, individual time planning, and reduced costs. The availability of clients' treatment data fuels research to analyze the collected data to obtain a better understanding of the relationship among symptoms in mental disorders and derive outcome and symptom predictions. This research leads to predictive models that can be integrated into the online treatment process to assist clinicians and clients. This dissertation discusses different aspects of the development of predictive modeling in online treatment: Categorization of predictive models, data analyses for predictive purposes, and model evaluation. Specifically, the categorization of predictive models and barriers against the uptake of mental health treatment are discussed in the first part of this dissertation. Data analysis and predictive modeling are emphasized in the second part by presenting methods for inference and prediction of mood as well as the prediction of treatment outcome and costs. Prediction of future and current mood can be beneficial in many aspects. Inference of users' mood levels based on unobtrusive measures or diary data can provide crucial information for intervention scheduling. Prediction of future mood can be used to assess clients' response to the treatment and expected treatment outcome. Prediction of the expected treatment costs and outcomes for different treatment types allows simultaneous optimization of these objectives and to increase the cost-effectiveness of the treatment. In the third part, a systematic predictive model evaluation incorporating simulation analyses is demonstrated and a method for model parameter estimation for computationally limited devices is presented. This dissertation aims to overcome the current challenges of predictive model development and its use in online treatment. The development of predictive models for varies data collected in online treatment is demonstrated and how these models can be applied in practice. The derived results contribute to computer science and mental health research with client individual data analysis, the development ofpredictive models, and their statistical evaluation.
Extracting meaningful representations of data is a fundamental problem in machine learning. Those representations can be viewed from two different perspectives. First, there is the representation of data in terms of the number of data points. Representative subsets that compactly summarize the data without superfluous redundancies help to reduce the data size. Those subsets allow for scaling existing learning algorithms up without approximating their solution. Second, there is the representation of every individual data point in terms of its dimensions. Often, not all dimensions carry meaningful information for the learning task, or the information is implicitly embedded in a low-dimensional subspace. A change of representation can also simplify important learning tasks such as density estimation and data generation. This thesis deals with the aforementioned views on data representation and contributes to them. The authors first focus on computing representative subsets for a matrix factorization technique called archetypal analysis and the setting of optimal experimental design. For these problems, they motivate and investigate the usability of the data boundary as a representative subset. The authors also present novel methods to efficiently compute the data boundary, even in kernel-induced feature spaces. Based on the coreset principle, they derive another representative subset for archetypal analysis, which provides additional theoretical guarantees on the approximation error. Empirical results confirm that all compact representations of data derived in this thesis perform significantly better than uniform subsets of data. In the second part of the thesis, the research group is concerned with efficient data representations for density estimation. The researchers analyze spatio-temporal problems, which arise, for example, in sports analytics, and demonstrate how to learn (contextual) probabilistic movement models of objects using trajectory data. Furthermore, they highlight issues of interpolating data in normalizing flows, a technique that changes the representation of data to follow a specific distribution. The authors show how to solve this issue and obtain more natural transitions on the example of image data.
Conflicts between intragenerational and intergenerational justice in the use of ecosystem services
(2012)
The principle of sustainability contains two objectives of justice regarding the conservation and use of ecosystems and their services: (1) global justice between different people of the present generation ("intragenerational justice"); (2) justice between people of different generations ("intergenerational justice"). International sustainability policy attaches equal normative importance to both objectives of justice. Accordingly, environmental philosophers ethically justify that people living today and people living in the future have equal rights to certain basic goods, including ecosystems and their services (e.g. Feinberg 1981, Visser’t Hooft 2007). Whereas ideal theories of sustainability and justice do not recognize interdependencies between intragenerational and intergenerational justice, conflicts in attaining the justices possibly arise in policy implementation. Identifying and preventing such conflicts is fundamental to devise an ethically legitimate, politically consistent and actually effective sustainability policy. This dissertation systematically investigates conflicts between intragenerational and intergenerational justice in the use of ecosystem services. Human wellbeing depends on the services provided by ecosystems. Yet, humans substantially degrade world’s ecosystems, and therewith cause the loss of important ecosystem services (MEA 2005: 26ff.). The idea of sustainability demands to use ecosystem services in accordance with the two objectives of intragenerational justice and intergenerational justice. Reality, however, is far from attaining these objectives: Both today’s global poor and future persons are, resp. will be, disproportionately affected by the loss of vital ecosystem services (MEA 2005: 62, 85). Especially severe affected are the rural poor who directly depend on local ecosystem services for food, income and health. The political discourse on the relationship between the objectives of intra- and intergenerational justice in the use of ecosystem services (‘justice-relationship’) is blurred. Further, the political discourse lacks a common understanding of justice in ecosystem-use and a systematic reflection on the actual ‘justice-relationship’, such as on the factors that cause conflicts between the two justices. In this dissertation, I investigate the ‘justice-relationship’ along three central questions: • What conception(s) of justice can adequately address the distribution of access rights to ecosystem services? • How must sustainability policy be designed to enhance both intragenerational and intergenerational justice in the use of ecosystem services? • (How) Can economics be helpful for characterizing and assessing trade-offs between the two justices? I approach these questions both generally and by the example of a case study, the MASIPAG farmer network in the Philippines. Methodologically, I combine a normative and a positive analysis of the relationship between intra- and intergenerational justice in the use of ecosystem services: The normative analysis serves the explication, justification and reflection of the norms underlying the ‘justice-relationship’; the positive analysis serves the description of the ‘justice-relationship’ in the sustainability discourse and in practical contexts, as well as the provision of explanations on the determinants of the ‘justice-relationship’. As methodological approach, I apply the “comprehensive multi-level approach” as developed by Baumgärtner et al. (2008) – investigating the ‘justice-relationship’ simultaneously on the three levels of (i) concept, (ii) model and (iii) case study.
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.
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.