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This thesis deals with the influence of sustainability communication on the purchase decision of sustainable tourism products involving German specialist tour operators. Sustainability communication is a challenge, because sustainable tourism is an abstract and vague concept which consumers find it difficult to grasp and about which they are sceptical. The service characteristics of tourism products complicate the decision making stage, which is a high-involvement situation of uncertainty to which sustainable product attributes add complexity. As an introduction, an interdisciplinary theory discussion reveals knowledge gaps in terms of the value-belief-norm theory and the elaboration likelihood model (ELM). The first article, which is the first systematic literature review on the topic, reveals that there is a limited theoretical understanding of sustainability communication, a lack of practical understanding of how to design sustainability messages, and an inadequate set of methodologies for its research. It identifies knowledge gaps concerning: the holistic approach to sustainability communication; its role in the attitude-behaviour gap; an interdisciplinary theoretical understanding focusing on belief-based social psychological theories and theories of persuasion; qualitative methods; and experimental design. The second article investigates the role of sustainability communication in the attitude-behaviour gap, employing the value-belief-norm theory to explain how information is processed by special interest customers. Interview findings show that ineffective sustainability communication is the reason for the gap and that customers unintentionally booked sustainably. The study identifies eight groups of beliefs which explain the processing of sustainability attributes. Sustainability information is effective when it is value-congruent, that is, when customers perceive they can make a difference, they begin to ascribe a responsibility to themselves. The third article investigates how to design an effective sustainability message in tour operator advertising. Drawing on the ELM, the study shows that appeal type does not significantly influence persuasion but the topic presented is important. Cultural sustainability is the sustainability topic that is most persuasive for cultural tourists, while consumer prior knowledge and issue-involvement with the topic promote successful information processing.
The smallholder-dominated landscapes of southwestern Ethiopia support a unique biodiversity with great importance to local livelihoods and high global conservation value. These landscapes, however, are severely threatened by deforestation, forest degradation and the adverse effects of farmland management regimes. These changes have fundamentally altered the structure of the landscapes and threaten their biodiversity and ecosystem services. Managing biodiversity and related services in such rapidly changing landscapes requires a thorough understanding of the effects of land use change and the reliance of local communities on biodiversity. This dissertation examines woody plant biodiversity patterns and services and presents several recommendations regarding biodiversity and multiple ecosystem services in smallholder-dominated landscapes of southwestern Ethiopia. Using a social-ecological systems approach, the author conducted four studies on the complex interactions of local people and woody plant diversity. First, he investigated the effects of human-induced forest degradation on woody plant species. His results suggest that forest biodiversity has been affected by the combined effects of coffee management intensity, landscape context and history at the local and landscape level. Specifically, richness of forest specialist species significantly has decreased with coffee management intensity and in secondary compared to old growth forests, but increased with current distance from forest edge in both primary and secondary forests. These findings highlight the need to maintain undisturbed forest sites to conserve forest biodiversity. Second, the author examined legacy effects of past agricultural land use on woody plant biodiversity. The results show that historical distance seems to be the most important variable affecting woody plant composition and distribution in farmland sections of the landscapes. The author found evidence for immigration credits for generalist and pioneer species but not for extinction debts for forest specialist species which might be rapidly paid off in farmland. The results suggest not only an unrecognized conservation value of old farmland but also a disturbing loss of forest specialist species. To slow this trend, it is necessary to shift to a cultural landscape development approach and to restore forest specialist species in the landscapes. Third, the author evaluated the supply of potential multiple ecosystem services and the relationships between the diversity of woody plant and ecosystem service in the three major land use types, namely forests with and without coffee management and farmland. The results revealed a high multifunctionality of landscapes and showed that ecosystem services significantly increase with woody plant diversity in all types of land use. These findings suggest that the woody plant diversity and multifunctionality in southwestern Ethiopian landscapes has to be maintained. Fourth, the author explored farmers' woody plant use to assess their dependency on and maintenance of woody plants and also considered the influence of property rights and management in this context. He found that local farmers used 95 species for eleven major purposes from all major land uses across the landscapes. He also found that most of the widely used tree species regenerated successfully throughout the landscapes, including in farmland. Local people felt, however, that their property and tree use rights were limited, especially in forests, and that some of the most widely used plant species, including important timber species, appeared to have been overharvested in forests. The results suggest that many species are important for local livelihoods, but a perceived low sense of property rights also seems to adversely affect the management of woody plants, particularly in forests. By focusing on woody plants and their ecosystem services to local people, this dissertation documents a dramatic loss of native forest biodiversity and rapid changes in the cultural landscapes of southwestern Ethiopia. Overall, the findings suggest the need for preservation of intact forest sites and for cultural landscapes development to safeguard biodiversity and multifunctionality of the landscapes in the future. This, in turn, requires holistic and integrated approaches that involve local people and recognize their basic needs of woody plants and their property rights to foster the management of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Maintaining primary forests in and using cultural landscape approaches to the rapidly changing rural setting of southwestern Ethiopia would also contribute to the global effort to halt biodiversity loss.
This cumulative thesis extends the econometric literature on testing for cointegration in nonstationary panel data with cross-sectional dependence. Its self-contained chapters consist of two publications and two publication manuscripts which present three new panel tests for the cointegrating rank and an empirical study of the exchange rate pass-through to import prices in Europe. The first chapter introduces a new cointegrating rank test for panel data where the dependence is assumed to be driven by unobserved common factors. The common factors are first estimated and subtracted from the observations. Then an existing likelihood-ratio panel cointegration test is applied to the defactored data. The distribution of the test statistic, computed from defactored data, is shown to be asymptotically equivalent to that of a test statistic computed from cross-sectionally independent data. The second chapter proposes a new panel cointegrating rank test based on a multiple testing procedure, which is robust to positive dependence between the individual units' test statistics. The assumption of a certain type of positive dependence is shown by simulations not to be violated in panels with dependence structures commonly assumed in practice. The new test is applied to find empirical support of the monetary exchange rate model in a panel of eight OECD countries. The third chapter puts forward a new panel cointegration test allowing for both cross-sectional dependence and structural breaks. It employs known individual likelihood-ratio test statistics accounting for breaks in the deterministic trend and combines their p-values by a novel modification of the Inverse Normal method. The average correlation between the probits is inferred from the average cross-sectional correlation between the residuals of the individual VAR models in first differences. The fourth chapter studies the exchange rate pass-through to import prices in a panel of nineteen European countries through the prism of panel cointegration. Empirical evidence supporting a theoretical long-run equilibrium relationship between the model's variables is found by the newly proposed panel cointegration tests. Two different panel regression models, which take both cointegration and cross-sectional dependence into account, provide most recent estimates of the exchange rate pass-through elasticities.
Climate change and atmospheric deposition of nitrogen affect biodiversity patterns and functions of forest ecosystems worldwide. Many studies have quantified tree growth responses to single global change drivers, but less is known about the interaction effects of these drivers at the plant and ecosystem level. In the present study, the authors conducted a full-factorial greenhouse experiment to analyse single and combined effects of nitrogen fertilization (N treatment) and drought (D treatment) on 16 morphological and chemical response variables of one-year-old Fagus sylvatica seedlings originating from eight different seed families from the Cantabrian Mountains (NW Spain). Drought exerted the strongest effect on response variables, reflected by decreasing biomass production. However, D and N treatments interacted for some of the response variables, indicating that N fertilization has the potential to strengthen the negative effects of drought (with both antagonistic and amplifying interactions). For example, combined effects of N and D treatments caused a sevenfold increase of necrotic leaf biomass. The authors hypothesize that increasing drought sensitivity was mainly attributable to a significant reduction of the root biomass in combined N and D treatments, limiting the plants' capability to satisfy their water demands. Significant seed family effects and interactions of seed family with N and D treatments across response variables suggest a high within-population genetic variability. In conclusion, the findings indicated a high drought sensitivity of Cantabrian beech populations, but also interaction effects of N and D on growth responses of beech seedlings.
Wind energy is expected to become the largest source of electricity generation in Europe's future energy mix. As a consequence, future electricity generation will be exposed to an increasing degree to weather and climate. With planning and operational lifetimes of wind energy infrastructure reaching climate time scales, adaptation to changing climate conditions is of relevance to support secure and sustainable energy supply. Premise for success of wind energy projects is the ability to service financial obligations over the project lifetime. Though, revenues(viaelectricity generation) are exposed to changing climate conditions affecting the wind resource, operating conditions or hazardous events interfering with the wind energy infrastructure. For the first time, a procedure is presented to assess such climate change impacts specifically for wind energy financing. At first, a generalised financing chain for wind energy is prepared to (qualitatively) trace the exposure of individual cost elements to physical climate change. In this regard, the revenue through wind power production is identified as the essential component within wind energy financing being exposed to changing climate conditions. This implies the wind resource to be of crucial interest for an assessment of climate change impacts on the financing of wind energy. Therefore, secondly, a novel high-resolution experimental modelling framework with the non-hydrostatic extension of the regional climate model REMO is set up to generate physically consistent climate and climate change information of the wind resource across wind turbine operating altitudes. With this setup, enhanced simulated intra-annual and inter-annual variability across the lower planetary boundary layer is achieved, being beneficial for wind energy applications, compared to state-of-the-art regional climate model configurations. In addition, surrogate climate change experiments with this setup disclose vertical wind speed changes in the lower planetary boundary layer to be indirectly affected by temperature changes through thermodynamically-induced atmospheric stability alterations. Moreover, air density changes are identified to occasionally exceed the net impact of wind energy density changes originating from changes in wind speed. This supports the consideration of air density information (in addition to wind speed) for wind energy yiel assumptions. Thirdly, the generated climate and climate change information of the wind resource are transferred to a simplified but fully-fledged financial model to assess the financial risk of wind energy project financing with respect to changing climate conditions. Sensitivity experiments for an imaginary offshore wind farm located in the German Bight reveal the long-term profitability of wind energy project financing not to be substantially affected by changing wind resource conditions, but incidents with insufficient servicing of financial obligations experience changes exceeding -10% to 14%. The integration of wind energy-specific climate and climate change information into existing financial risk assessment procedures would illustrate a valuable contribution to enable climate change adaptation for wind energy.
In response to the challenges of the energy transition, the German electricity network is subjected to a process of substantial transformation. Considering the long latency periods and lifetimes of electricity grid infrastructure projects, it is more cost-efficient to combine this need for transformation with the need to adapt the grid to future climate conditions. This study proposes the spatially varying risk of electricity grid outages as a guiding principle to determine optimal levels of security of electricity supply. Therefore, not only projections of future changes in the likelihood of impacts on the grid infrastructure were analyzed, but also the monetary consequences of an interruption. Since the windthrow of trees was identified a major source for atmospherically induced grid outages, a windthrow index was developed, to regionally assess the climatic conditions for windthrow. Further, a concept referred to as Value of Lost Grid was proposed to quantify the impacts related to interruptions of the distribution grid. In combination, the two approaches enabled to identify grid entities, which are of comparably high economic value and subjected to a comparably high likelihood of windthrow under future climate conditions. These are primarily located in the mid-range mountain areas of North-Rhine Westphalia, Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria. In comparison to other areas of less risk, the higher risk in these areas should be reflected in comparably more resilient network structures, such as buried lines instead of overheadlines, or more comprehensive efforts to prevent grid interruptions, such as structural reinforcements of pylons or improved vegetation management along the power lines. In addition, the outcomes provide the basis for a selection of regions which should be subjected to a more regionally focused analysis inquiring spatial differences (with respect to the identified coincidence of high windthrow likelihoods and high economic importance of the grid) among individual power lines or sections of a distribution network.
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.
Whereas the extant literature discusses what Sustainability-Oriented Innovations (SOIs) are and why firms develop them, little is known about how they are developed. To enable firms to innovate for sustainability, it is essential to know more about the processes underlying SOI development, which are considered as very difficult, with many firms failing. Drawing on several academic papers and relying on qualitative research methods, the thesis uses the Fireworks model to examine how innovation processes unfold at established small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The main contribution of the thesis is to advance the Fireworks model to the context of SOIs unfolding at SMEs. The findings reveal that SOIs unfold in an emergent, somewhat chaotic way, that duration and outcome are uncertain, that the overall journey is composed of multiple intertwined innovation paths, of which several will likely lead to setbacks. To manage this complex process, the thesis suggests to set four management foci: (1) to create a dedicated organizational unit for exploration, (2) to create conditions allowing intelligent learning for efficient exploration, (3) to carry out in-depth investigation of the related technological innovation systems, and (4) to plan carefully the re-integration of the innovation into the core business for commercialization.
This paper-based dissertation deals with capital structures and tax policies of German family businesses. Family firms as the predominant company form in Germany are mainly characterized by the overlapping of the two spheres family and business, both having different goal systems and preferences. This also has an impact on decision making with regard to corporate finance including the application of tax avoidance policies. In Germany, bank finance is the dominant financing source for family firms but there is a preference for internal finance since it comes along with more external independency. Extant research usually bases its results on samples of publicly listed companies. These studies come up with different results regarding family firms' actual financing preferences and capture their heterogeneity only to a very little extent. In this light, the present dissertation and its three papers examine different research questions in the context of capital structure decisions and tax avoidance in family firms. All the three papers apply a quantitative empirical research design. The first paper is a comparison between capital structures of family firms and non-family firms. The paper examines differences in bank debt and trade credit ratios. Overall, the findings show that family firms have significantly higher overall and long-term debt levels compared to their non-family counterparts. The identity as a family firm, which leads to a leap of faith by banks, can be a possible explanation for these results. The second paper is an in-depth examination of drivers of bank debt levels within the group of family firms. Further, it addresses heterogeneity amongst family firms and combines survey results and corresponding financial information. This represents a first attempt to capture family firm heterogeneity and its link to financial issues. The study shows that the more power in the company is exerted via management or supervisory board by the family, the less bank debt is used. Paper three is an extension of the previous two studies as it sheds light on tax avoidance, a significant instrument to strengthen the internal financing capability of a firm. This also takes up a research gap as there is very little research on taxation in family firms. Contrary to the expectation, the study reveals that private family firms might pay less tax than their non-family peers.
On 25 October 2016, the European Commission presented a proposal for a directive on a Common Corporate Tax Base (CCTB Proposal), which contains a comprehensive concept for the harmonisation of profit calculation regulations within the EU. Against this current background, the objective of the present work is to contribute to the implementation of the CCTB by identifying ambiguities and conceptual weaknesses in the design of the profit determination system of the CCTB Proposal and developing concrete recommendations for action for adjustments in the course of the further legislative procedure. In the first article, selected profit calculation rules of the CCTB Proposal will be analysed in detail and compared with the provisions on profit calculation under German commercial and tax law and the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) recognised across member states. Based on the legal comparison, questions of interpretation and inadequacies of the profit calculation system will be considered and proposals for adjustments to various regulatory areas will be submitted. Furthermore, in the second article, within the framework of a holistic study, expert interviews will be used as an empirical-qualitative research design to generate reliable assessments on the part of the various stakeholder groups affected by the implementation of the future directive or involved in its elaboration. The results show the extent to which the profit determination rules of the CCTB Proposal in their current form are suitable for national and EU-wide implementation and in which areas the various expert groups still see concrete need for adaptation. Based on these expert assessments, the third article finally develops a proposal to reduce the threat of legal uncertainty in interpretation issues criticised by the experts. Based on economic maxims developed by the European Commission and existing accounting principles of the current CCTB Proposal, the EU Accounting Directive and IFRS, a system of specific European tax principles will be developed which could be implemented within the framework of the CCTB Proposal.
Decoding the psychological dimensions of human odor perception has long been a central issue of olfactory research. As odor percepts could not be linked to a few measurable physicochemical features of odorous compounds or physiological characteristics of the olfactory system, odor qualities have often been assessed by perception–based ratings. Although these approaches have been promising, none of the proposed system has sustained empirical validation. In a review of 28 studies, the authors assessed how basic characteristics of study design have been biasing perception–based classification systems: (1) interindividual differences in perceptual and verbal abilities of subjects, (2) stimuli characteristics, (3) approaches of data collection, and (4) methods of data analysis. Remarkably, many of the difficulties in establishing these systems have been rooted in one underlying issue: the puzzling relationship between language and olfaction in general. While the reference from odors to language is weak, the reverse impact of verbal processing on olfaction seems powerful. Odor perception is biased by verbal–semantic processes when cues of an odor's source are readily available from the context. At the same time, olfaction has been characterized as basically sensation driven when this information is absent. The authors examined whether language effects occur when verbal cues are absent and how expectations about an odor's identity shape odor evaluations. Subjects were asked to rate 20 unlabeled odor samples on perceptual dimensions as well as quality attributes and to eventually provide an odor source name. In a subsequent session, they performed the same rating tasks on a set of written odor labels that was compiled individually for each participant. It included both the 20 correct odor names (true labels) and – in any case of incorrect odor naming in the first session – the self–generated labels (identified labels). The authors compared odor ratings to ratings of both types of labels and found higher consistencies between the evaluation of an odor and its identified label than between the description of an odor and its true (yet not associated) label. These results indicate that basic perceptual as well as quality ratings are affected by semantic information about an odor's source – even in absence of source cues. That is, odor sensation may activate a semantic mental representation of an odorous object that affects odor processing and may in turn relate to further multimodal properties. That means, associations between odors and stimuli from other sensory modalities should not only be stable, but these mappings should be mediated by an odor’s identity. The authors asked subjects to visualize their odor associations on a drawing tablet, freely deciding on color and shape. Additionally, they provided a verbal label for each sample. Color mappings were odor-specific, they reflected the imagery of a natural source and seemed to change with assumed odor identity. Shape mappings changed with odor identifications as well, as drawings frequently displayed concrete objects that reflected visual features of an odor's source. The influence of verbal identity codes on quality ratings or crossmodal mappings is rooted in the very same problem that perception–based classification systems have tried to solve – a terminology that relates to abstract mental categories. The less specific we communicate, the more we need to resort to source–related analogies – in scientific endeavors and everyday life alike.
When Libet and colleagues published their results on the temporal order of movement preparation and the reported time of conscious will to move in 1983, they shed some doubt on the existence of free will. This marked the beginning of a controversial and still ongoing debate, not only about the existence of free will, but also about the appropriateness of methods and validity of results from research on free will. Belief in free will was also discovered as psychological research topic. Literature on belief in free will shows some evidence that most laypersons across different cultural backgrounds believe that they have free will and that a person's belief in free will might have an impact on cognition and behavior, tending to positive outcomes with a greater belief in free will. Empirical findings from the German-speaking area are sparse, probably due to a lack of validated measurements assessing belief in free will available in the German language. The aim of this dissertation is to critically examine some aspects in psychological research on free will and the belief in free will. Two studies are reported that aim to generalize the Libet paradigm for a free and voluntary decision with consequences for the acting person, as this was never reported to have been researched in literature before, and to test the critical objection that the measurement of reporting the conscious intention to move has a direct effect on the result in the Libet paradigm. Furthermore, the construction of the first inventory measuring belief in free will in the German language is described. This inventory was also created with the aim of overcoming some methodological problems in the existing instruments in English language. Furthermore, studies on the experimental manipulability of the belief in free will are reported. These findings provide implications in view of the current state of research on free will and belief in free will and its reliability.
Poor quality of freshwaters is a widespread problem. The concept of complexity is a particularly promising concept to analyse and address this problem, and public policy problems more generally. The main reason is the concept's strength in unifying structural features of problems within a more comprehensive structural approach to political problem-solving. So far, however, these possible benefits remained hidden given the lack of a clear understanding of complexity, ultimately hampering a systematic analysis of the implications of complexity for solutions and governance strategies. This study aims at strengthening the value of the concept of complexity for systematic comparative analyses of water-related problems and public policies in general. To achieve this goal, this work is to specify the concept of complexity as well as the implications of complexity for solutions and governance strategies, both from a theoretical and an empirical point of view. To this end, five main basic approaches are applied, referring to underlying premises, the role of an interdisciplinary approach, the European Water Framework as an empirical reference point, the integration of practical knowledge, and the focus on external validity. This dissertation provides a detailed operationalisation of complexity related to the dimensions of goals, variables, dynamics, interconnections, and informational uncertainty. It also shows that freshwater pollution-related problems in Germany differ along these five complexity dimensions. This applies to 37 types of pollution-related problems and four clusters of problems, which refer here to tame, wicked, system complexity, and uncertainty problems. This dissertation suggests that relations between complexity and policy delivery can be both positive and negative and vary along dimensions of complexity and policy delivery. Regarding the analysed freshwater pollution problems, this work also shows various effects of complexity on policy delivery, both along the 37 types of problems, and along four clusters of wicked problems. This dissertation suggests a differentiated theoretical approach to define governance for complex problem-solving, demonstrating that the role of diverse institutions, actors, and interactions differs for solutions along five key dimensions of complexity and different management strategies that are information gathering, modelling, using decision-support tools, prioritising of measures, conflict solving, deciding under uncertainty, and being adaptive and flexible.
Vocational Integration of Refugees - Chances and Challenges of Refugee (Social) Entrepreneurship
(2019)
In recent years, especially since 2015, Germany and other European countries have accepted high numbers of refugees. The social and vocational integration of these refugees and of those yet to come represents a challenge. (Social) entrepreneurship is one means to achieve this goal, to fully tap into the potential of refugees and to give them a chance to make a living in host countries. This dissertation examines the potential of vocational integration of refugees through (social) entrepreneurial activities. It includes a detailed literature review and suggests possible direction in the emerging field of refugee (social) entrepreneurship. This dissertation shows that to foster refugee (social) entrepreneurship, the identification and evaluation of specific and potential needs for support is essential. Incubators in particular have a high potential for supporting refugee entrepreneurs, in part it is possible for them to address some of the challenges faced by this target group, which differ from those of locals or migrant entrepreneurs. More specifically, this dissertation aims to answer two research questions: (1) What are relevant (social) entrepreneurial concepts that can contribute to the vocational integration of refugees? (2) What are the distinct contributions of and challenges faced by refugees when it comes to their vocational integration through (social) entrepreneurial activities? Analyzing select practical cases, this dissertation has several important implications for researchers who seek to bridge the gap between academia and society in the context of refugee entrepreneurship and refugee social entrepreneurship research. The findings presented here are also relevant for practitioners, for example those working at business incubators, who aim to facilitate the vocational and social integration of refugees in general and refugees with entrepreneurial aspirations in particular.