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Advancing digitalization is changing society and has far-reaching effects on people and companies. Fundamental to these changes are the new technological possibilities for processing data on an ever-increasing scale and for various purposes. The availability of large and high-quality data sets, especially those based on personal data, is crucial. They are used either to improve the productivity, quality, and individuality of products and services or to develop new types of services. Today, user behavior is tracked more actively and comprehensively than ever despite increasing legal requirements for protecting personal data worldwide. That increasingly raises ethical, moral, and social questions, which have moved to the forefront of the political debate, not least due to popular cases of data misuse. Given this discourse and the legal requirements, today's data management must fulfill three conditions: Legality or legal conformity of use and ethical legitimacy. Thirdly, the use of data should add value from a business perspective. Within the framework of these conditions, this cumulative dissertation pursues four research objectives with a focus on gaining a better understanding of
(1) the challenges of implementing privacy laws,
(2) the factors that influence customers' willingness to share personal data,
(3) the role of data protection for digital entrepreneurship, and
(4) the interdisciplinary scientific significance, its development, and its interrelationships.
Digitalisation in industry – also called “Industry 4.0” – is seen by numerous actors as an opportunity to reduce the environmental impact of the industrial sector. The scientific assessments of the effects of digitalisation in industry on environmental sustainability, however, are ambivalent. This cumulative dissertation uses three empirical studies to examine the expected and observed effects of digitalisation in industry on environmental sustainability. The aim of this dissertation is to identify opportunities and risks of digitalisation at different system levels and to derive options for action in politics and industry for a more sustainable design of digitalisation in industry. I use an interdisciplinary, socio-technical approach and look at selected countries of the Global South (Study 1) and the example of China (all studies). In the first study (section 2, joint work with Marcel Matthess), I use qualitative content analysis to examine digital and industrial policies from seven different countries in Africa and Asia for expectations regarding the impact of digitalisation on sustainability and compare these with the potentials of digitalisation for sustainability in the respective country contexts. The analysis reveals that the documents express a wide range of vague expectations that relate more to positive indirect impacts of information and communication technology (ICT) use, such as improved energy efficiency and resource management, and less to negative direct impacts of ICT, such as electricity consumption through ICT. In the second study (section 3, joint work with Marcel Matthess, Grischa Beier and Bing Xue), I conduct and analyse interviews with 18 industry representatives of the electronics industry from Europe, Japan and China on digitalisation measures in supply chains using qualitative content analysis. I find that while there are positive expectations regarding the effects of digital technologies on supply chain sustainability, their actual use and observable effects are still limited. Interview partners can only provide few examples from their own companies which show that sustainability goals have already been pursued through digitalisation of the supply chain or where sustainability effects, such as resource savings, have been demonstrably achieved. In the third study (section 4, joint work with Peter Neuhäusler, Melissa Dachrodt and Marcel Matthess), I conduct an econometric panel data analysis. I examine the relationship between the degree of Industry 4.0, energy consumption and energy intensity in ten manufacturing sectors in China between 2006 and 2019. The results suggest that overall, there is no significant relationship between the degree of Industry 4.0 and energy consumption or energy intensity in manufacturing sectors in China. However, differences can be found in subgroups of sectors. I find a negative correlation of Industry 4.0 and energy intensity in highly digitalised sectors, indicating an efficiency-enhancing effect of Industry 4.0 in these sectors. On the other hand, there is a positive correlation of Industry 4.0 and energy consumption for sectors with low energy consumption, which could be explained by the fact that digitalisation, such as the automation of previously mainly labour-intensive sectors, requires energy and also induces growth effects. In the discussion section (section 6) of this dissertation, I use the classification scheme of the three levels macro, meso and micro, as well as of direct and indirect environmental effects to classify the empirical observations into opportunities and risks, for example, with regard to the probability of rebound effects of digitalisation at the three levels. I link the investigated actor perspectives (policy makers, industry representatives), statistical data and additional literature across the system levels and consider political economy aspects to suggest fields of action for more sustainable (digitalised) industries. The dissertation thus makes two overarching contributions to the academic and societal discourse. First, my three empirical studies expand the limited state of research at the interface between digitalisation in industry and sustainability, especially by considering selected countries in the Global South and the example of China. Secondly, exploring the topic through data and methods from different disciplinary contexts and taking a socio-technical point of view, enables an analysis of (path) dependencies, uncertainties, and interactions in the socio-technical system across different system levels, which have often not been sufficiently considered in previous studies. The dissertation thus aims to create a scientifically and practically relevant knowledge basis for a value-guided, sustainability-oriented design of digitalisation in industry.
Essays in public economics
(2023)
This cumulative dissertation uses economic theory and micro-econometric tools and evaluation methods to analyse public policies and their impact on welfare and individual behaviour. In particular, it focuses on policies in two distinct areas that represent fundamental societal challenges in the 21st century: the ageing of society and life in densely-populated urban agglomerations. Together, these areas shape important financial decisions in a person's life, impact welfare, and are driving forces behind many of the challenges in today's societies. The five self-contained research chapters of this thesis analyse the forward looking effects of pension reforms, affordable housing policies as well as a public transport subsidy and its effect on air pollution.
This research focuses on empowering leadership, a leadership style that shares autonomy and responsibilities with the followers. Empowering leadership enhances the meaningfulness of work by fostering participation in decision-making, expressing confidence in high performance, and providing autonomy in target setting (Cheong, 2016). I examine how empowering leadership affects followers’ reflection. I used data from 528 individuals across 172 teams and found a positive relationship between empowering leadership and followers’ reflection. Followers’ reflection, in turn, is negatively associated with followers’ withdrawal, which mediates the beneficial effect of empowering leadership on leaders’ emotional exhaustion. As for the leaders, I propose that empowering leadership is negatively related also to leaders’ emotional exhaustion. This research broadens our understanding of empowering leadership's effects on both followers and leaders. Moreover, it integrates empowering leadership, leader emotional exhaustion, and burnout literature. Overall, empowering leadership strengthens members’ reflective attitudes and behaviors, which result in reduced withdrawal (and increased presence and contribution) in teams. Because the members contribute to team effort more, the leaders experience less emotional exhaustion. Hence, my work not only identifies new ways through which empowering leadership positively affects followers but also shows how these positive effects on followers benefit the leaders’ well-being.
This cumulative doctoral thesis consists of five empirical studies examining various aspects of crisis and change from a management-accounting perspective. Within the first study, a bibliometric analysis is conducted. More precisely, based on publications between the financial crisis (since 2007) and the COVID-19 crisis (starting in 2020), the crisis literature in management accounting is investigated to uncover the most influential aspects of the field and to analyze the theoretical foundations of the literature. Moreover, this investigation also serves to identify future research streams and to provide starting points for future research. Based on a survey, the second study investigates the impact of several management-accounting tools on organizational resilience and its effect on a company’s competitive advantage during a crisis. The results show that their target-oriented use positively influences organizational resilience and contributes to the company’s competitive advantage during the crisis. The third study provides a more detailed view on the relationship between budgeting and risk management and their benefit for companies in times of crisis. For this purpose, the relationship between the relevance of budgeting functions and risk management in the company and the corresponding impact on company performance are investigated. The results show a positive relationship. However, a crisis can also affect the relationship between the company and its shareholders: Thus, the fourth study – based on publicly available data and a survey – examines the consequences of virtual annual general meetings on shareholder rights. The results show that, temporarily, particularly the right to information was severely restricted. For the following year, this problem was fixed, and ultimately, the virtual option was introduced permanently. The crisis has thus brought about a lasting change. But not only crises cause changes: The fifth study, also based on survey data, investigates the changes in the role of management accountants caused by digitalization. More precisely, it investigates how management accountants deal with tasks that are considered outdated and unattractive. The results of the study show that different types of personalities also act differently as far as the willingness to do those unattractive tasks is concerned, and career ambitions also influence that willingness. In addition to this, the results provide insights into the motivation of management accountants to conduct tasks and thus counteract existing assumptions based on stereotypes and clichés circulating within the research community.
This cumulative dissertation consists of three full empirical investigations based on three separate collections of data dealing with the phenomenon of negotiations in audit processes, which are combined in two research articles. In the first study, I examine internal auditors’ views on negotiation interactions with auditees. My research is based on 23 semi-structured interviews with internal auditors (14 in-house and 9 external service providers) to gain insight into when and about what (RQ1), why (RQ2), and how (RQ3) they negotiate with auditees. By adapting the Gibbins et al. (2001) negotiation framework to the context of internal auditing, I obtain specific process (negotiation issue, auditor-auditee process, and outcome) and context elements that form the basis of my analyses. Through the additional use of inductive procedures, I conclude that internal auditors negotiate when they face professional and non-professional resistance from auditees during the audit process (RQ1). This resistance occurs in a variety of audit types and audit issues. Internal auditors choose negotiations to overcome this resistance primarily out of functional interest, as they cannot simply instruct auditees to acknowledge the findings and implement the required actions (RQ2). I find that the implementation of the required actions is the main goal of the respondents, which is also an important quality factor for internal auditing. Although few respondents interpret these interactions with auditees as negotiations, all respondents use a variety of negotiation strategies to create value (e.g., cost cutting, logrolling, and bridging) and claim value (e.g. positional commitment and threats) (RQ3). Finally, I contribute to empirical research on internal audit negotiations and internal audit quality by shedding light on the black box of internal auditor-auditee interactions. The second study consists of two experiments that examine the effects of tax auditors’ emotion expressions during tax audit negotiations. In the first experiment, we demonstrate that auditors expressing anger obtain more concessions from taxpayers than auditors expressing happiness. This reveals that taxpayers interpret auditors’ emotions strategically and do not respond affectively. In the second experiment, we show that the experience with an auditor who expressed either happiness or anger reduces taxpayers’ post-audit compliance compared to the experience with an emotionally neutral auditor. Apparently, taxpayers use their experience with an emotional auditor to rationalize later noncompliance. Taken together, both experiments show the potentially detrimental effects of positive and negative emotion expressions by the auditor and point to the benefits of avoiding emotion expressions. We find that when auditors avoid emotion expressions this does not result in fewer concessions from taxpayers than when auditors express anger. However, when auditors avoid emotion expressions this leads to a significantly better evaluation of the taxpayer-auditor relationship and significantly reduces taxpayers’ post-audit noncompliance.
Creative intensive processes
(2023)
Creativity – developing something new and useful – is a constant challenge in the working world. Work processes, services, or products must be sensibly adapted to changing times. To be able to analyze and, if necessary, adapt creativity in work processes, a precise understanding of these creative activities is necessary. Process modeling techniques are often used to capture business processes, represent them graphically and analyze them for adaptation possibilities. This has been very limited for creative work. An accurate understanding of creative work is subject to the challenge that, on the one hand, it is usually very complex and iterative. On the other hand, it is at least partially unpredictable as new things emerge. How can the complexity of creative business processes be adequately addressed and simultaneously manageable? This dissertation attempts to answer this question by first developing a precise process understanding of creative work. In an interdisciplinary approach, the literature on the process description of creativity-intensive work is analyzed from the perspective of psychology, organizational studies, and business informatics. In addition, a digital ethnographic study in the context of software development is used to analyze creative work. A model is developed based on which four elementary process components can be analyzed: Intention of the creative activity, Creation to develop the new, Evaluation to assess its meaningfulness, and Planning of the activities arising in the process – in short, the ICEP model. These four process elements are then translated into the Knockledge Modeling Description Language (KMDL), which was developed to capture and represent knowledge-intensive business processes. The modeling extension based on the ICEP model enables creative business processes to be identified and specified without the need for extensive modeling of all process details. The modeling extension proposed here was developed using ethnographic data and then applied to other organizational process contexts. The modeling method was applied to other business contexts and evaluated by external parties as part of two expert studies. The developed ICEP model provides an analytical framework for complex creative work processes. It can be comprehensively integrated into process models by transforming it into a modeling method, thus expanding the understanding of existing creative work in as-is process analyses.
Distances affect economic decision-making in numerous situations. The time at which we make a decision about future consumption has an impact on our consumption behavior. The spatial distance to employer, school or university impacts the place where we live and vice versa. The emotional closeness to other individuals influences our willingness to give money to them. This cumulative thesis aims to enrich the literature on the role of distance for economic decision-making. Thereby, each of my research projects sheds light on the impact of one kind of distance for efficient decision-making.
Negotiations are a way of joint decision-making and thereby a form of social conflict. By determining the concrete allocation of scarce resources, negotiations have a great impact on the value creation of companies. If companies succeed in achieving better negotiation results in the long term, they can increase their profitability. Ensuring a company's negotiation success is therefore an organizational issue of central importance. While the question of ensuring individual negotiation success has been the subject and topic of multidisciplinary research for a long time, the question of how organizations can implement and ensure continuous negotiation success remains largely unexplored. This dissertation therefore aims to investigate how companies enable their employees to consistently achieve better negotiation outcomes. It is significant that, in the corporate context, negotiators do not act as individuals but as embedded representatives of an organization, and that negotiations are not one-time events but recurring necessities for the existence of the organization instead. In organizations, those recurring processes with a similar fundamental structure are handled by routines. A planned improvement of routines is often forced by new artifacts. In this context, artifacts refer to human-created technologies with which humans interact within routines and therefore artifacts have a central influence on executing the routine. If negotiation activities in companies are represented by organizational routines, one central issue for improving companies’ negotiation performance is the artifacts’ incorporation into organizational negotiation routines that facilitate the efficient application of the insights from negotiation research. The dissertation consists of three studies that were written as research papers to examine artifacts in the organizational negotiation context. The first study focuses on the pre-negotiation stage and presents four tools to assist negotiation practitioners in efficiently preparing for negotiation. The study examines the negotiation preparation’s effectiveness and efficiency and the negotiation outcome in a case-based experiment. The second study is devoted to a closer examination of the barriers that inhibit the adoption of negotiation support systems (NSSs) as one kind of organizational negotiation artifact. The investigation is conducted using a structural equation model based on information from participating practitioners. The third study is concerned with the future of negotiation support system research. An exploratory study based on qualitative in-depth interviews with proven and published experts in the field aims to evaluate the current state of research. The general discussion of the dissertation connects, summarizes, and concludes the study results and derives implications for practice, limitations, and future research ideas.