330 Wirtschaft
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Although the search for promising business models (BMs) is crucial for every profit-oriented venture, searching for those challenges in particular entrepreneurs. Limited resources, missing expertise and absolute uncertainty call entrepreneurs to strongly rely on their cognition in searching for a promising BM. However, as prior studies have examined cognitive search activities in isolation and neglected cognitive differences, explanations of how cognitive factors affect the BM process and outcomes are thus far insufficient.
Addressing the overall question of how BMs emerge, the dissertation contributes to the cognitive perspective in entrepreneurship and BM research. Building on the dual-process theory from cognitive psychology, the micro-foundations of managerial decision-making and insights from framing literature, this dissertation explicitly investigates the impacts of different cognitive dispositions, search activities and visual framing effects. The core assumption is that cognitive dispositions and entrepreneurs’ searches for information determine their BM decision-making. Furthermore, BM visualisations have become popular instruments with which to explain and manage today’s complex business interactions. As they abstract from reality, they can also unfold impacts on the cognitive processes.
This dissertation offers new explanations to these aspects and consists of three studies and one reflective article. The first study explores the impacts of differences in search activities and cognitive dispositions in a qualitative study with 70 entrepreneurship students. The second qualitative study explores the cognitive impacts of 103 BM visualisations. Third, a quantitative PLS-SEM experiment with 197 entrepreneurs illuminates the link between BM visualisations and cognition. The reflective article expresses the results’ meaning for the teaching of BMs.
In sum, the studies have resulted in a new theory of stabilising factors explaining how cognitive dispositions, search activities and visual framing determine entrepreneurs’ decisions to imitate or deviate from existing BMs. It indicates that the decision depends on the context-dependent strategic orientation and cognitive disposition-dependent cognitive safety, that is the correspondence between characteristics of cognitive dispositions and search activities. Moreover, the studies identified five visual framing effects that are independent of cognitive dispositions and prior experiences. This provides fertile contributions to the literature on BM methods and how BM visualisations affect decisions. Most importantly, BM visualisations provide an emotionally stabilising function to rational entrepreneurs, a cognitively stabilising function to experiential participants and do not affect indifferent participants in general.
The business model has emerged as a construct to understand how firms drive innovation through emerging technologies. It is defined as the ‘architecture of the firm’s value creation, delivery and appropriation mechanisms’ (Foss & Saebi, 2018, p. 5). The architecture is characterized by complex functional interrelations between activities that are conducted by various actors, some within and some outside of the firm. In other words, a firm’s value architecture is embedded within a wider system of actors that all contribute to the output of the value architecture.
The question of what drives innovation within this system and how the firm can shape and navigate this innovation is an essential question within innova- tion management research. This dissertation is a compendium of four individual research articles that examine how the design of a firm’s value architecture can fa- cilitate system-wide innovation in the context of Artificial Intelligence and Block- chain Technology. The first article studies how firms use Blockchain Technology to design a governance infrastructure that enables innovation within a platform ecosystem. The findings propose a framework for blockchain-enabled platform ecosystems that address the essential problem of opening the platform to allow for innovation while also ensuring that all actors get to capture their share of the value. The second article analyzes how German Artificial Intelligence startups design their business models. It identifies three distinct types of startup with dif- ferent underlying business models. The third article aims to understand the role of a firm’s value architecture during the socio-technical transition process of Arti- ficial Intelligence. It identifies three distinct ways in which Artificial Intelligence startups create a shared understanding of the technology. The last article exam- ines how corporate venture capital units configure value-adding services for their venture portfolios. It derives a taxonomy of different corporate venture capital types, driven by different strategic motivations.
Ultimately, this dissertation provides novel empirical insights into how a firm’s value architecture determines it’s role within a wider system of actors and how that role enables the firm to facilitate innovation. In that way, it contributes to both business model and innovation management literature.
Die deutschen Wirtschaftsverbände geraten zunehmend unter Konkurrenzdruck. Immer mehr Verbände werben um dieselbe Mitgliederklientel und haben einen ähnlichen Themenzuschnitt. Darüber hinaus betreiben immer mehr Mitgliedsunternehmen eigene politische Interessenvertretung. Die vorliegende Studie untersucht auf der Grundlage des aus der Evolutionsbiologie stammenden Population Ecology-Ansatzes, wie die Verbände mit dieser Konkurrenz umgehen.
Parlamentarier als Beruf
(2019)
Die politische Professionalisierung hat innerhalb der institutionellen Rahmenbedingungen zur Sozialfigur des Berufspolitikers geführt. Diese Entwicklung wird im theoretischen Teil der Arbeit hergeleitet und im empirischen Teil mit umfangreichen Daten belegt. Bemerkenswert ist, dass es dabei nicht zu erheblichen Veränderungen in den Rekrutierungsmustern und Karriereverläufen der Abgeordneten gekommen ist. Vielmehr erweisen sich die von Dietrich Herzog herausgearbeiteten Karrieretypen auch heute noch als gültig und mussten nur moderat angepasst werden. Es zeigt sich damit eine erstaunliche Kontinuität in der politischen Elitenbildung. Die in Deutschland sehr gefestigten institutionellen Rahmenbedingungen, die den Zugang und die Attraktivität politischer Karrieren determinieren, haben offensichtlich auch zu einer Stabilisierung der Karrieretypen geführt.
The present dissertation investigates profit-maximizing behavior in different phases of the negotiation process. Over the last decades, research dealt in detail with behavior of negotiation actors with the aim of identifying performance enhancing factors. The majority of those studies focused on behavior within the main negotiation phase. This work, however, considers phases which are, so far, underrepresented in research but show an impact on the negotiation process and outcome. Those phases are the pre-negotiation, the first offer, and the main negotiation phase which is further divided by breaks into several rounds. Within these phases, traits of behavior are analyzed that can be used strategically in order to impact the negotiation outcome. The dissertation contains three papers, each one dealing with a specific strategy within one phase. The first paper investigates communication behavior in the pre-negotiation phase. Content analysis of a negotiation experiment shows that the employment of positive communication elements such as the generation of enthusiasm for an upcoming project results in an increase of agreements on entering a negotiation and also leads to a higher willingness to make concessions. The second paper explores the impact of a semantic first anchor, which does not contain a specific number but only gives a numerical direction, on the opponent’s concession behavior and the final outcome. By means of two scenario-based questionnaires and a negotiation experiment it is demonstrated that semantic offers reveal an anchoring effect and lead to better negotiation outcomes. The third paper deals with the introduction of breaks and their effect on the following negotiation process. Therefore, content and outcome of another negotiation experiment are investigated. The analysis shows that breaks evoke a dominant impression but can negatively impact the atmosphere and thereby also the outcome. Finally, the gathered insights are brought together and discussed. The dissertation closes with implications for practice, limitations of the work, and ideas for future research.
Alexander Rhode investigates performance-oriented measures of Contracting Authorities in public tenders conducted within the EU. He finds that Contracting Authorities can improve their performance and attract more suppliers by publishing (as precise as possible) starting prices in the beginning of a tender. First, he reports that compared with private-sector negotiations, starting prices do not create entry barriers in public procurement. Second, he finds that increased numerical precision of starting prices is linearly correlated with better performance and a higher number of bids. In public procurement, suppliers tend to attribute increased credibility to precise starting prices which reduces their (perceived) entry risks.
A new model that links visionary leadership with team performance is
postulated. It is proposed that leader prototypicality will negatively
moderate the effect of visionary leadership on team goal monitoring and performance. This model underlines that teams will compensate for the less prototypicality of a visionary leader by engaging in more goal monitoring, which is a process that is conducive to team performance. A field study included 60 teams, 180 individuals, and 60 team leaders was conducted in Egypt. Parameters were collected on the individual level.
Aggregation measures (rwg, ICC1 & ICC2) were acceptable and the averages were calculated for each team. The proposed three-factor model exhibited a reasonable fit to the data, χ2(130) = 259.93, p-value0.01; CFI = 0.90; and RMSEA = 0.13). The hypothesized negative moderation effect of leader prototypicality on the relationship between visionary leadership and team goal monitoring was statistically significant (-0.16; s.e.= 0.06; t = -3.13; p <0.01; 95% CI: -0.31, -0.07). Results showed a significant index of moderated mediation (-0.07; s.e.= 0.05; 95% CI: -0.20, -0.01). As predicted, the indirect effect of visionary leadership on team performance mediated by team goal monitoring was more strongly positive when leader prototypicality was low (b = 0.27; s.e.= 0.16; 95% CI: 0.04, 0.68), rather than high (b = 0.13; s.e.= 0.10; 95% CI: 0.01, 0.45). A proposal for extending the dimensions of identity-based leadership is discussed. This dissertation makes four significant contributions to theory and research on leadership. First, the main contribution of this research lies in showing that visionary leadership is more strongly positively related to team performance when leader prototypicality is low, rather than high. Second, this dissertation provides a contribution toward overcoming the fragmentation in the leadership literature by desegregating the literature on visionary leadership and leader-team prototypicality. Third, team goal monitoring as a mechanism that explains the interactive effects of visionary leadership and leader prototypicality on team performance was identified. Fourth, this study tests the postulated research model in Egypt, a culture that has in the past received scant attention.
This thesis puts the citizen-state interaction at its center. Building on a comprehensive model incorporating various perspectives on this interaction, I derive selected research gaps. The three articles, comprising this thesis, tackle these gaps. A focal role plays the citizens’ administrative literacy, the relevant competences and knowledge necessary to successfully interact with public organizations. The first article elaborates on the different dimensions of administrative literacy and develops a survey instrument to assess these. The second study shows that public employees change their behavior according to the competences that citizens display during public encounters. They treat citizens preferentially that are well prepared and able to persuade them of their application’s potential. Thereby, they signal a higher success potential for bureaucratic success criteria which leads to the employees’ cream-skimming behavior. The third article examines the dynamics of employees’ communication strategies when recovering from a service failure. The study finds that different explanation strategies yield different effects on the client’s frustration. While accepting the responsibility and explaining the reasons for a failure alleviates the frustration and anger, refusing the responsibility leads to no or even reinforcing effects on the client’s frustration. The results emphasize the different dynamics that characterize the nature of citizen-state interactions and how they establish their short- and long-term outcomes.
Modern health care systems are characterized by pronounced prevention and cost-optimized treatments. This dissertation offers novel empirical evidence on how useful such measures can be. The first chapter analyzes how radiation, a main pollutant in health care, can negatively affect cognitive health. The second chapter focuses on the effect of Low Emission Zones on public heath, as air quality is the major external source of health problems. Both chapters point out potentials for preventive measures. Finally, chapter three studies how changes in treatment prices affect the reallocation of hospital resources. In the following, I briefly summarize each chapter and discuss implications for health care systems as well as other policy areas. Based on the National Educational Panel Study that is linked to data on radiation, chapter one shows that radiation can have negative long-term effects on cognitive skills, even at subclinical doses. Exploiting arguably exogenous variation in soil contamination in Germany due to the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, the findings show that people exposed to higher radiation perform significantly worse in cognitive tests 25 years later. Identification is ensured by abnormal rainfall within a critical period of ten days. The results show that the effect is stronger among older cohorts than younger cohorts, which is consistent with radiation accelerating cognitive decline as people get older. On average, a one-standarddeviation increase in the initial level of CS137 (around 30 chest x-rays) is associated with a decrease in the cognitive skills by 4.1 percent of a standard deviation (around 0.05 school years). Chapter one shows that sub-clinical levels of radiation can have negative consequences even after early childhood. This is of particular importance because most of the literature focuses on exposure very early in life, often during pregnancy. However, population exposed after birth is over 100 times larger. These results point to substantial external human capital costs of radiation which can be reduced by choices of medical procedures. There is a large potential for reductions because about one-third of all CT scans are assumed to be not medically justified (Brenner and Hall, 2007). If people receive unnecessary CT scans because of economic incentives, this chapter points to additional external costs of health care policies. Furthermore, the results can inform the cost-benefit trade-off for medically indicated procedures. Chapter two provides evidence about the effectiveness of Low Emission Zones. Low Emission Zones are typically justified by improvements in population health. However, there is little evidence about the potential health benefits from policy interventions aiming at improving air quality in inner-cities. The chapter ask how the coverage of Low Emission Zones air pollution and hospitalization, by exploiting variation in the roll out of Low Emission Zones in Germany. It combines information on the geographic coverage of Low Emission Zones with rich panel data on the universe of German hospitals over the period from 2006 to 2016 with precise information on hospital locations and the annual frequency of detailed diagnoses. In order to establish that our estimates of Low Emission Zones’ health impacts can indeed be attributed to improvements in local air quality, we use data from Germany’s official air pollution monitoring system and assign monitor locations to Low Emission Zones and test whether measures of air pollution are affected by the coverage of a Low Emission Zone. Results in chapter two confirm former results showing that the introduction of Low Emission Zones improved air quality significantly by reducing NO2 and PM10 concentrations. Furthermore, the chapter shows that hospitals which catchment areas are covered by a Low Emission Zone, diagnose significantly less air pollution related diseases, in particular by reducing the incidents of chronic diseases of the circulatory and the respiratory system. The effect is stronger before 2012, which is consistent with a general improvement in the vehicle fleet’s emission standards. Depending on the disease, a one-standard-deviation increase in the coverage of a hospitals catchment area covered by a Low Emission Zone reduces the yearly number of diagnoses up to 5 percent. These findings have strong implications for policy makers. In 2015, overall costs for health care in Germany were around 340 billion euros, of which 46 billion euros for diseases of the circulatory system, making it the most expensive type of disease caused by 2.9 million cases (Statistisches Bundesamt, 2017b). Hence, reductions in the incidence of diseases of the circulatory system may directly reduce society’s health care costs. Whereas chapter one and two study the demand-side in health care markets and thus preventive potential, chapter three analyzes the supply-side. By exploiting the same hospital panel data set as in chapter two, chapter three studies the effect of treatment price shocks on the reallocation of hospital resources in Germany. Starting in 2005, the implementation of the German-DRG-System led to general idiosyncratic treatment price shocks for individual hospitals. Thus far there is little evidence of the impact of general price shocks on the reallocation of hospital resources. Additionally, I add to the exiting literature by showing that price shocks can have persistent effects on hospital resources even when these shocks vanish. However, simple OLS regressions would underestimate the true effect, due to endogenous treatment price shocks. I implement a novel instrument variable strategy that exploits the exogenous variation in the number of days of snow in hospital catchment areas. A peculiarity of the reform allowed variation in days of snow to have a persistent impact on treatment prices. I find that treatment price increases lead to increases in input factors such as nursing staff, physicians and the range of treatments offered but to decreases in the treatment volume. This indicates supplier-induced demand. Furthermore, the probability of hospital mergers and privatization decreases. Structural differences in pre-treatment characteristics between hospitals enhance these effects. For instance, private and larger hospitals are more affected. IV estimates reveal that OLS results are biased towards zero in almost all dimensions because structural hospital differences are correlated with the reallocation of hospital resources. These results are important for several reasons. The G-DRG-Reform led to a persistent polarization of hospital resources, as some hospitals were exposed to treatment price increases, while others experienced reductions. If hospitals increase the treatment volume as a response to price reductions by offering unnecessary therapies, it has a negative impact on population wellbeing and public spending. However, results show a decrease in the range of treatments if prices decrease. Hospitals might specialize more, thus attracting more patients. From a policy perspective it is important to evaluate if such changes in the range of treatments jeopardize an adequate nationwide provision of treatments. Furthermore, the results show a decrease in the number of nurses and physicians if prices decrease. This could partly explain the nursing crisis in German hospitals. However, since hospitals specialize more they might be able to realize efficiency gains which justify reductions in input factors without loses in quality. Further research is necessary to provide evidence for the impact of the G-DRG-Reform on health care quality. Another important aspect are changes in the organizational structure. Many public hospitals have been privatized or merged. The findings show that this is at least partly driven by the G-DRG-Reform. This can again lead to a lack in services offered in some regions if merged hospitals specialize more or if hospitals are taken over by ecclesiastical organizations which do not provide all treatments due to moral conviction. Overall, this dissertation reveals large potential for preventive health care measures and helps to explain reallocation processes in the hospital sector if treatment prices change. Furthermore, its findings have potentially relevant implications for other areas of public policy. Chapter one identifies an effect of low dose radiation on cognitive health. As mankind is searching for new energy sources, nuclear power is becoming popular again. However, results of chapter one point to substantial costs of nuclear energy which have not been accounted yet. Chapter two finds strong evidence that air quality improvements by Low Emission Zones translate into health improvements, even at relatively low levels of air pollution. These findings may, for instance, be of relevance to design further policies targeted at air pollution such as diesel bans. As pointed out in chapter three, the implementation of DRG-Systems may have unintended side-effects on the reallocation of hospital resources. This may also apply to other providers in the health care sector such as resident doctors.