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The dissertation examines the use of performance information by public managers. “Use” is conceptualized as purposeful utilization in order to steer, learn, and improve public services. The main research question is: Why do public managers use performance information? To answer this question, I systematically review the existing literature, identify research gaps and introduce the approach of my dissertation. The first part deals with manager-related variables that might affect performance information use but which have thus far been disregarded. The second part models performance data use by applying a theory from social psychology which is based on the assumption that this management behavior is conscious and reasoned. The third part examines the extent to which explanations of performance information use vary if we include others sources of “unsystematic” feedback in our analysis. The empirical results are based on survey data from 2011. I surveyed middle managers from eight selected divisions of all German cities with county status (n=954). To analyze the data, I used factor analysis, multiple regression analysis, and structural equation modeling. My research resulted in four major findings: 1) The use of performance information can be modeled as a reasoned behavior which is determined by the attitude of the managers and of their immediate peers. 2) Regular users of performance data surprisingly are not generally inclined to analyze abstract data but rather prefer gathering information through personal interaction. 3) Managers who take on ownership of performance information at an early stage in the measurement process are also more likely to use this data when it is reported to them. 4) Performance reports are only one source of information among many. Public managers prefer verbal feedback from insiders and feedback from external stakeholders over systematic performance reports. The dissertation explains these findings using a deductive approach and discusses their implications for theory and practice.
The economic impact analysis contained in this book shows how irrigation farming is particularly susceptible when applying certain water management policies in the Australian Murray-Darling Basin, one of the world largest river basins and Australia’s most fertile region. By comparing different pricing and non-pricing water management policies with the help of the Water Integrated Market Model, it is found that the impact of water demand reducing policies is most severe on crops that need to be intensively irrigated and are at the same time less water productive. A combination of increasingly frequent and severe droughts and the application of policies that decrease agricultural water demand, in the same region, will create a situation in which the highly water dependent crops rice and cotton cannot be cultivated at all.
Current business organizations want to be more efficient and constantly evolving to find ways to retain talent. It is well established that visionary leadership plays a vital role in organizational success and contributes to a better working environment. This study aims to determine the effect of visionary leadership on employees' perceived job satisfaction. Specifically, it investigates whether the mediators meaningfulness at work and commitment to the leader impact the relationship. I take support from job demand resource theory to explain the overarching model used in this study and broaden-and-build theory to leverage the use of mediators.
To test the hypotheses, evidence was collected in a multi-source, time-lagged design field study of 95 leader-follower dyads. The data was collected in a three-wave study, each survey appearing after one month. Data on employee perception of visionary leadership was collected in T1, data for both mediators were collected in T2, and employee perception of job satisfaction was collected in T3. The findings display that meaningfulness at work and commitment to the leader play positive intervening roles (in the form of a chain) in the indirect influence of visionary leadership on employee perceptions regarding job satisfaction.
This research offers contributions to literature and theory by first broadening the existing knowledge on the effects of visionary leadership on employees. Second, it contributes to the literature on constructs meaningfulness at work, commitment to the leader, and job satisfaction. Third, it sheds light on the mediation mechanism dealing with study variables in line with the proposed model. Fourth, it integrates two theories, job demand resource theory and broaden-and-build theory providing further evidence. Additionally, the study provides practical implications for business leaders and HR practitioners.
Overall, my study discusses the potential of visionary leadership behavior to elevate employee outcomes. The study aligns with previous research and answers several calls for further research on visionary leadership, job satisfaction, and mediation mechanism with meaningfulness at work and commitment to the leader.
In industrialized economies such as the European countries unemployment rates are very responsive to the business cycle and significant shares stay unemployed for more than one year. To fight cyclical and long-term unemployment countries spend significant shares of their budget on Active Labor Market Policies (ALMP). To improve the allocation and design of ALMP it is essential for policy makers to have reliable evidence on the effectiveness of such programs available. Although the number of studies has been increased during the last decades, policy makers still lack evidence on innovative programs and for specific subgroups of the labor market. Using Germany as a case study, the dissertation aims at contributing in this way by providing new evidence on start-up subsidies, marginal employment and programs for youth unemployed. The idea behind start-up subsidies is to encourage unemployed individuals to exit unemployment by starting their own business. Those programs have compared to traditional programs of ALMP the advantage that not only the participant escapes unemployment but also might generate additional jobs for other individuals. Considering two distinct start-up subsidy programs, the dissertation adds three substantial aspects to the literature: First, the programs are effective in improving the employment and income situation of participants compared to non-participants in the long-run. Second, the analysis on effect heterogeneity reveals that the programs are particularly effective for disadvantaged groups in the labor market like low educated or low qualified individuals, and in regions with unfavorable economic conditions. Third, the analysis considers the effectiveness of start-up programs for women. Due to higher preferences for flexible working hours and limited part-time jobs, unemployed women often face more difficulties to integrate in dependent employment. It can be shown that start-up subsidy programs are very promising as unemployed women become self-employed which gives them more flexibility to reconcile work and family. Overall, the results suggest that the promotion of self-employment among the unemployed is a sensible strategy to fight unemployment by abolishing labor market barriers for disadvantaged groups and sustainably integrating those into the labor market. The next chapter of the dissertation considers the impact of marginal employment on labor market outcomes of the unemployed. Unemployed individuals in Germany are allowed to earn additional income during unemployment without suffering a reduction in their unemployment benefits. Those additional earnings are usually earned by taking up so-called marginal employment that is employment below a certain income level subject to reduced payroll taxes (also known as “mini-job”). The dissertation provides an empirical evaluation of the impact of marginal employment on unemployment duration and subsequent job quality. The results suggest that being marginal employed during unemployment has no significant effect on unemployment duration but extends employment duration. Moreover, it can be shown that taking up marginal employment is particularly effective for long-term unemployed, leading to higher job-finding probabilities and stronger job stability. It seems that mini-jobs can be an effective instrument to help long-term unemployed individuals to find (stable) jobs which is particularly interesting given the persistently high shares of long-term unemployed in European countries. Finally, the dissertation provides an empirical evaluation of the effectiveness of ALMP programs to improve labor market prospects of unemployed youth. Youth are generally considered a population at risk as they have lower search skills and little work experience compared to adults. This results in above-average turnover rates between jobs and unemployment for youth which is particularly sensitive to economic fluctuations. Therefore, countries spend significant resources on ALMP programs to fight youth unemployment. However, so far only little is known about the effectiveness of ALMP for unemployed youth and with respect to Germany no comprehensive quantitative analysis exists at all. Considering seven different ALMP programs, the results show an overall positive picture with respect to post-treatment employment probabilities for all measures under scrutiny except for job creation schemes. With respect to effect heterogeneity, it can be shown that almost all programs particularly improve the labor market prospects of youths with high levels of pretreatment schooling. Furthermore, youths who are assigned to the most successful employment measures have much better characteristics in terms of their pre-treatment employment chances compared to non-participants. Therefore, the program assignment process seems to favor individuals for whom the measures are most beneficial, indicating a lack of ALMP alternatives that could benefit low-educated youths.
Turning wind into power : effects of stakeholder networks on renewalbe energy governanace in India
(2011)
Wie hängen Vertrauen, Konsumeinstellungen und Verhalten bezüglich Fairtrade zusammen?
Dies ist die grundlegende Frage, mit der sich diese Arbeit beschäftigt. Lea Dirkwinkel analysiert die Fragestellung am Beispiel des Fairtrade-Labels, das als Symbol für das Produktzertifizierungssystem von Fairtrade International steht und das bekannteste Beispiel der Fairtrade-Bewegung darstellt.
Die Forschungsfrage wird einerseits zurückgeführt auf die Tatsache, dass die Qualität von Fairtrade-Gütern durch Konsumenten nicht erfasst werden kann, und andererseits durch die sogenannte Einstellungs-Verhaltens-Lücke begründet. Die Einstellungs-Verhaltens-Lücke beschreibt die kognitive Dissonanz zwischen positiven ethischen Einstellungen und Kaufintentionen sowie dem tatsächlichen Kaufverhalten und widerspricht traditionellen Einstellungs-Verhaltens-Modellen, die besagen, dass die Einstellung das Verhalten von Menschen bestimmt. Beide zuvor genannten Aspekte begründen in der Marketingtheorie die Relevanz von Vertrauen für den Konsum von Fairtrade-Produkten, aber auch anderen nachhaltigen Gütern.
Die Analyse basiert auf einer Online-Datenerhebung und erfolgte anhand der Kombination aus Conjoint Analyse und Strukturgleichungsanalyse. Die innovative methodische Vorgehensweise lieferte sowohl für die Marketingforschung als auch für die Praxis relevante Ergebnisse. Zum einem wird die wichtige Rolle von Vertrauen für den Fairtrade-Konsum bestätigt; zum anderen erklärt die Arbeit, wie sich Fairtrade-Vertrauen auswirkt. Das Vertrauen in das Fairtrade-Label stellt den Ausgangspunkt für Vertrauensbeziehungen zwischen Fairtrade und den Konsumenten dar und wird auf die zertifizierten Produkte übertragen.
Empfehlungen, die sich daraus ergeben, konzentrieren sich auf Maßnahmen, die das Vertrauen in Fairtrade-Labels stärken, z.B. durch die Reduzierung der Anzahl verschiedener Labels oder die verstärkte Kommunikation der Unabhängigkeit von Zertifizierungsorganisationen.
Public administrations confront fundamental challenges, including globalization, digitalization, and an eroding level of trust from society. By developing joint public service delivery with other stakeholders, public administrations can respond to these challenges. This increases the importance of inter-organizational governance—a development often referred to as New Public Governance, which to date has not been realized because public administrations focus on intra-organizational practices and follow the traditional “governmental chain.”
E-government initiatives, which can lead to high levels of interconnected public services, are currently perceived as insufficient to meet this goal. They are not designed holistically and merely affect the interactions of public and non-public stakeholders. A fundamental shift toward a joint public service delivery would require scrutiny of established processes, roles, and interactions between stakeholders.
Various scientists and practitioners within the public sector assume that the use of blockchain institutional technology could fundamentally change the relationship between public and non-public stakeholders. At first glance, inter-organizational, joint public service delivery could benefit from the use of blockchain. This dissertation aims to shed light on this widespread assumption. Hence, the objective of this dissertation is to substantiate the effect of blockchain on the relationship between public administrations and non-public stakeholders.
This objective is pursued by defining three major areas of interest. First, this dissertation strives to answer the question of whether or not blockchain is suited to enable New Public Governance and to identify instances where blockchain may not be the proper solution. The second area aims to understand empirically the status quo of existing blockchain implementations in the public sector and whether they comply with the major theoretical conclusions. The third area investigates the changing role of public administrations, as the blockchain ecosystem can significantly increase the number of stakeholders.
Corresponding research is conducted to provide insights into these areas, for example, combining theoretical concepts with empirical actualities, conducting interviews with subject matter experts and key stakeholders of leading blockchain implementations, and performing a comprehensive stakeholder analysis, followed by visualization of its results.
The results of this dissertation demonstrate that blockchain can support New Public Governance in many ways while having a minor impact on certain aspects (e.g., decentralized control), which account for this public service paradigm. Furthermore, the existing projects indicate changes to relationships between public administrations and non-public stakeholders, although not necessarily the fundamental shift proposed by New Public Governance. Lastly, the results suggest that power relations are shifting, including the decreasing influence of public administrations within the blockchain ecosystem. The results raise questions about the governance models and regulations required to support mature solutions and the further diffusion of blockchain for public service delivery.
Over the past decade, society has witnessed an increasing expansion of service economies as manufacturing (i.e., product-oriented) companies break free from their product-based business model and move toward more service-oriented value creation as a result of several economic, technological, and social changes. As they shift from products to (service) solutions, manufacturing companies pursue new strategic direction, inter alia, by extensively employing service business development activities.
The objective of this dissertation is to investigate the considerable (re-)emerging stream of service business development by providing vital insights for academia and management into important focus areas that have hardly, if at all, been (empirically) investigated in the existing literature before. Therefore, these findings can be vital to informing a differentiation in current and future marketing strategies in business practice.
First of all, this dissertation focuses on the extent to which service business development is transposed into business practice. Because scarce empirical-quantitative research has studied the current state of service business development across various industry and market sectors, this study analyzes a unique, manually collected dataset of 266 (product and service) business development activities. In so doing, this investigation contributes to literature by presenting a comprehensive, industry-wide status quo and trend report of service business development in practice.
Furthermore, given the surprisingly limited scientific attention paid to the question of how service business development is strategically configured and further applied to different environmental circumstances, this dissertation provides comprehensive theoretical and practical implications by analyzing in detail a sample of 137 service business developments of 66 product-oriented companies.
Lastly, manufacturers are recognizing that service-oriented value creation is moving toward a more collaborative process of co-creation as a promising measure to achieve competitive advantage, and even more as an appropriate response to complex business environments. Thus, an increasing number of companies around the world have recently introduced business models related to access-based services such as car-, scooter-, and bike-sharing systems. But despite the considerable advantages of access-based services as an alternative to ownership, these companies are now seeing that consumer adoption and (re-)usage rates remain insufficient. Owing to the lack of general and cross-national scientific knowledge, the purpose of this dissertation continues to explore which factors impede diffusion of related service business development activities from a consumer perspective and what kind of differences can be established between countries. Consequently, with a total of 1,443 participants, a cross-national survey was carried out in three countries, i.e., the United States, Germany, and China, to measure a vast number of different adoption barriers derived from a developed integrated framework that combines established theories within innovation and adoption behavior research.
Three Essays on EFRAG
(2018)
This cumulative doctoral thesis consists of three papers that deal with the role of one specific European accounting player in the international accounting standard-setting, namely the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group (EFRAG). The first paper examines whether and how EFRAG generally fulfills its role in articulating Europe’s interests toward the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). The qualitative data from the conducted interviews reveal that EFRAG influences the IASB’s decision making at a very early stage, long before other constituents are officially asked to comment on the IASB’s proposals. The second paper uses quantitative data and investigates the formal participation behavior of European constituents that seek to determine EFRAG’s voice. More precisely, this paper analyzes the nature of the constituents’ participation in EFRAG’s due process in terms of representation (constituent groups and geographical distribution) and the drivers of their participation behavior. EFRAG’s official decision making process is dominated by some specific constituent groups (such as preparers and the accounting profession) and by constituents from some specific countries (e.g. those with effective enforcement regimes). The third paper investigates in a first step who of the European constituents choose which lobbying channel (participation only at IASB, only at EFRAG, or at both institutions) and unveils in a second step possible reasons for their lobbying choices. The paper comprises quantitative and qualitative data. It reveals that English skills, time issues, the size of the constituent, and the country of origin are factors that can explain why the majority participates only in the IASB’s due process.