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On May 17, 2012, the social networking company Facebook Inc. fixes its initial public offering (IPO) price at $38.00 a share. Over the next couple of months, contrary to expectations raised by previous IPOs, the stock price crashes more than 50 per cent. Immediately, the question arises whether the issuer’s or the stock market’s pricing of the share are in line with the firm’s fundamentals. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to determine the company value in close proximity to the date of IPO.
Anti-Consumption
(2019)
Transcending the conventional debate around efficiency in sustainable consumption, anti-consumption patterns leading to decreased levels of material consumption have been gaining importance. Change agents are crucial for the promotion of such patterns, so there may be lessons for governance interventions that can be learnt from the every-day experiences of those who actively implement and promote sustainability in the field of anti-consumption. Eighteen social innovation pioneers, who engage in and diffuse practices of voluntary simplicity and collaborative consumption as sustainable options of anti-consumption share their knowledge and personal insights in expert interviews for this research. Our qualitative content analysis reveals drivers, barriers, and governance strategies to strengthen anti-consumption patterns, which are negotiated between the market, the state, and civil society. Recommendations derived from the interviews concern entrepreneurship, municipal infrastructures in support of local grassroots projects, regulative policy measures, more positive communication to strengthen the visibility of initiatives and emphasize individual benefits, establishing a sense of community, anti-consumer activism, and education. We argue for complementary action between top-down strategies, bottom-up initiatives, corporate activities, and consumer behavior. The results are valuable to researchers, activists, marketers, and policymakers who seek to enhance their understanding of materially reduced consumption patterns based on the real-life experiences of active pioneers in the field.
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.
Organizations have discovered Design Thinking as a promising framework or language for innovation-focused project teamwork. The goal is to develop new products and services by being customer-centric and working iteratively and in an interdisciplinary way, using specific working principles and methods to create a common language among all stakeholders. The empirical results in this article show that Design Thinking teamwork is different from other forms of teamwork. The difference in Design Thinking team-based project work is that the teams go through a specific learning process that poses individual challenges but also provides the individual with experience-based learning. We show that teams going through this learning process repeatedly find themselves in seemingly insolvable conflicts-so called structural dilemmas-within the framework of project deadlines and under the influence of strategic guidelines of the organization. We explore these structural dilemmas and develop ways to overcome them.
The paradox of openness is inherent to all platform ecosystems-the tension in enabling maximum openness to create joint innovation while guaranteeing value capturing for all actors. Governance mechanisms to solve this paradox are embedded into the technical architecture of the platform, addressing the dimensions of access, control, and incentives. Blockchain technology offers unique ways to design novel governance mechanisms through the standardization of interactions. However, the design of such an architecture requires careful consideration of the cost associated with it.
The Collatz conjecture is a number theoretical problem, which has puzzled countless researchers using myriad approaches. Presently, there are scarcely any methodologies to describe and treat the problem from the perspective of the Algebraic Theory of Automata. Such an approach is promising with respect to facilitating the comprehension of the Collatz sequence’s "mechanics". The systematic technique of a state machine is both simpler and can fully be described by the use of algebraic means.
The current gap in research forms the motivation behind the present contribution. The present authors are convinced that exploring the Collatz conjecture in an algebraic manner, relying on findings and fundamentals of Graph Theory and Automata Theory, will simplify the problem as a whole.
The Collatz conjecture is a number theoretical problem, which has puzzled countless researchers using myriad approaches. Presently, there are scarcely any methodologies to describe and treat the problem from the perspective of the Algebraic Theory of Automata. Such an approach is promising with respect to facilitating the comprehension of the Collatz sequences "mechanics". The systematic technique of a state machine is both simpler and can fully be described by the use of algebraic means.
The current gap in research forms the motivation behind the present contribution. The present authors are convinced that exploring the Collatz conjecture in an algebraic manner, relying on findings and fundamentals of Graph Theory and Automata Theory, will simplify the problem as a whole.
Cooperation is — despite not being predicted by game theory — a widely documented aspect of human behaviour in Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD) situations. This article presents a comparison between subjects restricted to playing pure strategies and subjects allowed to play mixed strategies in a one-shot symmetric PD laboratory experiment. Subjects interact with 10 other subjects and take their decisions all at once. Because subjects in the mixed-strategy treatment group are allowed to condition their level of cooperation more precisely on their beliefs about their counterparts’ level of cooperation, we predicted the cooperation rate in the mixed-strategy treatment group to be higher than in the pure-strategy control group. The results of our experiment reject our prediction: even after controlling for beliefs about the other subjects’ level of cooperation, we find that cooperation in the mixed-strategy group is lower than in the pure-strategy group. We also find, however, that subjects in the mixedstrategy group condition their cooperative behaviour more closely on their beliefs than in the pure-strategy group. In the mixed-strategy group, most subjects choose intermediate levels of cooperation.
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 vorliegende Forschungsarbeit untersucht den Umgang mit Dilemmata von Topmanagern. Dilemmata sind ein alltägliches Geschäft im Topmanagement. Die entsprechenden Akteure sind daher immer wieder mit diesen konfrontiert und mit ihnen umzugehen, gehört gewissermaßen zu ihrer Berufsbeschreibung. Hinzu kommen Dilemmata im nicht direkt geschäftlichen Bereich, wie zum Beispiel jene zwischen Familien- und Arbeitszeit. Doch stellt dieses Feld ein kaum untersuchtes Forschungsgebiet dar. Während Dilemmata in anderen Bereichen eine zunehmende Aufmerksamkeit erfuhren, wurden deren Besonderheiten im Topmanagement genauso wenig differenziert betrachtet wie zugehörige Umgangsweisen. Theorie und Praxis stellen bezüglich Dilemmata von Topmanagern vor allem einen Gegensatz dar, beziehungsweise fehlt es an einer theoretischen Fundierung der Empirie. Diesem Umstand wird mittels dieser Studie begegnet. Auf der Grundlage einer differenzierten und breiten Erfassung von Theorien zu Dilemmata, so diese auch noch nicht auf Topmanager bezogen wurden, und einer empirischen Erhebung, die im Mittelpunkt dieser Arbeit stehen, soll das Feld Dilemmata von Topmanagern der Forschung geöffnet werden. Empirische Grundlage sind vor allem narrative Interviews mit Topmanagern über ihre Dilemmata-Wahrnehmung, ausgemachte Ursachen, Umgangsweisen und Resultate. Dies erlaubt es, Topmanagertypen sowie Dilemmata-Arten, mit denen sie konfrontiert sind oder waren, analytisch herauszuarbeiten. Angesichts der Praxisrelevanz von Dilemmata von Topmanagern wird jedoch nicht nur ein theoretisches Modell zu dieser Thematik erarbeitet, es werden auch Reflexionen auf die Praxis in Form von Handlungsempfehlungen vorgenommen. Schließlich gilt es, die allgemeine Theorie zu Dilemmata, ohne konkreten Bezug zu Topmanagern, mit den theoretischen Erkenntnissen dieser Studie auf empirischer Basis zu kontrastieren. Dabei wird im Rahmen der empirischen Erfassung und Auswertung dem Ansatz der Grounded-Theory-Methodologie gefolgt.
Little is known about the conscious experience of internal bodily sensations in preschool-aged children. Given that preschoolers are in the most rapid phase of brain development, and display profound emotional development, it was the aim of the present study to establish an adapted interoceptive accuracy paradigm and to investigate associations between sociodemographic (age, sex) and emotional variables with interoceptive accuracy. Forty-nine children (aged 4–6 years) completed the jumping jack paradigm (JJP), a heartbeat tracking paradigm, which includes a noninvasive physical perturbation via performing jumping jacks for 10 s. An interoceptive accuracy score was based on the comparison between self-reported and objectively recorded heart rate prior to and after completion of jumping jacks. Children also completed validated measures for emotion recognition and emotion regulation. Children's objectively recorded heart rate significantly increased after the JJP by 20 bpm on average. There was a positive relationship between reactivity on self-reported heart rate and objectively recorded heart rate increase. The derived scores for interoceptive accuracy increased with age, suggesting older children to report more self-reported heart rate change than objectively recorded, but were unrelated to children's sex or BMI. While emotion recognition and regulation significantly increased with age, the interoceptive accuracy score was unrelated to emotion recognition, but marginally associated to emotion regulation. Children with higher interoceptive accuracy score (i.e., self-reporting more heart rate change than objectively recorded) received lower emotion regulation score. The present study is the first to depict a novel behavioral paradigm to assess interoceptive accuracy in preschool-aged children.
In a multi-source, lagged design field study of 197 leader-follower dyads, we test a model that predicts positive interactive effects of visionary and empowering leadership on follower performance. Based on the paradox perspective, we argue that visionary and empowering leadership are synergistic in that their combination enables leaders to address a key paradox inherent to leader behavior identified by Waldman and Bowen (2016): Maintaining control while simultaneously letting go of control. We argue that visionary leadership addresses the former and empowering leadership addresses the latter pole of this pair of opposites. Hence, in line with paradox thinking, we posit that leaders will engender more positive effects on follower performance when they enact visionary and empowering leadership behaviors simultaneously and adopt a "both-and" approach, rather than focus on one of these behaviors without the other. Our results support our hypothesized interactive effect of visionary and empowering leadership on goal clarity, as well as a conditional indirect effect such that goal clarity mediates the interactive effect of visionary and empowering leadership on individual follower performance.
We analyse the top tail of the wealth distribution in France, Germany, and Spain using the first and second waves of the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS). Since top wealth is likely to be under-represented in household surveys, we integrate big fortunes from rich lists, estimate a Pareto distribution, and impute the missing rich. In addition to the Forbes list, we rely on national rich lists since they represent a broader base of the big fortunes in those countries. As a result, the top 1% wealth share increases notably for the three selected countries after imputing the top wealth. We find that national rich lists can improve the estimation of the Pareto coefficient in particular when the list of national USD billionaires is short.
Introduction
(2019)
Over the past decades, it has become more and more obvious that ongoing globalisation processes have substantial impacts on the natural environment. Studies reveal that intensified global economic relations have caused or accelerated dramatic changes in the Earth system, defined as the sum of our planet’s interacting physical, chemical, biological and human processes (Schellnhuber et al. 2004). Climate change, biodiversity loss, disrupted biogeochemical cycles, and land degradation are often cited as emblematic problems of global environmental change (Rockström et al. 2009; Steffen et al. 2015). In this context, the term Anthropocene has lately received widespread attention and gained some prominence in the academic literature
Entrepreneurial persistence is demonstrated by an entrepreneur’s continued positive maintenance of entrepreneurial motivation and constantly-renewed active engagement in a new business venture despite counter forces or enticing alternatives. It is thus a crucial factor for entrepreneurs when pursuing and exploiting their business opportunities and to realize potential economic gains and benefits. Using rich data on a representative sample of German business founders, we investigate the determinants of entrepreneurial persistence. Next to observed survival we also construct a hybrid persistence measure capturing also the motivational dimension of persistence. We analyze the influence of individual-level (human capital and personality) and business-related characteristics on both measures as well as their relative importance. We find that the two indicators emphasize different aspects of persistence. For the survival indicator, the predictive power is concentrated in business characteristics and human capital, while for hybrid persistence, the dominant factors are business characteristics and personality. Finally, we show that results are heterogeneous across subgroups. In particular, formerly-unemployed founders do not differ in survival chances, but they are more likely to lack a high psychological commitment to their business ventures.
The “output-orientation” is omnipresent in teacher education. In order to evaluate teachers' and students' performances, a wide range of different quantitative questionnaires exist worldwide. One important goal of teaching evaluation is to increase the quality of teaching and learning. The author argues, that standard evaluations which are typically made at the end of the semester are problematic due to two reasons. The first one is that some of the questions are too general and don`t offer concrete ideas as to what kind of actions can be taken to make the courses better. The second problem is that the evaluation is mostly made when the course is already over. Because of this criticism, Apelojg invented the Felix-App which offers the possibility to give feedback in real-time by asking for the emotions and needs that occur during different learning situations. The idea is very simple: positive emotions and satisfied needs are helpful for the learning process. Negative emotions and unsatisfied needs have negative effects on the learning process. First descriptive results show, that “managing emotions” during classes can have positive effects on both motivation and emotions.
Das Thema Verwaltungsreform beschäftigt nach wie vor Bund, Länder und Gemeinden gleichermaßen. Konzeptionell sind die diskutierten Ansätze und Instrumente einem ständigen Wandel unterworfen und bei der Umsetzung von Maßnahmen besteht in großem Maße Unsicherheit und Orientierungsbedarf. Das Handbuch liefert einen Beitrag zur Einordnung unterschiedlicher Konzepte und Orientierung für die Umsetzung der Verwaltungsreform. In 66 Beiträgen werden vielfältige Ansätze der Verwaltungsreform vorgestellt, ihr Entstehungszusammenhang erläutert, praktische Anwendungsfelder beschrieben und Entwicklungsperspektiven untersucht. Die Beiträge stammen von renommierten WissenschaftlerInnen und erfahrenen PraktikerInnen. Themenblöcke: Staat und Verwaltung, Reform- und Managementkonzepte, Steuerung und Organisation, Personal, Finanzen, Ergebnisse und Wirkungen, Erfahrungen und Perspektiven. Die Hälfte der Beiträge dieser Auflage wurde komplett neu geschrieben und die restlichen Beiträge wurden gründlich überarbeitet.