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Future ERP Systems
(2021)
This paper presents a research agenda on the current generation of ERP systems which was developed based on a literature review on current problems of ERP systems. The problems are presented following the ERP life cycle. In the next step, the identified problems are mapped on a reference architecture model of ERP systems that is an extension of the three-tier architecture model that is widely used in practice. The research agenda is structured according to the reference architecture model and addresses the problems identified regarding data, infrastructure, adaptation, processes, and user interface layer.
Der Wandel zur automatisierten Produktion, die fortschreitende Digitalisierung der Wertschöpfungsprozesse sowie die stetige Implementierung von mobilen Industrial Internet of Things-Technologien (IIoT) in diese zur Unterstützung der Mitarbeiter stellen betriebliche Weiterbildung vor Herausforderungen. Komple-xere Anforderungen und veränderte Tätigkeitsprofile erfordern Handlungskom-petenzen bei Mitarbeitern im Sinne der Fähigkeit, in unbekannten Situationen auf Basis eigenen Könnens handlungsfähig zu bleiben. Jene sowie dafür notwendiges umfassendes Verständnis gegenüber digitalisierten Produktions-prozessen kann jedoch durch konventionelle Lehrmethoden nicht realisiert werden, da diese der erhöhten Anforderungskomplexität und den komplexen Rückkopplungen im Rahmen der Steuer- und Regelkreise nicht gerecht werden können. Diese Aspekte aufgreifend wird im Folgenden ein szenariobasierter Wei-terbildungsansatz für eine Lernfabrik vorgestellt, der insbesondere die Potenziale mobiler IIoT-Technologien zur Ausgestaltung dieser in den Blick nimmt.
Produkte werden zunehmend internetfähig. Gerade im Kontext der Industrie 4.0 statten beispielsweise Maschinen- und Anlagenbauer sowie Komponentenhersteller ihre Produkte mit Option zur Netzwerk- und Internetanbindung aus. Neben der technischen Realisierung beschäftigt Unternehmen die Frage, wie diese neue Geschäftsmodelle realisieren können. Gerade bei Produkten, die bei Kunden im Einsatz sind, kommt der Nutzung von IoT-Plattformen eine wichtige Bedeutung zu.
Digitale Plattformen finden zunehmende Verbreitung in unterschiedlichen Industriezweigen. Immer mehr Unternehmen sind an der Erschließung verbundener Potenziale für ihr Geschäft interessiert. Im Maschinen- und Anlagenbau wird die Vernetzung von Maschinen zunehmend ein Wettbewerbsfaktor für Hersteller. Der Einsatz digitaler Plattformen im Maschinen- und Anlagenbau bietet Herstellern Möglichkeiten zur gezielten Erweiterung des Geschäftsmodells. Für die Bereitstellung digitaler Plattformen können Unternehmen auf unterschiedliche Strategien zurückgreifen. Hierbei sollten Unternehmen die für ihre Konstellation geeignete Variante systematisch identifizieren, um die angestrebten Ziele zu erreichen. Die geeignete Strategie ist von einer Vielzahl an Faktoren abhängig. Als Grundlage für die Identifikation der geeigneten Strategie bietet dieser Beitrag eine systematische Untersuchung der möglichen Bereitstellungsstrategien für Unternehmen. Neben der theoretischen Systematisierung werden gegenwärtig genutzte Strategien am Beispiel des Maschinen- und Anlagenbaus in Deutschland vorgestellt. Zudem werden spezifische Merkmale, welche die Nutzung einer Strategie beeinflussen, als Ansatzpunkt für einen Strategieformulierungsprozess identifiziert. Im Maschinen- und Anlagenbau ist die Bereitstellung einer eigenen Plattform, insbesondere bei Großunternehmen vorherrschend. Die Strategien von KMU unterschieden sich von Großunternehmen.
Digitale Plattformen
(2020)
Obwohl digitale Plattformen vornehmlich von Großunternehmen betrieben werden, bieten sie klein- und mittelständischen Unternehmen (KMU) Potenziale zur Verbreitung innovativer Technologien und für den Ausbau ihres Geschäftsmodells. Für die Umsetzung digitaler Plattformen stehen Unternehmen mehrere Strategien zur Verfügung. Der Beitrag vergleicht und bewertet grundlegende Strategien am Beispiel eines Maschinenbauunternehmens. Die Ergebnisse dienen als Grundlage für die Entscheidungsfindung von KMU.
Das Angebot digitaler Plattformen ist mittlerweile auch im Maschinen- und Anlagenbau weit verbreitet. Dabei konnte in den letzten Jahren der Trend verzeichnet werden, dass die Herstellerunternehmen von Maschinen und An- lagen nicht mehr ausschließlich physische Produkte veräußern, sondern zusätzliche auf das Produkt abgestimmte Dienstleistungen, wie bspw. digitale Services. Dieser Wandel kann einen großen Einfluss auf die Veränderung des Geschäftsmodells ha- ben und je nach Komplexität der digitalen Plattformen unterschiedliche Ausmaße annehmen, die auch strategische Entscheidungen bestimmen können. In diesem Bei- trag wird eine Klassifizierung der digitalen Plattformen im deutschen Maschinen- und Anlagenbau vorgenommen, mithilfe derer unterschiedliche Plattformtypen auf Grundlage ihrer Funktionszusammensetzung identifiziert werden. Demnach können bspw. Plattformen, über die lediglich grundlegende Funktionen wie die Verwaltung von Maschinen angeboten werden, von umfangreicheren Plattformen unterschieden werden, die eine höhere Komplexität aufweisen und somit einen größeren Einfluss auf die Veränderung des Geschäftsmodells haben. Diese Einteilung unterschiedli- cher Plattformtypen kann Unternehmen im Maschinen- und Anlagenbau dabei unter- stützen, strategische Entscheidungen bezüglich der Entwicklung und des Angebots digitaler Plattformen zu treffen und eine Einordnung ihrer digitalen Plattform im Wettbewerb vorzunehmen.
Die Auswahl von Standardsoftware stellt viele Unternehmen vor Herausforderungen. Gerade im deutschen Mittelstand kommen vermehrt eigenentwickelte Individuallösungen zum Einsatz. Ent- sprechende Unternehmen sind daher nicht mit komplexen Soft- wareauswahlprojekten vertraut. Das breite Angebot an ERP-Systemen erschwert die Vergleichbarkeit der Lösungen und die zielgerichtete Auswahl des idealen Systems zusätzlich.
Government as a Platform?
(2022)
Digital platforms, by their design, allow the coordination of multiple entities to achieve a common goal. In the public sector, different understandings of the platform concept prevail. To guide the development and further re-search a coherent understanding is required. To address this gap, we identify the constitutive elements of platforms in the public sector. Moreover, their potential to coordinate partially autonomous entities as typical for federal organized states is highlighted. This study contributes through a uniform understanding of public service platforms by providing a framework with constitutive elements, that may guide future analysis. Apart from chance regarding coordination, platforms are well suited to support contextual eGovernment targets. Among them is service personalization. Highly individualized service offerings support targets such as No Stop government. To this end, the paper extends the framework for service personalization in the public sector and exemplifies related aspects using a reference case.
Shortening product development cycles and fully customizable products pose major challenges for production systems. These not only have to cope with an increased product diversity but also enable high throughputs and provide a high adaptability and robustness to process variations and unforeseen incidents. To overcome these challenges, deep Reinforcement Learning (RL) has been increasingly applied for the optimization of production systems. Unlike other machine learning methods, deep RL operates on recently collected sensor-data in direct interaction with its environment and enables real-time responses to system changes. Although deep RL is already being deployed in production systems, a systematic review of the results has not yet been established. The main contribution of this paper is to provide researchers and practitioners an overview of applications and to motivate further implementations and research of deep RL supported production systems. Findings reveal that deep RL is applied in a variety of production domains, contributing to data-driven and flexible processes. In most applications, conventional methods were outperformed and implementation efforts or dependence on human experience were reduced. Nevertheless, future research must focus more on transferring the findings to real-world systems to analyze safety aspects and demonstrate reliability under prevailing conditions.
Despite digital learning disrupting traditional learning concepts and activities in higher education, for the successful integration of digital learning, the use and acceptance of the students are essential. This acceptance depends in turn on students’ characteristics and dispositions, among other factors. In our study, we investigated the influence of digital competences, self-organization, and independent learning abilities on students’ acceptance of digital learning and the influence of their acceptance on the resistance to the change from face-to-face to digital learning. To do so, we surveyed 350 students and analyzed the impact of the different dispositions using ordinary least squares regression analysis. We could confirm a significant positive influence of all the tested dispositions on the acceptance of digital learning. With the results, we can contribute to further investigating the underlying factors that can lead to more positive student perceptions of digital learning and build a foundation for future strategies of implementing digital learning into higher education successfully.
Reinvigorating the discourse on Human-Centered artificial intelligence in educational technologies
(2021)
The increasing relevance of artificial intelligence (AI) applications in various domains has led to high expectations of benefits, ranging from precision, efficiency, and optimization to the completion of routine or time-consuming tasks. Particularly in the field of education, AI applications promise immense innovation potential. A central focus in this field is on analyzing and evaluating learner characteristics to derive learning profiles and create individualized learning environments. The development and implementation of such AI-driven approaches are related to learners' data, and thus involves several privacies, ethics, and morality challenges. In this paper, we introduce the concept of human-centered AI, and consider how an AI system can be developed in line with human values without posing risks to humanity. Because the education market is in the early stages of incorporating AI into educational tools, we believe that this is the right time to raise awareness about the use of principles that foster human-centered values and help in building responsible, ethical, and value-oriented AI.
The design of qualitative, excellent teaching requires collaboration between teachers and learners. For this purpose, face-to-face teaching benefits from a long-standing tradition, while digital teaching is comparatively still at the beginning of its dissemination. A major developmental step toward the digitization of teaching was achieved in the context of university teaching during the Covid 19 pandemic in spring 2020, when face-to-face teaching was interrupted for months. During this time, important insights into the opportunities and limitations of digital teaching were gained. This paper presents selected results of a study conducted at four German universities and with 875 responses in spring 2020. The study uncovers opportunities and limitations of digital teaching from the students’ perspective and against the background of their experience in the completely digital semester. The results are used as a basis for deriving design guidelines for digital teaching and learning offerings. Based on a model for analyzing the design of teaching and learning formats, these indications are structured according to the elements learners, teachers, teaching content, environment and teaching style.
E-mail tracking provides companies with fine-grained behavioral data about e-mail recipients, which can be a threat for individual privacy and enterprise security. This problem is especially severe since e-mail tracking techniques often gather data without the informed consent of the recipients. So far e-mail recipients lack a reliable protection mechanism.
This article presents a novel protection framework against e-mail tracking that closes an impor- tant gap in the field of enterprise security and privacy-enhancing technologies. We conceptualize, implement and evaluate an anti-tracking mail server that is capable of identifying tracking images in e-mails via machine learning with very high accuracy, and can selectively replace them with arbitrary images containing warning messages for the recipient. Our mail protection framework implements a selective prevention strategy as enterprise-grade software using the design science research paradigm. It is flexibly extensible, highly scalable, and ready to be applied under actual production conditions. Experimental evaluations show that these goals are achieved through solid software design, adoption of recent technologies and the creation of novel flexible software components.
Im Zuge der Digitalisierung bietet Business Analytics das Potenzial, die Budgetierung insbesondere durch eine Automatisierung von Prozessschritten der Budgetierung maßgeblich weiterzuentwickeln. Dieser Beitrag zeigt mittels einer empirischen Untersuchung den Status quo des Einsatzes von Business Analytics im Rahmen der Budgetierung in Deutschland und geht auf die Beurteilung einer Automatisierung der Budgetierung durch Unternehmen ein.
Powered by blockchain
(2020)
Purpose: The purpose of this study is to formulate the most probable future scenario for the use of blockchain technology within the next 5–10 years in the electricity sector based on today’s experts’ views.
Design/methodology/approach: An international, two-stage Delphi study with 20 projections is used.
Findings: According to the experts, blockchain applications will be primarily based on permissioned or consortium blockchains. Blockchain-based applications will integrate Internet of Things devices in the power grid, manage the e-mobility infrastructure, automate billing and direct payment and issue certificates regarding the origin of electricity. Blockchain solutions are expected to play an important big role in fostering peer-to-peer trading in microgrids, further democratizing and decentralizing the energy sector. New regulatory frameworks become necessary.
Research limitations/implications: The Delphi study’s scope is rather broad than narrow and detailed. Further studies should focus on partial scenarios.
Practical implications: Electricity market participants should build blockchain-based competences and collaborate in current pilot projects.
Social implications: Blockchain technology will further decentralize the energy sector and probably reduce transaction costs. Originality/value: Despite the assumed importance of blockchain technology, no coherent foresight study on its use and implications exists yet. This study closes this research gap.
Doing good by doing bad
(2022)
This study investigates how tone at the top, implemented by top management, and tone at the bottom, in an employee’s immediate work environment, determine noncompliance. We focus on the disallowed actions of employees that improve their own and, in turn, the company’s performance, referred to as performance-improving noncompliant behavior (PINC behavior). We conduct a survey of German sales employees to investigate specifically how, on the one hand, (1) corporate rules and (2) performance pressure, both implemented by top management, and, on the other hand, (3) others’ PINC expectations and (4) others’ PINC behavior, both arising from the employee’s immediate work environment, influence PINC behavior. When considered in isolation, we find that corporate rules, as top management’s main instrument to guide employee behavior, decrease employee PINC behavior. However, this effect is negatively influenced by the employees’ immediate work environment when employees are expected to engage in PINC or when others engage in PINC. In contrast, even though top management places great performance pressure on employees, that by itself does not increase PINC behavior. Overall, our study informs practitioners and researchers about whether and how the four determinants increase or decrease employees’ PINC behavior, which is important to comprehend triggers and to counteract such misconduct.
Purpose - This study aims to investigate whether a team of females negotiates differently than a team of males, and whether (workplace) friendship moderates the relationship between single-gender team composition and negotiation outcomes. Design/methodology/approach - The authors used two laboratory studies and paired 216 MBA students into single-gender teams of friends and non-friends, and then engaged them in several dyadic multi-issue negotiations. Findings - The results show that on average, male teams of non-friends reached significantly better outcomes than female teams of non-friends. However, and interestingly, female teams of friends perform equally to male teams of friends. Research limitations/implications - The authors contribute both to the negotiations and the workplace friendship literature because very little research has examined negotiation among friends at work and in particular team negotiations. In addition, the authors also contribute to the literature on gender differences in negotiations because existing research has rarely examined the differences between all-male and all-female teams and especially the relationship between same-sex teams and their effects on negotiation outcomes. Practical implications - This research has clear implications to managers with regard to team composition. Specifically, a winning all-female team should not be changed! Originality/value - This is the first study to examine the relationship between workplace friendship, gender and negotiation outcomes.
Purpose - The purpose of this study is to analyze whether negotiators stick to one single negotiation style or whether their styles vary during the negotiation process. The paper seeks to identify different combinations of phase-specific negotiation styles and investigates the relationship between these combinations and negotiation performance and satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach - The study is based on a large online negotiation simulation that allows a phase-specific analysis of negotiation styles via an elaborate coding scheme. Findings - The findings reveal that negotiators generally do not limit themselves to a single negotiation style. Instead, they vary their style in the course of different negotiation phases. The authors distinguish between five distinct phase-specific negotiation style patterns that differ with regard to their impact on negotiation performance but not negotiation satisfaction. Practical implications - Negotiation practitioners get to know different phase-specific negotiation style patterns and get insights into which pattern is the most promising for negotiation performance. As a result, they can acquire this phase-specific negotiation style pattern to enhance their performance. Originality/value - The paper contributes to existing negotiation style literature, because it is the first to analyze negotiation styles from a phase-specific point of view.
Organizations frequently try to incentivize employees to develop highly creative solutions. In this study, we examine self-set salaries as a specific type of incentive design. We investigate whether self-set salaries affect employees’ motivation and overall (creative) performance. Moreover, because self-set salaries potentially risk opportunistic employee behavior, we consider the effect of the observability of peer performance on employees’ level of self-set salaries. Using a laboratory experiment, we hold the average employee compensation constant and demonstrate that, in comparison with fixed-pay contracts, self-set salaries increase the quantitative performance in creative tasks without affecting the average creativity. However, we do not find significant differences between the amount of individuals’ self-set salaries with observability of peer performance and the amount for individuals without the chance to observe peer performance. Our findings are important for firms that rely on the development of creative ideas but are unsure about the effects of the introduction of self-set salaries
We investigate how the design of audit processes influences employees’ reporting decisions. We focus specifically on detective employee audits for which several employees are randomly selected after a defined period to audit their ex-post behavior. We investigate two design features of the audit process, namely, employee anonymity and process transparency, and analyze their impact on misreporting. Overall, we find that both components influence the extent of individuals’ misreporting. A nonanonymous audit decreases performance misreporting more than an audit in which the employee remains anonymous. Furthermore, the high incidence of performance misreporting in the case of anonymous audits can be decreased when the process transparency is low. Thus, our study informs accountants about how the two design features of employee anonymity and transparency of the audit process can be used to constrain performance misreporting to increase the efficiency of audits
Purpose:
The purpose of this paper is to examine the expectations, perceptions and role understanding of academic staff using a model of academic competencies (i.e. time management, learning skills, technology proficiency, self-monitoring and research skills).
Design/methodology/approach:
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten members of academic staff at a German university. Participants’ responses to the open-ended questions were coded inductively, while responses concerning the proposed model of academic competencies were coded deductively using a priori categories.
Findings:
Participating academic staff expected first-year students to be most competent in time management and in learning skills; they perceived students’ technology proficiency to be rather high but their research skills as low. Interviews indicated a mismatch between academic staff expectations and perceptions.
Practical implications:
These findings may enable universities to provide support services for first-year students to help them to adjust to the demands of higher education. They may also serve as a platform to discuss how academic staff can support students to develop the required academic competencies, as well as a broader conversation about higher education pedagogy and competency assessment.
Originality/value:
Little research has investigated the perspectives of academic staff concerning the academic competencies they expect of first-year students. Understanding their perspectives is crucial for improving the quality of institutions; their input into the design of effective support services is essential, as is a constructive dialogue to identify strategies to enhance student retention.
Der Band versammelt 21 Beiträge, die unter dem Titel "Technische Bildung und berufliche Orientierung im Wandel" aus Anlass der Emeritierung von Prof. Dr. paed. habil Bernd Meier, Professur für Technologie und Berufliche Orientierung an der Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Universität Potsdam, auf einem Kolloquium 2017 gehalten wurden.
ERP-Systeme
(2021)
Editorial
(2017)
Students often enter higher education academically unprepared and with unrealistic perceptions and expectations regarding academic competencies for their studies. However, preparedness and realistic perceptions are important factors for student retention. With regard to a proposed model of five academic competencies(time management, learning skills, technology proficiency, self-monitoring, and research skills), incoming students’ perceptions concerning academic staff support and students’ selfreported confidence at a German university were examined. Using quantitative data, an initial exploratory study was conducted (N = 155), which revealed first-year students’ perceptions of the role of academic staff in supporting their development, especially in
research skills, as well as low self-reported confidence in this competence. Thus, a follow up study (N = 717) was conducted to confirm these findings as well as to provide an indepth understanding of research skills. Understanding students’ perceptions is crucial if higher education institutions are to meet students’ needs and provide adequate support services in the challenging first year. Thus, in order to increase student retention, it is
suggested that universities assist first-year students in developing academic competencies through personalised competence-based programs and with the help of emerging
research fields and educational technologies such as learning analytics and digital badges.
In the automotive industry, suppliers from the consumer electronics and high-tech industry are becoming increasingly relevant, for example in the context of automated vehicles. The carmakers’ purchasing organizations need to understand the power constellation in negotiations with these new suppliers, since negotiating power is the greatest lever for influencing the outcome of negotiations. This study analyzes the importance of organizational sources of power and their interplay with the products’ degree of innovation.
To purchase or not?
(2017)
Although ecologically and socially responsible consumption helps to reduce the harmful effects of resource use for both nature and society, all types of consumption (whether green or fair) deplete valuable resources. At the same time, to maintain household financial sustainability, spending should not exceed a household's financial resources. Thus, economically sustainable consumption is related to the consumer's decision to not buy products and the disposition to forgo specific purchases. Based on a means-end chain approach, this study investigates consumer cognitive decision-making structures related to six distinct options for economically (non-)sustainable consumption. Whereas saving motives, waste concerns, and avoidance motivations support economically sustainable decisions, economically non-sustainable decision-making is directly linked to attaining overall life goals. By clustering respondents based on the elicited means-end chains, the study discloses four consumer groups with distinctive motivational structures. The study also reveals several obstacles to promoting economic sustainability, indicates methods to overcome such obstacles, and suggests avenues for future research.
There are two fundamental ways in which consumers can express their concerns and obligations for society through their consumption decisions: They can boycott companies that they deem to be irresponsible or they may deliberately buy from companies that they perceive to act responsibly (‘buycott’). It has been largely ignored that individuals are driven by different motivational mechanisms to join boycotts and buycotts (punishment vs. reward of corporate behaviors), and thus, these mechanisms have disparate implications for the participating individual (e.g., high vs. low subjective costs because of a restriction in consumption habits). This paper fills this void and develops a framework suggesting that the extent to which consumers translate their concerns and obligations for society into a willingness to boycott and/or buycott is bounded by self-interest. Using a unique, representative sample of 1833 German consumers, this study reveals that the effects of environmental concerns and universalism on buycotting are amplified by hedonism, while the effects of social concern on buycotting and boycotting are attenuated by hedonism and simplicity, respectively. These results have far-reaching implications for organizations and policy planners who aim to change corporate behavior.
Digital software platforms such as iOS or Android evolve quickly. Through regular updates, their set of built-in (core) features increases. While innovation allows strengthening platforms amidst competition, it can hurt contributors when introducing core features that are already provided by third-party developers (Platform Coring).
This book addresses the underexplored phenomenon of Platform Coring and provides strategical guidance for platform owners and third-party contributors. Platform owners are well-advised to carefully consider the benefits and risks for their platform ecosystem.
The book contributes by highlighting avenues to employ Platform Coring for the competitive advantage of the platform and ecosystem simultaneously.
We assess the short-term employment effects of the introduction of a national statutory minimum wage in Germany in 2015. For this purpose, we exploit variation in the regional treatment intensity, assuming that the stronger a minimum wage ‘bites’ into the regional wage distribution, the stronger the regional labour market will be affected. In contrast to previous studies, we construct two regional bite indicators based upon detailed individual wage data from the Structure of Earnings Survey (SES) 2014 and combine it with administrative information on regional employment. Moreover, using the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we are able to affirm the absence of anticipation effects and verify the assumption of a common trend in wages before the reform. In sum, we find only moderate negative effects on overall employment of about 140,000 (0.4%) jobs, which are mainly driven by a sharp decline of marginal employment (‘mini-jobs’), while we do not find pronounced significant effects for regular employment in most specifications. Our results are robust to a variety of sensitivity tests.
Digital transformation (DT) is a major challenge for traditional companies. Despite the term, DT is relatively new; its substance is not: a whole stream of research has examined the relationship between DT and firm performance with contradictory findings. Most of these studies have chosen a linear correlational approach, however, did not analyze the holistic interplay of DT dimensions, leading to firm performance. This applies especially to the mature financial services industry and the future perspectives of traditional financial service providers (FSP). Hence, it remains an open question for both research and practice what DT configurations have a positive impact on firm performance. Against this background, the aim of this exploratory study is to examine how DT dimensions are systemically connected to firm performance of incumbent FSP. Drawing on a qualitative-empirical research approach with case data from 83 FSP, we identify digital configurations along different levels of firm performance. Our findings suggest an evolution of digital configurations of FSP, leading to five empirical standard types from which only one managed to establish a profound basis of DT.
Retail banking has undergone a massive transformation in the last few years. A major aspect is changing consumer behavior. The aim of the paper is to better understand retail banking consumers regarding the impact of digitalization. Consequently, we acquired online consumer review data from Germany, the UK and US. We analyzed the data using coding techniques of grounded theory, supported by interdisciplinary literature to identify and categorize the relevant influence factors. The outcome of the paper is an integrated model of consumer decision-making in today’s retail banking along with four detailed partial models of the respective decision stages.
Fairness versus efficiency
(2018)
We investigate in a laboratory experiment whether procedural fairness concerns affect how well individuals are able to solve a coordination problem in a two-player Volunteer’s Dilemma. Subjects receive external action recommendations, either to volunteer or to abstain from it, in order to facilitate coordination and improve efficiency. We manipulate the fairness of the recommendation procedure by varying the probabilities of receiving the disadvantageous recommendation to volunteer between players. We find evidence that while recommendations improve overall efficiency regardless of their implications for expected payoffs, there are behavioural asymmetries depending on the recommendation: advantageous recommendations are followed less frequently than disadvantageous ones and beliefs about others’ actions are more pessimistic in the treatment with recommendations inducing unequal expected payoffs.
The current German start-up subsidy for unemployed individuals underwent a major reform in 2011 that altered key parameters of the program, leading to ambiguous ex ante predictions on the post-reform effectiveness of the program, making a new evaluation necessary. In our descriptive analysis, we find that participants after the reform differ significantly from pre-reform participants in terms of important characteristics and subsequent labor market performance. Our causal analysis reveals positive and sizable treatment effects on the treated regarding employment and income that are larger effects than what was estimated for the pre-reform program. Potential reasons for this are discussed.
This paper reconsiders the explanation of economic policy from an evolutionary economics perspective. It contrasts the neoclassical equilibrium notions of market and government failure with the dominant evolutionary neo-Schumpeterian and Austrian-Hayekian perceptions. Based on this comparison, the paper criticizes the fact that neoclassical reasoning still prevails in non-equilibrium evolutionary economics when economic policy issues are examined. This is more than surprising, since proponents of evolutionary economics usually view their approach as incompatible with its neoclassical counterpart. In addition, it is shown that this "fallacy of failure thinking" even finds its continuation in the alternative concept of "system failure" with which some evolutionary economists try to explain and legitimate policy interventions in local, regional or national innovation systems. The paper argues that in order to prevent the otherwise fruitful and more realistic evolutionary approach from undermining its own criticism of neoclassical economics and to create a consistent as well as objective evolutionary policy framework, it is necessary to eliminate the equilibrium spirit. Finally, the paper delivers an alternative evolutionary explanation of economic policy which is able to overcome the theory-immanent contradiction of the hitherto evolutionary view on this subject.
Chinas neuer langer Marsch
(2021)
Negotiations between buyers and suppliers directly influence a company’s costs, revenue, and consequently its profits. The outcome of these negotiations relies heavily on the companies’ as well as the negotiators’ power position. Across three empirical articles the author demonstrates how the own power position can first be identified as well as improved and subsequently used to maximize profits in negotiations between sellers and buyers. In the first paper the sources underlying buyer and supplier power are identified and weighted. The results of the first paper show the impact of each single sources on the buyer and supplier power. The number of suppliers available for one product is by far the most important source of power for both sides. The results indicate that a higher number of suppliers leads to a better power position of the buyer and simultaneously to an inferior power position of a single supplier. The second paper aims to examine the impact of the number of suppliers on the outcome of buyer-seller-negotiations thereby considering the innovation level of the products purchased. The results of the second study which are based on real negotiation data from a German car manufacturer indicate that the number of available suppliers has a stronger impact on the negotiation outcome for innovative than for functional, less innovative products. The third paper analyzes how the ability to take the counterpart’s perspective (perspective taking ability) influences the negotiation outcome. This relationship is examined for different power positions. The results indicate that a negotiator’s high perspective taking ability leads to a more unfavorable negotiation outcome compared to low perspective taking ability. Simultaneously, high perspective taking ability causes a more positive perception of the conducted negotiation than low perspective taking ability. This contradictory effect of perspective taking ability bears the risk for buyers and suppliers to assess an unfavorable outcome as positive. Finally, the results of the papers are summarized and discussed. The dissertation concludes with implications for practice, limitations of the work, and approaches for future research.
Email tracking allows email senders to collect fine-grained behavior and location data on email recipients, who are uniquely identifiable via their email address. Such tracking invades user privacy in that email tracking techniques gather data without user consent or awareness. Striving to increase privacy in email communication, this paper develops a detection engine to be the core of a selective tracking blocking mechanism in the form of three contributions. First, a large collection of email newsletters is analyzed to show the wide usage of tracking over different countries, industries and time. Second, we propose a set of features geared towards the identification of tracking images under real-world conditions. Novel features are devised to be computationally feasible and efficient, generalizable and resilient towards changes in tracking infrastructure. Third, we test the predictive power of these features in a benchmarking experiment using a selection of state-of-the-art classifiers to clarify the effectiveness of model-based tracking identification. We evaluate the expected accuracy of the approach on out-of-sample data, over increasing periods of time, and when faced with unknown senders. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Relatively little is known about the relationship between Carl Menger, founder of the Austrian school of economics, and his son, Karl Menger, the mathematician, geometer, logician, and philosopher of science, whose mathematical colloquium at the University of Vienna was essential for the development of mathematical economics. Based on Karl Menger’s diaries and correspondence, the present paper considers the development and struggles of the young Karl Menger, focusing on the years 1919–23, when Vienna was a vanquished city. We discuss the various relations within the Menger family and their significance for Karl Menger’s intellectual development. Additionally, we consider his acquaintances with economists such as Knut Wicksell, David Davidson, and Eli Heckscher as well as the younger Menger’s work in economics. We shed new light on his editorship of the second edition of his father’s Grundsätze der Volkswirtschaftslehre.
This open access book presents a topical, comprehensive and differentiated analysis of Germany's public administration and reforms. It provides an overview on key elements of German public administration at the federal, Länder and local levels of government as well as on current reform activities of the public sector. It examines the key institutional features of German public administration; the changing relationships between public administration, society and the private sector; the administrative reforms at different levels of the federal system and numerous sectors; and new challenges and modernization approaches like digitalization, Open Government and Better Regulation. Each chapter offers a combination of descriptive information and problem-oriented analysis, presenting key topical issues in Germany which are relevant to an international readership.
Federal Administration
(2021)
The federal administration is significantly small (around 10 percent of all public employees). This speciality of the German administrative system is based on the division of responsibilities: the central (federal) level drafts and adopts most of the laws and public programmes, and the state level (together with the municipal level) implements them. The administration of the federal level comprises the ministries, subordinated agencies for special and selected operational tasks (e.g. the authorisation of drugs, information security and registration of refugees) in distinct administrative sectors (e.g. foreign service, armed forces and federal police). The capacity for preparing and monitoring government bills and statutory instruments is well developed. Moreover, the instruments and tools of coordination are exemplary compared with other countries, although the recent digital turn has been adopted less advanced than elsewhere.
This chapter describes the most prominent public management reform trajectories in German public administration over the past decades since unification. In the 1990s, the New Steering Model emerged as a German variant of the NPM. Since the mid-2000s, local governments in Germany have been subjected to a mandatory reform of their budgeting and accounting system known as the New Municipal Financial Management reforms. Both reforms have led to a substantial change in terms of internal decentralisation, customer orientation, transparency in resource use and the financial situation of administrative bodies. But the emerging reform patterns and their impacts have not replaced the dominance of a strong legalist culture with hierarchical, centralised control. However, in the course of the reforms, a citizen-customer perspective, more participation of citizens and limited application of new management instruments have been accommodated within the persisting bureaucratic system.
Over the last decades, Better Regulation has become a major reform topic at the federal and—in some cases—also at the Länder level. Although the debate about improving regulatory quality and reducing unnecessary burdens created by bureaucracy and red tape date back to the 1960s and 1970s, the introduction by law in 2006 of a new independent institutionalised body for regulatory control at the federal level of government has brought a new quality to the discourse and practice of Better Regulation in Germany. This chapter introduces the basic features of the legislative process at the federal level in Germany, addresses the issue of Better Regulation and outlines the role of the National Regulatory Control Council (Nationaler Normenkontrollrat—NKR) as a ‘watchdog’ for compliance costs, red tape and regulatory impacts.
Although German bureaucracy is typically categorised as Weberian, a clear distinction between politics and administration has never been a defining characteristic of the German political-administrative system. Many close interrelations and interactions between elected politicians and appointed civil servants can be observed at all levels of administration. Higher-ranking civil servants in Germany are used to and generally appreciate the functional politicisation of their jobs, that is their close involvement in all stages of the policy process, from policy formation, goal definition, negotiation within and outside government to the implementation and evaluation of policies. For top positions, therefore, a class of ‘political civil servants’ is a special feature of the German system, and obtaining ‘political craft’ has become an important part of the learning and job experience of higher-ranking civil servants.
German Public Administration
(2021)
The international community of public administration and administrative sciences shows a great interest in the basic features of the German administrative system. The German public administration with its formative decentralisation (called: administrative federalism) is regarded as a prime example of multilevel governance and strong local self-government. Furthermore, over the past decades, the traditional profile of the German administrative system has significantly been reshaped and remoulded through reforms, processes of modernisation and the transformation process in East Germany. Studies on the German administrative system should focus especially on
key institutional features of public administration;
changing relationships between public administration, society and the private sector;
administrative reforms at different levels of the federal system; and
new challenges and modernisation approaches, such as digitalisation, open government and better regulation.
Human resource management (HRM) reform has not been the focus of attention in Germany despite its obvious relevance for effective policy implementation. Although there is a general trend worldwide towards convergence between public and private HRM strategies and practices, management of the workforce in German public administration still remains largely traditional and bureaucratic. This chapter describes and analyses German practices regarding the central functions and elements of HRM such as planning, recruitment, training and leadership. Furthermore, it explores the importance and contribution of public service motivation, performance-related pay and diversity management in the context of German practices. The chapter concludes by highlighting some of the major paradoxes of German public HRM in light of current challenges, such as demographic change, digital transformation and organisational development capabilities.