Business model (BM) visualisations have become popular instruments with which to explain and manage today's complex business interactions. Using verbal and graphic elements, they provide simplified representations of reality and can support BM tasks that go beyond working memory's capacities. Visualisations thus reduce cognitive load and represent how practitioners and researchers think about BMs. However, they can also affect their thinking. This constitutes a thus far insufficiently explained tension between effectively reducing reality's complexity and the resulting cognitive biases. Building on cognitive load and framing theory, we qualitatively analysed 103 BM visualisations to explain how visual elements affect visualisations' cognitive effectiveness (helpfulness and ease of applicability) and unfold visual framing effects. By identifying five visual framing effects, we contribute to the cognitive BM perspective and explain how this set of cognitive factors affects BM management and research. We also found that most BM visualisations are not cognitively effective because they consist of unclear and non-parsimonious elements, limiting their cross-contextual application. Furthermore, the analysis revealed certain visualisations with strictly operationalised BM dimensions. These findings provide essential contributions to the literature on BM methods. We conclude by discussing how practitioners and researchers can use BM visualisations and their cognitive impacts accordingly.

Die Arbeit ist ein Beitrag zu einer grundlegenden Diskussion der Kapitalmarktforschung, dem messbaren Erfolg „aktiver vs. passiver“ Investmentstrategien. Der Autor setzt sich kritisch mit den wesentlichen Anlagestrategien und Modellen für Indexprodukte auseinander und beleuchtet zugleich Closet Indexing bei aktiv gemanagten Investmentfonds. Das Ergebnis zeigt, dass Closet Indexing nicht nur sporadisch auftritt, sondern eine weit verbreitete Anlagestrategie in vielen vermeintlich aktiv gemanagten Aktieninvestmentfonds ist.

As overconsumption has negative effects on ecological balance, social equality, and individual well-being, reducing consumption levels among the materially affluent is an emerging strategy for sustainable development. Today's youth form a crucial target group for intervening in unsustainable overconsumption habits and for setting the path and ideas on responsible living. This article explores young people's motivations for engaging in three behavioural patterns linked to anti-consumption (voluntary simplicity, collaborative consumption, and living within one's means) in relation to sustainability. Applying a qualitative approach, laddering interviews reveal the consequences and values behind the anti-consumption behaviours of young people of ages 14 to 24 according to a means-end chains analysis. The findings highlight potential for and the challenges involved in motivating young people to reduce material levels of consumption for the sake of sustainability. Related consumer policy tools from the fields of education and communication are identified. This article provides practical implications for policy makers, activists, and educators. Consumer policies may strengthen anti-consumption among young people by addressing individual benefits, enabling reflection on personal values, and referencing credible narratives. The presented insights can help give a voice to young consumers, who struggle to establish themselves as key players in shaping the future consumption regime.

The paper argues that non-circulating tokens should be used as an alternative to money in a socialist economy. These tokens would be used to distribute consumer products out of socialised production to individual consumers. Like modern fiat money, these tokens are a kind of IOU. But unlike money, these tokens are not intended to facilitate the private exchange of commodities. Marx’s proposal to eventually abolish a token-based lower phase of communism in favour of a distinct higher phase is rejected because the ‘needs principle’ of the higher phase can be sufficiently realised within the token system. It is further shown that the prices of items should not be tied to the socially necessary labour time needed to produce them. Instead, prices should be regulated towards market clearing rates.