Unhealthy behavior can be extremely costly from a micro- and macroeconomic perspective and exploring the determinants of such behavior is highly important from an economist’s point of view. We examine whether locus of control (LOC) can explain alcohol consumption as an important domain of health behavior. LOC measures how much an individual believes that she is in control of the consequences of her own actions for her life’s future outcomes. While earlier literature showed that an increasing internal LOC is associated with increased health-conscious behavior in domains such as smoking, exercise or diets, we find that drinking seems to be different. Using German panel data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) we find a significant positive effect of having an internal LOC on the probability of moderate and regular drinking. We suggest and discuss two likely mechanisms for this relationship and find interesting gender differences. While social investments play an important role for both men and women, risk perceptions are especially relevant for men.

Negotiations have become a central aspect of managerial life and influence a company’s profit significantly. This is why organizations generally endeavor to increase their negotiation performance. Over the last decades, besides other factors, research found goal setting to be one of the best predictor of negotiation outcomes. Given the extent and complexity of multi-issue business negotiations, profit optimizing by means of improving a company’s goal setting has a great deal of potential. However, developing goal setting strategies before the actual negotiation is still rather uncommon in business practice. In order to provide professionals with empirical guidance, this work aims at investigating three steps for the development and effective management of goal setting strategies for business negotiations. Therefore, this dissertation contains three papers, each one dealing with one specific step. The first paper explores the characterization of social and economic outcomes in different business relationship types at the beginning of the relationship and the development of these outcomes toward the actual status quo. The second paper takes the number of goals into account for goal setting strategies. This paper uses the two dimensions goal scope and goal difficulty to investigate the relevance and potentials of combining different level of these dimensions in multi-issue negotiations. Therefore, a large experiment was conducted measuring the impact on individual and joint negotiation outcomes, and the impasse rate. The third paper analyzes the type and orientation of negotiation goals. When the set of negotiation issues has an integrative potential, the opportunity to increase the joint gains arises. To what extent negotiators pursue the integrative potential depends largely on their goal orientation. A quantitative analysis with practitioners was used to examine the influence that business negotiations’ situative and organizational factors have on the negotiators’ goal orientation. The dissertation closes with implications for practice, limitations of the work, and ideas for future research.

In the current programming period, European Union (EU) regions and member states that want to use European Regional Development Funds (ERDF) are required to develop innovation strategies for smart specialization (RIS3) based on the idea of rational strategic management. In order to explore the relationship between strategic policy design and policy performance, this article maps regional strategies for information and communication technologies (ICT) and their effects in the period 2008–2012. Furthermore, it generates suggestions for relevant case studies. We first conduct a quantitative analysis of the effects of ICT strategies and ERDF expenditure on regional ICT performance in Western European regions. ICT is a relevant priority for many regions, and it reflects EU priorities fostering ICT activities through regional development funds. Second, we propose a framework to categorize EU regions in the context of ICT policy based on the expected distribution of regional ICT performance. Our analysis covers 97 regions in 9 EU member states, out of which 29 have had a dedicated ICT strategy. In line with ideas of rational strategic management, our working hypothesis states that regions with a dedicated strategy should display better performance. However, our findings suggest that having a dedicated ICT strategy has not had a clear effect on performance in terms of Internet and broadband access, while allocating dedicated ERDF and other expenditure to Internet infrastructure has had a positive effect. At first sight, this questions the effectiveness of rational strategic management. Yet, more research is needed to assess the quality of ICT strategies and their fit with broader innovation agendas. It is indeed the degree of embeddedness of ICT in the regional innovation ecosystem that is likely to condition the effect of strategies on performance. To this end, our mapping indicates interesting case studies, and we suggest additional factors to be taken into account in future analyses. New insights into strategy design and performance will also be important to inform the implementation of the new generation of innovation strategies for smart specialization.

This paper challenges the solely rational view of the scenario technique as a strategy and foresight tool designed to cope with uncertainty by considering multiple possible future states. The paper employs an affordance-based view that allows for the identification and structuring of hidden, emergent attributes of the scenario technique beyond the intended ones. The suggested framework distinguishes between affordances (1) that are intended by the organization and relate to its goals, (2) that emergently generate organizational benefits, and (3) that do not relate to organizational but individual interests. Also, constraints in the use of scenarios are discussed. Affordance theory’s specific lens shows that the emergence of such attributes depends on the users’ specific intentions.