Die Wirkung ausländischer Direktinvestitionen auf die Beschäftigung im Heimatmarkt: Eine empirische Analyse des deutschen Mittelstands

Outbound FDI of German SMEs is often assumed to have a negative impact on domestic employment due to job replacement into low wage countries. In this context research often disregards, that FDI can be of horizontal or vertical nature and therefore has different effects on domestic employment. We analyze domestic employment effects using a sample of 1.106 German SMEs. The results show, that a differentiated view is appropriate and necessary to generate a more complete picture of the effects of FDI on job development in the domestic market. Whereas horizontal FDI has complementary effects on domestic employment, vertical FDI is linked to substitutional employment effects.     

Gleichmäßige Bewertung von Mietwohngrundstücken durch das neue steuerliche Ertragswertverfahren? Eine empirische Analyse

This paper deals with the question if the new valuation procedure for rental property established by the German Inheritance Tax Reform Act 2009 provides more consistent tax values than the previous valuation procedure which has been abolished as a result of the jurisdiction of the German Federal Constitutional Court. Our empirical findings show no improvement of the valuation results in terms of statistical spread. The only effect of the new valuation procedure is increasing tax values on average, and hence, tax values often exceed market values. But higher tax values could have been achieved with less effort by simply raising the multiplier of the previous valuation procedure. The findings of this contribution and the results of other papers suggest there is no standardised valuation procedure for rental property which provides a proper performance. Valuation of real estate remains one of the unsolved and presumably permanent problems of the inheritance tax in particular and of capital-based taxation in general.     

Verwertungserlöse von Kreditsicherheiten: Eine empirische Analyse notleidender Unternehmenskredite

Prediction models of recovery rates gain in importance because of the Basel II-framework, the impact on credit risk management, and the calculation of loan rates. Although the importance of the quota of collateral is beyond dispute in academic literature, only few studies exist analyze the real payments when the collateral is realized. This is the main focus of this paper. It can be shown that the net payments of the realized collateral are on average considerably below the predicted values. A large period between the time of default of the borrower and the begin of the realization leads to smaller ratios, calculated as the net payments divided by the predicted values, whereas the intensity of the client relationship and the macroeconomic conditions have only a marginal influence. The ratio differs significantly when analyzing different kinds of collateral. Furthermore, it is higher for small companies. It cannot be found any influence of the “Insolvenzrechtsreform” in 1999 in Germany.     

Coaching im Mittelstand – Wer ist der Mittelstand?

Medium-Sized companies usually have a specific organizational structure and corporate culture. This has implications for Human Resource Management, which is less systematized in medium-sized companies in comparison to larger organizations. What does ?medium-sized business“ mean and who is meant with that? Which typical values form its culture? What are the specific conditions for coaching in medium-sized businesses? Does a coach need special qualifications for this sector? This paper attempts to answer these questions and stays close to the everyday business of medium-sized companies. Concrete Examples will explain specific topics and coaching solutions for medium-sized businesses.     

Rechnet sich Coaching im Mittelstand?

Central question of this article: Is there a measurable correlation between health-oriented management culture in SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) and business success? Healthy management culture has a direct impact on the colleagues health and motivation, as well as on the healthy development and on the healthy results of business. On a practical example this connection between healthy colleagues, healthy business and healthy results becomes clear and quantitative demonstrable. The article is based on the research, “Basics for healthy management culture and business success” of Badura and Greiner (University of Bielefeld), on behalf of the Ministry of Labor, Health and Social Affairs NRW.     

Leistungsträger im Mittelstand: Mit Coaching die Besten halten

Employee retention is getting more important and urgent because of the high skill shortages. Studies and practical experiences show that in this area there are still many deficits in medium-sized companies. For them, at the same time, the departure of top performers is hard to cope. A first step towards binding valuable employees is that medium-sized companies become aware of their attractiveness especially for the younger generation of employees. Furthermore, the top performers in the company should be identified and their values and potentials should be worked out in an individual coaching process. Customized individual coaching is the best long term solution to keep top performers in medium-sized companies and to deploy them in the right position.     

Steuerreformen durch Tarif-oder Zeiteffekte? Eine Analyse am Beispiel der Thesaurierungsbegünstigung für Personenunternehmen

Zusammenfassung  Der Beitrag diskutiert Tarif- und Zinseffekte anhand der begünstigten Besteuerung nicht entnommener Gewinne von Personengesellschaften, die 2008 in Deutschland eingeführt wurde. Bei Eigenfinanzierung und Betrachtung von Grenzsteuers?tzen zeigt der Beitrag, dass die Thesaurierungsbegünstigung stets nachteilig ist, wenn eine abgeltend besteuerte private Kapitalmarktanlage die Alternativanlage darstellt. Müssen Gewinne thesauriert werden, weil Mittel im Unternehmen ben?tigt werden, so entf?llt die private Alternativanlage und die Thesaurierungsbegünstigung kann bei hohen Zins- und Steuers?tzen vorteilhaft sein. Wird die Einkommensteuerprogression berücksichtigt, zeigt der Beitrag, dass bei schwankenden Gewinnen die Thesaurierungsbegünstigung oftmals vorteilhaft ist, auch gegenüber der Abgeltungsteuer. Bei fremdfinanzierten Investitionen kann die Inanspruchnahme der Thesaurierungsbegünstigung sehr vorteilhaft sein, da die geringere Steuerzahlung bei Gewinnanfall den Umfang des ben?tigten Fremdkapitals mindert. Insgesamt zeigt sich, dass sich Reformen von Steuertarifen wesentlich st?rker auf die Vorteilhaftigkeit von Investitionen auswirken als Zinseffekte.

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Tax reforms by tax rate effects or timing effects? An analysis based an the German tax privilege for retained earnings

Summary  This paper analyzes two typical effects of tax reforms, tax rate effects and timing effects. The example chosen for the analysis is the tax privilege for retained profits of partnerships and sole proprietorships, which was implemented in Germany in 2008. Taking equity-financing and top marginal tax rates into account, the so-called tax privilege turns out to be a disadvantage under most assumptions. If the alternative investment is private capital income taxed at a flat-rate tax, the tax privilege will always be disadvantageous. If profits have to be retained and business income is the alternative investment, then the tax privilege will be advantageous in case of high income tax rates and interest rates. Analyzing progressive tax rates instead of top marginal tax rates reveals favorable results in case of fluctuating profits if the tax privilege is claimed. The same is true if debtfinancing is taken into account. All in all, the paper shows that a reform of tax rates influences the attractiveness of investments much more compared to timing effects.

     

Die Wirkung von informellen und internetbasierten Rekrutierungskanälen auf den Rekrutierungserfolg: Eine empirische Analyse in kleinen und mittleren Unternehmen

This study analyses the impact of informal and web-based recruitment sources on several dimensions of SME recruitment success. Our results show that informal recruitment sources unfold a different impact on applicant-pool quantity and -quality, and applicant fit than web-based recruitment sources. Informal recruitment sources (recruitment via personal networks, employee referrals etc.) enhance applicant-pool quality, person-organization fit and person-job fit. Web-based recruitment sources primarily increases applicant-pool quantity. HR-recruitment websites also unfold a positive effect on applicant-pool quality. Accordingly, the use of these recruitment sources needs to be planned in a strategic manner, in order to achieve firm specific recruitment goals regarding applicant-pool quantity and –quality.     

Implizite Theorien über Lernen und Veränderungen durch Coaching in Organisationen – Eine empirische Untersuchung

There are many different ways to understand and use coaching in organization which are influenced by the organizational culture with different basic assumptions about learning and change of humans. The question is on behalf of which implicit theory the members understand and develop their organization. The goal of the following investigation is to describe these implicit theories of change. Therefore a large sample of human resource managers were interviewed about assessment criteria for coaches, coaching topics, expectations on coaching, attitudes on coaching and the impact of coaching in their organization. The results show that there are no distinguishable patterns in the formal coaching processes but clear und different types of implicit theories about coaching. Finally some implication for coaching in organization and for external professional coaches were made.     

Kosten und Kostentreiber von unerwünschten Werbemails (Spam) — Eine empirische Analyse auf Provider- und Anwenderseite

Zusammenfassung  In der Literatur wird diskutiert, dass unerwünschte Werbemails (Spam) sowohl auf individueller als auch auf volkswirtschaftlicher Ebene erhebliche Kosten verursachen, deren H?he jedoch unbestimmt ist. Diese Fragestellung wird mit zwei empirischen Untersuchungen adressiert, in denen die Mitarbeiter einer Universit?t zu ihren Spam-Kosten befragt wurden. Die Daten werden mit Hilfe von Finite Mixture Regressions analysiert. In der Betrachtung der Kosten ergibt sich der Befund, dass die auf individueller Ebene entstehenden Kosten die zentralen Kosten auf IT-Ebene deutlich übersteigen. Es zeigt sich, dass die Spam-Belastung bei den Mitarbeitern heterogen verteilt ist und dass ein Spamfilter vor allem bei stark belasteten Nutzern zu einer Kostenersparnis führt. Um die Heterogenit?t in der Spam-Wahrnehmung und die Angst vor Fehlklassifikationen zu berücksichtigen, sollten die Nutzer die M?glichkeit haben, auf einfache Art auf den Filterprozess einzuwirken.

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Costs and cost drivers of unsolicited bulk email (spam) — an empirical analysis

Summary  This paper empirically addresses the often claimed assumption that unsolicited bulk e-mail (spam) causes significant costs — on the individual level as well as for the entire society. To shed light on this problem, employees of a large university were interviewed twice in order to determine the individual costs caused by spam and to identify the relevant cost drivers using finite mixture regressions. The results indicate a heterogeneous distribution of spam load and the resulting costs. The panel approach yields the conclusion that spam filters lead to a reduction of costs only for users severely troubled by spam. Furthermore, people tend to become active against spam only when a certain threshold of spam burden is reached. The costs caused by spam for the users exceed the central IT-related expenses by far. For the implementation of spam filters the results suggest a two step procedure to be most efficient: central actions should be taken to block e-mails that can be unambiguously identified as spam. Further, users should be given the opportunity to influence the filtering process in order to account for heterogeneity and their fear of false classification.

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Die Autoren bedanken sich sehr herzlich bei den Mitarbeitern des Rechenzentrums der Christian-Albrechts-Universit?t zu Kiel für die intensive Kooperation. Wir danken zudem Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. S?nke Albers, Christian Barrot, Eva Bl?meke und Christina Schmidt-St?lting für die zahlreichen Hinweise zu früheren Fassungen des Aufsatzes. Auch die beiden Gutachter und das Herausgeberteam der ZfB haben zahlreiche Verbesserungsvorschl?ge gemacht, die zu einer substanziellen Verbesserung des Manuskripts geführt haben.     

Betriebsinterne Arbeitsmärkte, Hierarchien und Neueinstellungen: Eine empirische Untersuchung mit Personaldaten

Many empirical studies which deal with internal labour markets are related to the work of Doeringer and Piore (1971). The majority of these studies cannot find closed internal labour markets with entry positions at the lower end of a firm’s hierarchy. Most of these studies, however, use data from financial and service industries, managerial or other white-collar workers. Doeringer and Piore (1971) state that closed internal labour markets with clearly defined entry positions should be found especially for blue-collar workers in the manufacturing industry, because firm specific human capital is of large importance in these industries. In this paper, a large data set of a manufacturing company with blue-collar and white-collar workers is used. We show that the internal labour market of blue-collar workers is more closed than that of white-collar workers. Moreover, we find that firm specific human capital plays a major role in determining the hierarchical position of blue-collar workers. Entries of white-collar workers, however, appear at all hierarchical positions. Furthermore, formal education plays a major role in allocating the white-collar workers.     

Ist Marktorientierung ansteckend? Der Transfer der Marktorientierung über Hierarchieebenen – Eine empirische Mehrebenenuntersuchung

It is generally accepted that market orientation as a well-established marketing phenomenon influences the performance of companies. However, work investigating how market oriented behaviours of customer-contact employees can be influenced is conspicuous by its absence. This article is the first empirical multilevel study in this area, which simultaneously examines intralevel-effects (effects within the level of customer-contact employees, e.g. length of work experience, job satisfaction) as well as crosslevel-effects (effects which come from superordinate managers). Based on a large-scale three-level study, the results show that the transfer of top-managers’ market orientation via sales managers down to customer-contact employees is definitely not an automatism. In fact this market orientation cascade particularly succeeds, if the market orientation of superordinate managers comes along with intense charismatic leadership. All in all, the entire impact of crosslevel-variables on the market orientation of customer-contact employees is at least as comprehensive as the influence of intralevel variables.     

Zur Berücksichtigung von Heterogenit?t versus funktionaler Flexibilit?t in Absatzreaktionsmodellen: Eine empirische Studie auf Basis von Handelsdaten

In this paper, we explore the differences between store sales models that allow for heterogeneity in marketing effects across stores and models that accommodate potential irregularities in sales response through the use of nonparametric estimation techniques. In particular, we investigate the following question: What benefits can we gain from incorporating store heterogeneity versus functional flexibility in sales response models concerning fit and predictive validity, as compared to a simple parametric store sales model? In an empirical study based on store-level data, we also compare the different model versions with respect to estimated price elasticities and resulting shapes for own- and cross-price effects. Our empirical results indicate that addressing heterogeneity is not advantageous in general, as model fit, predictive validity and the accuracy of price elasticities did not improve for many brands. In contrast, estimating sales response flexibly provides much more potential for statistical improvements and leads to different implications concerning price elasticities, too.     

Die Identifizierung von Lead Usern über soziale Netzwerke: Eine empirische Untersuchung unter jungen Konsumenten

In recent years, the lead user concept has received a great deal of attention in both academic research and corporate practice. Despite broad empirical evidence regarding the high potential of lead users for new product development, we still lack a full understanding of their nature and what enables individual consumers to become lead users. Our study addresses these fundamental issues in lead user research and examines them from a perspective which focuses on the social context of individual consumers. This angle is promising and fruitful as individual creative processes are couched in social networks. As a result, our investigation is guided by the following research question: Do lead users have a distinct social ‘footprint’ in social networks? We chose 34 groups of 804 young consumers as the empirical setting for our study, which yields two general findings: First, lead users are positioned as bridging links between different clusters of people. Being in this ‘boundary-spanning’ position implies that lead users have a wider reach and variety in receiving and distributing information and knowledge. Second, this finding is robust across different age groups. The insights from our study contribute to developing new means of identifying lead users in different settings, including Web 2.0 communities.     

Zum Einfluss der Inhaberführung auf die Betriebsrat-Geschäftsführer-Beziehung – Eine theoretische und empirische Analyse in mittelständischen Unternehmen

This paper examines the quality of the relationship between business managements and works councils in small and medium-sized enterprises and strives for answering the question, which factors determine the quality. As ownership is an important determining factor of the establishment of works councils in small and medium-sized businesses, especially the impact of ownership on this relationship has been investigated. Agency theory and stewardship theory give hints that the owner management can have different impacts on this relationship. In order to test these contradictory hypotheses we have estimated a Heckman selection model to investigate which factors determine the quality of the relationship between business managements and works councils. Our results based on data generated from a survey in small and medium-sized enterprises conducted by the IfM Bonn in the years 2005 and 2006 indicate that ownership has a negative influence on the establishment of works councils, but a positive one on the quality of the relationship between business management and works council. Thus, the hypotheses predicting the existence of stewardship behaviour among owners and the existence of agency behaviour among managers can be confirmed.     

Zur Persönlichkeitsstruktur von Multiplikatoren im On- und Offline-Bereich: Steigt deren Zahl durch die Online-Kommunikation?

As a key factor, word of mouth plays an important role in the diffusion of a product in the market. Therefore, big efforts are undertaken to identify opinion leaders and embed them in the value-added- and communication-process. Various studies confirm the relevant role of the opinion leader in terms of interpersonal communication. The importance of these multipliers got even more intensified through the wide range of services in the internet. Field reports or product evaluations achieve an intensely enhanced recipient circle through opinion platforms and discussion bulletin boards. However, the diffusion of information through the internet is not determinated through the typical attributes of a classical opinion leader. So it is possible to adopt an online multiplier role without acting the same way in an offline environment. Therefore, the present study deals with the differentiation between the online multiplier and the classical opinion leader on the basis of their personality structure. The results confirm the role of the internet as a platform that enables people with a strong personality as well as people with a weak personality to act as a multiplier.     

Der Einfluss von Kognition und Affekt auf Unternehmensgründungsentscheidungen: Eine vergleichende Analyse von Angestellten und Unternehmern

The relationship between individuals?? entrepreneurial behavior and objective situational characteristics of an entrepreneurial opportunity??individual-opportunity nexus??lies in the focus of entrepreneurship research. The role of subjective appraisals and affective influences in the pre-entrepreneurial process was neglected in this context so far. On the basis of a questionnaire experiment with two different samples of employees and entrepreneurs, our results confirm central assumptions of cognitive appraisal and emotion theories. The subjective appraisals of objective entrepreneurial opportunities better predict entrepreneurial evaluation and exploitation decisions than the objective characteristics of the entrepreneurial opportunity. Furthermore, the results show in addition to an inverse direct effect of negative affect that the relationship between the entrepreneurial evaluation and exploitation is negatively moderated by negative affect. Our analyses indicate that the two subsamples show differences in their cognitive processes, but that they are still generally comparable. The affective influences on the pre-entrepreneurial process, however, demonstrate no group specific differences. These results extend the individual-opportunity-nexus-paradigm that is based on objective characteristics by examining the meaning of subjective appraisals and affective reactions and therefore the intersection of individuals and entrepreneurial opportunities.     

Kann zu viel Kundenorientierung nachteilig sein? Eine Analyse der Wirkung der Kundenorientierung von Verkäufern auf die Kaufentscheidung

Zusammenfassung  In diesem Beitrag wird analysiert, wie das kundenorientierte Verk?uferverhalten auf die Kaufentscheidung der Kunden wirkt. Die Analyse erfolgt auf der Ebene der Dimensionen des kundenorientierten Verkaufens, namentlich Entscheidungsunterstützung, Aufbau eines positiven Gespr?chsklimas und Vermeidung von Abschlussdruck. Die Ergebnisse best?tigen die indirekte Wirkung des kundenorientierten Verkaufens auf die Kaufentscheidung über die Beratungszufriedenheit. Daneben k?nnen sowohl ein direkter umgekehrt u-f?rmiger Effekt der Vermeidung von Abschlussdruck auf die Kaufentscheidung als auch ein direkter negativer Einfluss des Aufbaus eines positiven Gespr?chsklimas auf die Kaufentscheidung nachgewiesen werden. Zudem zeigt sich, dass der Aufbau eines positiven Gespr?chsklimas den st?rksten Einfluss auf die Beratungszufriedenheit ausübt.

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Can too much customer orientation be less effective? An analysis of the effects of customer-oriented selling on customers’ decision to buy

Summary  This research investigates the effects of customer-oriented selling on customers’ decision to buy. In so doing, the focus of the analysis is on the effects of the dimensions of customer-oriented selling, namely supporting customer decision-making, building a positive interaction climate, and avoiding pressure to close the sale. The findings of an empirical study support an indirect effect of customer-oriented selling on customers’ decision to buy through customer satisfaction with the sales interaction. The results also support a direct inverted u-shaped effect of avoiding pressure to close the sale on customers’ decision to buy as well as a direct negative effect of building a positive interaction climate on customers’ decision to buy. And building a positive interaction climate was found to have the strongest effect on customer satisfaction with the sales interaction.

Der Autor dankt den zwei anonymen Gutachtern für die wertvollen Anmerkungen und Anregungen zu einer früheren Version dieses Beitrags.