Gibt es (noch) etwas spezifisch Ostdeutsches im Beratungsbedarf?

Is there still something specific East German in the need for counseling? There is a specific East German background, considering the adaption of issues, contents and methods of counseling of East German top management, enterprises and institutions. In the last ten years, development in East Germany was above all a make up for the development of West German conditions. Today the trends in West and East Germany are equally faced with the reorganization of processes resulting from global standards. These are confronted with a hardly stabil economical and social basis in East Germany. The general need for counseling is determined by psychological counseling and change management.     

The East German Wage Structure in the Transition to a Market Economy

ABSTRACT: An important question for the development of the East German labour market in the transition to a market economy is whether wage differentials by qualification, industry or region (which were relatively small in the former GDR) adjust to those in market economies which are more in line with differences in productivities and economic conditions. We estimate empirical earnings functions to quantify the contribution of various important factors shaping the earnings distribution in the East German transition process. Estimation is based on the first six waves of the Labour Market Monitor which is a representative panel data set of the East German working-age population covering the period 1990 to 1992. The specification of the estimated earnings functions is motivated by the various hypotheses of the development of the East German wage structure in the transformation process. Although we find some similarities with the existing wage structure in West Germany, the East German wage structure still differs in some important dimensions.     

Getting the most benefit from information systems consultants

Consultants are usually well-meaning people who enjoy the variety of organizations and problems they face in their work. Most do not like to get bogged down in fruitless and wasteful consulting engagement any more than managers of health care organizations like to supervise them, but at least the consultants are paid for their time. The health care organization that defines a project poorly, does not know what it wants from consultants, or does not direct consultants will pay the price in increasingly scarce resources squandered. The tips in the following article for managing an information systems consulting engagement apply to most consulting engagements and to the use of other expensive advisers, such as attorneys and engineers. But information systems is a field particularly foreign, and often threatening, to most administrators and physician executives, so the risk of wasting money on unsuccessful consulting engagements is high.     

Was heißt kommunikative Kompetenz im Spannungsfeld von Ost nach West?

What does communicative competence mean concerning the tension between East and West Germans? Although East and West Germany have been formaly reunified and ten years have passed the existence of different cultures cannot be denied. Trompenaars dimensions offer the possibility to make an intercultural comparison of the two cultures. I have chosen firm-cultures, individualism versus collectivism and specific versus diffuse culture. I also compare my experience as a West German lawyer in an East German administration with the results. The awareness and identification of these differences are important for more genuine recognition and acceptance of East and West Germans.     

Strategien des Konfliktmanagements

Strategies of conflict management. Coaching, supervision and organisational development in comparisonHow do different kinds of professional consultants engage in conflict management and what do they concentrate on most in their consulting work? This article explores and compares the approaches of professional coaches, supervisors and organisational consultants, focussing on the central differences and commonalities of the consulting approaches that emerge from three case studies of conflict resolution. Whereas coaching, relying on the idea that conflicts in a business are best addressed by leaders and a top-down strategy, trains executives in conflict resolution, supervision and organisational consulting emphasize a participatory model that involves all the affected parties in conflict resolution. The author considers the various consequences these approaches have for those seeking help, as well as the substantive and methodological differences become evident in the course of consulting sessions.     

Reflexion als Herausforderung in der Organisationsberatung Ein kritisch-organisationspädagogischer Blick auf die Professionalisierung

Reflection of the consultants advances to a central attribute of professional organizational consulting. Particularly the systemic and process consulting render outstanding services to this strategy of professionalization. This strategy bases on the assumption, that especially reflection enables to structure experiences und the role of the consultants in consultation projects in order to learn from them, i. e. to professionalize. A (self-)critical view to practical experiences, as the article focusses on, points up the challenges, which accompany reflection: Consultants – as well as their clients – have the problem, that they are not able to disclose influences of power, instrumentalization and projection. A confrontation of practical experiences with educational perceptions promises further impulses.     

Turnaround: from breakdown to breakthrough with Open Space Technology

This interpretive case study sought to fully understand and describe the turnaround experience from an organizational breakdown to breakthrough with the use of Open Space Technology. The turnaround occurred in a Roman Catholic parish. Participant interviews were used to collect the data. These qualitative portrayals provided insights and implications around the effectiveness and impact of Open Space. Four important themes emerged: the experience of breakdown, the deep longing for a breakthrough, the transformation of crisis into a turnaround and the effectiveness of Open Space Technology. This case study provides perspectives on how to effect transformation for an organization in crisis with the least effort and maximum impact within a short time span. It contains insights and implications for leaders and consultants to do the same.     

Strategy consultants—Do they add value?

To improve their strategy decision-making, managers have sought the assistance of strategy consultants. Strategy consultants differ in the degree to which they focus on content or process, the degree to which they are transactive or participative in their consulting approach and their level of specific expertise. Research on the benefits of strategy consulting is limited and inconclusive. While individual firms show concern about monitoring effectiveness, their approach is rarely comprehensive and often ignores measurement of company benefits. Recommendations for both clients and the profession are set out to improve the benefits of strategy consulting assignments.     

Supervisors’ power to deal with employees’ inner resignation: How perceived power of the organization and the supervisor relate to employees’ voluntary and enforced work behavior

Power is fundamental in organizations and is exerted on employees by the organization itself as well as by supervisors. In this study, I applied the slippery slope framework (SSF) and interpersonal power interaction (IPI) model to shed light on how power dynamics relate to employees’ inner resignation and contextual performance.Survey data was obtained from 1102 employees of Austrian and German organizations. In line with expectations, the results of path modeling revealed that perceived coercive power of the organization and supervisors positively relates to employees’ inner resignation. Perceived legitimate power of the organization and supervisors is positively associated with contextual performance and negatively associated with inner resignation. Finally, supervisor reward power further strengthens the beneficial relationship between legitimate organizational power and inner resignation. The results are discussed in light of self-determination theory and the effort-reward imbalance model.     

Negotiating Imitation: Examining the Interactions of Consultants and Clients to Understand Institutionalization as Translation

Organizational scholars increasingly view institutionalization as a process through which actors adapt or translate seemingly successful practices in a field to create variations that are specific to their own organization. Yet little is known about how outsiders who seek to diffuse ‘best practice’ affect translation. We examined interactions between management consultants and their clients in two different consulting projects, which focused on embedding the practice of ‘lean’ in one and the practice of a quality improvement framework in the other. Our findings provide insights into the processes of translation through which promoters and adopters iterate at different stages to reach a compromise, illuminating how the evolution of an imported practice signals the outcome of a negotiation. Furthermore, we demonstrate that management practices are not translated in isolation but enveloped by peripheral practices that are adopted by association. We highlight how the peripheral practice of benchmarking, in both cases, was rarely contested or negotiated and thus proved more resistant to translation. Our analysis allows us to unpack the agency inherent within translation‐as‐negotiation and integrate research on diffusion and translation.     

Unterstützungsbedarfe ausländischer Existenzgründer/innen mit akademischem Hintergrund – eine explorative Studie

Academic migrant company founders have not been in the focus of entrepreneurship research in Germany so far. The Project “StartMiUp—support for academic entrepreneurs with migration background” is dealing with this target group in the context of the German IQ-Network. In an empiric study the project investigates the specific challenges in starting up business and the support requirements of academic migrant founders. The study includes the perspective of start-up consultants and entrepreneurs from the target group. The results point out the necessity to increase the intercultural awareness and the competence orientation of existing start up consultancy institutions.     

Problem defining and the consulting/intervention process

Although many different approaches are currently being used to create planned change in organizations, Kilmann and Mitroff feel that too little attention has been paid to determining the effectiveness of these different methods in solving the organizations' problems. Based on intervention theory and the consulting process, the authors offer a method of evaluating an organization's approach to change to determine if it is well-suited to the types of problems being experienced. The process of change is diagrammed as a five-step cycle: 1) sensing problems; 2) defining problems; 3) deriving solutions; 4) implementing solutions; and 5) evaluating outcomes. Most consultants enter the process at step 3 which increases the probability that they will try to solve the wrong problem (termed Type III error). A second source of trouble is that consultants are usually trained in one or two disciplines and, therefore, see problems primarily in those perspectives. Kilmann and Mitroff suggest the use of teams of consultants so the problems can be conceptualized from a number of different viewpoints.     

THE RISE OF THE EAST AND THE FAR EAST: GERMAN LABOR MARKETS AND TRADE INTEGRATION

We analyze the effects of the unprecedented rise in trade between Germany and “the East” (China and Eastern Europe) in the period 1988–2008 on German local labor markets. Using detailed administrative data, we exploit the cross‐regional variation in initial industry structures and use trade flows of other high‐income countries as instruments for regional import and export exposure. We find that the rise of the East in the world economy caused substantial job losses in German regions specialized in import‐competing industries, both in manufacturing and beyond. Regions specialized in export‐oriented industries, however, experienced even stronger employment gains and lower unemployment. In the aggregate, we estimate that this trade integration has caused some 442,000 additional jobs in the economy and contributed to retaining the manufacturing sector in Germany. This is almost exclusively driven by the rise of Eastern Europe, not by China. We also conduct an analysis at the individual worker level, and find that trade had a stabilizing overall effect on employment relationships.     

Externe Organisationsberatung und Schulentwicklung

External organization counseling and school development Modernizing schools by internal school development is an important issue in Germany. This article discusses the conditions for successful processes in school development from the view of organization counseling. Which conditions for external counseling are necessary, how does a professional process steering function, and which tasks external counselors have to fulfil in the development process? Because of the very high demands on external counselors and coaches, an competence profile is presented and the necessary frame conditions for the setup of a counseling system are discussed.     

Up in the Skies? The Relationship between Body Height and Earnings in Germany

Abstract. This paper analyses whether taller workers earn more than their shorter counterparts. Using GSOEP data from 1991 to 2002, earnings functions are estimated for male and female workers for both West and East Germany. The Hausman–Taylor IV estimator is applied to account for unobservable heterogeneity including also time‐invariant indicators. The results do not imply wage differentials based on height for female workers and male East German workers. For the height range up to 195 cm there is, however, a wage premium associated with stature for male workers from West Germany of about 4 per cent for each additional standard deviation increment in height.     

Replenishment Analysis in Distribution Requirements Planning*

Most research on lot sizing has been for the case of a manufacturing system. In this paper, analogous issues are studied for a distribution network. Specifically, we consider the choice of shipment quantities within distribution requirements planning (DRP). A simulation model of DRP in a multi-echelon, rolling-schedule environment is used to examine, in conditions of both certain and uncertain demand, the performance of five lot-sizing rules. We conducted a full-factorial experiment in which four additional parameters were varied: distribution network structure (two options), demand distribution (three options), forecast error distribution (three options), and ordering cost (three values), as suggested by the consulting study which motivated our research. We found that for DRP, contrary to the “shop floor” wisdom on MRP, the choice of lot-sizing method can be important. Generally the Silver-Meal and Bookbinder-Tan heuristics were significantly better than the other methods.     

Sibling Rivalry in Educational Attainment: The German Case

Recent studies exploring sibling rivalry in the allocation of household resources in the USA produce conflicting results. We contribute to this discussion by addressing the role of sibling rivalry in educational attainment in Germany. Using the German Socioeconomic Panel (GSOEP) we are able to distinguish how the effects of sibling rivalry vary by cultural affiliation, i.e. among families of West German, East German and foreign origin. We also point out and correct for a reference group problem in earlier papers analyzing sibling rivalry.     

Perceptions of organization development in South Korea: the use of a sensemaking approach

ABSTRACT

This qualitative study explores how employees engage in sensemaking during Organization Development (OD) initiatives in chaebols, that is, large family-owned firms in South Korea. In adopting a case study approach, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 37 respondents drawn from different levels of a chaebol to address three research questions. First, what key contextual factors are associated with employees’ sensemaking at different levels of an organization? Second, how do individuals at different levels of the organization make sense of an OD initiative through the ‘searching for plausibility’ property of sensemaking? Third, what contextual cues are influential when employees engage in ‘identity construction’ in sensemaking in response to an OD initiative? The findings and implications of the study demonstrate multiple subjective realities, which employees from different levels construct, indicating that the prevailing norms and practice within the existing culture, which have been influential in constructing the identities of employees should be identified when attempting to implement OD to change the organizational culture.     

Minimum Wages as a Barrier to Entry: Evidence from Germany

This study analyses employers' support for the introduction of industry‐specific minimum wages as a cost‐raising strategy in order to deter market entry. Using a unique data set consisting of 800 firms in the German service sector, we show that high‐productivity employers support minimum wages. We further find some evidence that minimum wage support is higher in industries and regions with low barriers to entry. This is particularly the case in East Germany, where the perceived threat of low‐wage competition from Central and Eastern European countries is relatively high. In addition, firms paying collectively agreed wages are more strongly in favour of minimum wages.