Quo Vadis? Suggestions for future corporate governance research

In this paper I first review the basic tenets of agency theory and theory of managerial capitalism as well as some of the major research in these areas then suggest for areas for future research that go beyond the extant empirical work. First, I suggest that it would be useful to reconsider the basic nature of the agency relationship, taking into account that while equity holders can be considered the principal, the board of directors may be more realistically in need of agent-like controls. Second, the complementary or supplementary nature of the monitoring/incentive alignment relationship has been shown theoretically but the empirical evidence is equivocal and needs future investigation. Third, there has been very limited research on the construct validity of archival measures of the sort used in agency theory. This requires the use of methodologies outside those of the more conventional type used in agency theory (i.e., from economics and finance). Finally, agency theory development would profit greatly by more extensive use of research methods such as laboratory studies and survey methodology and the integration of concepts such as personality and control processes.

A quadratic lower bound for colourful simplicial depth

We show that any point in the convex hull of each of (d+1) sets of (d+1) points in ℝ ^d is contained in at least ⌊(d+2)²/4⌋ simplices with one vertex from each set. Both authors were supported by NSERC Discovery grants. Additionally, T. Stephen was supported by DFG FG-468 and the Dynamical Systems research focus at the University of Magdeburg.     

Online scheduling on parallel machines with two GoS levels

This paper investigates the online scheduling problem on parallel and identical machines with a new feature that service requests from various customers are entitled to many different grade of service (GoS) levels. Hence each job and machine are labeled with the GoS levels, and each job can be processed by a particular machine only when the GoS level of the job is not less than that of the machine. The goal is to minimize the makespan. In this paper, we consider the problem with two GoS levels. It assumes that the GoS levels of the first k machines and the last m−k machines are 1 and 2, respectively. And every job has a GoS level of 1 alternatively or 2. We first prove the lower bound of the problem under consideration is at least 2. Then we discuss the performance of algorithm AW presented in Azar et al. (J. Algorithms 18:221–237, 1995) for the problem and show it has a tight bound of 4−1/m. Finally, we present an approximation algorithm with competitive ratio . Research supported by Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province (Y605316) and its preliminary version appeared in Proceedings of AAIM2006, LNCS, 4041, 11-21.     

Diesseits von Coaching und Mentoring: Kollegiale Praxisberatung

Zusammenfassung  Die Methode der kollegialen Beratung eignet sich gut für Menschen in Organisationen, die vor der Herausforderung stehen, ihr Prozesswissen in neuen, unbekannten Kontexten anzuwenden. Schnelligkeit und konkreter Praxisbezug sind dabei wesentliche Faktoren für eine akzeptierte Lernform. In diesem Artikel wird eine Anpassung der Grundmethode der kollegialen Beratung, die kollegiale Praxisberatung, vorgestellt, die diese Anforderung der Praktiker erfüllt. Die dabei auftretenden Prozesswirkungen und Lernerfahrungen werden anhand zweier Praxisbeispiele aus der Industrie illustriert und Chancen sowie Grenzen der Methode diskutiert.

Die nur fast gelingende Schließung des Personalentwicklungszyklus

The nearly closed cycle of personnel development. The growing popularity of personnel development like training, coaching or supervision is usually justified by the new challenges impending on organizations. The author presents an alternative explanation: Basing on considerations about the operative consistency of organizations, he argues, that the popularity of personnel development is to explain by the boom of personnel diagnostics during the last two decades. Only by potential analysis, assessment center, 360-degree feedback, several trainings and especially person-centered counseling like coaching and supervision could increase their attractiveness. In organizations, cycles of personnel development emerge, and by this a sort of all-round cares of the organisation members.     

Anreizsysteme und Unternehmensethik

The article analyses the structuring of incentive systems from a business ethics point of view. The focus is on examining the impact of different types of social preferences on wage compensation. Besides the structuring of incentive systems, especially the effects of different types of social preferences on firm profits are analyzed. The paper systematizes important determinants for the impact of social preferences on the structure of the incentive system as well as firm profitability and provides an overview over the literature employing formal models based on a possibly general modeling approach.     

Entscheidungsverhalten von Kunden in Mass Customization-Systemen

Sequential choice processes are ubiquitous in consumer decision making. In each attribute decision, consumers are often faced with different numbers of options which they must trade off in order to make the best possible choice. Thereby, complicated high variety choices at the beginning of a choice process produce a larger trade-off conflict and, thus, initially a greater mental depletion than more simple low variety choices. We examine the strength of mental depletion in sequential choices on individuals’ perceived attractiveness of the firm’s recommended default option at a target choice. We show that consumers who are confronted with difficult high variety choices early in the decision sequence followed by low variety choices initially deplete more than consumers who encounter exactly the same attribute decisions in reverse. As a result, depleted consumers are more likely to fall prey to the recommended default or some perceptually focal options close to the default anchor at target choice succeeding a sequence of decisions.     

Conflict in foreign subsidiaries of Japanese and western multinational corporations: The impact of cultural distance and differences in home-host country combinations

This article investigates the degree of conflict between different groups of employees in MNC subsidiaries in relation to different home-host country combinations. More specifically, we compared the degree of conflict of Western subsidiaries in Japan and Japanese subsidiaries in the West. We based our comprehensive investigation on data from 617 US and German subsidiaries in Japan as well as Japanese subsidiaries in the USA and Germany (and, for comparative reasons, US subsidiaries in Germany and German subsidiaries in the US). Possibly rather surprisingly, our results indicate that different degrees of cultural distance between home and host country do not lead to different degrees of conflict in MNC subsidiaries. We suggest that expected conflicts, due to substantial cultural differences, induce employees to actively counteract such problems, leading ultimately to a reduction of real conflicts. Furthermore, while previous literature suggested that in particular Japanese subsidiaries in the West are prone to a high degree of conflicts, our findings suggest that Western subsidiaries in Japan are even more conflict-laden. This should caution Western companies against complacency when operating in Japan.     

A game theoretical analysis of an extended manager-auditor-conflict

Horst Albach has dealt in his research very often with problems of the quality of balance auditing (Albach 1992, 2003). Sometimes his considerations show close relations to the current crisis of the financial market and its consequences. Some of his contributions were already made in times, when it was not yet expected that the dependency of auditors from clients could once become a serious deficit of auditing. Those aspects also become relevant now in connection with the crisis of the financial market.The misgivings that arise continuously in this context with regard to the correctness of submitted balance sheets have sparked off intense discussions in two directions in the Federal Republic of Germany. Whereas the USA has already realised a prohibition of this nature to a great extent through statutory provisions, a broad spectrum of additional consultancy services is still permissible in the Federal Republic of Germany in spite of similar initiatives on the part of legislators.The present paper analyses methodically in the framework of an extended manager–auditor game how the Nash equilibrium is altered in a non-cooperative two-person game through the behaviour of the players, if the supervisory board, as an exogenous party, detects with a specific probability the incorrect certification of a substantively incorrectly prepared balance sheet. At the same time, payoffs from consultancy services for both players are included in the analysis here. However, with a greater probability of detection of an incorrectly certified incorrect balance sheet, and through the reductions of consultancy payoffs, the supervisory board can work towards the product of audit and publication quality being increased.