德国社会保障制度的文化背景——价值理念与法律在社会保障中的影响

经济全球化导致社会保障国家责任的改变,但社会保障制度的发展道路未必与全球化过程相类似,依据不同国家的特质,可以有不同的社会保障模式,或者至少在世界不同的地区有不同的社会保障模式。其中,文化价值理念是影响不同社会保障模式的重要因素之一。然而,社会保障并不直接与文化的基本要素相联系,社会保障的改革不会成为引发文化改变的因素,而是与文化自身的发展变化保持一致。文化隐含的基础不仅是政府行动正当性的理论基础之一,还是特定的一系列价值观,包括宗教与法律,最重要的是平等和个人自由的观念。欧盟国家仍然存在着不同的平等理念,同时也存在着不同的国家责任,不同的平等理念与不同的国家责任需要通过各种方式得到平衡,文化的多样性在某种程度上决定了社会保障制度的多样性。     

The Nature of the Firm – Static versus Developmental Interpretations

Different from the prevailing staticperspective in the theory of the firm, adevelopmental approach focuses on processes ofchange in firm organizations (rather than onstates and their properties). Although businesshistory provides ample evidence for systematicorganizational change, few contributions in theliterature take a developmental viewpoint andoffer explanations for the endogenous processesof change. To contrast static and developmentalinterpretations, the paper identifies threeparadigmatic questions for each of them. Theircomparison sheds some new light on the theoryof the firm and draws attention to theneglected entrepreneurial role inorganizational change.     

Managing crowdsourced software testing: a case study based insight on the challenges of a crowdsourcing intermediary

Crowdsourcing has gained much attention in practice over the last years. Numerous companies have drawn on this concept for performing different tasks and value creation activities. Nevertheless, despite its popularity, there is still comparatively little well-founded knowledge on crowdsourcing, particularly with regard to crowdsourcing intermediaries. Crowdsourcing intermediaries play a key role in crowdsourcing initiatives as they assure the connection between the crowdsourcing companies and the crowd. However, the issue of how crowdsourcing intermediaries manage crowdsourcing initiatives and the associated challenges has not been addresses by research yet. We address these issues by conducting a case study with a German start-up crowdsourcing intermediary called testCloud that offers software testing services for companies intending to partly or fully outsource their testing activities to a certain crowd. The case study shows that testCloud faces three main challenges, these are: managing the process, managing the crowd and managing the technology. For each dimension, we outline mechanisms that testCloud applies for facing the challenges associated with crowdsourcing projects.     

Are government deficits the prime cause of inflation?

We argue in this article that if government bonds are counted as part of private wealth, government budget deficits are a major cause of inflation, and the method chosen to finance the deficits (e.g., borrowing or monetary expansion) is of secondary importance. To illustrate this point we use a simple portfolio model that is then incorporated into a model of the Australian economy. The full model is specified in continuous time, and it is estimated by the full information maximum likelihood method (FIML) it is then used to simulate a number of fiscal shocks.     

Tatort Polizei: Gestalter statt Verwalter in der öffentlichen Verwaltung?

This article regards organizational changes inside the police force as an example for required changes in public administration. The promotion of human resources competence development is one of the main targets of the Administration Reform in Lower Saxony. Public administration leaders are to become ‘managers’, and see themselves as such, rather than ‘administrators’. The contents and structures of a two year training course designed for leaders of the Lower Saxony police force are considered. The evaluation of the course, which highlights both the educational (11 seminars of 3 days each) and practical parts (working on a specially designed one-year project), is based on the principles of qualititative research. Special emphasis is placed on the aspects that relate to knowledge transfer into the working-day situation, the further development of the leadership role, and aspects of organizational learning.     

Erik Händeler: Die Geschichte der Zukunft. Sozialverhalten heute und der Wohlstand von morgen — Kondratieffs Globalsicht

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Corporate Portfolio Analysis Tools Revisited: Assessing Causes that May Explain Their Scholarly Disdain

While prominent corporate portfolio analysis tools such as the BCG Growth–Share Matrix took centre stage in the field of strategic management from the 1960s to the mid‐1980s, this review of the literature shows that they have since then largely disappeared from the academic agenda, despite their practical relevance and widespread application. There may be two independent reasons for this apparent scholarly disdain: corporate portfolio analysis tools (a) may have been recognized as unsuitable owing to inherent flaws or superior alternative concepts or (b) may have become obsolete because of proof that corporate diversification is inferior to market diversification. Thus, this assessment is based on an extensive review of the most relevant academic literature on corporate portfolio analysis tools and on the constitutive diversification–performance link published in leading management journals over the past five decades. The review reveals that research to date has not produced advanced tools based on an objective criticism of the original matrices, nor has corporate diversification – as a precondition for corporate portfolio analysis – proved to be inferior to market‐based co‐ordination mechanisms. Thus, this literature review constitutes a call for further academic research in the field of corporate portfolio analysis tools as well as corporate diversification.     

Modelling over- and underdispersed frequencies of successful ink transmissions onto paper

This work focuses on the statistical modelling of successful or failed ink transmission during the printing of packaging paper. The main aim is to explain the probability of successful ink transmission with the help of a regression model. But many of the applied logistic regression models show that the variabilities of various samples from the printability data set range from much smaller to much larger values than the variability assumed in a binomial model. Hence, the main part of this paper concentrates on the discussion of distribution families that are capable of handling such a wide spectrum of different variations of frequency data.     

Control Charts for the Variance and Coefficient of Variation Based on Their Predictive Distribution

This article develops a control chart for the variance of a normal distribution and, equivalently, the coefficient of variation of a log-normal distribution. A Bayesian approach is used to incorporate parameter uncertainty, and the control limits are obtained from the predictive distribution for the variance. We evaluate this control chart by examining its performance for various values of the process variance.