How do social innovations emerge? What are innovative aspects of social innovations? Which resources are important to implement social innovations? And how can social innovations be spread in order to have a greater impact on society? These are the main questions of this article. It summarizes the results of our recent study "Mechanismen Sozialer Innovationen I: Entstehung, Entwicklung und Verbreitung" that examines 27 initiatives from the following five areas: educational equality, skills shortage, long-term unemployment, lifestyle diseases, and resource consumption. The study is one result of the three-year research project "Social Innovation in Germany" initiated by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The project is carried out by the World Vision Center for Social Innovation at EBS Universität für Wirtschaft und Recht.
If the family business shall remain in the family incumbents must choose according to which justice principle they transfer the family business - ownership and management - to the next generation. The most prevalent justice principles in our culture in this context are equity and equality. Each choice leads to different governance structures that entail particular consequences, such as agency issues. In the following I will analyze three different succession options - succession according to equity, succession according to equality as well as a succession form that encompasses both principles - and carve out in a dynamic approach the particular challenges that arise in the family business under an agency perspective. This paper is a conceptual one that combines justice and agency considerations in the family business succession.
Zusammenfassung
In diesem Beitrag werden die theoretischen Erkenntnisse im Rahmen dreier Fallstudien in mittelständischen Unternehmen empirisch angereichert, um eine praxisnahe Ableitung eines Wertmanagementansatzes sicherzustellen. Die zentralen Ergebnisse aus den Kurzfallstudien lassen sich in die beiden Ebenen strategisch-normativ und operativ-instrumental (Wertmanagementsystem) unterteilen. Auf der strategisch-normativen Ebene zeigt sich, dass sowohl Eigentümer als auch Management aller untersuchten Unternehmen versuchen, sich primär an den Interessen der Eigentümer zu orientieren. Diese Orientierung erfolgt unabhängig von der Eigentümerstruktur. Auf der operativ-instrumentalen Ebene wird wertorientiertes Management bislang in keinem der untersuchten Betriebe explizit umgesetzt.
Summary
Value management is a powerful management tool for use in an overall strategic management framework including the development of all total asset management strategies. This paper presents a holistic model of value management for medium-sized enterprises. Value management in medium-sized enterprises is strongly influenced by the owner-manager perspective. Drawing on the concept of enlightened value maximization the model uses much of the structure of stakeholder theory - notably the need to consider the interests of all corporate stakeholders. However, we do not posit maximization of long-run firm value as the unique criterion for making the necessary tradeoffs among stakeholders and we show that managers in medium-sized enterprises can pursue other goals, such as merely conserving value.
We extend the socioemotional wealth (SEW) perspective by arguing that SEW can be negatively associated with proactive stakeholder engagement (PSE). We further suggest that the SEW dimensions can be associated with positive or negative valence. Lastly, we propose that negatively valenced SEW dimensions lead to family centric behavior, which negatively affects PSE. This multifaceted conceptualization of SEW allows us to explain how family firms can partake in harmful stakeholder behaviors despite having seemingly strong SEW. Our paper suggests that SEW can be either an affective endowment or burden for family firms and their constituents.
