In dieser Publikation diskutieren Wissenschaftler(innen) sowie Praxis-Vertreter(innen) Trends und aktuelle Herausforderungen der Strategischen Unternehmensführung. Dabei wird aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven untersucht, wie sich die veränderten Rahmenbedingungen auf die Unternehmensführung auswirken und wie ihnen begegnet werden sollte. Die Publikation umfasst jeweils mehrere Beiträge in den drei Bereichen «Strategic Innovation und Nachhaltigkeit», «Strategic Leadership» und «Strategic Finance und Governance». Dies ist die zweite Publikation der Publikationsreihe des Profilbereichs «Responsible Corporate Competitiveness» (RoCC) der Universität St.Gallen. Die erste Publikation ist 2009 mit dem Titel «Konsequenzen aus der Finanzmarktkrise – Perspektiven der HSG» erschienen und unter www.rocc.unisg.ch erhältlich.
Das Jahr 2014 war ein Rekordjahr auf dem Schweizer M&A-Markt. So stieg die Anzahl der Transaktionen um 33% von 315 im Jahr 2013 auf nunmehr 420 an. Auch der Fünf-Jahres-Vergleich zeigt, dass die Anzahl angekündigter Deals die Werte aus den Jahren 2010 bis 2012 übertraf. Noch positiver fällt der Blick auf die Entwicklung des Dealvolumens im vergangenen Jahr aus, das zuletzt 188,1 Mrd. USD betrug. Damit lag der Wert aller Deals auf dem Schweizer M&A-Markt sogar noch deutlich über dem bisherigen Rekordhoch in Höhe von 116,5 Mrd. USD aus dem Jahr 2012. Gegenüber dem Vorjahr (33,2 Mrd. USD) hat sich das Transaktionsvolumen sogar mehr als verfünffacht.
The chief strategy officer (CSO) position has recently been gaining prominence in European firms. However, little is known about this new executive role. In this article, the authors report some of their findings from a major research program that involved two surveys of CSOs and give a portrayal of the CSO’s role in continental European firms. The article further highlights how CSOs deal with the current uncertainty and how they professionalise their firm’s strategy activities.
Trust has become of increasing interest in many scientific domains, including economics, social psychology, sociology, and marketing (Blois 1999). Marketing studies have demonstrated that trust is an essential ingredient for successful relationship marketing (Doney and Cannon 1997; Morgan and Hunt 1994). In fact, Berry states: “Relationship marketing is based on the foundations of trust” (1995, p. 242). Theorizing that successful relational exchanges are motivated by trust and commitment, relational theory implicitly assumes that transactional and weak relational exchanges are not similarly motivated. According to this assumption, Garbarino & Johnson (1999) have proposed and confirmed that in business relationships for customers with a weak relational orientation trust is a peripheral evaluation and not predictive of repurchase intent. This finding contrast with the impact of trust for customers with a strong relational orientation, where trust is a key determinant of repurchase intent. Extending the work from Garbarino & Johnson (1999) we take a different approach and investigate different facets of risk as moderators of the trust – repurchase intention relation. Furthermore building on the embeddedness notion we propose and show that close personal relationships between boundary personnel of interacting companies are a key determinant of trust. Several marketing scholars (Sheth and Parvatiyar 1995; Witkowski and Thibodeau 1999) have argued for the relevance of close interpersonal relationships specifically in a business-to-business context. Consequently building close personal relationships with key customers was proposed as a way to achieve competitive advantage (e.g., Gremler and Gwinner 2000; Reichheld 1993). However our results imply that the strategy to build close personal relationships with key customers is not effective in conditions in which trust is not important; notably in situations with low risk. Our notion of risk as a moderator for the trust-loyalty relation can also explain the negligible relevance of personal relationships in Wathne, Biong and Heide’s (2001) study, where risk was essentially zero.
The outcomes of matches in the 2005 Wimbledon Gentlemen's tennis competition were predicted by mere player name recognition. In a field study, amateur tennis players (n = 79) and laypeople (n = 105) indicated players' names they recognized, and predicted match outcomes. Predictions based on recognition rankings aggregated over all participants correctly predicted 70% of all matches. These recognition predictions were equal to or better than predictions based on official ATP rankings and the seedings of Wimbledon experts, while online betting odds led to more accurate forecasts. When applicable, individual amateurs and laypeople made accurate predictions by relying on individual name recognition. However, for cases in which individuals did not recognize either of the two players, their average prediction accuracy across all matches was low. The study shows that simple heuristics that rely on a few valid cues can lead to highly accurate forecasts.
Core theories in economics, psychology, and marketing suggest that decision makers benefit from having more choice. In contrast, according to the too-much-choice effect, having too many options to choose from may ultimately decrease the motivation to choose and the satisfaction with the chosen option. To reconcile these two positions, we tested whether there are specific conditions in which the too-much-choice effect is more or less likely to occur. In three studies with a total of 598 participants, we systematically investigated the moderating impact of choice set sizes, option attractiveness, and whether participants had to justify their choices. We also tested the moderating role of search behavior, domain-specific expertise, and participants’ tendency to maximize, in a within-subject design. Overall, only choice justification proved to be an effective moderator, calling the extent of the too-much-choice effect into question. We provide a theoretical account for our findings and discuss possible pathways for future research.
How important are visual cues for determining satiation? To find out, 64 participants were served lunch in a “dark” restaurant where they ate in complete darkness. Half the participants unknowingly received considerably larger “super-size” portions which subsequently led them to eat 36% more food. Despite this difference, participants’ appetite for dessert and their subjective satiety were largely unaffected by how much they had consumed. Consistent with expectations, participants were also less accurate in estimating their actual consumption quantity than a control group who ate the same meal in the light.
To test the influence of relationship length on ability to predict a partner's preferences, 58 younger (M = 24.1 years) and 20 older (M = 68.7 years) couples made predictions in three domains that varied in daily importance. While prediction accuracy was generally better than chance, longer relationship length correlated with lower prediction accuracy and greater overconfidence. The difference in accuracy between older and younger couples increased for strong preferences and when controlling for preference reliability over time. Independent of relationship length, prediction accuracy was higher for important domains, for strong, reliable, and stereotypical preferences, and when couples were more similar.
When predicting the next outcome in a sequence of events, people often appear to expect streaky patterns, such as that sport players can develop a “hot hand,” even if the sequence is actually random. This expectation, referred to as positive recency, can be adaptive in environments characterized by resources that are clustered across space or time (e.g., expecting to find multiple berries on separate bushes). But how strong is this disposition towards positive recency? If people perceive random sequences as streaky, will there be situations in which they forego a payoff because they prefer an unpredictable random environment over an exploitable but alternating pattern? To find out, 238 participants repeatedly chose to bet on the next outcome of one of two sequences of (binary) events, presented next to each other. One sequence displayed events at random while the other sequence was either more streaky (positively autocorrelated) or more alternating (negatively autocorrelated) than chance. The degree of autocorrelation varied in a between-subject design. Most people preferred to predict purely random sequences over those with moderate negative autocorrelation and thus missed the opportunity for above-chance payoff. Positive recency persisted despite extensive feedback and the opportunity to learn more rewarding behavior over time. Further, most participants' choice strategies were best described by a win-stay/lose-shift strategy, adaptive in clumpy or streaky environments. We discuss the implications regarding an evolved human tendency to expect streaky patterns, even if the sequence is actually random.
