infonet-economy

The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the main challenges imposed by demographic change on the human resource management (HRM) policies of German companies. Although many more aspects of business are affected by demographic change, such as changes in consumption or in savings and investment and therefore in capital costs, we concentrate on changes in personnel policies prompted by an aging workforce. We cover a wide range of HRM policies, starting with recruitment problems, moving on to training issues, wages and incentives, and end with problems concerning innovation and technological change.

DE: Ein Unternehmen als Ganzes wie auch seine einzelnen Profit-Center sollen Wert generieren. Nur, wie lässt sich diese Größe eigentlich messen? Wie tragen einzelne Strategien und Maßnahmen sowie traditionelle Stellgrößen des operativen Geschäfts zu einer Erhöhung des Unternehmenswerts bei?
Dieses Buch orientiert sich stark an der praktischen Arbeit des Controllers, der an der Schnittstelle zu allen Entscheidungsträgern die Managementprozesse koordiniert. Es vermittelt die Prinzipien, Methoden und Instrumente vor allem des operativen Controllings im Rahmen der renditeorientierten Unternehmensführung. Die Umsetzung geschieht in einem in der Praxis entwickelten und angewandten Controlling-Cockpit, das die wichtigsten operativen Steuerungsgrößen für das Management von Unternehmen und Profit-Centern übersichtlich darstellt. Die ausführlichen Fallbeispiele aus der Praxis im zweiten Teil decken einen repräsentativen Querschnitt unternehmerischer Entscheidungen ab.

FR: L’entreprise doit, et avec elle chacun de ses centres de profit, générer de la valeur. Mais qu’est-ce que la «valeur»? Comment les stratégies, les mesures et les variables classiques de l’activité opérationnelle contribuent-elles à augmenter la valeur de l’entreprise? Cet ouvrage est essentiellement axé sur le travail du contrôleur de gestion qui, à l’intersection entre les décideurs, coordonne les processus de décision. Il décrit les principes, les méthodes et les outils du contrôle de gestion opérationnel dans l’entreprise focalisée sur le rendement. Ils sont concrétisés dans le cockpit du contrôle de gestion, un outil pratique qui regroupe les principales variables opérationnelles nécessaires à la gestion d’entreprises et de centres de profit. La seconde partie présente des études de cas pratiques offrant un survol représentatif des décisions en entreprise.

IT: Un’azienda nel suo insieme, come anche singoli centri di profitto, devono generare valore aggiunto. Ci si domanda però come è misurabile questo valore. E come possono essere valutate le strategie e le decisioni che concorrono ad un valore aggiunto di un’azienda? La struttura del libro si orienta al lavoro pratico del controller, che coordina, assumendosi le competenze metodologiche, tutti i processi decisionali che si impongono tra coloro che hanno facoltà di decisione. L’opera trasmette i principi, i metodi e gli strumenti, in particolare del controlling operativo, nell’ambito della gestione aziendale rivolta alla redditività. L’applicazione avviene tramite il controlling cockpit, realizzato ed adottato nella pratica, che permette la chiara evidenziazione degli indici operativi per il management dell’azienda e di profit center. I casi pratici nella seconda parte trattano in maniera esaustiva le più importanti decisioni aziendali. Grazie alla combinazione di un’esperienza decennale nel management e controlling industriale con le esigenze di mediazione del sapere nelle scuole superiori ed in occasione di programmi di formazione e perfezionamento pratici questo libro è adatto sia a coloro che esercitano un potere decisionale (direzione, manager di progetti, responsabili di settore e di centri di costo) come anche agli studenti e coloro che si affacciano al mondo del lavoro per i quali risulta essere un importante strumento di lavoro e opera di consultazione.

The paper is concerned with the concept of leadership responsibility. Responsible leadership understood as normatively appropriate conduct in the pursuit of the organizational goals addresses the challenges of nowadays’ leaders in the light of global transformation processes. The paper argues that existing schools of the leadership phenomenon, herein paradigmatically grouped as “positivist” and “post-positivist”, fail to capture the scope of the therein encapsulated implications. Through reviewing existing approaches their normative vacuity, justification deficits and implementation problems are shown. In order to address these, the paper proposes a new approach, based on Habermas’ idea of democratic deliberation, as forwarded in the concept of political corporate social responsibility.

To enable a better understanding of corrupt activities, I develop the paper around fundamental dimensions: Firstly, corruption is exerted by the supply side, this means I analyze the regulation effects on providers of corruption activities. Second, I enrich existing compliance concepts with the integrity approach and point out the effects on individual behavior.

The relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and economic payoff has been an increasingly important issue for scholarly discussion. To enable a better understanding of the similarities, distinctions and complementarities between explaining theories, I set forth a theoretical basis for constituting CSR activities on an individual level. An alternative modeling of the utility function and economic concepts like happiness research, stewardship theory and intrinsic motivation can give some further explanations why managers act in a social responsible way beside normative considerations.

The UN Global Compact (UNGC) is the largest “corporate citizenship” (CC) initiative in the world. Almost 4000 companies have signed up for the initiative whereby they voluntarily commit themselves to adhere to ten principles in the areas of human rights, labor rights, the environment and corruption (www.unglobalcompact.org).

Eight years after the launch of the UNGC the question rises how far the participants have progressed in the implementation of the Compact’s principles.

This paper presents the results of an empirical assessment of the implementation process at five Swiss UNGC participants. The results illustrate that CC is a learning process and corporations are at different stages of development. To date, only few companies are implementing CC as intended by the founders of the UNGC yet some aspects show that companies assume a political role in their global business activities. Thus, the study confirms the theoretical argument of corporations contributing to emerging global governance structures (Palazzo/Scherer 2006).

This paper develops a model of collective organizational identification for the work-unitlevel. Following Chen and colleagues’ (2004) procedure for validating collective constructs, we first describe the theoretical development process of a collective perception of organizational identification. In a second step, we extend our understanding of the theoretical construct by hypothesizing a nomological net of potential antecedents and outcomes. In a third step, the theoretical model of collective identification is empirically tested. We conducted a longitudinal survey study, gathering data at three different points in time. The data was collected from 26 different country locations of a multinational company. The study sample comprised an average number of 2,355 employees nested within 145 work units. The empirical analysis showed that there exists a reliable and valid construct of collective identification that is different from related constructs (i.e., collective commitment, collective identity). Further, the results of the hypotheses tests confirmed all relationships proposed in the nomological net. Thus, we could show that a charismatic leadership climate fosters the identity strength within a work unit, which in turn leads to an enhanced collective identification. Concerning the outcomes of collective identification, we could empirically demonstrate that the construct has a positive effect on collective organizational commitment, which in turn reduces the collective turnover intention of the employees. The article concludes with theoretical implications, suggestions for practitioners, study limitations and future research directions.

Am 26. Januar 2005 hat das Bundesverfassungsgericht das allgemeine Studiengebührenverbot für verfassungswidrig erklärt und damit den Weg für die Einführung von Studiengebühren frei gemacht. Doch was bewirken Studiengebühren? Können Informationsasymmetrien zwischen Universitäten und Hochschulbewerbern verringert werden? Kann die Einführung von Studiengebühren zu einem besseren Match zwischen Universitäten und Studienbewerbern führen? Auf diese Fragen versucht die vorliegende Arbeit eine Antwort zu geben, indem die Signaling- und Screening-Funktion von Studiengebühren auf einem durch bilaterale Informationsasymmetrie gekennzeichneten Hochschulmarkt untersucht wird. Die theoretische Analyse zeigt, dass es durch die Einführung von Studiengebühren keinesfalls immer zu einem Abbau der Informationsasymmetrien und damit einem verbesserten Matching zwischen Studienbewerbern und Universitäten kommen muss, sondern dass sogar ein verschlechtertes Matching denkbar ist. Dieser zunächst überraschende Befund wird durch die empirische Analyse ausgewählter europäischer und außereuropäischer Hochschulsysteme mit variablen Studiengebühren bestätigt: Auch in der Realität haben sich nach der Einführung von Studiengebühren offenbar verschiedene Gleichgewichte unterschiedlicher Matching-Qualität eingestellt. Diese sind - gegeben die Ausgangssituation in den betrachteten Ländern - weitgehend kompatibel mit den Vorhersagen der theoretischen Analyse.