The contemporary human rights debate is mostly concerned with the protection of people affected by change that is beyond their control. But what about those who make use of their basic economic rights to facilitate economic and social change? Do these agents of change need protection and, if so, how do their activities relate to the current debate on human rights?
In this book, the historical importance of innovative entrepreneurs as agents of change who indirectly contribute to a more humane world by enhancing access to basic human rights is illustrated. However, entrepreneurial rights tend to be neglected in economic and legal theory as well as in the global debate on human rights. Philipp Aerni argues that this neglect has its roots in the implicit assumption that entrepreneurs must surely know how to help themselves and therefore do not require special attention from a human rights perpective. The fact ist, however, that those most vulnerable to human rights offences, especially in the developing world, are those who have failed to obtain formal employment ard are therefore self-employed by default.
Empirical research shows that European governments and retailers are unlikely to be directly punished by taxpayers and consumers if they move away from their anti-GMO positions and policies. However, it is ultimately not the weak attitudes of taxpayers and consumers that matter to governments and retailers but the strong attitudes of the noisy anti-biotech movement.
This article addresses the democratic deficit that emerges when private corporations engage in public policy, either by providing citizenship rights and global public goods (corporate citizenship) or by influencing the political
system and lobbying for their economic interests (strategic corporate political activities). This democratic deficit is significant, especially when multinational corporations operate in locations where national governance
mechanisms are weak or even fail, where the rule of law is absent and there is a lack of democratic control. This deficit may lead to a decline in the social
acceptance of the business firm and its corporate political activities and, thus, to a loss of corporate legitimacy. Under these conditions corporations may compensate for the emerging democratic deficit and reestablish their
legitimacy by internalizing democratic mechanisms within their organizations, in particular in their corporate governance structures and procedures. Theauthors analyze the available corporate governance models with the help of
a typology and discuss the possible contributions of a new form of democratic corporate governance.
Online communities are attractive sources of ideas relevant for new product development and innovation. However, making sense of the ‘big data’ in these communities is a complex analytical task. A systematic way of dealing with these data is needed to exploit their potential for boosting companies' innovation performance. We propose a method for analysing online community data with a special focus on identifying ideas. We employ a research design where two human raters classified 3,000 texts extracted from an online community, according to whether the text contained an idea. Among the 3,000, 137 idea texts and 2,666 non-idea texts were identified. The human raters could not agree on the remaining 197 texts. These texts were omitted from the analysis. The remaining 2,803 texts were processed by using text mining techniques and used to train a classification model. We describe how to tune the model and which text mining steps to perform. We conclude that machine learning and text mining can be useful for detecting ideas in online communities. The method can help researchers and firms identify ideas hidden in large amounts of texts. Also, it is interesting in its own right that machine learning can be used to detect ideas.
Das Swiss Banking Institute der Universität Zürich präsentiert die Neuauflage der bereits in den Jahren 2000, 2002, 2004 und 2006 durchgeführten Studie "Aktienbesitz in der Schweiz". Die Studie weist den Anteil der direkten und indirekten Aktionäre in der Schweiz nach und zeichnet ein detailliertes Bild des Anlageverhaltens privater Haushalte.
Das Institut für schweizerisches Bankwesen der Universität Zürich hat in einer repräsentativen Studie die Anlegerperspektive und das Anlegerverhalten im Schweizer Markt für Strukturierte Produkte untersucht (Befragung im Mai/Juni 2008). Insbesondere interessierten dabei der anlegerseitige Wissensstand sowie die Bekanntheit und die Nutzung Strukturierter Produkte. Zudem sollen Informationen über die Kriterien, die Anleger bei ihrer Entscheidung über einen Kauf dieser Produkte berücksichtigen, gewonnen werden. Schliesslich wird aufgezeigt, wie sich Anleger im Kontext genereller Wirtschaftsfragen spezifisch über Strukturierte Produkte informieren und wie sie ihre Transaktionen mit diesen Produkten abwickeln.
Die Studie orientiert sich dabei an der Methodik der Equity Ownership Studie, die vom ISB bereits seit dem Jahr 2000 durchgeführt wird
Der vorliegende Beitrag entstand im Wortlaut während des Jahres 2004. Auslöser waren durch den Verfasser kri- tisch verfolgte Entwicklungen jener Zeit des Wiederauf- schwungs nach dem Platzen der Internet-Blase. Der Autor sah schliesslich aus verschiedenen Gründen von einer Veröffentlichung des Aufsatzes ab. Vor dem Hinter- grund der aktuellen Finanzkrise mögen die damals for- mulierten, hier nur leicht gekürzt publizierten Gedan- ken von nicht unerheblichem Interesse sein.
Der Discounted-Cash-Flow-Ansatz hat sich durchgesetzt. Er bewahrt aber nur vor subjektiven Fehlbewertungen, wenn verschiedene Details stringent beachtet werden.
