Dissertations submitted to the Hertie School
Refine
Document Type
- Doctoral Thesis (2)
Language
- English (2)
Has Fulltext
- no (2) (remove)
Is part of the Bibliography
- yes (2) (remove)
Keywords
- EU-Staaten (1)
- Einkommensverteilung (1)
- Erbe (1)
- Erbschaft (1)
- Erbschaftsteuer (1)
- Europäische Union (1)
- Generationengerechtigkeit (1)
- Mitgliedsstaaten (1)
- Privatvermögen (1)
- Vermögen (1)
03/2017
What drives a systematic human rights management? : a multi-method study of large German companies
(2017)
Under which conditions do multinational enterprises systematically manage human rights risks with a view to preventing human rights abuses across their operations? Using a multi-method research design combining qualitative comparative analysis (QCA)and process tracing case studies (PT-CS), this study of the 30 largest German companies finds that it is neither institutional forces nor stakeholder pressures alone, but their combined effect that leads to a systematic human rights management at the firm-level: That is, stakeholders (e.g. NGOs) as more proximate actors act on and transmit existing institutional pressures (e.g. social expectations) to firms, while institutions provide stakeholders with the legitimacy necessary to successfully influence corporate behaviour. This conjunctional effect implies that a systematic approach to human rights is more likely to be found among firms with consumer proximity. Why? It is a firm’s position in the value chain that determines the concrete configuration of institutional and stakeholder pressures for a company: Downstream the value chain in the B2C business, where institutional and stakeholder pressures are generally high due to greater public exposure, most companies systematically address human rights issues: These B2C firms are exposed to an institutional environment, where firms are not only socialised into newly-emerging CSR-topics like human rights through institutional learning in CSR initiatives like the UNGC, but also constantly monitored by civil society actors like NGOs whether they walk the talk (i.e. 1st path to a systematic human rights management). (...)
02/2017
The knowledge of the distribution of assets and liabilities as well as the key determinants of the distributions of private wealth represent an important basis for decision-making for social and political action like levying taxes. In the three papers, which make up this dissertation, I contribute to these aspects for several European countries.
In the first paper (with M.M. Grabka) the data quality of the Household Finance and Consump-tion Survey (HFCS) is investigated. The survey provides information and enables comparison of assets and liabilities held by households in the Euro area. We investigate potential methodo-logical constraints regarding cross-country comparability and evaluate their impact on the surveyed net wealth (assets minus liabilities). In addition, we investigate item non-response patterns, a serious issue in wealth surveys. We find that the surveyed net wealth in Finland, the Netherlands, Italy and Slovakia is most likely not comparable with the other countries.(...)