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Corporate Digital Responsibility (CDR) is a recently developing new management concept in response to the increasing challenges caused by digital transformation. In Germany, this self-governance approach influenced the political discussions and led to a more integrative and collaborative multi-policy strategy beyond pure regulatory regimes. The launch of the German CDR-code by the German action group in June 2021 is a milestone to capture ethical problems in digitalised firms by voluntary commitments from signatories. However, little empirical evidence on the current state of CDR-initiatives at German corporations is available up-to now. This project addresses the identified research gap by performing a qualitative analysis of the disclosed information on CDR in nonfinancial reports of the DAX 30 companies from 2020.
This work investigates in how far Alternative Performance Measures (APM) are suitable to serve as the benchmark for achievement of financial targets by board members of stock-listed companies. Therefore, the concept of board compensation is outlined, the phenomenon of APM is defined, and the main points of scholarly interest in both subject areas are addressed. Through reviewing existing literature that investigates the use of APM within board compensation systems, the rationale for their use and the associated (dis-)advantages are determined. It is shown that the use of APM in board compensation can lead to greater alignment between board members and shareholders’ interests, in-crease sensitivity of pay to performance, and improve the information content of APM published elsewhere. However, using APM can also lead to excessive pay, which may be a result of managerial opportunism. Strong corporate governance mechanisms ap-pear to be relevant for ensuring an appropriate use of APM in compensation systems. The use of APM within board compensation schemes of large German stock-listed com-panies in the fiscal year 2019 is investigated empirically. The relevance of such measures is found to be high, and they determine a large portion of total variable pay. The specific APM used within compensation schemes and those disclosed in annual reports are partially divergent, especially when it comes to growth-related, capital effi-ciency-related, and capital structure-related measures. Nonetheless, APM used in com-pensation systems are identified as a subgroup of APM disclosed in the annual report.
The thesis contributes to the research field of change management by conducting empirical research and by analyzing how the changes in the financial service sector can be managed regarding the example of Bank X. Following questions are researched: Why is there a demand for change in the financial service sector and how can financial service providers shape the future and cope with changes? According to the methodological approach the thesis firstly draws on a literature review in order to evaluate the demand for change management. Then the thesis, in the empirical part, applies the method LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® with regard to the case of Bank X for deriving possible ideas how a financial service provider can cope with change. In the findings five categories are outlined, which can be seen as fields of actions, describing how financial service providers can cope with change.
While the regulation of non-standardized, voluntarily disclosed earnings figures – so- called Alternative Performance Measures (APMs) – has been part of the standard setting for over a decade now in the USA, the first extensive legally binding regulations for the EU and Germany have been coming into action in 2016 with the ESMA Guidelines on Alternative Performance Measures. In order to evaluate the impact of the guidelines on the APM reporting behavior of German large stock-listed companies, the annual reports of an adjusted sample of DAX30 and MDAX corporations are examined for the financial years 2014, 2015, and 2016. The empirical results show a slight decrease in the dissemination of APMs when comparing the results for 2015 and 2016. Moreover, the portion of companies reconciling the adjustments made in the calculation of APMs has increased significantly in the post-ESMA Guidelines period while the number of annual reports without any reconciliation has declined simultaneously. Furthermore, the results indicate a significant decrease in the amount of adjustments between normal and modified earnings figures that are published by the same company when comparing the periods prior and subsequent to the issuance of the ESMA Guidelines. A comparison to the developments in the USA following Regulation G shows a much smaller impact of the ESMA Guidelines on the countries’ companies. Nonetheless, this may be due to the differences in structure and competencies between the securities authorities in the US and the EU. However, it can be concluded that by reversing the trend of an increasing use of APMs, the ESMA has achieved some of its goals.
Eye-tracking refers to a methodology that helps researchers understand visual attention by recording eye positions, pupil dilation, and capturing eye movement images of a subject. Since eye-tracking systems nowadays are becoming more and more participant-friendly and easy to use for researchers, the application of the technology in behavioral economics and finance has recently been growing fast. Specifically, over the past two decades, there have been about forty eye-tracking research papers in the field, in which more than forty percent of them has been published since the last two years. For this reason, a literature review of the relevant studies will provide an overview of the development of eye-tracking and thus help to shape future eye-tracking research in human decision making in behavioral economics and finance.