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Today's global business landscape is marked by intricate technological and societal challenges, intensified by geopolitical shifts and economic disparities. The expectations for CEOs have undoubtedly evolved, now requiring a form of adaptive leadership capable of steering through unprecedented disruptions, managing vast organizational and environmental complexities, and navigating an unstable geopolitical landscape.
Added to these challenges is the urgent need to build inclusive, purpose-driven organizations that resonate with an increasingly demanding and discerning workforce.
In light of these transformative changes, a pressing question looms large for corporate boards and stakeholders alike: Are European CEOs adequately equipped and prepared for the future?
To address this, we carried out extensive empirical research on the 600 largest publicly listed corporations in Europe across 14 countries. We examined the life histories and career paths of approximately 1,350 CEOs. Our aim is to offer a comprehensive assessment of CEO profiles, highlighting strengths and potential challenges in the face of specific strategic imperatives. Our overarching findings underscore a duality; while there has been commendable progress in certain areas, distinct gaps remain in others, and these disparities further vary across European markets.
Fiserv (NASDAQ: FISV) and First Data Corporation (NYSE: FDC) coannounced on Jan 16th an unanimous merger agreement under which Fiserv would acquire First Data in a pure-stock transaction. The merger would combine two well-established Fintech companies into one giant. For each share of First Data, a fixed exchange ratio of 0.303 Fiserv shares is agreed, for a total equity value of USD 22bn. After the close of the transaction, Fiserv shareholders will own 57.5% of the new combined company, and First Data shareholders will own 42.5% on a fully diluted basis. The pure stock transaction is intended to be tax-free to First Data shareholders. The transaction is slated to close in the second half of the year, subject to shareholder and regulatory approval.
Greening of the tax code
(2023)
This thesis examines the impact of green fiscal policies, specifically environmental taxes, on firms' decision-making and competitiveness. It aims to contribute to the taxation and financial policy literature by analyzing the influence of environmental taxes on corporate investment decisions and the distribution of the economic burden, the effect on corporate emission levels, and the shift in competitive market dynamics due to a green VAT. The findings suggest that standalone environmental taxes may not be the first best option, but their effectiveness can be improved through combining them with additional policy measures to foster firms' innovativeness. The thesis also shows that the adjustment of traditional forms of taxation, such as the VAT, can promote sector growth. The thesis thereby provides a more nuanced view on the economic consequences of environmental taxes.
Deal Logic Shire / Takeda
(2019)
After a long bidding phase, the Japanese pharma company Takeda is going to take over the Ireland based manufacturer and wholesaler of pharmaceutical products Shire PLC. In the fifth attempt, Takeda offered USD 62 bn. The acquisition will create a leading provider of drugs for the treatment of rare diseases, cancer, blood clotting disorders, neurological disorders, or gastroenterology. With Shire, Takeda would double the size of their pharmaceutical business to about USD 30 bn, making it one of the top ten pharma companies worldwide. The takeover is the second biggest the pharmaceutical industry has seen so far and the largest overseas acquisition by a Japanese company.
Basiswissen RDA
(2017)
This dissertation examines the role tangible resources play in innovation projects. Specifically, it is distinguished between two mindsets when it comes to tangible resource constraints in innovation projects. One mindset regarding the relationship between tangible resources and innovation project performance can be described best as “resource driven”, meaning that innovation project performance is strongly linked to the presence of adequate tangible resource input. Counter-intuitively, a vast number of case examples suggest the exact opposite, though. The underlying “less is more” mindset suggests that innovation project performance could also be achieved because (not despite) of constrained tangible resources. Those views reflect the two extremes of the continuous variable “tangible resource orientation” which expresses the perceived dependency on tangible resources in order to achieve a high level of performance in innovation projects.
Since conceptual and empirical evidence on the antecedents and consequences of varying degrees of tangible resource adequacy in extant literature is inconclusive, this dissertation aims at disentangling the ambiguous tangible resources-innovation project performance relationship. The arguments I put forward in this dissertation are based on conceptual evidence as a result of synthesizing literature from neighboring research fields like cognitive psychology, entrepreneurship, and corporate strategy pointing to mechanisms which cause material resource constraints to facilitate creative and innovative performance in innovation projects. These literature streams are then brought together within the framework of the resource based view (RBV) of the firm. The empirical analyses to test the hypothesized relationships are based on a sample consisting of 121 innovation project teams from the electronics industry.
The results presented in this dissertation show that the ambiguity of the relationship between tangible resources and innovation project performance observed in the literature may be a result of moderating variables that determine the direction and strength of tangible resources’ influence on innovation project performance. Specifically, the analyses reveal an interaction effect in that perceptions of material resource adequacy indeed may entail diverging effects on innovation project outcomes in family and non-family businesses, depending on differences in these firms’ organizational culture regarding the orientation toward material resources. In particular, innovation projects in non-family firms do Extended summary III significantly better when being provided with more adequate material resources, while in family firms innovation projects do not show significant differences in conditions of more or less adequate tangible resources and are shown to perform better (relative to those in nonfamily firms) under conditions of perceived material resource inadequacy.
Moreover the results of this dissertation point to the influence of socio-cognitive factors on a team’s evaluation of material resource adequacy. These socio-cognitive influences are further shown to root both on innovation project team attributes and capabilities, as well as on characteristics of organizational culture. Specifically, regarding team-level factors, it is found that innovation project team members’ perception of material resource adequacy is influenced by a team’s action repertoire, the belief of a team being able to accomplish a task, and the team task’s work volume. Regarding organizational-level factors, this research reveals that innovation project teams in family firms perceived their material resource provisions generally as being more adequate. Further, this relationship is shown to be mediated by an organization’s cultural characteristic of material resource orientation, representing an important link that transmits family influence to innovation project teams’ perceptions of material resource adequacy.
Finally, the results reveal that depending on which outcome dimension is operationalized as the main project focus, i.e., whether the quality or innovativeness of the developed products is used as outcome measure, converse results may emerge. Specifically, it is found that perceptions of material resource adequacy have a positive effect on new product quality and a negative effect on new product novelty. In a similar vein, relative team size is shown to be negatively related with new product novelty while showing a positive relationship with new product quality. Additionally, relative team size is also found to have a positive relationship with project efficiency.
From these findings, key implications for the management of innovation projects are derived in order to ensure the effectiveness of companies’ investments in R&D, showing that adequate tangible resources per se do not have a direct effect (neither positive nor negative) on innovation project performance. Rather, the role of tangible resources in innovation projects is contingent upon how adequate tangible resources are perceived to be, on certain contingency variables, and on the outcome dimension focused on. Thus, sometimes less may indeed turn out to be more and this thesis points to ways how to tap this potential.
This dissertation investigates the value of customer behavior in supply chain management through the application of (big) data analytics in demand forecasting. The use of advanced analytics in supply chain management is not novel. However, the growing expansion of data volumes provides companies with new opportunities to optimize their supply chain. Despite the rising interest from both academia and practice and the recent increase in publications in this area, empirical insights are still limited. At the same time, changes in customer expectations towards instant product delivery require companies to rethink their supply chain, where accurate demand forecasts are often at the core of enabling efficient and flexible processes. This makes the development of demand prediction models that can be used in practice especially relevant. We1 analyze the use of customer behavior in demand forecasting in three separate research papers. Leveraging data from research partners in the online fashion and construction industry, we assess the potential of the developed prediction models in three areas of application in supply chain management, namely order fulfillment, order picking, and inventory planning. In the first paper, we develop a prediction model for anticipatory shipping in the fashion industry, which predicts customers’ online purchases with the aim of shipping products in advance, and subsequently minimizing delivery times. Using various forecasting methods and data on customers’ behavior on the website, we test if, and how early, it is possible to predict online purchases. Results indicate that customer purchases are, to a certain extent, predictable, but anticipatory shipping comes at a high cost due to wrongly sent products. The second paper assesses the extent to which clickstream data can improve forecast accuracy for fashion products. Specifically, we assess which clickstream variables are most suitable for predicting demand, and identify the products that benefit most from this. Results indicate that clickstream data is especially useful for forecasting medium- and certain intermittent-demand products. A simulation of order picking for these products shows that using clickstream data in the forecast substantially decreases picking times. The third paper investigates how sequential pattern mining can be used to determine products with correlated demand, and how to leverage this as an input into forecasting for a supplier in the construction industry. We find that sequential pattern mining may be beneficial when used in combination with traditional forecasting methods, and that support vector regression models seem especially suited to forecast intermittent-demand products. An application to inventory planning shows that our developed forecasting model might reduce the company’s costs of inventory holding and lost sales by up to 6.9%. Overall, our research highlights the value of using customer behavior to enhance demand forecasting and the benefit of using improved forecasts in various applications in supply chain management.
1Referring to the authors of the respective chapters as noted at the beginning of each chapter.
Airport slot allocation
(2023)
This dissertation addresses the concept of airport slot allocation as a major regulatory directive in air transport management. In three sequential parts, today’s slot allocation procedure, addressing the assignment of time windows for departure and landing operations at coordinated airports, is being assessed and critically evaluated. The three sections evolve from the evaluation and revision of a suitable criteria set to the development and implementation of a network solution. As a key feature, a carbon emissions price including the air carriers’ CO2 emissions is being provided, serving as the allocation principle. In all three parts, explicit reference to the IATA Worldwide Slot Guidelines, representing today’s regulatory framework, is being provided, highlighting explicit deficits and drawbacks of that solution. In the first part, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), as a concept of decision making based on a comparison of criteria and alternatives, is being applied guiding the allocation decision at a single airport. In this section, a set of multiple criteria is being proposed and weighted according a set of slot coordinators’ preferences. As a key feature, the concept of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is being extended by the conduction of a Pairwise Comparison-based Preference Measurement (PCPM) representing one stage of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). In part two, the perspective of the dissertation changes from a single-point to a multiple-point allocation environment. In this part, a model is being provided that includes the allocation of slots in an airport network. As a key feature, slots are being allocated such that the two complementary cost functions are being minimized. On one hand, the developed carbon cost function includes the minimization of the carbon footprint per traveling passenger. On the other hand, the developed handling cost function is being minimized incorporating a dedicated airport perspective to the solution. In part three, the proposed model is being further extended by the incorporation of a third directive, the minimization of connection cost, related to the application of solution in a hub-and-spoke network. As a result, the study demonstrates how slot allocation can be conducted efficiently in an airport network, and how the consideration of the carbon footprint per traveling passenger serves to calculate the allocation optimum.
Balanced Scorecard
(1998)
Flexibilität in der Logistik
(2005)
Logistik und Supply Chain Management haben sich inzwischen zu Funktionen entwickelt, die innerhalb einer globaleren Wertschöpfung entscheidende Erfolgsfaktoren für die Unternehmensführung sind. Dabei trägt die Logistik – gut gestaltet – nicht nur zur Anpassungsfähigkeit von Unternehmen bei. Sie ist in einer immer dynamischeren Umwelt auch selbst erheblichen Flexibilitätsherausforderungen ausgesetzt. Um dem
gerecht zu werden, haben sich in der Praxis verschiedenste Konzepte wie Outsourcing und Postponement etabliert. Gemessen an ihrer allgemeinen Marktdurchdringung sind demgegenüber die Potentiale von Personaldienstleistungen in Deutschland bisher nur in ersten Ansätzen realisiert worden.
Um die entsprechenden Potentiale für den Bereich der Logistik zu konkretisieren und den Grenzen des Einsatzes von Personaldienstleistungen gegenüberzustellen, wurde von der WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management eine Untersuchung in Kooperation mit Randstad Deutschland durchgeführt. Mit fast 1.200 teilnehmenden Unternehmen, die das ganze Spektrum von Nichtnutzern bis hin zu sehr starken Nutzern von Zeitarbeit abdecken, gehört sie in der Logistik zu den größten ihrer Art.
Die Ergebnisse dieser Studie, zeigen deutlich, dass in vielen Unternehmen noch Potentiale für Flexibilitätssteigerungen und Kosteneinsparungen ungenutzt bleiben. Über alle Branchen hinweg liegt der Ist-Anteil der Zeitarbeit aktuell noch deutlich unter dem Anteil, den die Teilnehmer der Umfrage selbst als optimal betrachten. Entsprechend erhoffen sich die Unternehmen weitere Lohnkostensenkungspotentiale in Höhe von durchschnittlich acht Prozent. Darüber hinaus konnte in der Studie ein signifikanter Zusammenhang zwischen der Flexibilität der Unternehmen und deren jeweiligem Anteil von Zeitarbeitern nachgewiesen werden.
Sowohl die Logistik als auch die Automobilzulieferindustrie gehören seit jeher zu den Branchen mit der höchsten Wachstums- und Innovationskraft in Deutschland und Europa. Insbesondere vor dem Hintergrund der sich aktuell rasant ändernden Umfeldbedingungen in der Automobilindustrie erlangt das Zusammenspiel beider Branchen eine neue Bedeutung. Die entstehenden Entwicklungs- und Produktionsnetzwerke erfordern von den Zulieferunternehmen der verschiedenen Ebenen ein Umdenken hinsichtlich der Ausgestaltung ihrer Value Chain sowie ihrer Geschäftsmodelle.
Die vorliegende Studie zeigt auf Basis einer Interviewreihe mit 41 deutschen Zulieferunternehmen, welche Fähigkeiten und Strukturen durch diese in den kommenden Jahren aufgebaut werden müssen, um erfolgreich innerhalb der sich wandelnden Wertschöpfungsstrukturen bestehen zu können.
Dabei ist es das erklärte Ziel der Studie, über die reine Informationsvermittlung hinaus, Denkanstöße für Unternehmensentscheider und Logistikverantwortliche hinsichtlich der zukünftigen Positionierung der Industrie zu liefern.
In diesem Artikel wird das neue Logistikkonzept der Flussorientierung konzeptualisiert und operationalisiert. Flussorientierung bezeichnet dabei eine umfassende Unterne hmensgestaltung, die darauf gerichtet ist, einen schnellen, durchgängigen und turbulenzarmen Fluss von Materialien Waren und Informationen über die gesamte Wertschöpfungskette zu ermöglichen. Es wird eine 14-faktorielle Skala zur Erfassung der Ausprägung der Flussorientierung entwickelt und validiert. Diese wird in zwei LISRELModellen eingesetzt, um die Auswirkungen der Flussorientierung auf den Logistikerfolg zu messen. Die Ergebnisse der Untersuchung zeigen, dass ein hoher Grad der Flussorientierung zu einer überlegenen Logistikleistung und niedrigeren Logistikkosten führt.
In diesem Artikel findet eine tiefgreifende Untersuchung des Einflusses der Logistik auf den Unternehmenserfolg statt. Die Wirkungen der Logistikleistung und der Logistikkosten auf die Erfolgskomponenten Anpassungsfähigkeit, Markterfolg und wirtschaftlichen Erfolg werden in einem Kausalmodell integriert, das mit dem statistischen Programmpaket LISREL 8 validiert wird. Die Ergebnisse der Untersuchung zeigen, dass die Logistik eine erhebliche Erfolgswirkung auf sämtliche Komponenten des Unternehmenserfolgs besitzt.
Business angels in Germany
(2000)
Erfolg in der Logistik
(2008)
Erfolg in der Logistik ist zunehmend zu einem entscheidenden Faktor für die Gesamtperformance von Unternehmen geworden. Dabei wirken Logistikverbesserungen sowohl auf der Kosten- als auch auf der Leistungsseite positiv auf den Unternehmenserfolg. Die Studie verdeutlicht anhand einer empirischen Untersuchung von über 300 Logistikbeziehungen wie eine zielführende Vergütungsgestaltung den Erfolg des Outsourcings steigern kann. Hierzu werden anhand von neusten Daten Wirkmechanismen von sowohl direkten als auch indirekten Vergütungselementen aufgezeigt. Dabei ist es das Anliegen der Studie, auch übergreifende Handlungsempfehlungen für Entscheider der Praxis anzubieten.
Kostenrechnung-(s)-Dynamik
(1995)
Selektives Rechnungswesen
(1995)
Research on motivation may be alive and vital, but it is highly fragmented. This thesis discusses the most prevalent motivation theories and compares their ideas and concepts to introduce two new fields of research in this area: neurology and cardiology. The next era of motivation research will conflate concepts derived from behavioral approaches with organic substructure and elevate our understanding of motivation. A sound understanding of motivation allows organizational scholars to solve the motivational problem in the context of the organizational problem. To make proper use of promising novel insights in organizational contexts, we will revisit the current state of performance evaluation and their ability to coordinate and motivate individuals. By reconsidering how rewards crowd out intrinsic motivation via complex moods, and how superior intrinsic motivation increases performance compared to extrinsic motivation, this thesis introduces the motivation-potential model of feedback. Using a case study on a feedback-based management control system at a European e-commerce company based in Germany, we test how self-determination theory could be expanded by neurological concepts and quantitatively applied to design performance evaluation systems under the consideration of the motivation-potential model of feedback. In its entirety, this thesis attempts to build common ground for the future of motivation research and provides in-depth examples of theorization upon the aggregation of the field of research, as well as practical application and execution.
Logistik, Produktion und Vertrieb im Spannungsfeld von abteilungsübergreifenden Zielkonflikten
(2016)
This dissertation integrates three papers on risk management in complex new product development projects (NPD) with an integrated perspective on the automotive industry. It seeks to provide a comprehensive access to the topic by highlighting the most relevant risk management aspects in NPD – processes and methods (chapter 2), organization and coordination (chapter 3) as well as culture and strategy (chapter 4).
The focus of chapter 2 lies on the identification and assessment of risks as the initial and most critical risk management steps. It illustrates the application of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method as an established multi-criteria decision analysis method to create transparency on the overall risk position of a selected highly complex NPD in the automotive industry. Chapter 2 confirms the AHP method as a suitable approach for stronger preventive risk management in complex NPD with stakeholders with conflicting functional perspectives. This sets the stage for chapter 3 and a subsequent consideration of organization and coordination.
Chapter 3 considers an issue of organization and coordination in complex NPD that is mainly based on the fact that the involved stakeholders have individual targets and rely on concurrent processes. The selected automotive industry example illustrates the resulting managerial challenge of balancing the overall NPD requirements such as product characteristics and development lead time (system perspective) and the targets of single stakeholders in NPD (individual perspective). The NK model as an important setting for search builds the methodical basis to solve this issue and results in optimized organizational and coordination setups.
The implications on risk management in complex NPD as a result of newly emerging NPD types in the automotive industry are subject to chapter 4. These implications are in line with profound industry changes that include changes in the requirements of customers and markets. Chapter 4 uses complexity theory and deploys the lens of complex adaptive systems (CAS) to NPD to outline the emerging NPD types and their implications on risk framing activities. An extended risk framework is derived as basis that addresses the cultural and strategic shift in the automotive industry with regard to managing risk in emerging NPD types.
Upper echelons theory
(2012)
Transportation is the backbone of globalization and international trade. Moving goods over long distances enables companies to access new markets and consumers to buy products from other parts of the world. Global trade is particularly driven by sea freight due to low cost and air cargo owing to its high speed, making both transport modes key for many industries. Anticipating future developments in transportation remains a black box for many companies. The logistics sector is characterized by high price uncertainty, market volatility, and product complexity. Transport is often organized manually and only based on employees’ experience, making it prone to error. Recent trends in international trade further complicate companies’ decisionmaking. Trends include changes in global demand, particularly driven by growing wealth in Asian countries, leading to shifts in freight rates on major trade lanes. The risk of supply chain disruptions, such as delays of container vessels, has also been increasing in the last few years. More frequent extreme weather events caused by climate change and higher traffic on shipping routes make on-time arrivals more challenging than ever. Recent breakthroughs in research indicate that novel data analytics-based methods can help to increase transparency in transportation by supporting the decision-making of shipping players. It has become evident that machine learning enhances forecast accuracy, which could enable companies to reduce uncertainty in their logistics. In our first study (Chapter 2), we1 analyze the container shipping industry to predict delays of vessels. With a forecast accuracy of 77%, we identify important influencing factors for shipping delays. This primarily includes the time between ports, piracy risk, demographics, weather, traffic in maritime chokepoints, and port congestion. In our second study (Chapter 3), we present what methods need to be applied to predict spot rates in container shipping. With an accuracy of 89%, our forecasts support the decision-making of various shipping players in negotiating their transportation contracts. My dissertation journey then took me to the air cargo industry in our third study (Chapter 4). By assessing the predictability of long-term air freight rates, we show that machine learning improves forecasts, especially for trade lanes with volatile and complex price trends. As a result, we achieve an accuracy of 93%, enabling air carriers and freight forwarders to increase their operating profits by 30%. By proposing prediction solutions featuring high accuracy, robustness, and applicability in practice, this dissertation demonstrates that predictive analytics enhance transparency in transportation. It is our hope that more advanced technologies, such as machine learning, will play an increasingly important role in future decision-making on transportation.
1The term “we” in this dissertation always refers to the authors of Viellechner and Spinler (2020, 2021a,b,c)
Corporate Raider
(2002)
Experimental studies on risk preferences, investment risk disclosure, and motives for risk-taking
(2014)
This paper looks at the value-relevance of accounting data and measures of web-traffic for Internet firms listed on the Neuer Markt. In particular, the objective is to identify value drivers during the period from October 1999 to May 2000. In doing so, the study attempts to contribute to the understanding of the investment behaviour of market participants during that time, in a market environment characterised by rapid technological change and growth. The study subdivides Internet companies into Ecommerce and Enabler firms and analyses the value-relevance accordingly. It emerged that, across both samples, no significant value-relevance of traditionally applied financial valuation metrics such as earnings and cashflow could be evidenced. However, a positive association of total sales with market capitalisation can be shown for both samples, and in addition, sales and marketing expenses (Ecommerce) as well as research and development costs (Enabler) can also be identified as value drivers. Furthermore, the paper finds a number of webmetrics to be highly value-relevant and positively associated with market capitalisation, viz. customer loyalty, reach, page impressions and unique visitors. Combining and comparing the information content and value-relevance supports the notion that webmetrics, which are not part of standardised reporting regulations, did provide at least as much explanatory power for variations in market value as standardised accounting data.