Customer Care — Wertschöpfung durch Inbound Marketing

Mit sinkender Wirksamkeit und zunehmender rechtlicher Eingrenzung von Outbound-Aktivit?ten ger?t das ?konomische Potenzial von Inbound-Kundenkontakten zunehmend ins Blickfeld. Unter dem Schlagwort des „Inbound Marketing“ erh?lt das Customer Care damit eine st?rkere vertriebliche Ausrichtung. Allerdings muss dafür Sorge getragen werden, dass mit der Verst?rkung von Vertriebsaktivit?ten tats?chlich eine Steigerung und nicht eine Gef?hrdung der spezifischen Wertsch?pfungspotenziale im Customer Care erfolgt.     

Social Motives and Trust: Implications for Joint Gains in Negotiations

This study examined the role of trust via contingency model in a multi-issue multi-party negotiation setting and how it relates to outcomes. Results of a laboratory experiment with 288 undergraduate students confirmed both a main effect of Social Value Orientations (SVO), such that cooperative negotiators achieved higher joint gains than pro-self negotiators, and a main effect of Motivational Orientations (MO), such that pro-social negotiators attained higher joint gains than egoistic-oriented negotiators. Furthermore, the predicted interaction effect between SVO and MO, such that negotiators with a pro-self SVO attained higher joint gains in a pro-social, in contrast to an egoistic MO, condition was confirmed. This effect was fully mediated by trust. The dimension of trust that explained the SVO and MO interaction was that of concern for fellow negotiators as rated by oneself, as well as by an objective third-party observer. Implications for the strategic use of social motives and trust on effective information exchange and negotiated outcomes are discussed.     

Industry-Level Wage Bargaining: A Partial Rehabilitation—The German Experience

In order to reduce unemployment, it is often recommended that industry-level wage bargaining in Germany should be replaced by a more decentralized system. This paper provides a critical assessment of the current wage bargaining institutions and re-examines the case for a more decentralized system. Based on a theoretical model integrating Insider–Outsider aspects into the comparison, the uniformly superior employment performance of a decentralized wage bargaining system is questioned. We conclude that, rather than solely trying to decentralize wage bargaining, a promising policy option may be to improve the skills of the unemployed by efficient labour market policies and to foster institutional reforms such that wage bargaining takes account of the long-run employment consequences of wage setting.     

Temporary overpessimism: Job loss expectations following a large negative employment shock

Job loss expectations were widespread amongst workers in East Germany following reunification with West Germany. Though experiencing a large negative employment shock, East German workers were nevertheless overpessimistic immediately after reunification with respect to their job loss risk. Over time, job loss expectations fell and converged to West German levels, which was driven by a stabilizing economic environment and by an adaptation of the interpretation of economic signals with workers learning to distinguish individual risk from firm-level risk. In fact, conditional on actual job loss risk, East German workers quickly caught up to West Germans regarding the share of correctly predicted job losses.     

Why do countries combine the exemption system for the taxation of foreign profits with domestic double taxation relief?

Many European countries exempt foreign profits from domestic corporate taxation. At the shareholder level, however, all corporate profits are taxed, and double taxation relief is granted only for domestic corporate taxes. This paper attempts to rationalize this tax policy. In the presence of double taxation agreements which exempt foreign profits from domestic corporate taxation, countries may use shareholder taxes to tax these profits. The disadvantage of shareholder taxes is that they create incentives to sell domestic firms to foreigners. But double taxation relief for domestic profits may preserve domestic ownership. Our results imply that national dividend tax policies may be a factor contributing to the empirically observed home bias in investment.     

Schärfere Regulierung von Managergehältern in Aktiengesellschaften?

Zusammenfassung  Die Finanzmarktkrise hat einer breiten ?ffentlichkeit bewusst gemacht, dass Manager auch in notleidenden Unternehmen hohe Geh?lter und Bonuszahlungen erhalten. Darauf hat die Bundesregierung mit einem Gesetzesvorschlag zur Angemessenheit der Vorstandsvergütung reagiert. Die deutlichen Zuw?chse der Managergeh?lter in den letzten 20 Jahren führen zu der Frage, nach welchen Kriterien die Entlohnung von Managern und anderen Arbeitskr?ften zu bewerten ist. Kann die geplante Reform zu mehr Gerechtigkeit verhelfen? Prof. Dr. Bernd Noll, 55, lehrt Volkswirtschaftslehre und Wirtschaftsethik an der Hochschule Pforzheim; Fridolin Haag, 25, Dipl.-Betriebswirt, arbeitet als Projektmanager in einem mittelst?ndischen Logistik-Unternehmen.