Globalisierung der Kommunikationswissenschaft

Empirical communication research was, on the whole, successful in increasing our scholarly knowledge about action, media and behaviour, on the micro-analytical level. Today, a communications community operating worldwide more often designs all-embracing conceptions to make our knowledge about human communication in its objective, social and temporal dimensions more transparent. It is the ambition of this paper to show, from a perspective of the history of scholarship, premises of thought, key concepts and theoretical tendencies, in order to reconstruct a theory of communications suited for examining globalization problems.     

European Works Council at General Motors Europe: bargaining efficiency in regime competition?

The European Works Council (EWC) at General Motors Europe is frequently cited as one of the few examples of an efficient body of employee representation at a European level within a multinational company. Despite the increasing threat of social dumping in the enlarged Europe, the EWC was able to agree with management the terms of compulsory European minimum standards for defensive employment and competitiveness pacts, thereby restricting the effects of coercive comparisons between factories located in different countries. In this article, we focus on this experience and illuminate the tensions of ‘micro‐corporatism’ caught between international solidarity and regime competition.     

Hazardous waste management in South African mining – a CGE analysis of the economic impacts

There is no doubt that improved hazardous waste management in mining and mineral processing will reduce environmental and health risks in South Africa. However, sceptics fear that waste reduction, appropriate treatment and disposal are not affordable within the current economic circumstances of the country. In particular, it is argued that higher treatment and disposal costs would weaken the country's international competitiveness in important export markets on the one hand, and place heavy adjustment costs on black workers on the other. Thus, improvements in waste management are not enforceable, from either an economic or a social point of view. This article deals mainly with the first aspect and touches upon the second. It investigates the short-term and long-term sectoral impacts of an environmental tax on hazardous waste in South African mining, using an open-economy multisectoral computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. The results bear out the expectation that the possibilities for shifting higher production costs are limited in an open economy. Moreover, the results also show that the brunt of the adjustment resulting from an isolated approach towards hazardous waste management will have to be borne by black workers.     

Wie motiviert man Unternehmertum in Deutschland?

Zwischen der Zahl der Unternehmensneugründungen und dem Wirtschaftswachstum besteht in Industriel?ndern ein deutlich positiver Zusammenhang. Welche Funktionen haben die Unternehmen im Wachstumsprozess? Was hindert bzw. f?rdert Unternehmertum in Deutschland? Wie kann die Politik die Unternehmer motivieren? Prof. Dr. Norbert Berthold, 55, ist Inhaber des Lehrstuhls für Volkswirtschaftslehre, insbesondere Wirtschaftsordnung und Sozialpolitik an der Bayerischen Julius-Maximilians-Universit?t Würzburg; Matthias Kullas, 29, Dipl.-Volkswirt, ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am selben Lehrstuhl; Dr. Michael Neumann, 34, ist Mitarbeiter am Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft K?ln.     

„Communication Excellence“

Literaturhinweise

Zusammengestellt von M.A. Lydia Ebersbach     

Teaching Economics to Undergraduates in Europe: Volume,Structure, and Contents

The structure and contents of undergraduate programs in economics and management sciences differ among the major European universities. Based on analyses of curriculums, course syllabuses, and adopted textbooks, the author looks at how much time is spent in pertinent programs, how time is allocated among different courses within programs, what common thematic denominators exist, and finally and most importantly, whether and in what way content taught in micro and macro courses differs. Based on examinations of how the coverage in major textbooks has evolved through successive editions, he also looks for trends and cycles in what is taught in undergraduate micro and macroeconomics.