Measurement of innovation activities in the knowledge-intensive services industry: a trademark approach

Innovation measurement in the knowledge-intensive services (KIS) industry is very complex, due to a lack of adequate innovation indicators. A rather new empirical approach involves the analysis of trademarks for the measurement. This paper aims to explore the use and relevance of trademarks for service firms. Data from the German section of the ‘Community Innovation Survey’ are used, and a survey with 278 participating firms is conducted. The results of the two independent empirical studies demonstrate that a trademark can be used as an innovation indicator, at least for knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) and product innovations. The results also illustrate which firm-inside and environmental features explain the use of trademarks as an intellectual property protection measure.     

Konjunkturschlaglicht: Slowenien—Fit für den Euro

HWWA-FORUM

Konjunkturschlaglicht: Slowenien—Fit für den Euro     

Canadian business perspective on nafta

This article presents some of the major criticisms concerning Mexico's entry into the NAFTA. Then it addresses these criticisms from the Canadian business executives’ point of view using data gathered from those currently doing business and not currently doing business in Mexico. The major concerns, costs, and benefits to Canadian firms have been identified. Candid comments from the business executives are contrasted with those views frequently portrayed in the popular press.     

What is the Value of Luxury? A Cross‐Cultural Consumer Perspective

International luxury businesses are challenged by the identification and satisfaction of the common needs and desires of global market segments. Although luxury goods have become available to a wider range of consumers, the traditional conspicuous consumption model has been transformed into a new experiential luxury sensibility that is marked by a change in the way that consumers define luxury. Based on an empirical study in collaboration with American, European, and Asian researchers, the results provide evidence that consumers in various parts of the world purchase or wish to purchase luxury products for varied reasons but that such consumers generally possess similar values. Regardless of their countries of origin, the basic motivational drivers of luxury consumers are similar among the financial, functional, personal, and social dimensions of luxury value perceptions, although the relative importance of these dimensions varies.     

Antitrust Laws and the Relationship Between Mergers, Stock Prices and Industrial Production: A Cointegration Approach

This paper tests Grossman and Hart (1980) hypothesis that antitrust laws such as the Williams Act of 1968 and the Hart–Scott–Rodino Act of 1976 dramatically reduced the impact of stock prices on mergers. Both the cointegrating and the casual relationship between mergers, stock prices, and industrial production are studied. First, our paper supports Nelson's findings that, while stock prices have impact on mergers, industrial production does not. However, the cointegration relation between stock prices and mergers is unstable. Second, causality testing indicates that the direction of causality has changed from two-way causation before the late 1960s to one way causation from the late 1960s onwards. In particular, stock prices no longer cause mergers after the late 1960s due to changes in antitrust laws. Hence, the evidence supports Grossman and Hart's hypothesis.     

Dissonante Öffentlichkeiten als Perspektive kommunikationswissenschaftlicher Theoriebildung

The article takes up an ongoing conversation among German communication scholarship about the question whether we need new theories and methods to understand the fundamental changes in public communication due to digitalization. We respond to an argument made by a group of academics around Christian Strippel and Annekatrin Bock, who maintain that communication scholarship has already begun to develop and to apply new and innovative methods to deal with new phenomena and problems that stem from digital technologies in communication. In our article we argue that the deficits in the current communication research lies in the discourse about theories. Thus, it is surprising that innovative methods are driving current studies, while the reflection about concepts and theories that help to understand the consequences of digitalization in public communication has been neglected. Provided that communication research is the academic discipline which does have particular competences in describing and explaining public spheres, we call for conceptual work and theory development that revisits public sphere theory to deal with the challenges of digital public communication in contemporary society. We propose to theorize public communication in the framework of dissonance. We suggest to introduce the notion of dissonance in public spheres in order to describe and explain the conditions of multilayered, synchronous and disparate processes of public communication and the contradictory consequences of changing public spheres. The latter are characterized by simultaneous entanglements of traditional mass communication and digital venues of communication which eventually create a hybrid media system. We also call for theory development that takes up critical, participatory and constructivist approaches of public sphere theory such as antagonistic pluralism. However, since these approaches account for the conflicts and antagonisms of contemporary pluralist society but largely neglect communication processes and infrastructures, we suggest to also look into new approaches of digital communication, such as network theories and combine them with the concepts of public sphere sociology. We think that it would be instructive and fruitful to use this newly developed framework of dissonance in public sphere to study communication processes and practices in journalism, civil society and political communication.Our article is organized in three sections. In the first part we discuss the terminology of dissonant communication and review approaches to dissonance as opposed to consonance. We revisit communication theory and music theory in order to develop a definition of dissonance. In the second section we take up concepts of public sphere which stress the coexistence of contradictions and antagonistic voices in the public realm which do not converge into consonance or consensus. We revisit studies on the nature of digital communication which focuses on network theories of communication and call for combining these two trajectories of social thought. In the third section of our article we propose a research agenda that focuses on the conditions of dissonance in public communication and the consequences of communication in dissonant public spheres for information flows and inclusion demands in contemporary society. Finally we argue that dissonant public spheres can be observed and should be studied in the fields of journalism, civil society and political communication. Thus, future research should focus on these areas.     

Rezensionen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Zur Wirksamkeit der Regulierung interner Kontrollsysteme – empirische Ergebnisse der Wirkung des KonTraG

Zusammenfassung Seit der Verabschiedung des KonTraG 1998 gibt es in Deutschland eine gesetzliche Vorschrift zur Erweiterung des internen Kontrollsystems um Aspekte des Risikomanagements. Die Erweiterungen der Verlautbarungen des IDW zeigen, dass damit auch ein ge?ndertes Verst?ndnis und eine intensivere Auseinandersetzung mit internen Kontrollsystemen seitens der Wirtschaftsprüfer und Unternehmen einhergehen. Dieser Aufsatz untersucht, inwieweit das KonTraG und die damit verbundene Ausweitung und Versch?rfung der Prüfungspraxis Einfluss auf Best?tigungsvermerke von Unternehmen, die nach dem HGB bilanzieren, haben. Darüber hinaus werden zus?tzliche, in der einschl?gigen Literatur best?tigte, Einflussfaktoren auf die Qualit?t von internen Kontrollsystemen sowie auf die Art der Best?tigungsvermerke als Kontrollvariablen einbezogen. Die Ergebnisse deuten auf einen positiven Effekt des KonTraG hin und zeigen mit Hilfe der Difference-in-Difference Methodologie nach der Berücksichtigung von St?rvariablen eine signifikante Zunahme von beschr?nkten Best?tigungsvermerken nach Einführung des KonTraG.

---

Summary Since the issuance of KonTraG in 1998 Germany has regulatory requirements to supplement internal control systems with a risk management component. The extensions of IDW’s standards indicate also the need for an altered understanding and a more intense analysis with internal control systems by auditors and companies. This research tries to investigate to what degree the KonTraG and the related expansion and intensification of the audit affect HGB following companies’ audit opinions. Furthermore, we control for other confounding factors affecting the quality of internal control systems and internal audit opinions as indicated in prior literature. The results imply a positive effect of KonTraG and show, based on a difference-in-difference approach including potentially confounding variables, a significant increase in qualified audit opinions post-KonTraG.

     

Individual investors surpass their reputation: Trading behaviour on the Polish futures market

This paper examines individual investors’ trading behaviour by testing the presence of Monday and January anomalies on the Polish futures market, where individuals are the predominant trader type. Both anomalies are well established in the literature, and they are at least partially attributed to individual investors’ trading activities. We conduct an intraday analysis of trading volume, open interest, returns, and return volatility on the futures market in Poland and find the contribution of individuals to market anomalies to be grossly overstated. Hence, individual investors’ trading on the Polish futures market surpasses the prediction by the majority of investigations for mature stock markets.