Short reviews

Greater Manchester Low Pay Unit, 1991: The Good Employer: A Guide to Employing People. Available from 23 New Mount Street, Manchester M4 4DE, £5.00 paper.

Healey, P. 1990: From Shipyard to Housing Estate - the Transformation of the Hebburn Riverside 1979-1989. Department of Town and Country Planning, University of Newcastle, £8.50 paper.

Cameron, G., Moore, B., Nicholls, D., Rhodes, J. and Tyler, P. (eds) 1990: Cambridge Regional Economic Review, Department of Land Economy, University of Cambridge.     

Zur Übertragung biologischer Konzepte in die Betriebswirtschaft

Unternehmen sind — wie Organismen — offene und komplexe Systeme, die in st?ndiger Wechselbeziehung zu ihrer Umwelt stehen. Vor diesem Hintergrund werden im Beitrag die M?glichkeiten der übertragung biologischer Konzepte in die Betriebswirtschaft analysiert. Die Gegenüberstellung beider Wissenschaftsdisziplinen erfolgt dabei auf einer abstrakten Ebene und stellt eine metaphorische Beziehung her, damit die zwei an sich v?llig unterschiedlichen Disziplinen einem Vergleich überhaupt erst zug?nglich werden. Hierbei werden zahlreiche Parallelen deutlich. Die Grenzen der übertragung biologischer Konzepte ergeben sich allerdings im Hinblick auf die mangelnde Ableitung konkreter Handlungsempfehlungen, weil lediglich analysiert werden kann, was sich bew?hrt hat, jedoch nicht, was sich bew?hren wird.     

Employment and Environment in a Sustainable Europe

major challenges in Europe. The EuropeanTreaties require an integration of environmental, economic and social policies in orderto allow for a Sustainable Development. This is of special importance for the linkbetween environmental and employment policy. This paper starts with a definition of thethree pillars of sustainable development, the viability (resilience) of environmental, economicand social systems. With regard to economic development and the social field,these objectives are relatively easy to operationalise: GDP and employment are generallyused headline indicators of sustainable development. The total material input into aneconomy can be seen as an indicator showing the environmental impact.This view brings about major challenges for economic theory:We include the total material input along with resource productivities to describe, explainand evaluate possible developments of economic and environmental variables.With the help of the results from a German research project weshow the relationships between the indicators, the productivities and how they can beinfluenced by policy measures. The simulation results indicate the possibility ofwin-win situations concerning the environment and employment. Additionally, we investigatewhether the developed minimum conditions of sustainable development are valid for Austria.     

The links between active cooperation and eco-innovation orientation of firms: A multi-analysis study

The environmental orientation of companies is key for firms to gain a competitive advantage against peers. However, the high level of novelty and uncertainty involved with eco-innovations requires additional knowledge and capabilities that go beyond the firm and that can be achieved through cooperation. Thus, it is crucial to analyse how cooperation affects the elements that drive eco-innovation. This study tests the impact of cooperation on the environmental orientation of companies while innovating using structural equation modelling with partial least squares and multigroup analysis and a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis for a sample of Spanish companies. Results suggest that companies that do not cooperate are less eco-innovation-oriented and show lower dependence on external information sources, although their impact on the orientation to product and process innovation is higher. This work leads to some theoretical conclusions and implications for researchers and practitioners.     

Verfassungsrechthiche Aspekte der Reform der PKV

On January 1, 2009, the Act to Strengthen Competition in the Statutory Health Insurance System (GKV-WSG) became effective. By final judgement of June 10, 2009, the Federal Constitutional Court declared the health insurance reform compatible with the German Basic Law. Nevertheless, the GKV-WSG fails to comply with the constitutional basic rights of the private health insurance companies, such as freedom of professionalism, the guarantee of properties, the freedom of association and the basic right of general freedom of action. Furthermore the constitutional freedom of contract as well as the principal of protection of legal confidence are violated. In addition, with the GKV-WSG the legislator introduced an unconstitutional special charge: The private health insurance companies and their insurants are held liable to pay for public health needs instead of financing them by tax money. This results in a disproportional claim of private persons for public social needs which is inadmissible by constitution.