Reputational risks and large international banks

The paper considers the causes, costs and consequences of reputational risk in large international financial institutions. A conceptual strategic positioning model focusing on clients, products and geographic arenas is superimposed on a flow of funds model based on the key financial intermediation functions. This nexus is used to identify important areas of reputational risk, which are then documented in an inventory of adverse events in recent banking history, and explained in terms of behavior failures in compliance, public expectations and behavioral norms. This framework is then used to position empirical studies of reputational risk in the literature, and a normative discussion of reputational risk governance and bank culture.     

Cross‐border mergers and acquisitions in services: The role of policy and industrial structure

This paper explores the role of policy and economic structure in determining international mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in services sectors. The analysis is based on bilateral sectoral M&A flow data and detailed information on policy barriers from a new database. Restrictive investment policies are found to reduce the probability of M&A inflows, controlling for bilateral frictions such as geography. This negative effect, however, is mitigated in countries with relatively large shares of manufacturing and (to a lesser extent) services in GDP. The same result holds for the number of M&A deals concluded. Findings are robust to accounting for the potential endogeneity of policy restrictiveness. The evidence suggests that the impact of policy is state‐dependent and related to the composition of GDP in the target economy.     

Characterising Euro Area Multinationals

This study uses firm‐level data on a large sample of European manufacturing firms to investigate the links between opening up foreign affiliates and firms’ productivity. The analysis is guided by recent theoretical models of international trade with firm heterogeneity. The paper finds that while only a small share of euro area firms locate affiliates abroad, these firms account for over‐proportionally large shares of output, employment and profits in their home countries. They have higher survival rates and their productivity growth is also higher. The strongest contribution is by productivity growth of existing firms with a multinational status rather than entry into the multinational status. Finally, there are performance premia for multinationals with a large number of affiliates abroad relative to those with a small number.     

Advertising and Economic Development

In this article it is argued that West Germany has developed into the largest advertising market with the highest productivity per employee in Western Europe. We observe a continuous increase of net advertising turnover during the 1970s. Some extraordinary characteristics of the German advertising market (such as the structure of the TV advertising market and the printed media industry), which set it into sharp contrast to other European advertising markets, are discussed. Furthermore, we analyse the relationship between advertising and the business cycle movement (procyclical v. anticyclical advertising strategies) and we find that the majority of German business firms still pursue a procyclical advertising strategy although evidence seems to prove that an anticyclical advertising policy adopted during recessions will result in higher market shares and strengthened market positions of advertised brands.     

One‐off export events

Isolated single‐month, one‐off export transactions (observed once in a 49‐month window) turn out to be the dominant spell length in granular firm–product–destination trade data. Moreover, on average, for an export‐active firm, such one‐off events generate a significant part of foreign sales. These patterns cannot be explained by the lumpiness of trade (e.g., seasonal shipments), nor do they sit well with available trade models. To reconcile theory with the data, we introduce passive (i.e., unsolicited buyer‐side driven) exporting in addition to proactive exporting. Our empirical investigation establishes novel stylized facts on firm and destination characteristics associated with one‐off exporting.     

Commitment Strategies for Sustainability: How Business Firms Can Transform Trade‐Offs Into Win–Win Outcomes

This paper addresses a fundamental problem in corporate sustainability: How can corporations transform trade‐offs through win–win‐oriented governance strategies aimed at creating value? Drawing on new strands of research in business ethics, we employ an ‘ordonomic’ perspective and proceed in four steps. First, we sketch how sustainability semantics has evolved historically from a societal searchlight to a heuristics for business practice. Second, we discuss how business firms can make strategic use of moral commitments as governance contributions by deploying individual or collective self‐commitments as well as commitment services in their stakeholder relations. Third, we combine these four governance strategies with the three ESG (‘ecological, social and governance’) criteria of sustainability. We derive and illustrate with real‐life examples a 12‐box matrix as a tool for the strategic management of corporate sustainability. Fourth, we discuss the specific contribution of our ordonomic approach to the literature. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Offshoring and job loss fears: An econometric analysis of individual perceptions

We quantify the impact of offshoring and other globalisation measures on individual perceptions of job security. For the analysis we combine industry-level offshoring measures with micro-level data from a large German household panel survey and estimate ordinal fixed effects models. Our results indicate that offshoring to low-wage countries significantly raises job loss fears whilst offshoring to high-wage countries somewhat lowers them. Over our sample period from 1995 to 2006, offshoring to low and high-wage countries together can account for about 13% of the total increase in job loss fears. High-skilled workers are more sensitive to offshoring although their objective job loss risk is lower relative to low-skilled workers, which we argue reflects the fact that they have more to lose from unemployment.     

Employee Identities in Corporate Codes of Ethics: The Equal,Responsible, Subordinating,and Self‐Monitoring Employee

The article invites the reader to engage in a critical perspective. It emphasizes the role of language in formal corporate documents and the discursive practices of language use. It presents the results of a study that analyzes the corporate codes of ethics of the German Dax30‐companies. The study conceives codes of ethics as texts deploying discursive practices in order to position the various actors addressed in the documents. Four distinct identities have been elaborated: the equal, the responsible, the subordinating, and the self‐monitoring employee. This study demonstrates that codes of ethics propose various subject positions of the employee and through this positioning aim to regulate the identification processes. Copyright © 2011 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Information-seeking behaviour in interactive videotex. Training effects in an experimental investigation

First, we present a conceptual framework designed to measure information-seeking behaviour of non-professional users of Bildschirmtext, the German version of interactive videotex. A training programme is conceived with the aim of improving high school students' information-seeking behaviour in videotex by means of three consumer education lessons. Second, a laboratory investigation is described which set out to measure the influence of user training and the impact of three antecedents (sex, age, and school mark) upon four constructs of information-seeking behaviour, viz., precision of the information goal, user efficiency, content and amount of retrieved information, and satisfaction with the system. We found (a) that the training increased the ability to formulate precise information goals, (b) that the more precise the information goal the less the user efficiency and the less the satisfaction with the system, and (c) that there exist substantial sex-specific differences in information-seeking behaviour.

---

Zusammenfassung Um Bildschirmtext (Btx) wirkungsvoll nutzen zu können, muß der Teilnehmer sein Informationsverhalten den Speicherstrukturen dieses interaktiven Systems anpassen, die vom Suchbaum-Menue-Prinzip geprägt sind. Da das alltägliche Informationsverhalten des durchschnittlichen Verbrauchers nicht derart strengen Regeln folgt, ist fraglich, ob Btx eine erfolgreiche Karriere als Verbraucherinformationssystem beschieden sein wird. Für Zwecke der Untersuchung wird zunächst ein Konzept entwickelt, um das Informationsverhalten nicht-professioneller Nutzer an Btx messen zu können. Weiterhin wird ein Trainingsprogramm entwickelt, das geeignet scheint, Schüler/innen im Rahmen der Verbrauchererziehung in dem wirkungsvollen Gebrauch von Bildschirmtext zu unterweisen. Die Wirkung dieses Programms und der Einfluß dreier Antezedenzvariablen (Alter, Geschlecht und Schulnote) wird im Hinblick auf vier Größen des Informationsverhaltens (Präzision des Informationsziels, Effizienz des Nutzerverhaltens, Art und Inhalt der abgerufenen Informationen und Zufriedenheit mit der Btx-Nutzung) bei Jugendlichen zwischen 13 und 16 Jahren gemessen. Zur Analyse wurde das LISREL Programm eingesetzt, das die kausalen Strukturen zwischen beobachtbaren und latenten Variablen abbildet und überprüft. Es zeigt sich, daß (a) das Nutzertrainung die Präzision des Informationsziels erhöht, daß (b) präzisere Informationsziele die Nutzereffizienz und die Zufriedenheit mit dem System reduzieren, und daß (c) die Bildschirmtextnutzung starke geschlechtsspezifische Unterschiede aufweist. Die Ergebnisse unterstreichen, daß rechnergestützte, interaktive Informationssysteme für den Verbraucher erst dann von Nutzen sein können, wenn das Informationsangebot konsequent seinen Informationsfähigkeiten und -bedürfnissen angepaßt wird.

---

---

Eberhard Kuhlmann is Professor of Consumer Economics and Ingo Balderjahn Assistant Professor of Quantitative Methods in Economics at the Technical University of Berlin. Mailing address: Technische Universität Berlin, Franklinstr. 28/29; D-1000 Berlin 10, FRG.