The impact of climate on life satisfaction

We analyse the influence of climate on average life satisfaction in 79 countries using data from the World Values Survey. Climate is described in terms of ‘degree-months’ calculated as the cumulated monthly deviations from a base temperature of 65 °F (18.3 °C). Our results suggest that countries with climates characterised by a large number of degree-months enjoy significantly lower levels of life satisfaction. This finding is robust to a wide variety of model specifications. Using our results to analyse a particular climate change scenario associated with the IPCC A2 emissions scenario points to major losses for African countries, but modest gains for Northern Europe.     

Target pricing: Demand-side versus supply-side approaches

The practice of target pricing has been a key factor in the success of Japanese manufacturers. In the more commonly known demand-side approach, the target price for the supplier equals the manufacturer's market price less a percent margin for the manufacturer but no cost-improvement expenses are shared. In the supply-side approach, cost-improvement expenses are shared and the target price equals the supplier's cost plus a percent margin for the supplier. Using a general oligopoly and Cournot duopoly models, we characterize the equilibrium and optimal policy for each approach under various conditions. We find that sharing cost-reduction expenses allows the manufacturer using the supply-side approach to attain competitive advantage in the form of increased market share and higher profit, particularly in industrial conditions where margins are thin and price sensitivities are high.     

Triggers of HR outsourcing decisions – an empirical analysis of German firms

This paper takes an explanatory approach to the triggers of Human Resource (HR) outsourcing decisions and evaluates them empirically. Our data show that many German firms have never explicitly considered outsourcing of HR functions. Obviously, explicit outsourcing decisions do not come into being automatically but have to be triggered. We analyze theoretically and empirically which triggers are relevant. In our definition, HR outsourcing includes a broad range of internal HR functions and the respective, externally procured personnel services (e.g., temporary agency work, payroll accounting, interim management, outplacement services, HR consulting, placement services and others).     

Rational Versus Intuitive Gatekeeping: Escalation of Commitment in the Front End of NPD

The unwillingness of a gatekeeper to let go of a fruitless new product development (NPD) project wastes valuable resources and hampers NPD performance. The onset of such escalation of commitment is likely to occur already in the front end of NPD, where high ambiguity and complexity make it hard to distinguish fruitless from potentially successful projects. This study investigates if a gatekeeper’s thinking style—whether they think rationally or whether they follow their intuition—can prevent escalation of commitment in the front end. Theory on cognition provides arguments for and against either thinking style’s influence on escalation of commitment, but empirical evidence on this matter is lacking. Our study demonstrates that gatekeepers who think rationally are less likely to escalate their commitment than those who follow their intuition. This result holds both in a correlational study of dispositional thinking styles, as well as in an individual‐level randomized experiment in which the thinking style of experienced practitioners before they take gate decisions is induced. Our findings provide ample opportunities for improving existing front end gate review practices, such as allocating candidates for gatekeeper positions based on their thinking style, training gatekeepers to think rationally, and increasing the use of gate‐decision rules and templates.     

Humankapital deutscher Fußballmanager

Based on the human-capital-theory we analyse the effects of managers’ characteristics on the sportive success of soccer-clubs. Relevant characteristics are a previous career as a player or trainer, an apprenticeship or academic study and the work experience as a manager. Over the last twenty years the proportion of managers with an economic education doubled. This general human capital affects success less complementarily than as a substitutive for sector- or club-specific human capital in terms of a previous career as a player. The work experience as a manager correlates positively with the teams’ league ranking. These results allow recommendations for recruiting new managers.     

Backing outsiders: selection strategies for discontinuous innovation

A key challenge in managing innovation is to explicitly identify ways to improve an organization's performance with regard to discontinuous innovation. However, discontinuous innovation does not fit the existing ‘frame of reference’ and hence requires a reframing of the traditional ways of innovating within the organization. More specifically, previous research shows that practices that work well in the context of incremental innovation do not work in the context of discontinuous innovation. Thus, the aim of this paper is to explore innovation practices that enable organizations to select innovation projects, which are ‘outside the box’ of its prior experience, i.e. are discontinuous in nature. Building on the experience of more than 150 firms across 12 countries, we have identified nine innovation practices for the selection of discontinuous innovation; these can be grouped into three clusters: enable, engage and experience. In sum, we identify that an organization needs to acknowledge that its choice to engage in discontinuous innovation will have consequences for the innovation practices chosen to select which discontinuous projects to carry forward.     

A contextual theory of organizational learning from failures and successes: A study of acquisition completion in the global newspaper industry, 1981–2008

This study develops and tests theory about the context‐specificity and outcome‐dependence of experiential learning in acquisition processes. First, we investigate whether learning from experience gained in different acquisition contexts is limited to influencing subsequent outcomes of same‐context transactions. Second, we analyze whether learning patterns in response to prior successes and failures differ across acquisition contexts, depending on two properties of these contexts—the degree of structural variance and the level of stimulation of deliberate learning. Learning is assessed with respect to an underexplored organizational goal variable in acquisitions: completion of a publicly announced transaction. An analysis of 4,973 acquisition attempts in the newspaper industry in 1981–2008 largely supports our theory. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The future of mobility and its impact on the automobile insurance industry

Among the trends impacting most industries are new mobility concepts, digitalization, urbanization, rising environmental awareness, and demographic change. The automobile insurance industry, in particular, is strongly affected by new mobility concepts, including autonomous, shared, and electric vehicles, which are expected to increasingly impact the risk exposure and insurance demand in the future. Identifying and assessing the resulting risk and opportunity landscape from these trends thus becomes a major strategic challenge for insurers. The aim of this paper is to analyze the trends that impact the field of mobility and thus automobile insurers. Based on this, we derive a set of strategic response measures for insurers to enable them to be prepared for the future of mobility.