„Full Range Leadership“-Modell: Kritische Würdigung und Anregungen zur Weiterentwicklung

Zusammenfassung  Transformationale Führung als inspirierendes und emotional aktivierendes Führungsverhalten erf?hrt aufgrund ihrer Wandlungsfunktion in gesellschaftlichen Umbruchsphasen eine sehr hohe Wertsch?tzung, auch wenn ihr Gegenüber, die transaktionale Führung, in der Praxis derzeit wohl noch eine st?rkere Verbreitung besitzt. Ein Abgleich transformationaler und zugleich transaktionaler Führung in ihrer fortentwickelten Form als Full Range Leadership Modell mit den Charakteristika des Ph?nomens Führung offenbart zentrale Schwachstellen. An diesen Punkten setzen überlegungen zu einer Aufwertung transaktionaler Führung mittels einer Integration effektiven aufgaben-, beziehungs- und wandlungsorientierten Verhaltens in das Full Range Leadership Modell an. Zudem bietet ein „führungspraktischer“ Ausblick einen Denk- und Handlungsansatz, der von einem wechselseitigen Einflussverh?ltnis ausgeht und Situationsfaktoren modellimmanent berücksichtigt.

The Car Cushion Hypothesis: Bigger Cars Lead to More Risk Taking—Evidence from Behavioural Data

Journal of Consumer Policy - Car traffic and accidents involving cars create an enormous societal cost, particularly in terms of negative consequences for public health. Mitigating these effects is...     

High School Dropouts and Sexually Transmitted Infections

People who drop out of high school fare worse in many aspects of life. We analyze the relationship between dropping out of high school and the probability of contracting a sexually transmitted infection (STI). Previous studies on the relationship between dropout status and sexual outcomes have not empirically addressed unobserved heterogeneity at the individual level. Using fixed effects estimators, we find evidence supporting a positive relationship between dropping out of high school and the risk of contracting an STI for females. Furthermore, we present evidence that illustrates differences between the romantic partners of dropouts versus enrolled students. These differences suggest that female dropouts may be more susceptible to contracting STIs because they partner with significantly different types of people than do nondropouts. Our results point to a previously undocumented benefit of encouraging those at risk of dropping out to stay in school longer.     

Einkommensgruppenspezifische Teuerungsraten

Als die Inflationsraten in Deutschland Mitte 2008 relativ hoch waren, wurde die vermeintlich starke Belastung unterer Einkommensschichten durch die Teuerung ?ffentlich diskutiert. Dagegen kommen Claus Christian Breuer und Jens Mehrhoff in ihrer detaillierten empirischen Analyse zu dem Ergebnis, dass die Inflationsraten sehr viel homogener waren als behauptet.     

Formal Rules in Product Development: Sensemaking of Structured Approaches*

Many scholars consider the use of formal structured approaches to manage product development as very significant for successful product innovation. Others consider them a predictor of the likely outcome of the processes. Structured approaches can be considered management technologies for product development. Prior research has addressed the design of structured approaches and has measured how different types or generations of these are related to different processes and outcomes in different ways. However, only limited research has addressed how managers and employees actually understand and makes sense of these methods. This paper investigates how structured approaches are translated through a number of interpretations into daily practices. The research draws on research in sociology and management accounting to analyze structured approaches for product development as a managerial technology that consists of rules that individuals must understand (i.e., make sense of). The paper presents arguments for building a model of factors that influence the sensemaking of structured approaches for product development based on Scandinavian cases. First, structured approaches are presented as a type of managerial technology that consists of rules. Second, a framework to classify structured approaches for product development according to their degree of elaborateness and exhaustiveness is derived. This helps to identify the types of rule systems in companies—and how these influence everyday practices. The sensemaking from rules to practice is implemented through a number of translations, based on the context, the history, and the authorized statements and feedback processes. Empirical findings show that structured approaches differ both with respect to their degree of elaborateness and exhaustiveness. Additionally, firms differ greatly in terms of how rigorously they enforce the rules. Furthermore, the importance assigned to them by functional managers and project managers differ greatly. Even companies with extensive and elaborate rule regimes enforce the rules in a flexible manner, and rules are often applied at the discretion of project managers. Practices are influenced by the interpretation, use, and feedback from senior managers. Observations make it possible to develop a model for the sensemaking processes that influences how a specific structured approach through sensemaking is altered, modified, and sometimes even cut off from influencing innovation processes. The sensemaking of rules might reverse elaborate and exhaustive rules into quite flexible systems in practice. One implication of this is that individual sensemaking of structured approaches for product development thus needs to be analyzed to understand managerial practices. Another implication is that it cannot be assumed, a priori that formal approaches are the same as exercised practices.     

Mobility in different generations of older persons: The development of daily travel in different cohorts in Denmark,Norway and Sweden

In the Scandinavian countries Denmark, Norway and Sweden, the proportion of older people in the total population is expected to reach about 25% in 2060. The ageing of the population has a variety of social implications. One aspect of population ageing that has relatively little attention in the Scandinavian countries is the question of everyday mobility. The purpose of this paper is to get a better understanding of the activity and travel patterns of different groups of older people, examine how travel- and activity patterns are developing during the life course, study the changes over time and how the “new” generations of older people behave compared to the older ones. The method used is cohort analysis of National Travel Surveys from the three countries in a 20 years perspective. Results show a significant period effect in car ownership and use among older people in Denmark, Norway and Sweden with a clear increase during the past 20 years. This is especially true for women. The increase in the number of driver’s licence-holders and car availability is reflected in travel mode choice among older people: both men and women maintain their car-use habits at old age. Another clear finding is that older people today travel more than the comparable age groups 20–25 years ago: everyday trip rates are higher and activities outside home are more common. While commuting and work-related trips decline after retirement, shopping and leisure trips do not start to decline before high age. From the cohort analysis we see that leisure and shopping trips are maintained in the period after retirement, and the car is important to reach shopping malls, health service, leisure activities, visit relatives and other social company.     

Kant on Virtue

In business ethics journals, Kant’s ethics is often portrayed as overly formalistic, devoid of substantial content, and without regard for the consequences of actions or questions of character. Hence, virtue ethicists ride happily to the rescue, offering to replace or complement Kant’s theory with their own. Before such efforts are undertaken, however, one should recognize that Kant himself wrote a “virtue theory” (Tugendlehre), wherein he discussed the questions of character as well as the teleological nature of human action. Numerous Kant scholars argue that Kant already erected precisely the kind of integrative moral architecture that some of his modern interpreters (while aiming to supersede him) wish to construct. For business ethics, this divergence of scholarly opinion is of crucial importance. It shows first that the standard portrayals of Kant’s ethics in business ethics textbooks—as rigidly deontological, narrowly individualistic, and hence unsuitable for the specific demands of corporate agency—might have to be revised. Second, discussions in the business ethics literature on stakeholder-engagement and managerial decision-making likewise stand to gain from a more nuanced picture of Kant’s moral philosophy. Third, a reassessment of Kant’s ethics with regard to questions of personal character and moral sentiments might also lead to a more favorable view of the relevance of his ethics for managerial practice. Last, but not least, the many current attempts to reconcile Kant’s freedom-oriented philosophy with virtue theories stand to benefit considerably from a better understanding of how Kant himself conceived of one such synthesis between the formal and substantial aspects of morality. This, ultimately, could lead to an important overlapping consensus in the academic literature as to the role and relevance of virtuous conduct in business.     

Inequality and capitalism

By participation in lotteries, people reject the goals of equality of outcome or of opportunity - fortunately because both are infeasible.     

Voluntary internalisations facing the threat of a pollution tax

This paper investigates how the threat of a pollution tax fosters voluntary arrangements under private information and how such arrangements (of the take-it-or-leave-it type) will look like. The objective is (i), to address a topical and policy relevant problem, and (ii), to highlight that the optimal contracts exhibit substantial variations, degrees of complexity and uncommon features. If the pollutee offers an arrangement (and this is the more likely and also more interesting case) the spectrum of solutions covers six different cases: 'no distortion at the top', 'no distortion at the bottom', 'no distortion in the interior' and a boundary solution (a pseudo contract of duplicating the tax outcome) applicable either in all instances of the agent's benefit or coupled with one of the conventional mechanisms. If the polluter offers a contract, the optimal incentive scheme is countervailing with the consequence that the signs of the payments are reversed, that the property of no distortion holds at both ends and that the polluter's best strategy is to duplicate the tax outcome if the actual damage is around the expected value. The government's threat encourages contracting and improves the allocation beyond what an actual intervention could achieve. This provides a potential role for governments in an otherwise Coasean framework. Received: 28 March 2003, Accepted: 10 October 2005 JEL Classification: D62, D82 Both authors acknowledge (exceptionally) helpful and detailed comments from an anonymous referee and suggestions from an associate editor of the journal.     

Joint Implementation: Strategic Reactions and Possible Remedies

This paper investigates the promising proposal of Joint Implementation (JI) to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. This was ultimately the only concrete outcome of the Conference on Climate Change in Berlin, albeit restricted to a pilot phase. The basic idea, given the public's awareness of global warming, sounds economically plausible: The industrialized countries, the only ones required to stabilize and lower carbon emissions, can search for cheaper reductions of greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries and economies in transition. However, this proposal leads to strategic reactions by developing countries reinforced by the fact that this cheating coincides with the interest of the industrialized country. In short, this proposal will lead to cheating (given asymmetric information) and will thus produce largely faked reductions in emissions. On the constructive side, an efficient mechanism retaining the spirit of JI is derived, which deters strategic reactions. This differs from a usual principal-agent problem through an additional hierarchical layer: a global authority (e.g. the Conference of Parties on Climate Change), an industrialized country and a developing country. The unavoidable loss that is even associated with an optimal scheme due to strategic, behavioural reality (the first best optimum is unattainable, except at the top) leads, of course, to much less glamorous predictions in emission reductions. Moreover, the implicit subsidization scheme focuses and favours on already 'efficient' partners.