Fast Track Opportunities for High Achievers? A Comparative Investigation into Career Advancement Patterns for In-House and Consultancy Practitioners

Consultancy? Or in-house department? Public relations and communication graduates usually extensively debate the “pros and cons” of the industry's two key employment options. However, to date there has been a lack of research into potential differences in required skill sets, career advancement, and promotional opportunities between these two employment types. Contrary to management research, public relations scholars have largely focused on traditional career advancement determinants, such as experience in years and gender, largely failing to embrace modern management research into career advancement. Based on the author's previous research into alternative career advancement factors, which has highlighted the importance of social competencies and networking skills for PR practitioners, this article sets out to investigate potential differences in career advancement factors and career development patterns for in-house and consultancy-based practitioners.     

Diversification at financial institutions and systemic crises

It is widely believed that diversification at financial institutions benefits the stability of the financial system. This paper shows that it also entails a cost: even though diversification reduces each institution’s individual probability of failure, it makes systemic crises more likely. When systemic crises induce additional costs (over and above individual failures), full diversification is no longer desirable as a result and the optimal degree of diversification may be arbitrarily low. We show that the analysis can be extended beyond diversification, such as to interbank insurance and financial integration.     

Livestock Disease Indemnity Design When Moral Hazard Is Followed by Adverse Selection

Averting or limiting the outbreak of infectious disease in domestic livestock herds is an economic and potential human health issue that involves the government and individual livestock producers. Producers have private information about preventive biosecurity measures they adopt on their farms prior to outbreak ( ex ante moral hazard), and following outbreak they possess private information about whether or not their herd is infected ( ex post adverse selection). We investigate how indemnity payments can be designed to provide incentives to producers to invest in biosecurity and report infection to the government in the presence of asymmetric information. We compare the relative magnitude of the first- and second-best levels of biosecurity investment and indemnity payments to demonstrate the tradeoff between risk sharing and efficiency, and we discuss the implications for status quo U.S. policy.     

Transformative travel as a sustainable market niche for protected areas: a new development,marketing and conservation model

Many protected areas worldwide are mandated to provide visitor enjoyment and sustainable heritage conservation but face growing challenges and competition. To satisfy modern aspirational markets, parks must design meaningful experiences delivering long-lasting participant benefits that cultivate visitation rates and a conservation constituency. Transformative travel can deliver such benefits through participants’ psycho-physiological transformation but market insights critical for experience development in parks are lacking. Our systematic quantitative review of 126 transformative travel articles provides those insights, linking experiential characteristics, participant traits and motivations to experience outcomes according to five transformative travel typologies pertinent to parks: health and wellness, nature-based physical activity, spiritual, cultural and volunteering travel. We identified 35 travel motivations, 14 participant traits and 23 experience characteristics linked to transformation and 28 purposefully or incidentally realised benefits. Transformative travel improved participants’ psychological, physiological, social, economic and environmental conditions, as well as satisfaction with and destination loyalty towards parks. Socio-demographic characteristics and propensity for independent versus social travel shaped choice of travel experience. Our results are uniquely conceptualised in a transformative travel framework and transformative market niche model which we apply to sustainable experience development and marketing in parks. We identify implementation possibilities and areas for future research and monitoring.     

Die Erhebung personenbezogener Gesundheitsdaten bei Dritten

The recently introduced § 213 VVG is linked to an interesting history and regulates an issues that had been discussed in the insurance industry for some time. In its application § 213 VVG is more particular than regulations by the German data protection act, at least concerning the collection of health data. For the processing and usage of data the regulations of the German data protection act still apply. Time will show whether § 213 VVG will lead to a reconciliation of interests of the insured with those of the insurer. The aforementioned two-week-period for the data survey might be a contribution to achieve this goal.     

„Prozessorientierte Produkt- und Kundenergebnisrechnung als Instrument der Sortimentssteuerung“

Einer strukturierten und systematischen Produkt- und Kundenbereinigung geht eine nach Prozesskostenrechnungs-Methodik erstellte Produkt- und Kundenergebnisrechnung voraus.     

Accounting in organized anarchies: Understanding and designing accounting systems in ambiguous situations

This paper explores the relationship between organizations in ambiguous situations, the technology of choice and the uses of internal accounting systems (systems of cost accumulation, performance evaluation and budgetary control). Accounting systems are examined in terms of the two elements of March's technology of foolishness (Civilokonomen, May 1971, pp. 7–12). Relaxation of traditional prohibitions in choice behaviour against imitation, coercion and rationalization suggest that accounting systems might be understood both in terms of their impact on sustaining and influencing an organization's culture and language and in terms of their ideological and legitimizing influence in maintaining systems of power and control in organizations. Allowing playfulness in the choice process suggests that accounting systems might be designed to facilitate creativity and innovation in organizations, insofar as these characteristics are appropriate in contributing to organizational effectiveness.     

A critique of some fundamental theoretical and practical tenets of present consumer policy

The paper begins with a critique of the normative foundations of present public consumer policy. In particular, the lack of an indispensible link between the policy goals and the interests of those concerned is stressed. The authors go on to characterize the available set of policy instruments as being frequently arbitrary, interchangeable, and not suitable for systematic evaluation. The conclusion is reaches that present consumer policy has an ex-post character, and the paper closes with an attempt to formulate the goals of a superseding policy with an ex-ante orientation.

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Kritik einiger theoretischer und praktischer Grundannahmen der gegenwärtigen Verbraucherpolitik

Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag entfaltet die Kritik an der normativen Basis der gegenwärtigen Verbraucherpolitik in einem kurzen Überblick. Die Verankerung verbraucherpolitischer Ziele, Programmatiken und Handlungsweisen am Marktparadigma wird problematisiert und der Prozeß der Zielbildung bei der programmatischen und pragmatischen Verbraucherpolitik als elitärer Zielfindungsprozeß charakterisiert, dem die Rückbindung an die Interessen der unmittelbar Betroffenen fehlt.Die Kritik an der unzureichenden Diskussion verbraucherpolitischer Zielsetzungen und ihrer Begründung bzw. Rechtfertigung bei der vorherrschenden Verbraucherpolitik wirkt sich notwendigerweise auch auf ihre Versuche zur Instrumentalisierung der genannten Zielsetzungen aus. Da die Ziele weitgehend leerformelhaft und in nicht-operationalisierter Form formuliert sind, bleiben die von verbraucherpolitisch orientierten Wissenschaftlern und Praktikern gemachten Vorschläge zu einer »effizienten« Instrumentalisierung in den Bereichen Verbraucherinformation, Verbraucherschutz und Verbraucherbildung auch meist willkürlich und austauschbar und entziehen sich vor allem einer systematischen Evaluation bezüglich ihrer Wirkungsweise bei der Zielerreichung.Die Ausführungen zur Organisationsproblematik von Verbraucherinteressen zielen vor allem darauf, den Charakter der Verbraucherorganisationen als Formen der Fremdorganisation herauszuarbeiten und auf deren besondere Legitimationsprobleme hinzuweisen.Die vorfindbare Verbraucherpolitik läßt sich grundsätzlich als ex post orientierte Verbraucherpolitik charakterisieren. Am Schluß des Beitrages werden Umrisse einer Umorientierung dieser ex-post-Verbraucherpolitik thematisiert, die prinzipiell dadurch charakterisiert ist, daß sie versucht, verbraucherpolitische Probleme durch rechtzeitige Einflußnahme und Eingriffsmöglichkeiten zu regeln. Ausgewählte Ansatzpunkte für eine solche ex-ante-Orientierung der Verbraucherpolitik werden zur Diskussion gestellt.

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Reinhard Rock is Professor of Business Administration and Bernd Biervert is Professor of Economics, both at the Gesamthochschule Wuppertal, P.O. Box 10 01 27, D-5600 Wuppertal, West Germany. Wolf F. Fischer-Winkelmann is Professor of Business Administration at the Hochschule der Bundeswehr München, Schwere-Reiter-Straße 35, D-8000 München 40, West-Germany.