Determinanten des deutschen Kreditzinsniveaus

Seit Mitte der 90er Jahre liegt das deutsche Kreditzinsniveau über dem Durchschnitt der EWU. Worauf ist diese Entwicklung zurückzuführen? Sind die deutschen Banken weniger effizient? Liegt der Zinsunterschied an den hohen Refinanzierungskosten? Gibt es in Deutschland mehr Kreditausf?lle, oder sch?tzen die deutschen Banken die Risiken realistischer ein? Dr. Stefan Sch?fer, 34, und Christian Weistroffer, 30, Dipl.-Wirtschaftsingenieur, arbeiten im Referat Banken, Finanzm?rkte und Regulierung von Deutsche Bank Research; Christian Weistroffer forscht au?erdem am Center for Financial Studies, Frankfurt am Main. * Der Beitrag gibt die Meinung der beiden Autoren, aber nicht unbedingt diejenige des Center for Financial Studies oder von Deutsche Bank Research wieder.     

Foreign Direct Investment in China: An Examination of the Literature

Since 1978, when China announced its ‘open-door’ policy to pursue the country's long-term national goal, the Four Modernisations, more than 220,000 foreign funded ventures have been approved. By the end of 1994 some US$300 billion of contracted investment had been agreed and US$95 billion of utilized investment, making the country the most important recipient of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the developing world. This paper analyses the phenomenon of FDI in China. It examines the different forms and composition of FDI, reviewing its development since the early days of the ‘open-door’ policy and analysing its importance for Chinese domestic and export industries, as well as Western investor companies. Furthermore, the paper focuses on the world-wide sources of FDI in China and its distribution by both region and industry. Additionally, it reviews the existing research on FDI in China, emphasizing the investment mode of equity joint venture.     

Contractibility,Strategy, and Network Dynamics: From Franchising to Licensing

The article examines the network dynamics from franchising to licensing due to the increase of contractibility of the franchiser's system-specific assets as determinant of the allocation of decision rights between the network partners. Based on the property rights approach, residual decision rights must be allocated according to the distribution of intangible knowledge assets between the franchiser and franchisee. Our analysis derives the following hypothesis: The more contractible the franchiser's system-specific assets, the higher is the tendency from franchising toward licensing. In addition, we investigate the impact of strategy change on the standardization (contractibility) of system-specific assets and the network governance. We argue that a change of strategy may increase the contractibility of system-specific know-how and consequently the tendency toward licensing. This study presents empirical evidence from company Getifix on the network dynamics from franchising to licensing.     

Blockchain in Additive Manufacturing and its Impact on Supply Chains

Additive manufacturing (AM) appears to be a particularly attractive use case for blockchain. This research combines inductive in‐depth interviews with the Delphi method to explore what potentials blockchain technology in AM creates, which adoption barriers firms need to overcome, and how supply chains will be affected by the integration of these two potentially disruptive technologies. The results suggest opportunities that are related to intellectual property (IP) rights management, the monitoring of printed parts throughout their lifecycle, process improvements, and data security. The most important barriers for blockchain adoption in AM are an absence of blockchain‐skilled specialists on the labor market, missing governance mechanisms, and a lack of firm‐internal technical expertise. By addressing important limitations of AM, blockchain is expected to improve the competitiveness of AM in parts’ production, catalyzing the trend toward more decentralized manufacturing resulting in more agile, resilient, and flexible supply chains and reduced logistics costs. Beyond that, blockchain‐based AM platforms are expected to enhance supply chain visibility, drive supply chain digitalization, support supply chain finance, and contribute to the emergence of shared factory systems.     

Social media adoption: A process-based approach

This research conceptualizes and measures social media adoption (SMA) of companies with a process-based approach and explains its antecedents of micro- and macro-environment, size, and ownership, as well as its consequence of intention to increase resources dedicated to social media. Based on data from 310 Turkish small and medium enterprises, the study first develops a conceptual framework on the pillars of internal and external stakeholder focus as well as relationship and information oriented implementation. Based on these two dimensions, it discusses the novel concepts of social customer relations, social stakeholder communication, social intelligence, and social responsiveness related to SMA. The study further indicates that ownership type and micro environment play a role in SMA and that path dependence exists in the interplay of current adoption and future intentions.     

Die Erwartungen der Wirtschaft für 2016

Last year saw only a moderate economic upturn, which will continue in 2016. Geopolitical risks and the loss of momentum in the emerging economies are obstacles that may hinder a positive trend in exports. However, the falling crude oil price and the low euro currency rate give hope for better prospects. On the domestic front, there is a strong focus on the digitisation of all sectors. Meanwhile, many problems result from the low level of investments and the high energy costs resulting from the energy transition. The insurance industry views the low-yield environment, which greatly intensified last year, as its main challenge in 2016.     

The Research Field “Modeling Business Information Systems”

The research field “Modeling business information systems” has a long tradition in the scientific discipline of Business and Information Systems Engineering (BISE). The present paper highlights research shaping the research field, discusses challenges impairing the development of the research field in the coming years, and outlines elements of a future research agenda.     

Evolutionary Business Information Systems

This article reflects on existing and emerging future challenges arising in the area of “evolutionary business information systems”, a class of systems that demand an evolutionary software development process and which support secondary design of various conceptual layers. We place both existing contributions and future research opportunities in context by referring to an idealized, preliminary system architecture. Finally, we emphasize our pluralistic perspective on the research object and the resulting need for methodological flexibility in the sense of interdisciplinary configurations of research methods.