Contributions published at Strategic Management and Business Policy (Egon Franck)

The substantial literature on the relationship between demographic diversity and team performance yields weak and/or inconsistent results. Using match-level data of all games played in the German soccer league Bundesliga over six seasons, this paper analyzes age, race and tenure diversity of the fielded team under different model specifications to test the robustness of demographic diversity effects. The empirical results reveal that the correlations between demographic diversity and the outcome of the game are confounded by mean values of the demographic attributes and contextual covariates.

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Mit der Liberalisierung des Postmarktes geht nicht zuletzt die Befürchtung einher, dass minimale Standards des Service public nicht mehr erbracht werden. Ein zentrales Element der vom Bundesrat vorgelegten neuen Postgesetzgebung ist daher die Beauftragung der Post mit der Grundversorgung. In der praktischen Umsetzung ergeben sich jedoch Schwierigkeiten: Definition, Umfang und die Art der Finanzierung des Auftrages beeinflussen wesentlich die Funktionsfähigkeit des Wettbewerbs.

In the literature addressing the determinants of TV audiences in sports, both the absolute and relative playing strength of the opponents play a prominent role. Regarding national team competitions, however, this study conjectures that patriotism matters as well. Analyzing the Swiss TV audience at 2 World Cups and 2 European Football Championships, this study finds strong evidence that TV ratings are highly affected by the sizes of the groups of foreign residents affiliated with the teams playing on the field.

This dissertation deals with the dynamics of collective action in free and open source software (FOSS) projects. Thereby the following questions are primarily answered: i) Is the problem of collective action shaped by dynamical forces? ii) How are different types of motivation related to the dynamics of collective action? It is basically hypothesized that different development phases provide distinct incentives, opportunities, and limitations for contribution to FOSS. It is therefore assumed that developers with different types of motivation are differently attracted by diverse development phases. The relationship between development phases and motivation is firstly modulated by network externalities and switching costs respectively by the S-shaped production function of software. Secondly, the relationship is heavily affected by incremental decision making that changes payoffs for the developers. It improves the information of the successor and allows antecessors to make a credible commitment and fosters conditional cooperation. The conducted empirica1 study supports the basic assumption that there is a relationship between development phases and motivation. Based on the findings of this dissertation one may presume that i) collective action is, depending on the production function of a collective good, to a greater or lesser extent shaped by dynamical forces and that ii) different types of motivation are related to the dynamics of collective action a1though there is no fix or universa1 relationship for a11 types of collective action. As hypothesized the motivation related to human capital increases in the initia1 phase, decreases in the intermediate phase, and increases in the mature phase of FOSS development. The relationship between peer recognition and FOSS development is, as suggested, u-shaped. Investments in reputation increases with FOSS development going on not logarithmically as suggested but linearly. However, not all predictions concerning the relationship between motivation and development phases proved to be correct (or almost correct). Contrary to the hypothesis pro socia1 motivation increases about linearly during development. Also not in line with the hypothesis personal requirement answers to human capital. Fun seeking was wrongly thought to decrease linearly in FOSS development because autonomy was predicted to vanish linearly. The data shows, however, clearly that fun seeking remains almost constant. The reason for this rather surprising finding may be that autonomy remains a1so more or less stable in all development phases. This result may be connected to the self-selection mechanism found in FOSS development. Because fun seeking is the most important type of motivation in FOSS development this has far reaching implications. Commercia1 projects may have a hard time to reproduce self-selection mechanisms. Employed programmers should select tasks to accomplish that are in the interest of the employer. In consequence, commercial projects that intend taking advantage of the FOSS production model should either deliberately foster other motivation types than fun seeking or treat the autonomy of their employees with special care.

In this paper, we provide an analysis of the principal economic issues in the professional team sports industry. We characterize the major peculiarities of this industry and give an overview of the most important league policy measures that are implemented to provide cross subsidies among teams. In particular, we focus on salary caps and compare the US major leagues with the European football leagues. Moreover, we show how to design an efficient salary cap system in the European football leagues.

Historically, European team sports leagues were run by their respective national and international associations and were legally independent from the professional clubs playing in these leagues. Recently, European leagues have adopted an organizational form similar to their North American counterparts who are organized since their beginning in a cooperative-like manner. Based on a comparative institutional analysis, we explain the advantages of the cooperative form of league organization over contractual governance. With our four-stage game-theoretic model, we show that contractual governance of sports leagues leads to larger investment distortions than cooperative league organization.

Anlässlich seiner Magglinger Tagung vom Mai 2007 hat sich der Arbeitskreis Sportökonomie e.V. sehr intensiv mit ökonomischen Fragen rund um den Fußball beschäftigt. Fußball ist in den meisten Teilen der Welt die mit Abstand populärste Sportart. Diese Popularität lässt sich nicht zuletzt auf die Einfachheit des Fußballspiels zurückführen. Gemessen an anderen Sportarten hat das Fußballspiel nicht nur sehr einfache Regeln, sondern es kommt im Extremfall fast ohne Ausrüstungsinvestitionen aus, denn wer einen Ball, ein paar Freunde und die Abgrenzung für zwei symbolische Goals organisieren kann, kann auf jeder freien Fläche dieser Welt in die Faszination des Spiels eintauchen und die fußballtypische Leidenschaft entwickeln. Wesentlich komplexer als das Fußballspiel selbst sind die ökonomischen Gesetzmäßigkeiten und Zusammenhänge, die das wirtschaftliche Geschehen im Fußball bestimmen. Der vorliegende Band soll dem Leser helfen, diese Komplexität zu reduzieren und die wirtschaftlichenDimensionen des Fußballspiels besser zu verstehen.

Dieser Artikel widmet sich der Bestimmung kurz- bis mittelfristiger Determinanten der Nachfrage nach Sportunterhaltung im TV. Mögliche Einflussfaktoren auf die Zuschauerzahlen einer Fußball-Highlightsendung werden sportökonomisch hergeleitet und ausführlich beschrieben, bevor ihre Bedeutung ökonometrisch überprüft wird. Die häufig diskutierte Unsicherheit des Spiel- oder Saisonausgangs erweist sich im Ergebnis als bedeutungslos. Signifikanten Einfluss auf die Nachfragehöhe besitzen hingegen der Sendezeitpunkt, die Möglichkeiten alternativer Freizeitgestaltung sowie einige grundlegende Unterhaltungsdimensionen des sportlichen Geschehens. Es zeigt sich dabei auch, dass nur ein Teil der Konsumenten sich im Vorfeld der Highlight-Sendungen über das Spielgeschehen informiert.

Torgler and Schmidt (2007) have recently found a positive impact of pay on player performance in German soccer, measured by the number of goals and assists scored within a season. This note shows that their result is spurious as both a player's wage and goal/assist scoring are driven by individual playing abilities. Holding the (unobserved) timeinvariant and the varying talent of a player constant, the positive pay-performance link is no longer statistically significant. In professional soccer, wages seem to buy talent rather than motivation.

Transfer restrictions have a long tradition in professional sports but came under heavy attack in recent years (e.g. Bosman ruling, Monti system). Based on a bargaining model with stochastic player productivity, we show that less restrictive transfer rules reallocate ex post bargaining power from players to clubs. This reallocation is efficient and in the ex ante self-interest of players. The right to charge transfer fees enables clubs to insure their players. The players, in turn, benefit by converting risky future income into riskless current income. Overall, player utility is higher under more than under less restrictive transfer rules.

Ein unternehmensübergreifendes Verständnis von Organisation ist von zentraler Bedeutung. Denn es hat sich gezeigt, dass die Organisation des Unternehmensumfeldes, z. B. Wettbewerbspolitik, und die Organisation an den Grenzen der Unternehmung - z.B. Outsourcing, Kooperationen - erheblichen Einfluss auf den Erfolg und die Gestaltung von Unternehmensstrukturen haben. Das Lehrbuch wurde in der 5. Auflage aktualisiert und ergänzt um die Bereiche `Dienstleistungs-/Service-Organisation` und `Organisation von Wertschöpfung`.

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