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

Sportgrossveranstaltungen wie die Fussball- EM verschlingen häufig umfangreiche öffentliche Ressourcen. Oft werden Steuergelder in mehrstelliger Millionenhöhe für Infrastrukturmassnahmen (u. a. Stadienbau) ausgegeben. Aber auch für die Durchführung des Anlasses müssen grössere öffentliche Budgets bereitgestellt werden. Vor diesem Hintergrund taucht immer wieder die Frage auf, ob sich diese Ausgaben wirtschaftlich gesehen lohnen.

Eine augenscheinliche Gemeinsamkeit aller vier amerikanischen Major Leagues besteht darin, dass sie als Genossenschaften der Clubs organisiert sind. Im letzten Jahrzehnt konnten die Clubs der großen nationalen Fußballligen Europas ihre Autonomie gegenüber den Fußballverbänden erheblich stärken. Offenbar nutzen die Clubs die gewonnene Freiheit, um in Bezug auf die Ligaorganisation vergleichbare Entscheidungen zu fällen wie die Clubs in den nordamerikanischen Major Leagues, die seit jeher außerhalb von Verbandsstrukturen operieren. Das Hauptziel dieses Aufsatzes besteht darin zu erklären, warum die Genossenschaftsstruktur eine effiziente Organisationsform der Ligaaktivitäten ist. Wir zeigen mit Hilfe eines formalen Modells, worin der ökonomische Vorteil dieser hybriden gegenüber marktlichen Organisationsformen der Ligaaktivitäten bestehen könnte.

Media companies generally enjoy increasing profits if more customers watch a program. The viewer drawing capability of stars serves as a prominent instrument to increase the audience. The literature distinguishes between two different types of stars: highly talented and therefore ‘self-made’ superstars, and famous but ‘manufactured’ and thus rather trivial celebrities. Whereas ‘self-made’ superstars attract viewers by providing services of superior quality, ‘manufactured’ celebrities draw attention by fabricated fame. Illustrating the Pop Idol series and comparing the abilities of superstars and celebrities to generate and to capture value, we show why ‘manufacturing’ celebrities is a lucrative business for the media.

In the research project “Good practices of stakeholder view” three firms in the Swiss telecommunications industry were analysed in order to compare their stakeholder involvement. This paper seeks to illustrate how these three firms, namely Swisscom, Sunrise, and Orange, dealt with a particular problem all of them faced: the deployment of antennas for mobile telephony that in some cases was strongly opposed by the population. Thereby, the “Telco” firms were challenged as societal institutions and had to defend their licence to operate. The three firms chose different strategies to deal with the problem.

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The article presents an empirical analysis of the relationship between competitive balance and fan attendance in European Soccer Leagues. Seasonal average match attendance data in professional German, English, Italian and French football during the season 1963-1964 to 2005-2006 formed the basis of the empirical results. A dominating approach among researchers in measuring seasonal competitive balance is the idealized standard deviation of winning percentages and one reason for this is the measure's simplicity. Drawbacks of measuring competitive balance using the said approach has been pointed out by Michie and Oughton and this has been addressed by Cain and Haddock by proposing a different procedure.