Contributions published at Department of Business Administration (Egon Franck)

This review summarizes the current state of the art of statistical and (survey) methodological research on measurement (non)invariance, which is considered a core challenge for the comparative social sciences. After outlining the historical roots, conceptual details, and standard procedures for measurement invariance testing, the paper focuses in particular on the statistical developments that have been achieved in the last 10 years. These include Bayesian approximate measurement invariance, the alignment method, measurement invariance testing within the multilevel modeling framework, mixture multigroup factor analysis, the measurement invariance explorer, and the response shift-true change decomposition approach. Furthermore, the contribution of survey methodological research to the construction of invariant measurement instruments is explicitly addressed and highlighted, including the issues of design decisions, pretesting, scale adoption, and translation. The paper ends with an outlook on future research perspectives.

Borderline personality disorder is characterized by considerable heterogeneity. The present studies attempt to describe this heterogeneity by locating the borderline construct and its facets in the overall personality structure within the Circumplex of Personality Metatraits and by using the pathological personality traits of the ICD-11. Two studies were conducted with adults – a non-clinical group and a clinical group. It turned out that two facets of the borderline can be differentiated: the Borderline Internalizing Facet and Borderline Externalizing Facet, which have distinct personality underpinnings. General borderline was explained by Negative affectivity, Dissociality, Disinhibition and Detachment. At the facet level, the Borderline Internalizing Facet was mainly explained by Negative affectivity and Detachment, while the Borderline Externalizing Facet was explained by Disinhibition and Dissociality. Moreover, in both groups the general borderline was located close to Alpha-Minus (between Alpha-Minus and Gamma-Minus in the non-clinical group and between Alpha-Minus and Delta-Minus in the clinical group) and the Borderline Internalizing Facet and the Borderline Externalizing Facet were located on both sides of the general borderline. The results of our research revealed broader personality underpinnings of borderline personality disorder and distinct personality underpinnings of its facets.

This paper examines how workers’ earnings change after involuntary job separations depending on the workers’ acquired IT skills and the specificity of their occupational training. We categorize workers’ occupational skill bundles along two independent dimensions. First, we distinguish between skill bundles that are more specific or less specific compared to the skill bundles needed in the overall labor market. Second, as digitalization becomes ever more important, we distinguish between skill bundles that contain two different types of IT skills, generic or expert IT skills. We expect that after involuntary separations, these different types of IT skills can have opposing effects, either reducing or amplifying earnings losses of workers with specific skill bundles. We find clearly opposing results for workers in specific occupations—but not in general occupations: Having more generic IT skills is positively correlated with earnings after involuntary separations, whereas more expert IT skills is negatively correlated.

We consider a real discrete pricing problem in network revenue management for FlixBus. We improve the company's current pricing policy by an intermediate optimization step using booking limits from standard deterministic linear programs. We pay special attention to computational efficiency. FlixBus' strategic decision to allow for low-cost refunds might encourage large group bookings early in the booking process. In this context, we discuss counter-intuitive findings comparing booking limits with static bid price policies. We investigate the theoretical question whether the standard deterministic linear program for network revenue management does provide an upper bound on the optimal expected revenue if customer's willingness to pay varies over time.

The television broadcasting industry is of crucial economic and social importance. Traditionally, this industry has been dominated by free-to-air TV (FTV) but due to technological progress, subscription-based pay TV (PTV) has emerged as a competing business model. A key question for the PTV broadcasters is whether to air commercials in addition to charging subscription fees. Based on a theoretical model of asymmetric competition between a PTV and an FTV broadcaster, we examine the effects of placing PTV advertising on broadcaster market strategies, viewer demands, broadcaster profits and consumer surplus. We find that introducing advertising on PTV can induce a higher viewer demand on this channel but a lower viewer demand on the FTV channel. Surprisingly, consumers can benefit through the introduction of advertising in PTV and broadcaster profits can increase if the viewer disutility of advertising is sufficiently large. Our study provides an analytical framework for choosing and implementing an optimal PTV strategy when an FTV competitor preexists in the market. Furthermore, our study derives implications for policymakers and regulatory authorities by showing that additional PTV advertising is not necessarily socially undesirable due to the strategic market reactions.

We conduct an empirical study to examine the impact of the initial distribution of labor-related property rights on the allocative efficiency of labor markets for skilled workers in a highly competitive labor market (professional basketball). Specifically, we compare a regime where employers can trade workers to other employers without the worker's consent to one where workers have the right to negotiate freely with other employers and move without their employer's consent. Our results indicate that contrary to the predictions of the Coase Theorem, allocative efficiency decreases when workers have the initial right to negotiate freely and move to another employer.

Despite the devastating impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, it provided the opportunity to investigate factors associated with compliance with public health measures that could inform responses to future pandemics. We analysed cross-country data (k = 121, N = 15,740) collected one year into the COVID-19 pandemic to investigate factors related to compliance with COVID-19 guidelines. These factors include social norms, moral values, trust, stress, and demographic factors. We found that social norms to follow preventive measures were positively correlated with compliance with local prevention guidelines. Compliance was also predicted by concern about the moral value of harm and care, trust in government and the scientific community, stress, and demographic factors. Finally, we discuss country-level differences in the associations between predictors and compliance. Overall, results indicate that the harm/care dimension of moral foundations and trust are critical to the development of programs and policies aimed at increasing compliance with measures to reduce the spread of disease.

The aim of this study is to compare results of measuring the Schwartz (2004) cultural value orientations using multilevel confirmatory factor analysis (ML CFA) vs. the unweighted aggregated means (simple means) used in previous research. We conduct this comparison with data from the 21-item short version of the Portrait Values Questionnaire in 6 rounds of the European Social Survey (ESS). An advantage of estimating factor scores via ML CFA vs. simple means is that ML CFA weights the impact of the factors on their indicators empirically. It also permits simultaneously assessing Schwartz' 10 individual level and 7 cultural level values by decomposing the total variances of the 21 items into a within part (individual values) and a between part (cultural values), while controlling for random measurement errors. High intercorrelations between related values in ML CFA required unifying two pairs of cultural values. Comparing correlations with theoretically relevant macro indicators of the factor scores and of the simple means of the cultural values indicated somewhat higher external validity for the factor scores. Taken together, the findings suggest that the derived factor scores provide suitable macro indicators of Schwartz' cultural value orientations for future studies using the ESS data.

A pesar de la creciente legislación y adopción de estrategias sostenibles por parte de las empresas, la moda sostenible sigue siendo un sector de nicho. Los consumidores declaran una creciente preocupación e interés por el tema, pero no ha habido un incremento en ventas correspondiente, lo que se conoce como la brecha entre actitud y comportamiento. En este sentido, las colecciones y museos de moda sostenible pueden jugar un triple rol clave, divulgativo, educativo y de concienciación, con lo que se ayuda a subsanar dicha brecha. La presente investigación aborda de forma sucinta colecciones de moda sostenible a nivel nacional e internacional, centrándose a través de un estudio de caso en el museo Fashion For Good, el único museo dedicado exclusivamente a la moda sostenible en el mundo. Metodológicamente, para abordar este estudio de caso, se examinan fuentes primarias y secundarias y se presenta un análisis de la recepción por parte del público.

A key feature of education systems in German-speaking countries is apprenticeships, dual vocational education and training programmes. These provide students with general human capital and so, a central question is why are firms still willing to invest in these programmes. The theoretical as well as empirical research has consequently been concerned with firms’ costs and benefits of apprenticeship training and the benefits for individuals of taking part in apprenticeships. Recent research has looked at more general benefits of apprenticeships, such as innovation, adaption to technical change and lifelong learning.

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Die Nachhaltigkeitsberichterstattung entwickelt sich rasant und gewinnt auch für viele Unternehmen an Bedeutung, die Swiss GAAP FER anwenden. Trotz einer Vielfalt an Normen fehlt es noch an gangbaren Konzepten für KMU. Die Stiftung FER hat die Lücke erkannt und nimmt sich der Thematik in bewährt pragmatischer Weise an.

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Artificial intelligence (AI) enables corporate communicators to effectively reach stakeholders through the systematic collection of information, identification of patterns, and prediction of future behaviours. Voice assistants (VAs) such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home represent the fastest-growing AI-based technology across diverse geographical regions and languages. Such emerging voice-enabled agents offer novel communication and relational opportunities within, between, and beyond organisations. Following this rapid diffusion, many companies are launching voice-based initiatives driven by digital corporate communication (DCC) objectives. However, the unique characteristics of voice are likely to challenge traditional DCC principles. Drawing on in-depth interviews and rich archival data, this research introduces the digital voice communication (DVC) framework showing (i) how voice-based corporate communication initiatives generate value for organisations and (ii) how corporate communication, marketing, and commerce goals converge in the voice environment. Furthermore, this chapter critically examines the changes introduced by VAs while discussing threats and opportunities for organisations.