Publication database

Greta Braun, a well respected German Professor of Management, joins the board of Infotech as one of only two non-executive directors. The first board meeting is a surprise since a 5 million euro acquisition decision is passed without any significant questioning or debate. After the board meeting she questions the board chairman about board functioning and procedures. The upshot is that she, as a newcomer and relative outsider, is asked to prepare her thoughts on these issues for the next board meeting. The board chairman suggests that two main subjects should be put on the table: First, how the board, which includes three founder-owners, should relate to the CEO (who is one of these); second, what kind of information the board should expect to get from management to do its job and fulfill its legal obligations.

This paper shows that privacy concerns in commercial contexts are not solely driven by a desire to control the transmission of personal information or to avoid intrusive direct marketing campaigns. When they express privacy concerns, consumers anticipate indirect economic consequences of data use, such as price discrimination. Our general hypothesis is that consumers are capable of expressing differentiated levels of concerns in the presence of changes that suggest indirect consequences of information transmission. We suggest that there is a homo economicus behind privacy concerns, not simply a primal fear. This hypothesis is tested in a large-scale experiment evoking the context of affinity-based direct marketing of insurances, which relies on data transmitted by alumni associations. Because opt-in and opt-out choices offered by firms to consumers usually capture non-situational preferences about data transmission, their ability to enact privacy concerns is questioned by our findings.

 

View all ESMT Working Papers in the ESMT Working Paper Series here. ESMT Working Papers are also available via SSRN, RePEc, EconStor, and the German National Library (DNB).

Personal Career Workout for Executives is a courseware developed to help instructors and executive coaches and consultants discuss topics related to careers and career management with experienced course participants and coaching clients. This courseware is developed to introduce the topic of careers and career management to adult audiences and to help program participants engage in reflection and/or discussions related to their own careers.

Die Finanzmarktkrise zwingt alle Banken zur Überprüfung ihrer bisherigen Geschäftsmodelle. Dabei ist für die Entscheidung der künftigen Positionierung die Kenntnis der Treiber für den Erfolg (gemessen an Rendite/Volatilität) entscheidend. Vor diesem Hintergrund haben die Autoren eine empirische Analyse der Jahresabschlüsse 65 europäischer Banken über den Zeitraum der Jahre 2000 bis 2008 durchgeführt. Dabei wurden fünf Treiber für den Geschäftserfolg identifiziert: Wachstums-Dynamik, Portfolio-Mix, Unternehmensgröße, Kostenposition und relativer Marktanteil. Langfristig bedeutsam sind dabei nur Wachstums-Dynamik und Portfolio-Mix. Die drei übrigen Faktoren haben zwar einen bedeutenden, aber insgesamt ‚überschätzten' Einfluss. Auf der Basis dieser Analyse wird anschließend aufgezeigt, wie eine Umsetzung in die jeweilige Management-Agenda aussehen kann. Entscheidend ist hier die Kenntnis und Bewertung der eigenen Ausgangslage im Markowitz-Portfolio.

With the current financial and economic crises and expectations or reality of a recession companies are looking at ways of optimizing the use of their resources and reconsidering their investments. Efforts at developing management talent and leadership capacities of company employees are often associated with significant costs and may, therefore, be among the first to undergo scrutiny in terms of feasibility and expected effectiveness. On the other hand, underinvestment in preparing people for leadership and management roles and tasks may come at a cost for the organization's survival, competitiveness, and future success. Although leadership development can take many forms, executive education courses and programs traditionally play a large role in the process, and constitute a major part of leadership development costs. This business brief outlines a number of issues that need to be taken into account when designing, developing, and delivering leadership and management development programs under the conditions of scarce financial resources.

A pdf file of this working paper may be available at INSEAD.

In 2010 the legal barriers for international, intramodal competition in long-haul passenger transport in the railway sector will be abolished. This report analyzes the extent to which effective competition will arise in long-haul passenger transport after liberalization-from 2010 onward-and how co-operative agreements between European rail operators may impact the liberalization process. The study also provides an overview of the existing literature related to entry and intramodal competition in the rail sector, as well as intermodal competition between aviation and rail. In addition, it provides a review of the legal and regulatory environment of the sector at a European level and evaluates current organizations operating in it. The following are the main conclusions:- We find robust evidence for effective competition between low cost airlines (LCAs) and rail operators. A rail operator loses at least 7% of its passengers and 8% of its passenger kilometers due to entry by LCAs. We also find evidence of negative price effects of strategic LCA entry in both first class and second class. This demonstrates that LCAs are a significant competitive constraint for rail operators.- Based on a revenue & cost model ('R&C model'), only a minority of long distance origins and destinations (O&Ds) are profitable with respect to both operating profitability and total profitability from a pre-entry perspective - that is before entry by competing rail operators. This result does not change drastically even under optimistic but reasonable assumptions regarding future changes in demand, costs, and degree of intermodal competition.- An analysis of various entry strategies identifies the most profitable strategy as entry by an independent entrant with inferior technology. However, such a strategy is specifically vulnerable to legal and strategic limitations on exploitation of network effects (e.g. by imposing national levies or incompatibilities in ticketing or train schedules).- Overall, we find very limited evidence for intramodal competition arising on international O&Ds for long distance passenger travel after 2010, while past experience from airline alliances - although in a different competitive setting - promises significant efficiency gains as a result of international alliances.