Publication records

China, Europe, and the United States are competing over whose image will be most reflected in rules and normst hat define digital markets. Regulatory measures such as Europe’s GDPR and China’s Cybersecurity Law combine privacy, security, and safety regulation. Driving factors are security policy as well as industry and trade policy. With China pulling into the pole position in the digital technology race, it is time for the United States and Europe to forge a digital governance alliance

In April 1520, Gaspar de Quesada and other Spanish Captains mutinied against their Portuguese admiral Ferdinand Magellan. After being retired by the Portuguese King, Magellan approached the Spanish King, Charles I, claiming to know a passage through the newly found continent to South-East-Asia. The king promised Magellan significant personal gain and full authority over an armada of five ships. When leaving Spain in 1519, Magellan did not reveal the details of his plans to the mostly Spanish captains of the other ships, but rather ordered them to just follow his boat. A minor signal of disobedience by Magellan’s deputy was met with immediate force and the expedition continued until Magellan ordered to stay in a natural harbor during Winter season and drastically rationed supplies. The case study describes a meeting between the Spanish Captains under the command of Gaspar de Quesada during which they debate their options, namely a mutiny to get control of the largest ship, San Antonio.
Using a historical case and setting, the case allows to discuss multiple issues of contemporary interest in the domains of leadership and (business) ethics, namely loyalty, authority, power, (dis-)obedience, psychological contracts (and their violations), organizational success, and triple bottom line thinking.

The overall learning objectives include discussing and understanding:

• the role of power and authority for leadership behaviors—including their respective benefits and potential drawbacks,


• the particular leadership challenges and behaviors when acting in VUCA settings, and


• the importance and limitations of loyalty, obedience and followership—including the potential need to demonstrate (or react to) different forms of disobedience (incl. mutiny).

In particular, the immediate issues that can be addressed by using the case are:

• Mutiny at the workplace:


• As a subordinate: When, why and how to do it?


• As a superior: How to react to it?


• (Dis-)obedience and authority (in professional settings)

The subsequent case discussion will then also allow addressing the following underlying issues:

• Authority and power


• Achieving follower buy-in


• Leadership in a VUCA world


• Loyalty (esp. from a middle-management perspective)


• Giving voice to values


• Psychological contract violations

Dependent upon the educational objectives of the instructor, the case can also be used to address the following additional/alternative underlying issues:

• Triple bottom line


• Stakeholder management


• Cross-cultural differences


• Law versus ethics


• Normative ethical theories

The Commission “‘Competition Law 4.0’” was set up by the German Federal Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy with the task to draw up recommendations for the further development of EU competition law in the light of the digital economy. The final report with 22 recommendations was handed over in September 2019.
The commission finds that the practical and actual power of consumers to dispose of their own data must be improved, clear rules of conduct for dominant platforms must be introduced, legal certainty for cooperation in the digital sector must be enhanced, and the institutional linkage between competition law and other digital regulation must be strengthened.

We build a framework where firm size is a source of market power in a frictional labor market. The key mechanism is that a granular employer can eliminate its own vacancies from a worker’s outside option in the wage bargain. Hence, a granular employer does not compete with itself for workers. We derive a structural mapping from a microfounded concentration index to average wages. Using the framework in Austrian micro-data, we find that granular market power depresses wages by 9-13 percent and can explain 40 percent of the observed decline in the labor share from 1997 to 2015. Merging the two largest firms in every labor market depresses market-wide wages by six percent.

This working paper was also published in the IZA Institute of Labour Economics discussion paper series: https://www.iza.org/publications/dp/12574

Prior research has argued that family firms are reluctant to consider external equity as a source of financing because they fear a loss of control, which would limit their socioemotional wealth. However, prior empirical research has neglected potential contingencies that determine whether family firms’ need for control affects their equity financing decisions. The purpose of this paper is to provide first insight into this research void.

The paper builds on rational choice theory and a logit regression using secondary data.

The study shows that the effect of family firm owners’ need for control on their consideration of external equity depends on the extent to which owners expect investors to interfere with management and the extent to which decision making is affected by emotions. Hereby, the present study provides evidence that family firm owners’ decisions to use external equity are more complex than previously presumed.

This study has several limitations that provide fruitful avenues for further research. Overall, the authors list and detail seven different limitations in the paper, e.g. the narrow focus on equity financing, the use of a partial model, the fact that the authors did not conceptualize differences between different types of investors (such as high net worth individuals, private equity firms and venture capital firms) in the model and further more.

The study shows that investors need to understand the complex interplay among family firms’ need for control, expected investor interference and emotional decision making, to correctly assess their chances of success when approaching family firms for equity.

Prior empirical research has neglected potential contingencies that determine whether family firms’ need for control affects their equity financing decisions. The present paper provides first insight into this research void.

With permission of Emerald

This chapter first shows that the phenomenon of luxury is also subject to a life cycle. In advanced economies, luxury has reached the seniority phase, where less is more often and in time, space, and leisure, as well as the ability to experience, decode, and enjoy the essential. This chapter also includes a detailed description of the size and functioning of different luxury markets. Tourism and the cars/yachts segment are by far the largest luxury market segments, with sales of around €400 billion each. In the future, however, the weights will shift towards tourism. Travel dominates the wish list of luxury.

The term "luxury" must increasingly be grasped intellectually. The chapter stresses the outstanding importance of status in society, which goes hand in hand with the consumption and possession of luxury. In addition it highlights the personal and cultural dimension of the phenomenon and shows ways how luxury might evolve further.

Hannes Gurzki and David Woisetschläger speak in their contribution of luxury as the extraordinary—as opposed to the ordinary—and investigate the question of the motives and modes of conduct of human beings, from aesthetics to self-realization. In a further article, they explain the motives and factors that trigger a consumer choice for luxury goods. This involves the creation of a need for the unattainable, the way to fulfilling it and the further development of the need for ever new experiences.

We study the transmission channels from central banks’ quantitative easing programs via the banking sector when central banks start purchasing corporate bonds. We find evidence consistent with a “capital structure channel” of monetary policy. The announcement of central bank purchases reduces the bond yields of firms whose bonds are eligible for central bank purchases. These firms substitute bank term loans with bond debt, thereby relaxing banks’ lending constraints: banks with low Tier-1 ratios and high non-performing loans increase lending to private (and profitable) firms, which experience a growth in capital expenditures and sales. The credit reallocation increases banks’ risk-taking in corporate credit.

With permission of Elsevier

Herbert Simon predicted in 1958 that the revolution in computers will force humans to consider our role in a world in which our intellectual power and speed are outstripped by the intelligence of machines. The purpose of this panel symposium is to invite thought leaders in the field of management to share how they consider the role of organizations in a world in which the predictions Simon made are about to be fully realized. In particular, we will focus on how organizations and their members adapt to artificial intelligence (AI) and how organizations learn from machines that are also learning from the (potentially biased) data the organizations generate.

With permission of the Academy of Management