Kaiserslautern - Fachbereich Wirtschaftswissenschaften
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Climate change and its effects are accelerating, with climate-related disasters surging. To tackle climate change, the reduction of emissions by means of climate policy is vital. As such, the purpose of the present dissertation is to provide deeper insights about market-based and non-market-based environmental state interventions. Using regression analyses, the empirical part of this doctoral thesis investigates the adverse effect of financial subsidy payments on the energy market. Findings indicate that subsidized renewables may depress the profitability of energy storages and lower their own market values. Research projects demonstrate that carbon pricing is a promising solution to counteract the adverse effect. The theoretical part of this doctoral thesis examines the implementation of a unilateral price floor in emissions trading schemes and emissions cap negotiations. Results suggest that, under certain conditions, i) a unilateral price floor can be welfare-enhancing and ii) negotiations can achieve the socially optimal emissions cap. The dissertation helps provide a better understanding of climate policy design and emphasizes the advantage of carbon pricing as a market-based approach.
The four essays deal with social motivators for human behavior in economics, namely social norms and social preferences. The first three essays present and analyze a particular social preference model, socially attentive preferences. The fourth essay gives a review of the theoretical economic literature on social norms.
Organizational Coordination of Digital Structures: The Effects of ICT and Values on Grand Challenges
(2022)
This doctoral thesis sheds light on organizing contributions toward grand challenges by
highlighting various effects on organizing values, coordination mechanisms, and digital
technologies. Grand challenges are defined as vast and complex problems affecting
organizations, governments, and entire societies. The objective of this thesis is to address such
global societal problems. Towards this end, at first a systematic literature review depicts the
overall process of addressing grand challenges. Second, building upon the holistic process from
this literature review, an empirical inquiry is conducted, scrutinizing the development of
organizing mechanisms and structures along organizing values. Third, digital technologies and
their role in the solution process are explored. Taken as a whole, the systematic literature
review offers a holistic overview over the solution process of grand challenges addressed by
organizations, while the empirically substantiated theoretical frameworks analyze and
highlight coordination mechanisms, organizing structures and values, as well as digital
infrastructures in great detail.
Organizational routines constitute how work is accomplished in organizations. This dissertation thesis draws on recent routine research and is anchored in the field of organization theory. The thesis consists of four separate manuscripts that contribute to related research fields such as agility or coordination research from a routine perspective while also extending routine dynamics research. Recent routine dynamics research offers a wide perspective on how situated actions within and across routines unfold as emergent accomplishments. This allows us to analyze other organization research phenomena, such as agility and coordination. Accordingly, the first and second manuscripts argue for the adoption of a very dynamic perspective on routines and the incorporation of these insights into agility and coordination research. This is followed by two empirical manuscripts that expand the routine literature based on qualitative research within agile software development. The third manuscript of this dissertation analyzes how situated actions address different temporal orientations (i.e., past, present, and future). Last, the fourth manuscript addresses the performing of roles within and through routines. In general, this dissertation contributes to overall organization research in two ways: (1) by outlining and examining how agility is enacted; (2) by highlighting that actions are performed flexibly to consider the situation at hand.
In the pre-seed phase before entering a market, new ventures face the complex, multi-faceted, and uncertain task of designing a business model. Founders accomplish this task within the framework of an innovation process, the so-called business model innovation process. However, because a set of feasible opportunities to design a viable business model is often not predictable in this early phase (Alvarez & Barney, 2007), business model ideas have to be revised multiple times, which corresponds to experimenting with alternative business models (Chesbrough, 2010). This also brings scholars to the relevant, but seldom noticed field of research on experimentation as a cognitive schema (Felin et al., 2015; Gavetti & Levinthal, 2000). The few scholars that discussed the importance of such thought experimentation did not elaborate on the manifestations of this phenomenon. Thus, building on qualitative interviews with entrepreneurs, the current state of the research has a gap that offers this dissertation the ability to clearly conceptualise the manifestation of experimentation as a cognitive schema in business model innovation. The results extend previous conceptualisations of experimentation by illustrating the interplay of three different forms of thought experimentation, namely purposeful interactions, incidental interactions, and theorising. In addition, the role of individuals in business model innovation has recently been recognised by scholars (Amit & Zott, 2015; Snihur & Zott, 2020). It is noticed that not only the founders themselves but also many other actors play a central role in this process to support a new venture on its way to designing a viable business model, such as accelerators or public institutions. It thus stands to reason that in addition to understanding how new ventures design their business model, it is also important to study how different actors are involved in this process. Building on qualitative interviews with entrepreneurs, this gap offers this dissertation the ability to study how different actors are involved in business model innovation and conceptualise actor engagement behaviours in this context. The results reveal six different actor engagement behaviours, including teaching, supporting, mobilising, co-developing, sharing, and signalling behaviour. Furthermore, it stands to reason, that entrepreneurs and external actors each play a certain role in business model innovation. Certain behavioural patterns and types of resource contributions may be characteristic for a group of actors, leading to the emergence of distinct actor roles. Thus, in this dissertation a role concept is established to illustrate how actors are involved in designing a new business model, including 13 actor roles. These actor roles are divided into task-oriented and network-oriented roles. Building on this, a variety of role dynamics are unveiled. Moreover, special attention is given to role temporality. Building on two case studies and a quantitative survey, the results reveal how actor roles are played at a certain point in time, thereby concretising them in relation to certain stages of the pre-seed phase.
This doctoral thesis investigates paths from an organization theoretical perspective. The respective debate is characterized by two almost entirely separately led discussions about path dependence, or alternatively path creation. Against this background, it is the objective of this thesis to reconcile these two streams of research and inquire into the possibility of coexisting paths in the form of path dependence and path creation. Towards this end, at first a systematic review offers an overview of the field of path-related research in the social sciences. Second, building upon the deepened understanding gained from this review, an empirical inquiry is launched to explore how a novel path is created at an information and communication technology company while this is still sticking, in a path dependent fashion, to an older path. Third, the dynamics between both paths are explored. Taken as a whole, a theoretically sound and at the same time empirically substantiated theoretical framework of the coexistence of path dependence and path creation is offered.
Routines are an everyday phenomenon and traditionally have been seen as mainly static. The current view on organizational routines however changed the overall conception of routines to a source of continuous change and therefore opened an entirely new focus upon the field. Research addressing this focus led to the understanding, that routines can be both a source of organizational stability as well as a source of flexibility and change. This is because of the influence of the actors which enact those routines. Since those actors think, feel and care and thus breathe life into routines it is beneficial to further deepen our understanding about their influences on organizational routines.
Even though the potential for change lies within the actor, only little light has been shed on the effect of emotions concerning the dynamics of routines. This is somehow surpris-ing, since emotions have become a recognized aspect of our organizational life over the years, and the importance of emotions in day-to-day activities has been confessed openly by many researchers.
Therefore, the guiding questions of this dissertation are how emotions influence the dynamics of routines and how the enactment of routines influences emotions? This is being explored over three papers. The first paper reviews the overlaps of routine and emotion research. The second and third papers are based on an ethnographic field study. Considering the insiders’ emotions in the second paper and the outsiders’ emotions in the third paper sheds light on the emotions of all routine participants and therefore aids in a more comprehensive understanding of the topic.
Drawing on a resource perspective, this thesis scrutinizes the role of digital technologies regarding employee intrapreneurial and innovative behavior. This is done by conducting four independent empirical studies which examine how digital technologies foster and inhibit employee intrapreneurial and innovative behavior. The first study investigates employee-perceived information technology support for innovation, work overload, and invasion of privacy as mediators of the relationship between digital affordances and employee corporate entrepreneurship participation likelihood. The second study examines the relationship between digital technology support and employee intrapreneurial behavior and how this relationship is moderated by management support for innovation and intrapreneurial self-efficacy. Analyzing employee techno-work engagement and employee-perceived techno-strain as mediators, the third study investigates the relationships of employee-perceived digital technology usefulness and complexity with employee innovative performance. Finally, the fourth study examines the indirect effects of perceived daily techno-support and techno-stressors on daily employee innovative behavior through daily high-activated moods. Findings revealed digital affordances to foster employee corporate entrepreneurship participation likelihood through employee-perceived information technology support for innovation and reduced work overload perceptions. Support by different digital technologies was also found to promote employee intrapreneurial behavior, but its relative impact varied with different levels of management support for innovation and intrapreneurial self-efficacy. Moreover, employee-perceived digital technology usefulness fostered employee innovative performance through employee techno-work engagement, while employee-perceived digital technology complexity had negative sequential indirect effects through employee-perceived digital technology usefulness and employee-perceived techno-strain on the one hand and employee techno-work engagement on the other hand. Perceived daily techno-support had a beneficial effect through daily high-activated positive mood. Perceived daily techno-stressors fostered daily employee innovative behavior through daily high-activated negative mood but inhibited that behavior through daily high-activated positive mood. Thus, findings indicate that by offering potentials for both resource gains and losses, digital technologies might be a double-edged sword for employee intrapreneurial and innovative behavior. Hence, with this, the thesis advances the research on employee intrapreneurial and innovative behavior as well as the digital entrepreneurship and innovation literature.
Complex global sustainability challenges cannot be solved by governance and technology alone, but rather demand a broader cultural shift towards sustainability. Various authors postulate that a social change towards more sustainability can be manifested by a shift in human consciousness towards a more spiritual mindset. Similarly, the contemporary discourse in business literature increasingly emphasizes the importance of spirituality for business sustainability. This cumulative dissertation attempts to explore how the individual’s spirituality may be connected to business sustainability. Therefore, I carried out three studies on specific research gaps in the broad field of the connection between individual spirituality and business sustainability. Paper one (Chapter 2) addresses the general connection between the individual`s spirituality and business sustainability. The goal of the applied systematic literature review was to gain an overview of the themes that are discussed in the related literature and build a cohesive framework. This paper contributes to the literature stream of spirituality in business.
Paper two and three focus on the individual level of spirituality and business sustainability. In paper two (chapter three), we address the spiritual practice mindfulness, a secularized, widely discussed Eastern spiritual practice that is gaining popularity in the Western (business) world. Katharina Spraul co-authored this paper. Mindfulness describes a nonjudgemental, nonevaluative process of paying attention to what is happening internally and externally. We connect mindfulness to business sustainability in such a way that we hypothesize that mindfulness serves as a moderator between the intention and behavior relationship in the field of green employee behavior. Employee pro-environmental behavior was found to be an important antecedent of ecological and economic business sustainability, such as green procurement, and ecological efficiency. In order to test this hypothesis, we applied a quantitative prospective design, assessing variables at two points of time. This paper enhances the theoretical strands of mindfulness research and employee green behavior.
Paper three (chapter four) was written in co-authorship with Katharina Spraul. In this study, in terms of spiritual practices, we focus on German part-time yoga teachers. We investigate the meaningfulness experience of multiple jobholders with the case of part-time yoga teachers. Empirical research has linked meaningful work to job satisfaction and health (social sustainability) as well as work engagement and performance (economic sustainability). We pose the questions: What were the motives to start the secondary job as a yoga teacher? Which job is perceived as more meaningful and why? How does teaching yoga affect the meaningfulness of the primary, organizational job? In order to answer these questions, we applied a mixed method design. On the one hand, we conducted narrative interviews with part-time yoga teachers. On the other hand, we asked these interviewees to rank and rate Rosso et al.'s (2010) seven meaningfulness mechanisms for their jobs (with which we calculated meaningfulness values of each job). With this paper, we address gaps in research on meaningful work and multiple jobholders.
Considering the outlined theoretical strands, this cumulative dissertation contributes to sustainable development by a differentiated discussion of the relationship between the individual’s spirituality and business sustainability.
This thesis aims to examine various determinants of perceived team diversity on the on hand, and, on the other hand, the individual consequences of perceived team diversity. To ensure a strong theoretical foundation, I integrate and discuss different conceptualizations of and theoretical approaches to team diversity, empirically examined in three independent studies. The first study investigates the relationship between objective team diversity and perceived team diversity, and as moderators individual attitudes toward diversity and perception of one’s own work team’s diversity. The second study answers the questions of why and when dirty-task frequency impairs employees’ work relations and the third study examines how different cognitive mechanisms mediate the relationships between employees’ perceptions of different types of subgroups and their elaboration of information and perspectives. Taken together, study results provide support for the selection-extraction-application model of people perception and the assumption that individuals can integrate objective team characteristics into their mental representation of teams, using them to judging the team. Moreover, results show that a fit between perceived supervisor support and perceived organizational value of diversity can buffer the effects of dirty-task frequency on perception of identity-based subgroups, as well as perceived relationship conflict and surface acting, through employees’ perceptions of identity-based subgroups. Also, perceived social-identity threat and perceived procedural fairness but not perceived distributive fairness and perceived transactive memory systems serve as cognitive mechanisms of the relationships between employees’ perceptions of different types of subgroups and their elaboration of information and perspectives. These results contribute to diversity literature, such as the theory of subgroups in work teams and the categorization-elaboration model. In addition, I propose the input-mediator-output-input model of perceived team diversity, based on the study results, and recommend practitioners to develop diversity mindsets in teams.