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In this bachelor’s thesis, the fundamental new trends in Human Resources, due to digital transformation for instance, will be thoroughly examined. Primary research focus is placed on assessing the concrete differences between performance appraisal systems at German and Chinese multinational companies.
Underlying Human Resources tools, such as the feedback, judgment and annual performance appraisal, will be discussed and disseminated as part of employee performance reviews and evaluations. This is intended to be achieved by offering fresh perspectives on the concepts of “New Pay” and peer evaluation among others.
In the age of digital transformation, groundbreaking technologies like artificial intelligence, create a myriad of opportunities for potential applications in Human Resource Management.
However, at the core of this research work stands the comparison between traditional and modern performance appraisal systems. Furthermore, the thesis aims at establishing a better understanding of these systems in practical fields, at the example of German and Chinese businesses. It is argued that benefits and shortcomings regarding new trends, technologies and innovations will play a major role for global corporations.
Therefore, this thesis delivers a broad foundation for understanding not only general HR performance management tools but also current research and very relevant ongoing industry problems.
A growing population, climate change, animal welfare and health concerns are issues with increasing relevance. They draw attention to new technologies that focus on more sustainable and healthier solutions. This thesis analyses the market of meat substitutes with the aim of getting a deeper understanding of the market drivers, what contributes to consumer acceptance and a successful market positioning. The focus lies on the factors that make meat substitutes successful alternatives in Germany.
The research includes previous literature, expert interviews and a marketing mix analysis. The secondary literature is used to introduce the topic, to analyse the market drivers and to gain insights into consumer food choice behaviour, whereas the expert interviews focus on market assessment and effective company positioning. The marketing-mix analysis is conducted on the basis of purchased meat substitute products which are compared to regular meat products. The researcher included a place analysis that takes the entire German market into account, as well as a promotional analysis that highlights effective marketing strategies.
Based on the findings of the thesis, it can be concluded that animal welfare, sustainability and health trends are major drivers of meat substitutes. The market is expanding and has great future potential. However, large scale consumer acceptance is highly dependent on the preferred sensory properties such as authentic taste and texture, as well as a product variety that meets German consumer preferences. All in all, the promotion of meat replacement products should focus on a combination of benefits that include both functional and emotional aspects.
This thesis assesses whether a momentum strategy, which buys past winner and sells past loser stocks, implemented in the German stock market yields positive returns. Additionally, it provides an evaluation of potential sources and implications to stock market efficiency. The findings indicate that momentum profits are on average positive and significant in a time period between 1999 and 2018 and that these profits, in general, seem to contradict the efficient market theory. Hence, after a review of behavioral finance models, these profits seem to be due to inefficient price reactions to new firm-specific news. Despite their strong positive average returns, momentum strategies yield significant negative returns which occur in times of market reversal after panic states and crashes.
Due to the global increase in temperature, China has been dealing with severely increasing ecological disasters. The Chinese government has therefore increased its environmental protection measures in the past 15 years. This thesis delivers descriptive results of these measures, taken from the last three five-year plans as issued by the Chinese government. This is being done by applying the expected results of these measures into a so-called integrated assessment model. Furthermore, this thesis elaborates how integrated assessment models can be used in order to assess policies, such as these employed by the government of the PRC in order to compute their overall socio-economic impact on factors like welfare-maximization and technological advancement. This is rounded out by exploring the possibility of creating a holistic assessment model that combines the potential of backstop- and abatement technologies with a global or regionally disaggregated assessment model.
Sustainable product offerings in food retailing have been increasing in the last years, making their way from specialized stores to mainstream food retail stores. It is the case of Germany in which sustainable food products are found in many retailing channels, even discounters. Many pieces of research have been focusing on the bio- and fair-trade labels effect on consumers' behavior, and increased interest has been put in the effect it has regarding WTP towards food products. These studies tend to conclude in a higher WTP towards sustainable labeled food products. However, the studies focus only on the valuation of the product qualities and leave the retailer format aside, which is the location where the product and the labels are being displayed and evaluated by the customer. This research will focus on assessing if the retailer format influences consumers WTP towards bio and fair-trade labels in the German food retail market. In total, 400 randomly selected participants answered one of four surveys regarding WTP towards food products in different retailer formats. Two retailer formats are considered discounters and supermarkets. This research analyses if the labels are performing adequately throughout all food retailing formats in order to provide valuable information for the future of sustainable consumption and regulation. In the end, we cannot conclude a statistically significant difference through the analysis of variance of the means of the label performance in both retailer formats.
The aim of this paper is to show different possible solutions by using a practical example, which lead to cost reduction in the logistics area. The thesis was examined whether a consolidation of external warehouses would lead to synergy effects which would result in cost reduction. For this purpose, target sizes were identified from the historical data of the company MS Powertrain Technologie GmbH and a growth forecast and a warehousing concept was developed on the basis of these target sizes.
The thesis was confirmed in the course of the work and different variants for cost reduction could be developed. After evaluating the possible solutions, a recommendation for action was drawn up for MS Powertrain Technolgie GmbH. This can be divided into operational interim solutions and a strategic concept.
This thesis deals with the determination of decision criteria for the development of a fixed-floating mix for non-financial firms and applies them to the example of Heineken.
Existing literature fails to offer a clear guidance on how to approach the fixed-floating decision. Managerial incentives, leverage, the availability of natural hedges, firm liquidity and the shape of the yield curve are frequently mentioned as factors influencing the fixed-floating mix of non-financial firms. I analyse a theoretical approach to constructing the fixed-floating mix and depict the difficulties that such a model based on historical data has in the current interest rate environment.
Conducting a peer group analysis, I study the trends in interest rate risk management in the brewery and alcoholic beverages industry. A clear tendency of the firms in the sample to maintain a high percentage of debt with fixed interest rates is visible. Furthermore, I analyse the risk-return trade-off and conclude that the importance of the fixed-floating split decision for the individual firm depends mainly on leverage and the firm’s capability to absorb volatility in interest expenses, measured by interest coverage.
Additionally, I determine leverage, the level of interest rates, the shape of the yield curve and the comparison to a core peer group as decision criteria Heineken should apply when reconsidering its fixed-floating mix in place. The analysis of these criteria leads to the conclusion that the current interest rate environment, financial metrics of Heineken and the comparison to a core peer group justify having a high percentage of debt with fixed interest rates and can even trigger Heineken to further increase the fixed portion of its debt.
In recent decades, the topic of increasing wealth and income inequalities has received growing attention in research. The focus was frequently placed on examining past developments and influencing factors, which might have produced the present distributions.
This thesis attempts to summarize the effects of past developments and tendencies on the distribution of income and wealth of households based on the findings of existing academic literature. An understanding of the underlying forces is particularly important to respond correctly and effectively to rising inequality. In addition, this thesis aims at presenting the distribution of income and wealth in the euro area with respect to similarities and differences across euro area countries. For this purpose, data provided through the Household Finance and Consumption Survey has been used. Furthermore, the observations have been compared to corresponding data on income and wealth distributions in the United States, allowing for a better assessment of the circumstances in the euro area. The Federal Reserve Board and the U.S. Census Bureau published data on household wealth and income in the United States, which has been utilized in this thesis. The observed points in time are 2010 and 2014.
The conducted investigations and analyses yielded the result that relevant developments have been the process of globalization, the technological advancement, the evolution of labour markets, the growing importance of capital, the changes in governmental policies and societal developments. Furthermore, it could be shown that both income and wealth tend to be unequally distributed within and between euro area countries. In fact, wealth appeared to be much more concentrated than income. Large heterogeneity across countries was detected. Nevertheless, the degree of inequality is less severe than the one observed in the United States.
In a fast-evolving world, technological innovations can disrupt existing processes and behaviors. The rising trend of digital collaboration brings new possibilities through technology and can have a significant impact on organizations and their employees. But during the implementation, decision makers tend to focus on the IT-part, leaving their employees with a new application with a broad range of functions which they don’t know what to do with. The new tool also can have complex implications on the way of working and must be learnt from the technical side. This results in the question, whether an individual end-user activation with a comprehensive change management and learning activities would be necessary for the implementation, which will be answered in this thesis “Collaboration technologies in DAX30 companies - How important is a targeted end-user activation during and after the implementation of Microsoft Teams and Co.?”. In order to cover the different aspects of a targeted end user activation the topic was split up into three research questions: 1. How should the skills and attitudes of employees change, so that collaboration technologies are used effectively? 2. What factors need to be considered in the change management for sustainable activation? 3. What is the ideal design of learning formats for an end-user activation?
To answer these research questions in a well-founded and valid way, the method of expert interviews was chosen after an extensive literature search. Therefore, 3 experts from this field were interviewed on the topic and the collected qualitative data critically analyzed on the knowledge basis of the literature. Also, this thesis is written in collaboration with the company Ernst & Young GmbH Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft, which provided information on the topic and experience of experts.
The results can be used for organizations to decide on relevance and the way and strategy of implementing a new collaboration technology. They showed, that an implementation can be very complex and that many aspects should be considered for the employees to be able to work effectively with the new technology. Most important is an user centric approach with the needs and expectations of the affected employees at its core, which should be individually developed after a careful analysis of each organization. The skills and attitude toward a new way of collaborating, the mentality in communicating and sharing culture of exchanging work and results should be applied by the employees in order to work effectively. Therefore, a targeted end-user activation is highly recommended during and after the implementation of the new technology.
The People’s Republic of China has now been a popular target of foreign investments for years as its continuous economic growth makes it one of the most promising markets of the future. While during the last decades, international corporations held a dominant position over native firms, in recent years operating on eye level has increased in importance due to China’s growing economic power. Because of the tradition loaded past of the country and the fundamental differences compared to most western cultures, frequently even multinational companies struggle to cope with the diverse cultural influences. Amongst those various cultural concepts, the term guanxi in particular attracts the attention of the western business world. While guanxi constitutes a fundamental part of Chinese everyday life, in the western world it is often associated with corruption and unethical business practices. This work aims to reduce cultural misunderstandings on the side of western firms and help create a deeper understanding for fundamental principles of Chinese networks. The question on which this paper is based on was which role guanxi plays in modern Chinese society and how western companies may capitalize on this concept. After examining the relevant literature as well as conducting two expert interviews, it shows how guanxi has been influencing the Chinese way of life for centuries and is still relevant in today’s Chinese business world. Form Human Resource Management to mobilizing financial resources, the success of a business in China is often closely linked to a company’s ability to manage guanxi. Therefore it is recommended for western firms to not only gain a deeper understanding of the concept of guanxi and its underlaying principles, but also actively invest in their own guanxi-network.