Academia as a league system

In this paper, we explain the stability of top university ranks and discuss attempts to create top national universities. Firstly, it is shown theoretically that in a world with differently-gifted poor and rich students, a three-tier university system may become very stable, with a super league of the best research universities that attract the best students, whether rich or poor. Secondly, it is empirically demonstrated that half of the highest ranked universities enjoy very stable competitive advantages. Thirdly, we examine attempts of China, France and Germany to overcome these disadvantages and to get into this super league. The recent attempt of China to create such super league universities shows the financial and societal costs of these attempts. France demonstrates how the concentration of financial resources on two newly built universities that complement the forces of existing ones—either real or only by labelling—may succeed. Despite the complexly designed and competitive German Excellence Initiative, ongoing since 2004, no German university was among the top 50 in the Shanghai ranking in 2021 (compared to one university in 2004). The mixed results of all these worldwide attempts may reflect the problem that late market entry into the super league may be too costly, given that the classical university business model is in the mature phase of its life cycle.

Marketing control in international headquarters-subsidiary working relationships of industrial goods firms: the role of environmental context

The use of marketing and sales control mechanisms is a core management activity for multinational corporations. However, research on controlling marketing and sales of international subsidiaries is scarce. In particular, the influence of a firm’s economic and cultural environment on different control mechanisms has not been thoroughly examined yet. In attempting to fill these gaps, we build on Jaworski’s (J Mark 52:23–39, 1988) framework from a subsidiary perspective on marketing and sales controls, applied by the headquarters of medium-sized industrial goods corporations. Through a rival model analysis, we determine the impact of the local environmental context on marketing and sales control types exerted by headquarters on subsidiaries located in foreign countries. To analyze the proposed model, this study deploys survey data of 184 subsidiaries from different industries and different European countries with headquarters in Switzerland. The results show that while environmental factors influence the marketing and sales control configurations, the effectiveness of marketing and sales controls is not contingent on environmental factors.

Resource allocation procedures for unknown sales response functions with additive disturbances

We develop a modified exploration–exploitation algorithm which allocates a fixed resource (e.g., a fixed budget) to several units with the objective to attain maximum sales. This algorithm does not require knowledge of the form and the parameters of sales response functions and is able to cope with additive random disturbances. Note that additive random disturbances, as a rule, are a component of sales response functions estimated by econometric methods. We compare the developed algorithm to three rules of thumb which in practice are often used to solve this allocation problem. The comparison is based on a Monte Carlo simulation for 384 experimental constellations, which are obtained from four function types, four procedures (including our algorithm), similar/varied elasticities, similar/varied saturations, high/low budgets, and three disturbance levels. A statistical analysis of the simulation results shows that across a multi-period planning horizon the algorithm performs better than the rules of thumb considered with respect to two sales-related criteria.

Staged entrepreneurship: the formation of hybrid and spawning entrepreneurial intentions

Most individuals find their way into entrepreneurship through combinations of self-employment and paid employment. However, prior research on entrepreneurial intentions has overlooked intended career transitions. Drawing on social cognitive career theory, we argue that, against the background of personal and environmental factors, individuals form career intentions that involve the combination of and transition between paid employment and self-employment. Such staged entrepreneurial intentions include the delay of entrepreneurial entry by intermediate stages of paid employment (i.e., spawning entrepreneurial intentions) or immediate entrepreneurial entry in parallel combination with paid employment at established organizations (i.e., hybrid entrepreneurial intentions). We test these theoretical ideas based on a survey involving 1003 individuals prior to career entry. The results indicate that individuals proactively align their envisioned career stages according to expected socio-cognitive enablers and barriers (i.e., their entrepreneurial self-efficacy, personal attitudes to entrepreneurship, subjective norms, and socioeconomic status). Notably, we find that individuals with lower levels of perceived social support for an entrepreneurial career more likely intend to combine their existing entrepreneurial activities with a conventional career at an established organization. Furthermore, individuals from lower socioeconomic status backgrounds as well as women are more likely to delay entrepreneurial entry by starting their professional careers in paid employment. The study’s primary contribution is the introduction of a novel perspective on entrepreneurial intentions based on individuals’ intended career transitions.

Beyond the beaten paths of forecasting call center arrivals: on the use of dynamic harmonic regression with predictor variables

Modern call centers require precise forecasts of call and e-mail arrivals to optimize staffing decisions and to ensure high customer satisfaction through short waiting times and the availability of qualified agents. In the dynamic environment of multi-channel customer contact, organizational decision-makers often rely on robust but simplistic forecasting methods. Although forecasting literature indicates that incorporating additional information into time series predictions adds value by improving model performance, extant research in the call center domain barely considers the potential of sophisticated multivariate models. Hence, with an extended dynamic harmonic regression (DHR) approach, this study proposes a new reliable method for call center arrivals’ forecasting that is able to capture the dynamics of a time series and to include contextual information in form of predictor variables. The study evaluates the predictive potential of the approach on the call and e-mail arrival series of a leading German online retailer comprising 174 weeks of data. The analysis involves time series cross-validation with an expanding rolling window over 52 weeks and comprises established time series as well as machine learning models as benchmarks. The multivariate DHR model outperforms the compared models with regard to forecast accuracy for a broad spectrum of lead times. This study further gives contextual insights into the selection and optimal implementation of marketing-relevant predictor variables such as catalog releases, mail as well as postal reminders, or billing cycles.

The influence of values in sustainable consumption among millennials

Due to climate change and global warming, sustainable consumption—as one possible solution to these challenges—is becoming more and more relevant. One generation that is affected the most by these developments are the millennials. While more and more baby boomers are retiring, millennials are now transitioning from being in training to being full-time employed, which marks a big change in their lives and makes understanding their values and consumption behaviour more important for marketers. The goal of our study is to clarify which values influence the building of attitude of millennials, if this influence differs according to employment status, and how attitude affects purchase intention concerning sustainable goods. Building to the list of values by Kahle (1983), the theory of planned behaviour, and perceived consumer effectiveness, we construct a framework to understand how values and employment status of millennials interact with their purchasing intention. Our results show that, among others, the values, that play a role during purchase intention forming, differ depending on the employment status. We also find that millennials place high importance on being in control when purchasing sustainable goods. Advertising and product managers can use our results to better understand and target the audience of their products as they construct their marketing efforts with the values of the audience in mind. In particular, messages that comply with the notion of being in control should be considered in every communication channel. This way, they may increase the share of sustainable consumers.

CHRO firm dinosaur versus CHRO role gorilla: the effect of CHRO company and role tenure on firms’ social performance

Academics and practitioners emphasize the rising importance of Chief Human Resource Officers (CHROs). CHROs act as heads of staff—they motivate the personnel and offer guidance. This study helps clarify the impact of increasingly relevant CHROs and reveals how their company and role tenure influence firms’ social performance. Drawing on a multisource longitudinal dataset of S&P 500 firms, we empirically validate our hypotheses. The sample contains 283 companies with 1944 firm-year observations from 2005 to 2017 and combines manually collected top management team data with data from Thomson Reuters Datastream. Our results show that there is a negative relation between CHROs with long company tenure and firms’ social performance, whereas CHROs with long role tenure positively relate to firms’ social performance. We also investigate the moderating role of CEO prior experience (i.e., HR experience, education, company and role experience) on the effect of CHRO company and role tenure on firms’ social performance. Surprisingly, CEO prior experience negatively moderates the relationship between CHRO role tenure and firms’ social performance. Overall, this article offers novel implications for the CHRO role and uncovers a distinction between two types of CHROs: CHRO firm dinosaurs versus CHRO role gorillas.

Optimal labor and capital utilization by financial firms: evidence from the German property and casualty insurance industry

Motivated by discussions whether financial firms use too much equity capital and labor, we analyze the input utilization in the German property and casualty (p/c) insurance industry in a newly constructed sample of firm-level data in the period 1956–2019. An earlier study for the U.S. (Cummins and Nini, J Financial Serv Res 21(1–2):15–53, 2002) finds that p/c insurers over-utilize capital. Compared to this study, our large historical dataset exhibits less heterogeneity and thus allows a cleaner identification of the impact of firm characteristics on input factor utilization. We show that German p/c insurers have substantial cost savings potential and that labor input is the main driver of inefficiency. We also document severe differences in firm characteristics driving the utilization of labor. Our results contribute to both the academic discussion on productivity and efficiency in financial services as well as to the political discussion on the future of work and capital regulation in this sector.

Profit uplift modeling for direct marketing campaigns: approaches and applications for online shops

In order to select “best” customers for a direct marketing campaign, response models are widespread: a sample of customers receives an ad, a catalog, a sample pack, or a discount offer on a test basis. Then, their responses (e.g., website visits, conversions, or revenues) are used to build a predictive model. Finally, this model is applied to all customers in order to select “best” ones for the campaign. However, up to now, only models that reflect website visits, conversions, or revenues have been proposed. In this paper, we discuss the shortcomings of these traditional approaches and propose profit uplift modeling appoaches based on one-stage ordinary regression and random forests as well as two-stage Heckman sample selection and zero-inflated negative binomial regression for parameter estimation. The new approaches demonstrate superiority to the traditional ones when applied to real-world datasets. One dataset reflects recent discount offers of a large online fashion retailer. The other is the well-known Hillstrom dataset that describes two Email campaigns.

Corporate social responsibility and bank risk

The concept of sustainable banking has developed significantly in recent years. Previous research found that corporate social responsibility reduces firm risk, yet this empirical evidence refers almost exclusively to non-financial companies and it remains unclear whether the risk-mitigating effect stems from the environmental, social, or governance pillar. The paper aims to analyse the impact of corporate social responsibility activities on bank risk and to explore its determinants. Using a sample of 582 banks worldwide over the period from 2002 to 2018, we confirm a risk-reducing effect of the corporate social responsibility activity on an aggregated level. The decomposition of this effect suggests that environmental activities determine this risk mitigation. In contrast, social and governance activities do not show similarly unambiguous results. In this way, our analysis highlights the great importance of environmental aspects in banks’ risk management.