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2. Introduction 2.1 The nature of the problem Organizational investments in computer aided information and communication technologies have expanded dramatically in most industries of the western business world over the last 50 years. The most central reasons for these investments in technological change are improved productivity; enhanced efficiency or quality; reduction of problems, mistakes, or danger; enlarged span of information, knowledge or control; and enhanced communication or prestige (Crespi et al. 2006; German Statistisches Bundesamt 2007). However, simply purchasing technology is not enough. In order to obtain an anticipated effect, technology must be used ¿appropriately¿ (Agarwal and Prasad 1997, p.15). Such appropriate use is called ¿technology adoption¿ throughout the study. It is contrasted with ¿technology acceptance behaviours¿ used to express the variety of behaviour from endorsing a new technology eagerly through fast or slow conformity with organisational decisions to hidden or open rejection. This breath of behaviour is often inter-situational and even inter-personal. It has the effect that many technology products do not fail in convincing management during the sales process; they are thwarted during test installations or in the rollout phase.

1. 1 Research Scope Ever since the introduction of social insurance legislation beginning in the last th decades of the 19 century, social scientists have been interested in analyzing the causal forces behind the development of the modern welfare state. Precisely, for most of the period the academic debate has hereby mainly centered on the following qu- tions: Why was the welfare state founded in the first place? And which factors have 1 contributed to its rapid expansion in the aftermath of World War Two (WWII)? With the advanced capitalist welfare states beginning to face increasing ch- lenges from the mid-1970s onwards, academic research has recently shifted from providing explanations on the rise of the welfare state to understanding processes of welfare state adaptation. In general, advanced capitalist welfare states confront today two types of challenges: on the one hand, pressures from post-industrial devel- ments, and on the other hand, pressures from global economic forces (see Buti, Franco, and Pench, 1998, pp. 17-26). Following Pierson (2001a), the most severe ¿post-industrial pressures¿ (p. 80) involve ongoing processes of deindustrialization, population ageing, changing household structures, and welfare state maturation (pp. 82-83). Apart from these domestic challenges, advanced capitalist welfare states have recently also been affected by developments occurring in the global sphere. While processes of international economic integration had already resumed in the imme- ate aftermath of WWII, they have significantly intensified during the last four decades.

The main cause of financial crisis may be found in the over-optimistic investing of b- ers that leads market prices away from fundamental values. However, in the aftermath of ¿excess¿ when stock markets tumble, it is usually the pessimists or short sellers who get publicly blamed. Despite the longstanding controversy on short selling activities, this market instrument remains a widely misunderstood concept by the public while it is an essential tool used by hedge funds for speculation and arbitrage. That is why it is important to investigate short selling for its different motivations and the resulting effect on stock returns, a subject whose empirical study is in its infancy. In his doctoral thesis, Sebastian examines convertible bond arbitrage, which is a typical hedge fund strategy that involves a long position in a convertible bond and a significant short position in the underlying stock. The short selling is employed as a hedge against movements in the stock price. With every change in the stock price, the hedge needs to be continuously readjusted, a practice which should lead companies with convertible bonds outstanding to have on average higher short selling activity than companies without convertible bonds. Furthermore, fundamental information should be processed differently in stocks with convertible bonds as stock price reactions based on the information are accompanied by the short selling of the convertible bond arbit- geurs.

Foreword Since the first studies by Bower and Burgelman in the early 1980¿s on the phenomenon of strategic initiatives, the use of strategic initiatives in the strategic management of diversified organizations now is omnipresent. Strategic initiatives are seen as efficient answers of management teams for pressing challenges. By making use of strategic initiatives, managers can proceed flexibly and with entrepreneurial vigor from broad ideas toward specific commitments. Managing initiatives is perceived as a complex challenge by most managers. Empirical studies show that about 70% of all strategic initiatives fail to reach their goals. This statistic shows us, that successful management and implementation of strategic initiatives requires a multitude of diverse managerial skills. To date, the complexity of strategic initiatives is most often not fully taken into account in strategic management research. Almost all studies investigating strategic initiatives have concentrated either on the external or internal organizational context or have solely identified contextual factors that undermine the successful implementation of strategic initiatives. This underscores the fact that most prior research on the relationship between the organizational context and strategic initiatives is too narrow and suggests the need for a more holistic approach.

This work contributes to a field in the literature of law & economics in which little research has been done thus far namely the relationship between corporate law and procedural law such as the rules of evidence and of civil procedure. As the reader will discover in the following pages, attorneys, accountants, and journalists, each play an important role in promoting corporate compliance with the law as gatekeepers and monitors against wrongdoing. Ido Baum evaluates the importance of the professional testimonial privilege - a rule that allows the professional to refrain from testifying with regard to information received from his client - in promoting this objective. He does so by looking at the efficient performance of the professional privilege in the United States, England, and Germany while taking into account systemic differences such as the starkly different civil procedure regimes and the structural differences in corporate ownership and control in the capital markets of the compared jurisdictions. Focusing on the relationship between the corporate counsel and the corporation, this book provides new insights into the internal effects of the corporate lawyer-client privilege on corporate decision-making. For example, it is shown that the narrow application of the privilege in some US states creates an inefficient incentive to inflate corporate boards in order to reduce the exposure to sanctions for corporate malfeasance. As accounting standards are converging around the world, the author provides some warnings with respect to situations in which accountants and lawyers choose to work together.

An investment in knowledge pays the best interest. Benjamin Franklin (1706¿1790) The knowledge economy Benjamin Franklin, scientist, publisher, founder, and first president of the American Philosophical Society is not only well known for his role as a founding father of the United States of America. He also invented products and technologies that are still used today, for example, bifocals and the lightning rod. In a world in which knowledge creation, application, and protection are essential drivers for a firm¿s success, his 2- year-old words of wisdom are still relevant and have not become any less important. Today, it is widely recognized that knowledge is one source for obtaining a leading competitive position. Strategic management research tells us that such a leading m- ket position ¿ or even a monopoly ¿ is a basic prerequisite for creating attractive e- nomic rents. This first of all makes knowledge a valuable asset or resource. Additi- ally, empirical results and management expertise indicate that knowledge creation and accumulation through research and development expenditures are important drivers of business success. These expenditures lead to the creation of new products or more - ficient production processes that in turn create higher sales volume or increase existing profit margins. In the end, higher sales and/or lower cost structures result in an - crease of the overall company profit. All else being equal, rising annual earnings drive the market value of a company upward.

Law and economics has been established as an important sub-discipline of economics. Looking at the ?eld, it is undisputed that the economics of tort law has been the subject of much study early on and continues to be. The analysis in that realm is centered on the internalization of external e?ects by the means of liability law, i.e. the allocation of a liability burden possibly depending on the behavior of parties involved in an accident. In the by now standard framework, introduced by path-breaking contributions such as Calabresi (1970) and Brown (1973), the outcome with regard to care-taking (and possibly the level of activity) under several liability rules, which are actually observed in practice, is compared to what is socially desirable. The objective of society usually is assumed to be wealth maximization. The set of results which may be called the central theory show that liability rules can indeed induce ?rst-best behavior by parties, as long as several core assumptions hold. After the central theory of the economics of tort law had been settled, contributors to the literature started to test the robustness of the conclusions obtained when these core assumptions are varied. The existent literature on the economics of tort law is rich and diverse. Yet, without doubt, there are still numerous questions in the ?eld which need to be answered and therefore require scholarly attention. The present book rightfully goes along that path. In a collection of chapters, di?erent subjects are examined from a theoretical standpoint.

Foreword In her dissertation Anna Krzeminska deals with the determinants and the management of make-and-buy decisions. Make-and-buy describes the simultaneous use of in-house prod- tion and external procurement of a good or service. Today make-and-buy can be found in many industries and corporate sectors; the simultaneous use of in-house production and external procurement can, for example, be found in the automotive, telecommunications, and IT industry, as well as in pharmaceutical research-and-development projects, the assignment of sales representatives, and in franchising businesses. Make-or-buy, in contrast, refers to the decision between the alternatives of in-house production versus external procurement (e.g. Boerner and Macher 2002) and has been studied extensively. Studies relating to the ma- and-buy perspective, however, are rare. Anna Krzeminska approaches this gap in the literature in the here presented thesis by investigating determinants, management, and performance implications of make-and-buy. Firstly, Anna Krzeminska reviews the existing research on make-and-buy. She points out that, in spite of a thorough literature research, merely 17 contributions on make-and-buy in the industrial purchasing context could be identified over the last 30 years. Analyzing the existing literature, she discovers an interesting paradox: while there is no evident consensus in the literature on whether transaction cost economics (TCE) is a useful approach to explain ma- and-buy, she finds that TCE is by far the predominant approach used to explain this phe- menon. Against this background she proceeds by systematically scrutinize the potential of TCE to explain make-and-buy.

The topic of commitment has a long tradition in the organizational behavior literature. For some 40 years now, the concept has been studied and quantitative empirical research has shown that commitment can be differentiated into several forms such as affective, normative, or continuance commitment. That is, some employees are committed to their organization because they want to be (affective), because they need to be because of low alternatives (continuance) or because they feel they ought to be (normative). Evidence clearly supports the assumption that affective comm- ment is positively related to a range of organizationally relevant variables such as performance, satisfaction, well-being etc. Normative commitment is also associated with these variables, i. e. is ¿good¿ for both organization and employee, but to a lesser extent. Continuance commitment, however, has been found to be largely unrelated to these variables; the only reliable association holds for turnover intentions. Other important research in the last decade or so has looked into the differentiation of foci or targets of commitment. The most prominent foci that have been identified are the organization as a whole, and teams, departments or work groups as smaller entities. (Other foci include work commitment, career commitment, commitment to the supervisor, etc. ). Research here has shown that commitment is usually stronger towards smaller categories compared to large inclusive ones (such as the organization as a whole) but that the strengths of relationships to other variables depends on the fit or match between the concepts.

Exactly forty years after Eugene Famäs (1965) article ¿The Behavior of Stock Market Prices¿ (Journal of Business), the play ¿E?cient Capital Markets¿ is still going strong. With his thesis, Frank Ecker is adding a new act to the play: His work is a combination of several new developments on the analytical and empirical capital market research front. Capital market e?ciency is based on two aspects. First, the ability of investors to identify a situation in which asset prices are out of the capital market equilibrium. Second, on the possibility of the market to make arbitrage pro?ts by driving the prices back to the equilibrium value. Both aspects are conditional on the set of ¿relevant¿ information. As a result, the basic question is: What is relevant information and how is it processed by investors? This work is building on the concept of information quality, information uncertainty or information risk. Famäs e?cient market hypothesis is just a special case based on the assumption that new information is absolutely correct and completely credible to all investors. In contrast, this work makes use of the more general assumption that new information can be characterized by very di?erent degrees of credibility, or qu- ity. The setting of initial public o?erings is chosen as one of the few capital market transactions arguably characterized by high information asymmetry between the ?rm¿s insiders (management) and outsiders (investors).

Foreword Innovation equally requires rational problem solving and interpretive space (Lester & Piore, 2004). It is a key challenge for innovation management to overcome this obvious dilemma, especially in the early stages of the innovation process. Ontologies as logical representations of knowledge bear the potential to enable the required balance between structure and flexibility. They provide a promising, yet largely unexplored approach for significantly improving corporate innovation processes. During the early stages of the innovation process, the so-called Fuzzy Front End of innovation management, decision-making in corporate practice is often ¿uncertain fumbling at minimal sight¿ (Hauschildt & Salomo, 2007), i.e. the existing idea selection processes tend to be ad hoc and somewhat intuitive. Due to this unsatisfying situation, in which new ideas are difficult to compare, inadequate risks are taken and projects are stopped too late, a generic framework for the early stages of innovation management is necessary. Ontologies, used to represent knowledge, provide powerful modeling potential. Developed by researchers from the field of Artificial Intelligence, ontologically based applications recently been widely applied in online business to business solutions. The so-called semantic web is also based on ontologies. Its high flexibility and easy adaptability recommend ontological modeling for broader use and application in a business context. The few existing examples in the field of HR management as well as in the field of knowledge management indicate the potential of corporate ontologies.

During the last decade the electronics industry faced growth rates considerably higher than average due to innovative products and the comprehensive use of electronic control devices for almost all types of technical products. Hence, printed circuit board (PCB) assembly can be seen as one of the most dynamic branches of the electronics industry. In modern electronics manufacturing, highly automated assembly systems are used to mount the electronic com- nents at pre-specified locations onto the PCBs. Because of the tremendous complexity of the process technology and huge capital investments, highly sophisticated planning and control strategies are needed for the operation of the assembly plants. In the past both industry and academia became heavily involved in the development of tools and planning concepts which help to master the huge variety of customized electronic pr- ucts. While previous research work has primarily been concerned with a high-volume, l- variety production environment, there is now an ongoing trend towards the use of highly fl- ible manufacturing equipment and the production of printed circuit boards in a mixed - quence with only small lot sizes.

Although services make up an increasingly larger share of global economies, how to source services is still a rather scarcely investigated field. The p- chasing of services from an international supplier landscape has increased dramatically in the last years, but this practical relevance has not yet echoed in academic research fully. The academic, professional and also political discussions around terms and phenomena such as ¿offshoring¿ are still ch- acterized by a lack of clarity and delimitation of (seemingly) competing terms. Another issue worth highlighting in this field is that despite the g- graphical dimension of this topic, how to best source certain complex service categories, such as for example marketing services, is still particularly under researched. Therefore, the dissertation of Ms Bals was on the one hand particularly concerned with bringing clarity into these terminological issues in the field of international sourcing of services. On the other hand, it focused to further develop the field of complex categories by highlighting specific aspects of sourcing marketing services. These goals have been accomplished exc- lently. Prof. Dr. Christopher Jahns Acknowledgements First and foremost I would like to take the opportunity to state my thanks to the people, who have significantly supported and enabled this thesis.

Von nahezu allen Unternehmen wird heute die Notwendigkeit einer geeigneten strategischen Positionierung erkannt. Ihre Bedeutung wächst dabei angesichts zunehmender Veränderungsraten und der Internationalisierung der Märkte. Die Managementforschung befasst sich schon seit langer Zeit mit diesen Herausforderungen, wobei sie sowohl komplexe Erklärungsansätze entwickelt als auch konkrete Konzepte und Methoden hervorgebracht hat.

One of the major goals in strategic management research is to identify firm-related and ind- try-related sources and determinants of profitability differences among firms. Accordingly, essential theoretical views explaining superior economic performance of firms include (1) competitive advantages realized by firms compared to their rivals and (2) industry structural characteristics. Both became prominent in strategic management research by the seminal work of Michael Porter who originally distinguished two corresponding performance effects, the positioning effect and the industry effect. Many empirical studies have already been c- ducted on these issues. The majority considered market entry barriers and industry concent- tion (as external factors), competitive strategies and resources/ capabilities (as internal f- tors) and strategic group membership (as an intermediate factor). From a strategic and long-term perspective, the sustainability of superior economic perfo- ance is of particular interest. Considerably less empirical studies have been conducted with respect to this topic. And there is no empirical study to date existing that has quantified for different industries the time span over which firms had been able to attain superior economic performance. Thomas Fritz bridges this research gap with his PhD thesis by determining the competitive advantage period (CAP) and the industry advantage period (IAP). He gives - sights concerning the sustainability of performance differences at both the intra-industry and inter-industry level.

Foreword In today¿s markets, companies face ever growing international competition, radical technological change, and increasingly demanding customers. These developments force managers to focus on core competencies and result in decreasing in-house val- add across industries. Adequate supplier selection and competent management of the supply base have thus become key firm success factors. As a consequence, purchasing and supply management (PSM) has developed into a powerful weapon for contributing to a firm¿s competitive advantage along dimensions such as cost, quality, and inno- tion. Such a contribution, however, critically depends upon the alignment of purch- ing strategies and practices with the company¿s overall business strategy. Only if the purchasing function supports the firm¿s competitive position can it effectively improve profitability. Unfortunately, existing research still lacks both the theoretical concepts and empirical foundation to provide detailed guidance to practitioners regarding how such alignment can be achieved and what impact it should have on firm performance. The doctoral thesis presented by Christian Baier develops and tests a comprehensive model of the alignment-performance link in PSM in order to close this knowledge gap. Drawing on insights from the market-based view, the resource-based view, princip- agent theory, and contingency theory, the author derives a solid theoretical understa- ing of the relationships between business strategy and strategies and practices at the functional level. By applying the theory of production competence to the PSM context, two critical levels of alignment are identified: strategic alignment, i. e.

The fact that customers can be a major source of innovation is well known. Research traditions on user-driven innovation have received a lot of attention since the first - search attempts in the early 80s. With today¿s trend of opening up the internal inno- tion process, innovation actors are no longer restricted to R&D or cross-functional internal teams but include external partners as well. Open innovation and open R&D models are means to manage the increased technological complexity and customer - mands in the global market place. The roles of customers are no longer restricted to p- sive consumers whose latent requirements need to be identified. Instead they have become an active and important part of the innovation process. Von Hippel's 'Democ- tizing innovation' is today¿s mantra, but how are we to integrate customers in the in- vation process and how can such a process be managed? Patricia Sandmeier analyzes how companies can establish a continuing transfer of c- tomer knowledge to the innovator. She draws on more than 22 European companies and her analytical framework for the case analysis is based on the rather new approach of Extreme Programming (XP) in the software industry. While this approach and the - derlying agile project management practices have received a high acceptance among software engineers, the concept is less known in the 'hardware world' of new product creation.

The Portfolio Selection Model developed by Markowitz in the 1950s offers a theore- cally founded approach to combining securities into a utility-optimizing investment portfolio, that is, a portfolio leading to the best possible trade-off between the expected return and investment risk. However, when applied in practice, the model often rea- es its limits as soon as certain central assumptions are not fulfilled. This holds es- cially for the assumption of perfect liquidity of all assets in the portfolio, that is, the ability of selling or buying any of these assets at any time immediately and without influencing its market price. A serious additional source of investment risk may arise when no organized and centralized market for a specific asset exists that would d- close the currently prevailing price level, and when the valuations of the asset differ strongly among market participants. Examples of such assets characterized by limited liquidity and valuations¿ heterogeneity are direct real estate investments, private eq- ty, and many other privately traded goods. A number of rather simple extensions to the Markowitz model allowing for listed - curities with limited liquidity have been developed to date. They are usually based on a price discount due to the lacking ability of an immediate sale. The work of Mora- ki, however, goes further and offers a complex model of market participants¿ behavior on illiquid markets with heterogeneous expectations.

Foreword Among researchers in the business and management disciplines, there is some kind of a common understanding that research should provide models, concepts and solutions for practical problems. In other words: research is practice-oriented and, personally, I subscribe to this maxim. Still, sometimes, it is important to pause for a moment and reflect upon one¿s own activities. The present thesis is one of those comparatively few pieces of research that do so by dealing with the scientific side of research and by asking a number of questions that target at the identification of the nature of a very recent subfield within business and management, namely Supply Chain Management. In particular, the author seeks to understand the processes that characterize the evolution of Supply Chain Management research throughout the past sixteen years and reflects upon avenues for future research - feeling that SCM research seems to have come to a crossroads. The systematic reprocessing of Supply Chain Management literature and the methodologically sound approach are impressive and enable Julia Wolf to contribute a valuable component to scientific practice and debate in this area. Her work also illustrates that, in terms of philosophical underpinnings, research in Supply Chain Management is still at the very beginning and I hope that this thesis gives rise to more work of similar kind.

Key for successful knowledge management is a balance between exploration and exploitation. Exploration means the generation of new knowledge in non-targeted search processes, while exploitation denotes the use of existing knowledge in targeted exploitation processes. The relationship between the two processes is one of fundamental tension; this poses a challenge to organisations which seek to make their knowledge management effective. There is a danger that exploration is neglected in favour of exploitation. This results in an organisation which lacks innovation capability. In order to prevent this, an idea has been put forward for debate in recent knowledge management research called ambidexterity, which means the simultaneous and balanced pursuing of both exploration and exploitation activities. In the following work, Tatjana-Xenia Puhan further develops this idea masterfully, by concluding that ambidexterity need not necessarily be implemented in one single organisation but can also be realised in a network of associated organisations. This approach, which she terms interorganizational ambidexterity is based on co-specialisation: one organisation is devoted solely to exploration, while associated organisations focus on their core competences in exploitation. Ms. Puhan additionally draws on the concept of the think tank. Think tanks play an increasingly important role in society: as a source of ideas, in an advisory capacity and sometimes even as devil¿s advocate for the purposes of injecting new momentum to current debate in society, business and science.

Der Sammelband vereinigt Beitrage von uber 50 Autorinnen und Autoren aus Wirtschaftswissenschaft, Informatik und Mathematik zu aktuellen und grundA - legenden Problemen und Losungsansatzen der intelligenten EntscheidungsA - unterstutzung in Unternehmen und erscheint zum 65.

Sebastian Knoll suggests that the successful realization of growth synergies is associated with a selective focus on specific growth opportunities, decentralized cross-business collaboration that motivates productive business unit self-interest, and a corporate management approach that guides and balances this self-interest in an evolutionary fashion.

The continuinggrowth of global Internet usage has a remarkable impact on retailing businesses. Customers expect to do business not only through stationary sales channels, but also to order online, pushing companies to introduce e-commerce sales channels. The distribution of goods through newly introduced e-commerce sales channels offers retailers opportunities such as the cost-effective enlargement of their assortment and the attraction of new customers. However, it alsoimplicatesa number ofproblems. In the past, channel con?ictswere usuallyavoided byd- ferentiating the offerings of sales channels. Today, offerings are typically coordinated between a company¿s e-commerce and other sales channels. In such cases, customers can seamlessly switch between different contact points during their buying process, for example they get the same products for the same price in the different sales channels. Such coordinated sales channels certainly affect the internal organizational structure of such multichannel retailers. Adequate performance measurement systems are needed to manage the resulting risks (for example channel con?icts) and utilize possible synergy effects. In this book, a design of a performance measurement system for multichannel retailing is presented. It addresses the coordination of distributionchannels from a performance measurement¿s persp- tive. The author places this book in the context of recent marketing, performance measurement and e-commerce literature. The ?rst part reviews the relevant literature. E-commerce business models for multichannel retailers and their strategic options are discussed. Furthermore, the requirements for modern performance measurement systems are presented. A whole section of the book is devoted to the discussion of successfactors for multichannel e-commerce retailers.

On the basis of an analysis conducted in a freight forwarding company, this title demonstrates that on the local level the automated operational transportation planning increases the planning quality and influences mid- and long-term planning issues.

I = word/phrase usually in the initial position in a sentence M = word/phrase usually in the mid position in a sentence F = word/phrase usually in the final position in a sentence Inf = informal usage Appendix B Punctuation Punctuation in written English is used as a means of conveying your message clearly and unambiguously. Thefullstop has two main uses: To signify the end of a sentence, e.g., The European Union has faced a lot of oppositionfromsomepoliticalpartiesinallcountries.Thereisstillalongwaytogo beforeEuropeistrulyunited. To show that a word has been abbreviated, e.g.,Mr.,Dr., e.g., Remember to keep sentences in English short and simple otherwise it may be difficult for your reader to follow you. Thecomma is used in sentences to show a pause between sense groups of words, e.g., The car industry expanded in the eighties, slowed down in the nineties, and it is anybody¿sguesswhatitwilldointhecomingdecade. The comma is also used to separate words in a list, e.g.,Thesteel,coal,chemical,and gasindustriesallfacealotofcompetitionfromtheFarEast. Commas are also used for non-defining relative clauses, e.g., The response, which came rather late, surprised everyone concerned. Remember that in defining relative clauses no commas are needed e.g., The item which you ordered is no longer in production. Commas are not generally used before linking words like or, but or then, e.g., The presentation was quite long but everyone listened with great concentration. Commas are, however, used after subclauses in front position, e.g.,Althoughinterestrateshave beenfalling,thereisnosignofanyrecoveryintheeconomy.

Das Buch stellt ein praxisnahes Controllinginstrumentarium zur Verfügung, das Firmen zur Reflexion des Internationalisierungsprozesses benutzen können. Damit lässt sich die Rationalität des Internationalisierungsprozesses sicherstellen, und eine erfolgsträchtige Ausgestaltung und Steuerung des internationalen Expansionsprozesses wird ermöglicht.

Liebe Leserinnen und Leser, Sie glauben, in der Topetage einer Investmentbank wird den ganzen Tag über zielgerichtet, sachorientiert und gewinnfokussiert gearbeitet. Weit gefehlt. Auf Alex trifft keines dieser Attribute zu. Alex ist der Investmentbanker, der die Leser der HD täglich an einer neuen Episode seines Arbeitsalltags teilhaben lässt, wenn er nicht gerade arbeitslos ist. Alex ist faul, dekadent, geldgierig und sich für keine Intrige zu schade. Alex ist das genaue Gegenteil des integeren und erfolgsverwöhnten Londoner Gentleman-Bankers - und wohl gerade deshalb so real. Bei den Lesern der HD jedenfalls ist Alex Kult, einige sind geradezu süchtig nach den kleinen Gemeinheiten, die ihm widerfahren und die er anderen zukommen lässt. Alex entspringt feinstem britischem Humor, der sich auch deshalb so gut entfaltet, weil der Hauptdarsteller in einer von Anglo-Amerikanern dominierten Branche agiert. Für all jene, die bei einer Investmentbank anheuern wollen, ist Alex eine Art Survival Kit. Und für alle anderen zumindest ein Beleg dafür, dass es auch bei einer Sparkasse oder Volksbank schön sein kann. Viel Vergnügen bei der Lektüre. Steffen Klusmann Chefredakteur Financial Times Deutschland 3 Inhaltsverzeichnis Alex auf Arbeitssuche 7 Bonus-Saison 39 Headhunter 51 Christian macht Finanz-PR 89 Neuanfang I Wenn der Vater mit dem Sohne 107 Blackberry-Sucht 141 153 Aufschwung Von Träumen und neuen Schulen 165 5 Alex auf Arbeitssuche Alex auf Arbeitssuche Natürlich versuche Ich hab" schon viele Vorstelll\ll9s­ ich immer noch, gespröche in meinem Leben gehabt. Arbeit in der Banken­ Und es ist wohl keine Überraschung. branche zu finden.

Christel has been intrigued by the phenomenon of invasions since her studies as an undergraduate student in botany at Goettingen University where she took several of my courses and where I supervised her diploma thesis. Her diploma thesis already addressed the possible impact of hybridization for the invasiveness of plant species. By using molecular markers, she studied North American and European Rhododendron species. We were also in close contact while she was working on her PhD thesis at the Department of Community Ecology at the Helmholtz-Centre for Environmental Research UFZ in Halle. Having been one of the reviewers of her PhD thesis, I readily agreed when she asked me to write a short preface to this publication. While the main line of research on the role of evolutionary processes for plant invasions has mainly been on the response to a different natural selection pressures exerted by the abiotic and biotic site factors of the new environment, Christel has asked to which degree breeding efforts might have contributed to such pressures. She chose a very apt study object to address this topic, Mahonia aquifolium, a species native to North America and introduced to Europe as an ornamental plant, together with some other species of the same genus. Christel¿s basic question was whether invasive populations of Mahonia aquifolium in Europe originate from planted cultivars or from hybrids with M. repens und M. pinnata.

I am deeply grateful to my advisor Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Schultz for his untiring - couragement. Moreover, I would like to express my gratitude to Prof. Dr. -Ing. - mund Handschin and Dr. -Ing. Hendrik Neumann from the University of Dortmund for inspiration and support. I would like to thank PD Dr. René Henrion from the Weierstrass Institute for Applied Analysis and Stochastics in Berlin for reviewing this thesis. Cordial thanks to my colleagues at the University of Duisburg-Essen for motivating and fruitful discussions as well as a pleasurable cooperation. Contents 1 Introduction 1 1. 1 Stochastic Optimization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1. 1. 1 The two-stage stochastic optimization problem . . . . . . 3 1. 1. 2 Expectation-based formulation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1. 2 Content and Structure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 2 RiskMeasuresinTwo-StageStochasticPrograms 9 2. 1 Risk Measures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 2. 1. 1 Deviation measures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 2. 1. 2 Quantile-based risk measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 2. 2 Mean-Risk Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 2. 2. 1 Results concerning structure and stability . . . . . . . . . 13 2. 2. 2 Deterministic equivalents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 2. 2. 3 Algorithmic issues ¿ dual decomposition method . . . . . 26 3 StochasticDominanceConstraints 33 3. 1 Introduction to Stochastic Dominance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 3. 1. 1 Stochastic orders for the preference of higher outcomes . . 34 3. 1. 2 Stochastic orders for the preference of smaller outcomes . 38 3. 2 Stochastic Dominance Constraints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 3. 2. 1 First order stochastic dominanceconstraints. . . . . . . . 43 3. 2. 2 Results concerning structure and stability . . . . . . . . . 44 3. 2. 3 Deterministic equivalents. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 3. 2. 4 Algorithmic issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .