Fachgebiet Empirische Wirtschafts- und Sozialforschung
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Item The impact of crisis on firms´stakeholders and the moderating effect of innovation(2025) Seidinger, Tim; Kraft, Kornelius; Böhm, Michael J.This dissertation empirically investigates the effects of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and the COVID-19 pandemic on German firms and their stakeholders, focusing specifically on two key aspects: (i) vocational training provision and (ii) payments to stakeholders. Both vocational training and wages are crucial economic factors. Vocational training is a fundamental component of human capital development, enhancing workers' skills and productivity, thereby driving economic growth and improving firms' competitiveness. Wages, on the other hand, play a vital role in labor supply by reflecting workers' value in the economy while also influencing consumer demand. This thesis makes a significant contribution to existing literature by examining potential differences in crisis impacts between stakeholders of innovative and non-innovative firms (Chapters 1 and 3). Additionally, it distinguishes between various stakeholder groups (Chapters 2 and 3). The findings reveal that both general training provision and training expenses per employee increased during the financial crisis. While innovation does not moderate the increase in general training provision, non-innovative firms exhibit a stronger rise in training expenses per employee. Regarding pay adjustments, results indicate that affected firms are more likely to reduce payments across all stakeholder groups. Notably, reductions in executive compensation occur with significantly higher likelihood compared to other groups. Moreover, innovation increases the probability of pay cuts—particularly for shareholders and executives—suggesting that innovative firms primarily pass on the implicit costs of crises to groups with greater financial flexibility. Overall, this dissertation enhances our understanding of how crises impact firms and their stakeholders while emphasizing the critical role of innovation as a moderating factor within this area of research.Item Firm-level drivers of stakeholder compensation(2024) Hemker, Tobias; Kraft, Kornelius; Böhm, MichaelThis thesis empirically investigates three specific firm-level drivers of stakeholder compensation in Germany. The first chapter examines the impact of trade unions on executive remuneration. It takes into account the special features of German employee representation rights through the framework of parity codetermination, which grants trade unions a direct say in the determination of executive pay. The results indicate that trade unions have a reducing effect on total remuneration and fixed components in parity-codetermined firms, while the ratio of variable pay is higher in codetermined firms. This suggests that unions use their position on the supervisory board to reduce the level of executive pay while maintaining incentives for good performance. Moreover, the second chapter examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic as an exogeneous driver of stakeholders’ compensation. It investigates pay adjustment strategies to four groups of stakeholders (shareholders, executives, middle managers, other employees) in response to the COVID-19 crisis. The main results indicate that affected firms are more likely to cut payments for all stakeholder groups, whereby the likelihood of reductions in executive compensation is significantly higher than for other groups. Thus, compensation appears to be more aligned in times of crisis, suggesting that cost savings are not only made at the expense of the lowest hierarchical levels but rather tend to occur more frequently at higher hierarchical levels. Finally, the third chapter investigates the specific role of innovation as a driving force during the pandemic with respect to stakeholder payments. For this purpose, different pay adjustment strategies to stakeholders were observed in relation to the innovation status of the firm or industry during the pandemic. The main results show that innovation increases the probability of pay cuts, especially for shareholders and executives, suggesting that innovative firms pass on the implicit costs of the crisis mainly to the groups with the most financial leeway. Altogether, this dissertation provides evidence that employee participation, the COVID-19 crisis, and the role of innovation during the pandemic are reducing drivers of compensation.