Search

Financial statements should provide useful information for stakeholders to assess the profitability and financial stability of both private and public enterprises. However, using the discretionary scope within accounting rules in a strategic sense is common among managers of private corporations and stakeholders are well aware of that. The article analyses indicators of earnings management in the financial statements of municipally-owned enterprises in Germany between 1998 and 2014. With regard to the results, stakeholders of public enterprises might take a more critical perspective on the financial statements of municipal enterprises, especially when these are highly indebted and ownership is dispersed. ABSTRACT Although earnings management is one of the most extensively covered topics in empirical accounting research, there are few studies of publicly-owned enterprises in Europe to date. This article aims closes this gap by using annual financial statement data from 11,721 German municipal enterprises from 1998–2014 to investigate various structural determinants of earnings management. Firm size and leverage were found to be positively related to earnings management. Concerning corporate governance, public enterprises with a more fragmented ownership structure were found to be more likely to manipulate their financial statements, while such practices are less prevalent in enterprises operating under German commercial law. Finally, the inclusion of private investors did not seem to have a significant effect on earnings management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'1968' was a contradictory turning point. A new era was born. But right-wing, free market economic supremacy emerged out of the left-wing assault on post-war paternalism. It called for peace but was very violent. It was a macho moment of male-dominated revolutionaries but this provoked the modern feminist movement -- the year's most lasting progressive achievement came about in opposition to it. The central demand was for open, democratic people power. Everywhere this was pushed back. Yet its call has never been extinguished and remains the challenge of our time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article demonstrates that the issue-yield concept is able to predict the electoral strategies of mainstream and challenger parties at the 2017 German federal election. While the electorate of mainstream parties favour valence issues, the Greens and the AfD can gain more by concentrating on socio-cultural positional issues. Relying on a unique survey covering 17 positional issues and 10 valence issues as well as an analysis of Twitter accounts, the article shows that contemporary Germany is characterised by a centrifugal competition on the socio-cultural dimension. At the same time, an asymmetric ideological confrontation persists on the socio-economic dimension, because the Left and the SPD still refer to their traditional welfare issues while the bourgeois parties no longer counter this with a contrasting free-market ideology. Thus, the economy is currently not the decisive issue in German politics. Migration, integration, and other socio-cultural issues are rather driving electoral competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines recent changes in collective bargaining and employer strategies in the German telecommunications industry following market liberalization in the late 1990s. Germany's distinctive co-determination and vocational training institutions encouraged large firms to adopt employment systems in technician and call center workplaces that relied on high levels of worker skill and discretion. However, organizational restructuring is undermining these gains, as firms use outsourcing and the creation of subsidiaries to escape or weaken company-level collective agreements. These trends have substantially weakened unions and contributed to the further disorganization of coordinated bargaining structures. Findings are based on interviews with union and works council representatives, managers, and employees at Deutsche Telekom and its major competitors conducted between 2003 and 2007, as well as secondary analysis of company documents and industry reports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Industrielle Beziehungen is the property of Rainer Hampp Verlag and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This analysis of data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) for the years 1989-91 illuminates important changes in the structure of wages that were occurring in the former East Germany during its transition toward a capitalist economy-and changes that are probably occurring in other countries in Eastern Europe as well. Under the new capitalist wage regime, workers realized significant returns to schooling gained under socialism, but no significant returns to work experience. Because work experience is the largest element in the human capital of older workers, their wages fell under the new system; and the results suggest that their wages will continue to fall relative to those of younger workers. Generous transfer payments from western Germany may prevent an absolute decline in living standards of these workers. Older workers in other eastern countries, however, will have no such social assistance, and their living standards will probably fall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on industrial democracy. The author focuses on changes that have been made in industrial organization and management since the conception of labor unions. Industrial democracy is evaluated using the examples of the system of codetermination in Western Germany and the worker-owned mills in the Pacific coast softwood plywood industry. Economic reform programs that attempt to offer more freedom for workers while maintaining industrial efficiency in production systems are also discussed. The practice of involving workers in policy making decisions is evaluated. It is suggested that the goals of employees are not always the same as the goals of the organization for which they work.

The article presents the author's response to comments made on an article about the labor history in Germany. He emphasized that it was gratifying that a person is well versed in topic. However, the origins of codetermination in terms of critical discussion should be re-examined. German trade union leaders in 1945 started to imitate the German Labor Front and hoped to play the role of a national Labor Front. The history of industrial unions is structured from the Nazi ideology. After the defeat of Nazis in 1945, the DAF was dissolved.

We exploit Germany's reunification to identify how school-age education affects entrepreneurial intentions. We look at university students in reunified Germany who were born before the Iron Curtain fell. During school age, all students in the West German control group received formal and informal education in a free-market economy, while East German students did or did not receive free-market education. Difference-in-differences estimations show that school-age education in a free-market economy increases entrepreneurial intentions. An event study supports the common-trends assumption. Results remain robust in matched samples and when we exploit within-student variation in occupational intentions to control for unobserved individual characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twenty-five years ago, East Germany adopted the deutschmark as its currency. In terms of East German economic development, monetary union proved to be a disaster. With virtually no warning, East Germany's few productive factories and businesses were exposed to free market competition; industrial production collapsed in a way unparalleled in history. Nevertheless, for political reasons, introducing monetary union at the start of the process of system transformation was almost unavoidable. Given the insecure foreign policy situation, the aim was to seize the chance of reunification and push through monetary union to create an irreversible fait accompli. Moreover, this move was intended to put a brake on the massive exodus of people from East Germany. Admittedly, it also buttressed the widespread illusion among the East German population that a strong currency would facilitate fast-track income parity on West German levels. This illusion, however, also encouraged excessive wage hikes which only served to intensify the shock of alignment in summer 1990, complicate economic renewal in eastern Germany, and increase the financial costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the attitudes of German regional administrative elites towards government-based and market-based economic policy, as compared to administrators in other European Union (EU) member states. According to the authors, German administrators hold centrist views in comparison to others in the EU. It is suggested that civil servants prefer market-based solutions in good economic conditions. The role of New Public Management (NPM) reform in policy attitudes is discussed.

The article explores the impact of the political history of Germany in crafting its foreign policy. It highlights the association between the efforts to surpass the history of the country and the government decisions and international relations of the country. An overview of how the country has successfully advocated democracy, peace and free markets with a promise to never let war and genocide emanate again is also emphasized.

The article focuses on the developments in the democracy and capitalism since the 1989 Revolutions, with particular focus on countries including Bulgaria, Germany, and Czech Republic. It explores the notion that democracy and institution of free markets following decades of totalitarian rule and struggles to ensure that post-1989 elections in Bulgaria were fair and free. It mentions the lecture given by East German writer Daniela Dahn at the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, which explores the democratic awakening after the fall of Berlin Wall. It discusses topics including civil movements, social solidarity, and economic security.

This article traces the trajectories of consumer policy in Finland and Germany in the light of a comparative history in order to reflect upon the notion of consumer empowerment in public policy. The principle developments of contemporary consumer policy can be traced back to the post-war political and economic integrations arising from the initial idea of free markets and individual freedom emphasized in classical liberalism. The article explores this development in Finland and Germany to the point of the establishment of a joint European Union (EU) consumer policy to reveal the notion of consumer empowerment. This approach creates an understanding of the peculiarities of consumer policy in EU member states despite the presence of a joint European policy area. Nowadays, both Finnish and German consumers find EU regulations excessive. It is important to acknowledge the influence of this historic development in order to understand what consumer empowerment meant in the past and thus to further develop policy action on a joint level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews recent writing on the political economy of Germany. Even before the global economic crisis of 2008-20 10, scholars of German politics had identified deep fissures in the German model of capitalism and in the policies that sustained this system. Neither Social Democrats nor Christian Democrats seemed capable of initiating and executing the reforms that would tackle the fiscal dilemmas of the state. Though these recent accounts of German troubles agree in their diagnosis of severe strains and inadequate political response, they diverge in their analysis of the source of these problems. Are they endogenous to capitalist societies that try to reconcile free market economics with social welfare policies? Or were they Induced by the disruptive shocks of globalization and European integration? Whether the origins of the crises before the big crisis were exogenous or endogenous, there remains the further question of the national state's capacity to provide solutions. This article considers the German state's responses to the 2008-2010 financial and economic breakdown and concludes that there may be greater resilience and capabilities in national politics than those that the recent literature has identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European continental countries traditionally emphasized the character of the cultural possessions as a public good. Now the technological development, accelerated expansion, internationalization, and the commercialization of the cultural economy bear a new quality of contradiction between social and economic demands in the field of cultural work. This problem is discussed with regard to the framework for freelance work in cultural professions in Germany. The main focus is on the specific institutional arrangement, which supports professionalism in the field of culture, without providing a privileged status comparable to the established professions. One central column of this arrangement is the German copy right law, which defines - in contrast to the Anglo-Saxon model, created as an investment protection - an individual property right of 'intellectual property' ('Geistiges Eigentum'), against misuse, and economic exploitation. Against the background of the structural changes in the media in the 1990s, the EU is supporting the reform of copyright regulations in the European member states. It is claimed that present EU directions, developed within the concept of a 'European knowledge-society', break with the leading concept of cultural professions, but without providing a consistent foundation to solve the societal challenges of present culture and media production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we try to explain why the economic and political transition in Germany after World War II was successful, and why the transition in post-communist Slovenia was not. We analyse interactions between political markets and economies in both countries. The differences between the two transitions can be explained by different institutional transformations and different roles of interest groups. In Slovenia, the slow pace of political reform inhibited economic liberalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the way the film industry is supported in Germany, looking at the complex array of public funding available, the types of films this support tends to produce and what the future might hold for film-makers. I question the claim that the industry has moved from a subsidy-based model, which promoted avant-garde Autorenkino, to a market-driven model that is more in line with Hollywood, with an emphasis on mainstream mass entertainment. Instead, I argue that the industry is more reliant than ever on the public subsidy system, even as this system ostensibly looks to promote a market-oriented approach to film-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Dados - Revista de Ciências Sociais is the property of DADOS and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Drawing on empirical evidence in Germany and the UK, this article examines the institutional effects on a fast-growing area of knowledge-intensive business services — IT outsourcing. This is an important area for research since the IT outsourcing market provides many organizations with an important specialized production input and is characterized by complex inter-organizational relations. By exploring institutional influences in the context of IT outsourcing, the research extends earlier studies on how client-supplier relations shape markets for business services. It also contributes to varieties of capitalism debates by highlighting heterogeneous institutional effects within countries and common systemic trends (involving powerful multinational IT firms) in the development of the market for IT outsourcing. Comparative analysis of 13 IT outsourcing contracts in Germany and the UK, focusing on the organizational practices of client organizations and IT firms, illuminated institutional effects within the organizational setting. Analysis of industry-level data shows that the diverse institutional contexts of Germany and the UK provided an equally favourable basis for growth in the IT outsourcing market, despite its apparent deregulatory bias. But significant institutional effects were observed, specifically related to: the role of deliberative institutions (especially works councils); and institutions governing technical standards and contracting rules. Strong deliberative institutions in Germany facilitated market growth since transactions involved distributive dilemmas, particularly related to staff transfer. Also, while institutions shaped technical and contractual expertise of client managers, they were not deterministic. Instead, they interacted with characteristics of the IT outsourcing market, namely: heterogeneous client practices to improve absorptive capacity; public vs. private contracting experience; and power relations between client and IT firm in their use of market discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the impact of the cultural and consumer products of the German Democratic Republic on the western colonization of East German values. Criticism of the historical nostalgia in the film "Good Bye Lenin!; Evidences of West Germany's adherence to a free market economy and democratic individualism; Reasons behind the absence of fascist elements in the Federal Republic.

After a conceptualization of Americanization, an overview over the process of Americanization of the German system of higher education in management is provided. This process is characterized by four phases: (a) the almost complete absence of American influences on academic German management education before World War II, (b) the "re-education" of German managers after World War II based on American principles of the free market and management approaches with some assumed effects on academic management education, (c) the increasing acceptance of American approaches to management sciences within academia, starting in the 1950s, (d) the attempts to Americanize (via Europeanizing) the higher management education institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reviews German monetary history in the first half of the twentieth century, employing the theme that the evolution of the concept of a modern central bank required popular support for a free market. Discussion on hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic; Explanation on world depression; Background on the birth of the deutsche mark.

The article traces the historical development and peculiarities of (West) German capitalism and the place of consensus within the ideological superstructure. New state and employer offensives against labour are recorded and analysed and the resultant crisis of labour relations is discussed. The author argues that employers are, as yet, unwilling to launch a full frontal attack on co-determination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an essay by Wolfgang Sachs, a fellow at the Essen Institute for Advanced Studies in Germany, in which he argues that industrial Utopia is not only an unachievable goal for the Third World, it is an unwise and destructive one.

The article presents information on the rise of capitalism as an aspect of political victory in different parts of the world. The victory of capitalism marks the end of history, or at least the end of the modern age which has always drawn its cultural sustenance from the substance of the French Revolution, the Enlightenment and Romanticism. There is no such thing as a Third Way the choice is bureaucratic socialism or pluralistic capitalism. The ideology of the Third Way was a typical product of post-war Germany and was, at the time, the great illusion nurtured by the left-wing and liberal intelligentsia. The fact that it has now been flourishing, at least for a short time again in the East, can probably be explained by the fact that the free public discussion which has at last become possible in the GDR often picks up the threads of an argument at the point where they were so militantly cut off 40 years ago.

This article tries to describe the main antinomies of the transitory period in Poland. There are three principal ideas Poles want to realize: free market economy, civil society and the state of law. There exist, however, structural obstacles to effectiveness of the process of changes. On the political side, there are a lack of tradition of positive activity (resulting from the negative character of the social movement in the 80's), social attituides concentrated on demands and the weakness of local communities. On the legal side, problems arise from the controversy between formal and material conceptions of the rule of law. The first one stresses the requirement for certainty and predictibility of legal results although it often means strict application of many provisions inherited from the communist past. The second one is focused on adequacy of law and -- in consequence -- on its adaptation (axiological as well as functional) to new conditions. The discussion is illustrated by decisions of the Constitutional Tribunal. The author considers the relevance of the postwar discussion on law in Germany and formulates some practical proposals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the implementation of economic planning in Prussia, Germany. Restoration of free-market economy; Plans to combine radical utopianism with withering cultural pessimism; Characteristics of modern capitalism.

Eighteen years of Conservative government have failed to reverse the century long relative decline of British capitalism and free-market orthodoxy has begun to be questioned by important economic commentators. They propose new institutional arrangements to limit and structure market operations and to create a more inclusive, less individualized, model to enhance social cohesion and economic success. Their model comprises elements from the most successful of post-war European capitalisms - Germany, and from Japan. This article argues, however, that their analysis of `stake-holder' capitalism is seriously flawed: social inclusion provided a thin veneer for a reconstructed capitalist exploitation after the defeat of radical workers' movements in the immediate post-war period. Furthermore, both countries are currently experiencing their most severe post-war conjunctural crises and, faced with simultaneous structural crises, are attempting to restructure along more `Anglo-Saxon' lines. Capitalism, it is argued, takes a variety of forms but its content remains contradictory and crisis-prone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Ludwig Gumplowicz, Franz Oppenheimer, and Alexander Rüstow have all developed a theory of superposition, they differ in their historical approach. The author discusses these differences. Special attention is given to Rüstow, who pleaded for a 'new liberalism' in the context of reorganising the economic system of West Germany after the Second World War to a social market-economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of the international economy over the past twenty years has bred considerable diversity in the form and substance of employment relations (labour-management relations, human resource management practices) throughout the world. Cases of 'social partnership' are today found in the 'free market' United States economy; some companies operating in Germany's 'social' market economy are rejecting traditional forms of social partnership in the name of more unilateral strategies. This paper examines (a) the extent to which 'strategic diversity' - variation in human resource strategies and policies - is possible within the heavily institutionalized, co-operative and codeterminative German economy, and (b) how managers perceive the effects of different kinds of HR approaches on organizational change and industrial adjustment. It is based on empirical evidence drawn from seven large chemicals companies operating in Germany - three of them US-owned firms and four German-owned. The main conclusions are that considerable strategic diversity is possible within the German context, and that managers perceive distinct costs and benefits to specific aspects of the typically American 'unilateral' style and the more German 'negotiated' approach to structuring the relationship with human resources. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these trade-offs for the transferability of HR strategies across international borders, giving special attention to policies to avoid some of these potential costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the so-called dynamic pensions that were introduced by German economist and social thinker Wilfrid Schreiber as part of German pension reform. The debate surrounding these wage-based pensions is highlighted and particular attention is given to the criticism that the new pensions will endanger the social market economy. The position of the "Bank deutscher Länder" (BdL) is presented.

• A novel model chain was built up for producing gridded traffic emissions in Germany. • The model chain was used to create emissions in 2010 and future scenarios for 2040. • NOx emissions from traffic are expected to decrease by approximately 80% until 2040. In the German project Traffic Development and the Environment an advanced model chain was built up that includes traffic models, fleet composition developments, new driving technologies, and emission factors in order to produce spatio-temporal emission distributions for use in atmospheric chemistry transport models. This novel model chain was first used to calculate current day traffic emissions in Germany and then to develop consistent future scenarios for 2040. In all scenarios, NO x emissions from traffic decrease by approximately 80% while PM emissions show a lower reduction. The scenarios Free Play , which is based on a free market economics logic, and Regulated Shift , which considers stricter environmental regulations, represent large differences in traffic emissions. NO x emissions will be 32% lower and PM emissions 13% lower in the Regulated Shift scenario compared to the Free Play. The data can be combined with other anthropogenic emissions for investigating air quality with chemistry transport models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]