Due to its unique nature, creativity it is an inseparable part of an innovative outcome. While creativity and innovation are significant indicators of organizational present and future success, it is reasonable to introduce an organizational approach to promote both phenomena. Since work environment is rarely abundant, a very special way of enhancing creativity is discussed and analyzed, known as “less is more”. This novel view refers to the ability of demonstrating creative thinking under a restriction of the favorable conditions. The prior interest of this Bachelor’s thesis is to reflect the possible positive impact of scarcity of time, budget, and monitoring on the level of creativity. Constraint-based creativity is indeed a real-life phenomenon, though limitations alone may rarely provide an enhancement of creative thinking and thus require supplementary effects.

Der Anspruch dieser Arbeit ist, Kundenloyalität im Servicesektor und deren diverse Konzeptualisierungen unter dem Einfluss der Variable des Geschlechts zu beleuchten. Dazu wird eine Literaturübersicht erstellt, die aktuelle Stände der Loyalitäts-, Service und Genderforschung zusammenbringt, sowie die Bewandtnis ihrer Schnittstellen analysiert und bewertet. Die dargestellten Sachverhalte geben Ausschluss über die Herausforderungen in der Zusammenführung der drei Forschungsfelder, wobei der Fokus auf spezifischen Determinanten wie Zufriedenheit, Vertrauen und Commitment liegt. Darüber hinaus wird der Einfluss des Geschlechts sowohl auf der Konsumenten- als auch Dienstleisterseite betrachtet, und damit abschließend auf entscheidende Implikationen für Theorie und Praxis geschlossen.

Business failure is an existent and severe threat for entrepreneurs, but also offers an opportunity for learning. According to literature, failed entrepreneurs are facing a tremendous learning experience. However, only very few studies focus on the long-term entrepreneur-related consequences of failure and even less work is available on entrepreneurs who decide to restart (Ucbasaran et al. (2013)). The goal of the thesis is to enhance business failure literature by focusing on behavioral outcomes of failure-based learning in the context of entrepreneurs who decide to restart after experiencing business failure. Hence, it will be possible to analyze whether cognitive learning processes result in changes of the entrepreneur’s behaviors and actions with respect to the subsequent business. Thus, the aim is to answer the following research questions: (1) How do business models of an entrepreneur’s failed business and the subsequent business differ? (2) What explains possible business model differences? The business model concept is employed as a unit of analysis to identify learning outcomes of entrepreneurs by comparing the business
models of the initial, failed business and the subsequent business by conducting an in-depth multiple-case study. Particularly, five semistructured interviews with entrepreneurs who failed and restarted were conducted to allow for the theory building approach according to Eisenhardt (1989). In addition, to triangulate data and enrich the findigns objectively two interviews were held with bankruptcy trustees, experts in the field of business failure. Especially the information provided by the experts enhanced the cross-case analysis. By employing the business model concept as a unit of analysis in the context of restart entrepreneurship, I am able to provide in-depth, empirically-based insights into behavioral outcomes of failure-based entrepreneurial learning. The multiple-case study provides evidence that an entrepreneur rather improves the business model of the failed business than creating a completely novel business model design for a subsequent, new business. Findings also show that learning from failure is affected by situation-specific, entrepreneur-related conditions, which becomes obvious in the business model design of the subsequent businesses. Particularly, the time span between failure and restart, external support and outside options have an impact. Thus, learning from business failure does not automatically take place but is affected by the entrepreneur’s willingness and ability to reflect on past experiences and further conditions that are beyond the entrepreneur’s scope of influence. Therefore, the thesis enhances existing literature on failure-based learning as it highlights that failure-based learning does not happen automatically, but requires certain cognitive capabilities that depict a precondition for successful transfer of learning outcomes to an operational level. Overall, the thesis emphasizes a difference between business closure and serial entrepreneurship on the one hand and business failure and restart entrepreneurship on the other hand. This distinction is of particular importance for entrepreneurship research, as the behavior of serial entrepreneurs seems to follow a different logic compared to restart entrepreneurs. This important finding calls for future research that may rely on the thesis as groundwork and contributes to a deeper understanding of restart entrepreneurship. Managers or entrepreneur on the other hand shall use the findings as a guide. The thesis highlights the importance of the business model
and its benefits for the real-world as a tool to objectively consider value creation and capture. In particular, the entrepreneur or manager shall check and critically analyze his or her business in terms of the internal and external fit the business model design. Furthermore, in the case of an approaching or already existent business failure, entrepreneurs should take time for reflection and learning; consider external
advice and accept responsibilities and deal with costs of failure openly.

More and more companies are pursuing corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. Current scientific literature mainly evaluates the underlying economic and non-economic motivations of CSR. This thesis aims to expand the current framework and empirically investigate the impact of managers’ social background on CSR perception. Therefore, I first review Bourdieu’s theory of social reproduction with a special notion of the different forms of capital and the concept of habitus as well as existing research on CSR perception with an emphasis on stakeholder theory. In a next step, I developed an online questionnaire that combines these two concepts. This questionnaire was sent to students of the Bavarian EliteAcademy, a program that educates future leaders from all social backgrounds. The results of the regression reveal that social background is influential in determining the importance put on shareholder interests. Moreover, students align their ranking of stakeholder importance with their self-perception as stakeholders. Self-perception as shareholders shows most correlations with social background variables. These findings support the hypothesis that social background affects CSR perception. It is especially interesting that students who might assume future leadership positions are already now united by a similar habitus.

Die Mitarbeiteraktienoptionen, die Unternehmen ihrem Vorstand gewähren, unterscheiden sich von herkömmlichen Optionen durch bestimmte Einschränkungen und Ausübungsbedingungen. Diese Besonderheiten müssen bei der Ermittlung der erreichten Vergütung berücksichtigt werden. Im Zuge dieser Arbeit wird deshalb ein Verfahren entwickelt, dass es ermöglicht, auf die Herausforderungen bei der Bewertung von Mitarbeiteraktienoptionen einzugehen. Durch die Modifikation eines herkömmlichen Binomialmodells werden verschiedene Ausübungshürden, die Dauer der Vesting Period und Handelsbeschränkungen, denen die Optionen unterliegen, berücksichtigt. Zusätzlich werden auch die frühzeitige Ausübung durch den Vorstand, ein möglicher Verfall der Optionen sowie die rechtlichen Vorschriften des IFRS 2 bei der Bewertung beachtet.
Bei der Konzeption des Modells wurde großer Wert auf die Möglichkeit einer einfachen Implementierung gelegt. Dies unterscheidet das entwickelte Verfahren von den meisten vorhandenen wissenschaftlichen Veröffentlichungen und ermöglicht einen Vergleich der aktienoptionsbasierten Vergütung über verschiedene Unternehmen und Jahre hinweg.
Das vorgestellte modifizierte Binomialmodell erreicht eine Korrelation von über 82% mit den Angaben aus den Geschäftsberichten der DAX- und MDAX-Unternehmen aus den Jahren von 2006 bis 2012. Durch die Berücksichtigung der unterschiedlichen Besonderheiten reduziert sich der Wert der betrachteten Mitarbeiteraktienoptionen um durchschnittlich 35% im Vergleich zu einer Bewertung anhand des Black-Scholes-Modells ohne zusätzliche Anpassungen.