The sharing economy is experiencing explosive growth around the globe in which trust plays a crucial role and builds the foundation of the services. With the rise of the sharing economy and the increasing numbers of cross-contextual users, this research aims at the lack of trust transference possibilities across the Peer-to-Peer applications and has the goal to find out whether and how trust can be transferred between the platforms, so that new users do not have to create their reputation from scratch every time they join a new platform. First, this research provides an in-depth literature review of trust transfer theories. Secondly, a conceptual research model for the role of the imported trust in the context of the sharing economy is outlined and analysed by proposing and evaluating a questionnaire using structural equation modeling. Throughout the study, a three-dimensional scale of trust, i.e. ability, benevolence and integrity, is validated in the context of the sharing economy. The experimental study shows that both the overall and subdimensional trust in the provider is directly affected by the overall trust in the platform, the perceived reputation as well as the perceived social presence. The study also provides empirical evidence for the existence of trust transferability. The findings show that in addition to the immanent ratings, imported ratings also significantly affect the perceived reputation of the provider positively. Finally, this paper discusses further details of the trust transfer processes and broadens implications for future research.

In this work, I provide quantitative responses to the questions of how the size and the growth of the gig-economy can be measured and how labor markets respond to the exposure to online platforms using data on non-employer firms from the U.S. Census Bureau and on the staggered market entry of Uber in different U.S. metropolitan areas. I find that non-employer firms experienced a growth by 60% between 1999 and 2014 adding almost 9 million non-employer firms to the U.S. economy. I show that non-employer firms are tightly linked to the rise of independent work and are highly effected by the emergence of online platforms. Uber triggers an increase of 20 percentage points in non-employer firms relative to employment in the transportation sector 4 years after entering local labor markets. Furthermore, Uber’s market entry is associated with a 0.05 – 0.07 increase in non-employer share in the transportation sector. I demonstrate that the growth of non-employer firms between 2005 and 2014 is correlated with the growth in alternative work arrangements measured at the industry and state level by Katz and Krueger. I find that the rise of non-employer firms is not mechanically driven by differential industry or regional growth and that the number of gig-economy workers are at highest where unemployment is at highest. My results highlight the impact of the gig-economy on labor markets and provide evidence that the use of non-employer firms is relevant for measuring the gig-economy.

Special tax incentives aiming to foster research and development (R&D) investment are widely spread among the members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OCED). I investigate the effect such tax incentives have on business R&D investment. Fiscal R&D incentives can be categorized as input-oriented tax incentives such as tax credits, super deductions and accelerated depreciation, and as output-oriented incentives such as patent box regimes. In the first part of my thesis I provide an overview over the methodology of the B-Index, a measure for the generosity of input-oriented tax incentives. Calculations of the B-Index for 33 OECD-countries and China from 1991 to 2014 show an overall trend towards an increase in the generosity of input-oriented fiscal R&D incentives. In the second part of my thesis, I create a panel with country-level data on business R&D investment provided by the OECD. I test reactions to changes in R&D tax incentives and find a positive effect of input-oriented R&D tax incentives, but no significant impact of output-oriented R&D tax incentives. A more detailed analysis on the industry-level shows that the results are driven by effects on business R&D investment in the manufacturing and services sector.

As selective revealing is being recognized as a new means to find collaboration partners, little attention has been paid on how selectively revealed solutions are best formulated in order to be positively perceived. Prior research has highlighted that technological gatekeepers, i.e. individuals with who handle the R&D communication network and hence potential recipients of revealed knowledge, rely on cognitive and perceptual abilities during the recognition and evaluation of novel technologies. To enrich existing knowledge about opportunity recognition in selective revealing, this study took a cognitive perspective and intended to explore the effects of different formulated revealed solutions on the identification of collaborative opportunities. By priorly manipulating the superficial and structural commonalities of two revealed solutions conducted in collaboration with industry experts, I designed a 2*2 within-subject experiment to validate whether such an induction of analogies increases the percipience of a selectively revealed opportunity. The data, which was attained during an online-experiment with university students from different fields of studies also included individual factors such as prior knowledge about markets and technologies, creative ability (proxied by divergent thinking test and creative self-efficacy) and other demographic characteristics. The gathered data was analyzed through a linear-mixed effect model to capture the repeated design of the experiment. The computation illustrated that relational commonalities between a market and a revealed solution considerably improved the perception about a revealed solution and the willingness to engage a collaboration. In addition, the results demonstrated that superficial similarities facilitate the retrieval of analogies from structural commonalities. For the individual factors, the provided evidence could not support the initial hypotheses that individual creativity and prior knowledge positively moderate the effects of superficial and structural similarities. Contrarily, the results revealed negative moderating effects of creativity and the field of study. Despite further research is necessary, this study delivered implications for both ends of the information flow in selective revealing by conjointly examining the effects of selectively revealed opportunities and personal traits, and enriched this field of study through comprehending the drivers of early action in open innovation and strategic renewal.

Servitization is transforming traditional manufacturing and product-oriented firms across industries in many ways. One of these transformations concerns the business models of firms that transform from selling products to provisioning products as a service with product-service systems (PSS). I analyze this form of servitization in the software industry, where the software as a service business model is becoming the standard for most start-ups as well as some big enterprises like Adobe and Autodesk. Event study methodology is applied to 359 software vendors’ announcements of new software as a service offerings between 2001 and 2015, analyzing how installed base, parallel business models and partnerships with external service providers influence the reaction in the stock price of the software vendors. I find that “as-a- service” business models are not perceived as a substitute but rather as a complement for perpetual product sales and that collaboration with specialized service providers for the delivery of the new offering is rewarded by the stock market. I explain the findings with organizational inertia within the software vendors’ organization as well as that of their customers. The findings are used to discuss how companies can manage the inertia by developing new product lines for the PSS model, offering perpetual product sales in parallel and cooperating with third party service providers for the service delivery.

Family businesses favor the transition of ownership taking place within the family. However, the internal succession often fails, leading families to sell their businesses. Thus, in this thesis I aim to investigate the reasons of families for selling their businesses. I compare the perspectives of family owners and their potential successors to reveal their motives for selling the business to an external buyer. I put forward the proposition that the feasibility of a sale option is dependent on the potential sale scenario and the possible survival of the business to increase the sale inclination. My research is based on eight individual interviews with family owners and the next generation. Provided that those family businesses do not have specific internal succession thoughts, I exposed six different scenarios that have a positive or negative inclination towards selling the family business. Once the family owner or the next generation has established a sale intention a sale process is triggered. In my thesis I explore the sale terms that influence the negotiations during the sale process. My findings indicate that the survival of the firm has certain significance in the sale process. Families carefully examine the buyer, the acquisition price, and the anticipated durability in order to decide whether they complete a deal or discontinue the sale process with the particular buyer. With the discontinuance of the sale process, the intention to sell is still present, and the businesses reenter the sale process.