Chair of Strategic Management and Digital Entrepreneurship
Refine
Document Type
- Doctoral Thesis (46)
- Article (45)
- Working Paper (40)
- Part of a Book (20)
- Book (15)
- Course Material (9)
- Report (6)
- Conference Proceeding (2)
Keywords
- Entrepreneurship (8)
- Corporate accelerator (6)
- Corporate venturing (6)
- Corporate entrepreneurship (5)
- Management (4)
- Business models (3)
- Industry dynamics (3)
- Innovation management (3)
- e-Commerce (3)
- Accelerator design (2)
This paper investigates the emerging potential of metaverse technology and the diverse opportunities it presents for companies across industries. Although the metaverse remains in its nascent stages, its swift evolution has introduced a broad spectrum of use cases that hold significant promise for businesses. However, despite the evident potential, there remains a limited understanding of how metaverse technology can be effectively applied to benefit business operations and strategy. To address this gap, this study employs a scoping review methodology, systematically collecting and analyzing data from academic literature, publicly available sources, and company websites. The comprehensive review identified 101 distinct use cases of metaverse technology, which were subsequently categorized into three primary application fields: developing new product and service offerings, enhancing customer experience, and optimizing internal business processes. These findings not only provide a compelling rationale for companies contemplating the adoption of metaverse technology but also represent the first extensive exploration of its applications across diverse fields and industries. The study offers valuable insights that are crucial for both academic researchers and business practitioners who are keen to understand and leverage the transformative potential of the metaverse. By mapping out the current landscape of metaverse applications, this paper contributes to a deeper understanding of how companies can harness this technology to drive innovation, improve operational efficiency, and create new value propositions in an increasingly immersive and interconnected world.
More than 15 years after the introduction of 'familiness' into the literature, the term has evolved into one of the most popular concepts in family firm research. Despite the steadily growing body of studies that build on familiness, recent calls suggest a need to revisit its conceptualisation due to a lack of a common understanding that could affect future research endeavours. In our systematic literature review of 25 studies, we find support for this notion and show that the discussion on the concept has reached a dead end. We present a systematisation of familiness research that highlights an inconsistent conceptualisation, a lack of validation and even a partial hijacking of the term into contexts different from those originally proposed by Habbershon and Williams (1999). Based on these findings, we present a research agenda aimed at overcoming the current limitations and rejuvenating familiness as a suitable approach to understanding family firm heterogeneity.
HHL als Innovationsmotor
(2024)
Purpose
Literature on entrepreneurial resourcefulness (ER) has grown constantly in the last two decades. ER is a construct that describes the specific behavior of entrepreneurs, focusing on the generation and deployment of resources to pursue an opportunity. Since the ER literature has expanded and diversified, the purpose of this study is to integrate its findings with existing knowledge about the construct.
Design/methodology/approach
The study applies a systematic literature review approach, following the methodology of Tranfield et al. (2003). The authors identify and synthesize 31 studies focusing on ER.
Findings
The literature on ER can function on four different levels: (1) individual, (2) organizational, (3) contextual, and (4) effectual level. Studies on ER concentrate on either the individual or the organizational level, with the contextual and effectual levels appearing as additional study categories for the studies. Behind this categorization, research views ER either as an antecedent influencing a specific effect or as an outcome resulting from a particular context.
Originality/value
This paper is the first of its nature, structuring the existing ER research and proposing a research agenda on ER with seven concrete research avenues and their research questions. Based on the systematic literature review, the authors develop a framework consolidating the interrelations of the different levels.
Purpose
When CEOs are publicly weighing in on sociopolitical debates, this is known as CEO activism. The steadily growing number of such statements made in recent years has been subject to a flourishing academic debate. This field offers first profound findings from observational studies. However, the discussion of CEO activism lacks a thorough theoretical grounding, such as a shared concept accounting for the heterogeneity of sociopolitical incidents. Thus, the aim of this paper is to provide an archetypal framework for CEO activism.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors used a multiple case study approach on 145 activism cases stated by CEOs and found seven distinct statement archetypes.
Findings
The study identifies four main structural design elements accounting for the heterogeneity of activism, i.e. the addressed meta-category of the statement, the targeted outcome, the used tonality and the orientation of the CEOs’ positions. Further, the authors found seven distinguishable archetypes of CEO activism statements: “Climate Alerts”, “Economy Visions”, “Political Comments”, “Self-reflections and Social Concerns”, “Tech Designs”, “Unclouded Evaluations” and “Descriptive Explanations”.
Research limitations/implications
This typology classifies the heterogeneity of CEO activism. It will enable the analysis of interrelationships, mechanisms and motivations on a differentiated level and raise the comprehensibility of research-results.
Practical implications
The framework supports executives in understanding the heterogeneity of CEO activism and to analyse personality-fits.
Originality/value
To the authors’ knowledge, this marks the first conceptualisation of activism developed cross-thematically. The work supports further theory-building on CEO activism.
Acting beyond concepts
(2022)
There is a lack of understanding about early-stage entrepreneurial actions, as existing research focuses on later stages and overlooks how experience impacts entrepreneurial actions. However, entrepreneurial experience has a pivotal role in shaping entrepreneurial actions, serving as a distinguishing factor within the scope of this study. Therefore, we employ a grounded theory research approach building on 112 in-depth interviews in which we differentiate between novice and experienced entrepreneurs. We analyzed the extensive data set following the methodology of Gioia et al. Our findings include the identification of three dimensions of entrepreneurial activities, namely Entrepreneurial Alignment, Resource Enhancement, and Value Generation, that are relevant for both novice and experienced entrepreneurs. In addition, we are able to identify 27 specific entrepreneurial actions distributed between the three dimensions but differing depending on whether the entrepreneur is a novice or experienced. Examining these results, we outlined differences and commonalities in the activities of the two groups: novice entrepreneurs follow a sequential, unconnected, and perfectionist-driven process, while experienced entrepreneurs adopt a parallel, interconnected, and iterative process across the three dimensions. Practitioners and researchers can benefit from the study’s results for entrepreneurship education and resource theories in the early-stage venture creation.
From hype to impact
(2024)
This study explores the impact of metaverse technology on business models (BMs). Despite increasing academic and practical interest, the adoption and seamless integration of this technology poses substantial challenges for businesses. This study adopts a grounded-theory approach to explore how firms can incorporate this technological innovation within their existing BMs. Drawing upon insights from 20 interviews, the data were structured using the Gioia methodology, uncovering 5 dimensions that elucidate how companies can leverage metaverse technology to augment value creation, capture, and delivery, both internally and externally, within their BMs. These dimensions serve as a roadmap for firms seeking to embrace the metaverse, offering insights into potential adaptations to their existing BMs. This study contributes to the theoretical discourse surrounding the metaverse by delineating specific components within BMs that can be tailored to accommodate metaverse integration. Furthermore, our findings offer invaluable guidance and recommendations to firms and ventures, highlighting the diverse areas within the value creation process where metaverse integration can be strategically applied. This research lays the foundation for a more comprehensive understanding of metaverse technology's role in shaping the business landscape.
SevenAccelerator, a specialized unit of ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE established in 2013, is one of Germany’s longest-running corporate accelerators. This case enables students to understand the detailed workings of a structured startup support program through the activities outlined in the SevenAccelerator business model. Now, to ensure a successful value proposition and remain a key player in the increasingly competitive entrepreneurial ecosystem, the accelerator’s two key managers must not only be certain they have a holistic and thorough understanding of current operations but also analyze existing activities and consider new activities and their interlinkages and effects on the business model, challenges students will help them meet.
Corporate accelerators
(2023)
Since their emergence almost two decades ago, accelerators have evolved towards a global phenomenon that has the potential to shape global economies and societies. The rapid evolvement of the accelerator phenomenon increasingly caught scholars’ interest to examine what makes this specific form of startup support unique and popular in practice. Despite the growing amount of valuable contributions in accelerator research, several key aspects of the accelerator phenomenon remain unsolved or misunderstood, which leaves scholars as well as practitioners with a discordant understanding of how and why accelerators evolved and how they function to date. Hence, ambiguities are still large with regard to thoroughly understanding the accelerator mechanism and its recent developments. However, this understanding is crucial to develop theory in accelerator research and provide assistance for practitioners on how to increase value creation of accelerator programs. By means of five research studies this cumulative dissertation contributes to the lack of common conceptual foundations, an adequate consideration of theoretical underpinnings, a contemporary presentation of defining accelerator characteristics and their evolvement, and reliable insights on accelerator efficacy. In addition, this dissertation contributes numerous lessons learned and guidance to various stakeholders affected by accelerators.
Purpose
The aim of this paper is to explore how multi-national corporations (MNCs) can effectively adopt artificial intelligence (AI) into their talent acquisition (TA) practices. While the potential of AI to address emerging challenges, such as talent shortages and applicant surges in specific regions, has been anecdotally highlighted, there is limited empirical evidence regarding its effective deployment and adoption in TA. As a result, this paper endeavors to develop a theoretical model that delineates the motives, barriers, procedural steps and critical factors that can aid in the effective adoption of AI in TA within MNCs.
Design/methodology/approach
Given the scant empirical literature on our research objective, we utilized a qualitative methodology, encompassing a multiple-case study (consisting of 19 cases across seven industries) and a grounded theory approach.
Findings
Our proposed framework, termed the Framework on Effective Adoption of AI in TA, contextualizes the motives, barriers, procedural steps and critical success factors essential for the effective adoption of AI in TA.
Research limitations/ implications
This paper contributes to literature on effective adoption of AI in TA and adoption theory.
Practical implications
Additionally, it provides guidance to TA managers seeking effective AI implementation and adoption strategies, especially in the face of emerging challenges.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is unparalleled, being both grounded in theory and based on an expansive dataset that spans firms from various regions and industries. The research delves deeply into corporations' underlying motives and processes concerning the effective adoption of AI in TA.