Search

German accounting has traditionally followed a dual ledger approach with strictly separated internal cost accounting, as the basis for management information, and external financial accounting focusing on creditor protection and based on the commercial law. However, the increased adoption of integrated accounting systems implies a significant change in the relationship between financial and management accounting systems. We use Hegelian dialectic to trace the historical development of German accounting from separated systems and antithetical propositions of full integration, to the emergence of partial integration as the synthesis of this transformation process. The foundation of our paper is a comprehensive analysis of the literature on the relationship between financial and management accounting in Germany. On this basis, we elaborate how financial accounting in Germany has been shaped by its economic context and legislation, and how financial accounting – accompanied by institutional pressures – in turn influenced management accounting. We argue that the changing relationship between management and financial accounting in the German context illustrates how current accounting practice is shaped not only by its environment, but also by its historical path. Based on this reasoning, we discuss several avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a unique, longitudinal data set of UK and German new technology-based firms (NTBFs) to investigate the determinants of internationalization and firm survival. Specifically, it tests the influence of absorptive capacity, inter-firm specific relationships and international exposure on survival. Its key findings are that high absorptive capacity increases survival probabilities; specific customer-supplier relationships enhance survival; and the greater the firm's exposure to internationalization activity, the higher its subsequent chance of survival. Thus, the paper provides evidence that young firms are more likely to survive when they pursue an internationalization strategy based on resource consolidation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Personalforschung is the property of Sage Publications Inc. 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.)

Globalisation is an area where supporters and non-supporters of left- and right-wing parties disagree, both for domestic and international policies. Populists see metropolitan elites as 'corrupt' and oppose policies that encourage globalisation in trade, immigration, and multi-culturalism. Media play important roles in providing pro- and anti-globalisation content, both in traditional and digital media. We use a unique combination of large-scale web-tracking and cross-country survey data to study the interactions between populism, media trust, consumption, and globalisation attitudes in the US and Germany. We find country variances for different aspects of globalisation, particularly among the supporters of right-wing populist parties or leaders. Populist anti-elitism and a feeling of powerlessness in relation to influencing the country's politics are two important factors behind the backlash against globalisation. We also find that a higher level of trust in public service media is associated with more supportive attitudes toward globalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relevance of Bourdieu's 1980 spatial theorisation in Le Sens Pratique (The Logic of Practice 1990, Polity Press, Cambridge) for understanding intercity relations in contemporary globalisation—specifically, interdependencies between Castells's 'space of flows' and 'places' in advanced business services. Bourdieu's relational concepts are reviewed with reference to evidence from in-depth interviews with business actors in London and Frankfurt at the time of European Economic Monetary Union. The intention is to deepen understanding of emergent relations between the cities and, in so doing, to contribute to the reinterpretation of Bourdieu's input to geographical thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze the impact of economic globalization and industry growth on the complexity of early work careers in Germany. We conceptualize complexity as the absolute number of employer changes, the regularity in the order of job changes, and the variability of the durations spent in different employment states. Results from empirical analyses based on the German Life History Study (N = 5453) show only a small increase in the complexity of work careers over the last decades, but there was a shift in the prevalence of different career patterns. This suggests that effects of globalization might be counteracted or modified by other social changes that affected work careers in Germany during the last 60 years. In particular, we consider the possible impact of educational expansion, labor market restructuring, and women’s increased employment. We find no evidence that industry-specific economic globalization impacts the complexity of work careers, but we find a U-shaped relationship between industry growth and career complexity. Careers are slightly more complex in industries with high or low industry growth. We conclude that, while there has been a shift in career patterns over time, the impact of globalization on career stability is possibly overestimated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Major sport spectacles are probably the most potent, vibrant stages on which human drama can be played out in real time before a vast international audience. Media sport, through global scale 'frozen moments', can precipitate popular interrogations of 'race' and its myriad connections to other socio-cultural structures and identities. This article considers the case of the now infamous incident of French captain Zinedine Zidane head-butting the Italian Marco Materazzi during the 2006 World Cup Final of association football in Germany, as a striking example of the political resonance and reach of mega-media sport, as well as of the perils of being 'lost' and 'found' in popular media translation. The persistence and pervasiveness of sexism in the language and metaphor of racism, it is argued, is an essential ingredient of the 'sexual racism' within the patriarchal genre of sports field insults. The immediate speculation and intense search for 'signs' of racism in the Zidane-Materazzi affair reveals that it lurks close below the surface of contemporary sport. This article advocates a cultural politics that understands and resists the causes of racism through sport, just as it refuses to legitimize racialized categories of the human in the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article defines and explores the crisis of social democratic trade unionism in three countries in western Europe. The authors contend that a particularized form of postwar trade union orientation was socially constructed in Britain, Germany, and France in which a party union nexus gave special privileges to unions in return for compliance with state policies in the national interest. This arrangement has broken down in recent years under the pressure of global product market competition. As a result, trade unions are being forced to adopt alternative strategic orientations, involving both a fracture in the party union nexus and a willingness to work within wider civil society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article challenges popular wisdom that economic globalization uniformly increases working time in industrialized countries. International investment and trade, they argue, have uneven effects for workplace bargaining over standard hours and over work-time flexibility, such as use of temporary or fixed work contracts. The authors explain how such globalization will tend to more substantially decrease standard hours than it does work-time flexibility. And they explain how works councils and union-led collective bargaining alter the way globalization affects both aspects of working time. The analysis of German enterprise data supports these expectations. Measures of globalization diminish standard working hours but yield more temporary work, fixed-contract work, and flexible working arrangements. Works councils and collective bargaining, however, mediate these effects in contrasting ways. Among enterprises without works councils or collective agreements globalization triggers more standard hours, but among firms with such representation globalization triggers fewer hours. With respect to flexibility, however, globalization increases use of temporary or fixed-term contracts more strongly where works councils or collective bargaining are present than when they are not. In short, economic openness has uneven consequences for working time, and firm-level labor representation channels those consequences in ways that highlight political agency in how people respond to globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Sociology is the property of Sage Publications Inc. 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.)

Virtually unheard of since the Great Depression, lockouts have reemerged strongly in Australia and New Zealand just as they have all but disappeared in Germany. The decline of lockouts in Germany is convincingly attributed to the enhanced vulnerability of firms to stoppages in certain circumstances amid globalization, but the small, open economies of Australia and New Zealand are equally subject to these pressures. Using macro- and micro-level data, this article illustrates that neoliberal legislative reforms and institutional change have reconfigured the risks, costs, and payoffs associated with lockouts amid globalization. In doing so, some flaws in the varieties of capitalism/dual convergence literature are highlighted. In particular, the post hoc classification of the antipodes as liberal market economies bypasses the role of legislative reform in reconstituting employer interests and the differences in electoral, party, and state structures that impeded/facilitated the rise of neoliberal reformers in Germany and the antipodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The globalization of financial markets and the concomitant restructuring decisions of firms challenge the historical legacy of national systems of governance. German corporate ownership patterns and restructuring events in the 1990's are examined here in this light. The results show that ownership links among German firms constitute a "small world" that has consequences for understanding mergers and acquisitions. Ownership links form closely-knit clusters of firms that are nonetheless highly connected across the network as a whole. Restructuring events fall squarely in the center of this structure. Despite increasing global competition, the German small world tends to replicate itself To illustrate this robustness, potential disruptions to the observed German network are simulated. This simulation shows that the properties of the small world remain intact even when ownership ties are changed. These findings suggest that a more global economy in Germany need not lead to the dissolution of the ownership structure, but rather may be associated with a deepening of network ties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]