Vienna University of Economics and Business
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Private external funding of universities: Blind alley or new opening?
Get PDFOf late, the problems of private external, or third-party funding of universities have been the subject of much debate, even at universities of economics and business. Given the constraints on government funding, politicians are looking increasingly to this source, with university leaders (rectors, deans, department heads) frequently being set targets for increasing income from it. Yet it is important to distinguish between different types of external funds. Moreover, their advantages and potential drawbacks must be weighed up. This paper seeks to do that, against the background of the author's more than 13 years as Rector of Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU). Much of the paper thus draws rather less on theory than on that practical experience
Determinants of older peoples's preferences for dispensing doctors
Get PDFObjectives: Dispensing doctors (DDs) are a central part of the medication supply in Austria. Nevertheless, they are controversial and research pays little attention to perspectives of user-groups, especially older people. Therefore, this article deals with determinants of older people’s approval of dispensing doctors.Methods: For this purpose, data from a telephone survey with people over 60 years in Lower Austria are used and evaluated by means of a logit model.Results: The results show that accessibility of medicines is a major reason for the preference of DDs. Key factors are availability of a pharmacy in close proximity (OR: 0.44), independent use of a car (OR: 1.54) and individual mobility due to health reasons (OR: 1.14).Discussion: DDs are important for older people in terms of a spatially close drug supply. A pharmacy at the place of residence only outweighs the preference for DDs if it is actually accessible for older people (taking low travel costs into account).Conclusions: The aim must be to improve access to medicines in all communities where there is no pharmacy within a reasonable distance for people with health problems or those with restricted mobility
Process Mining Techniques in Internal Auditing: A Stepwise Case Study
Get PDFA business process is a sequence of activities organized in a logical way in order to produce a service or a product that is valued for a particular group of customers. Process auditing in corporate environment aims to assess the degree of compliance of processes and their controls. Due to the volume of information that needs to be analyzed in an audit job, auditing´s cost can be very high. We argue that process mining techniques have the potential to improve this activity, allowing the auditor to meet the short deadlines, as well as bringing greater value to the senior management and reliability in the service provided by the audit. The goal of this paper is to discuss, through a case study, how process mining techniques can optimize and bring agility to the verification of process model compliance against the process actually performed. With this approach, it will be possible to detect errors and/or failures in activities or controls of a running process. The main contribution of this paper is to describe a simple set of steps that could be applied by auditors and experts in order to get introduced and to obtain the first insights in the process mining area
Adaptive, Distribution-Free Prediction Intervals for Deep Networks
Get PDFThe machine learning literature contains several constructions for prediction intervals thatare intuitively reasonable but ultimately ad-hoc in that they do not come with provableperformance guarantees. We present methods from the statistics literature that can beused efficiently with neural networks underminimal assumptions with guaranteed performance. We propose a neural network thatoutputs three values instead of a single pointestimate and optimizes a loss function motivated by the standard quantile regression loss. We provide two prediction interval methodswith finite sample coverage guarantees solelyunder the assumption that the observations are independent and identically distributed. The first method leverages the conformal in-ference framework and provides average coverage. The second method provides a new, stronger guarantee by conditioning on the observed data. Lastly, our loss function doesnot compromise the predictive accuracy of thenetwork like other prediction interval methods. We demonstrate the ease of use of our procedures as well as its improvements overother methods on both simulated and realdata. As most deep networks can easily be modified by our method to output predictions with valid prediction intervals, its use should become standard practice, much like reporting standard errors along with mean estimates
Peer effects in art prices
Get PDFArt often serves as an investment tool. However, the prices for some of the pieces are not easy to predict, and removing the price uncertainty is crucial to attracting even more investment in the art market. This paper assumes that the reputation of the artists and their social connections can play a significant role in determining the prices of their work. I check if a link to a higher valued or more famous peer has a positive effect on the prices of art pieces and on the probability of a successful sale. To test this hypothesis, I use the network of abstract artists, whose works' value is not always straightforward determined, and the prices of their works auctioned in 2000-2015 at Sotheby's, one of the most significant art and collectibles brokers in the world. The results suggest that consumers are willing to pay more for a particular artist's work, once there is a connection between the artist and a more valuable set of peers. However, the probability of sale is not affected. The auctioneer's predictions about future prices exhibit a similar trend.Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Serie
The information content of corporate social responsibility disclosure in Europe: an institutional perspective
Get PDFThis study examines how firm value (measured via stock prices) is related to corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosure and how the institutional environment influences this relationship. To test our hypotheses, we apply textual analysis to our data on firms listed in the STOXX Europe 600 for the period 2008–2016. Our investigation of topic-specific CSR disclosure indicates that when firms shifted from voluntary to mandatory reporting, following the announcement of Directive 2014/95/EU, the association between their share price and CSR disclosure became significantly negative. For the period before the announcement, this relationship is either positive or statistically insignificant. We also show that the institutional environment can impact this relationship in four distinct ways: the level of CSR awareness, the level of employee protection, the degree of enforcement and the strength of the legal environment. We find that the first two have a negative impact on the incremental value relevance of specific CSR disclosure, whereas the last two have a positive impact. Lastly, our results also indicate that the magnitude of (a) the relationship between a firm’s CSR disclosure and its value and (b) the impact that the firm’s institutional environment has on this relationship depends on the specific CSR topics
Towards a Comprehensive Framework of the Relationships between Resource Footprints, Quality of Life, and Economic Development
Get PDFThe relationship between economic affluence, quality of life, and environmental implications
of production and consumption activities is a recurring issue in sustainability discussions. A number
of studies examined selected relationships, but the general implications for future development
options to achieve environmentally and socially sustainable development of countries at different
levels of per capita resource footprints, quality of life, and income have not yet been investigated
in detail. In this study, we use a global dataset with 173 countries to assess the overall relationship
between resource footprints, quality of life, and economic development over the period of 1990–2015.
We select the material footprint and carbon footprint and contrast them with the Human Development
Index, the Happiness Index, and GDP per capita. Regression analyses show that the relationship
between various resource footprints and quality of life generally follows a logarithmic path of
development, while resource footprints and GDP per capita are linearly connected. From the empirical
results, we derive a generalized path of development and cluster countries along this path. Within
this comprehensive framework, we discuss options to change the path to respect planetary and
social boundaries through a combination of resource efficiency increases, substitution of industries
and sufficiency of consumption. We conclude that decoupling and green growth will not realize
sustainable development if planetary boundaries have already been transgressed
The Interactions of Sustainable Development Goals: The Case of Urban Informal Settlements in Ethiopia
Get PDFEthiopia is challenged by a strong development progress. Currently the major issues in Ethiopia, as a least developed country with a rapid urbanisation, include a high level of income inequality, lack of formal employment opportunities, deeply rooted poverty, tenure insecurity, poor infrastructure, and limited access to electricity and energy. The Erasmus+ Project "Social Inclusion and Energy Management for Informal Urban Settlements", enables European and Ethiopian universities to develop new university courses integrating the aspects of sustainability for future professionals in the field of architecture, urban planning but also social sciences. The paper investigates the respective situation in Ethiopia, and demonstrates the interactions of six selected Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations highly linked with this topic. These six Sustainable Development Goals were identified in a participative process, involving different stakeholders like government officials, urban planners or informal settlers by interviews, focus groups, workshops and conferences. The focus is on SDG1 "No Poverty", SDG3 "Good Health and Well-being", SDG7 "Affordable and Clean Energy", SDG11 "Sustainable Cities and Communities", SDG13 "Climate Action" and SDG15 "Life on Land". In the context of Ethiopian cities, energy production and distribution have been highly centralised under state entities and the scope for exploring local/business driven and decentralised energy systems has been limited. Transitions can be implemented towards sustainability and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, if collective identification and structuring of issues along with collective envisioning of the future, and the interactions and trade-offs of different goals are taken into consideration
Digitizing the field: designing ERP systems for Triple-A humanitarian supply chains
Get PDFPurpose: The purpose of this study is to explore what design principles need to be considered in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems for humanitarian organizations (HOs) to enable agile, adaptive and aligned (Triple-A) humanitarian supply chain capabilities and digitize humanitarian operations. Design/methodology/approach: This study follows an embedded case study approach with ahumanitarian medical relief organization, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), which engaged in a multiyear ERP design at its humanitarian field missions. Findings: This research shows that ERP systems for humanitarian organizations should be designed asunique systems addressing humanitarian organizations' challenges and unique missions, their valuegeneration processes, and resource base in an effort to improve organizational performance. This study presents 12 general design principles that are unique for humanitarian organizations. These design principle sprovide a high-level structure of guidance under which specific requirements can be further defined and engineered to achieve success. Research limitations/implications: The results of this study are based on a single case study limiting generalizability. However, the case study was analyzed and presented as an embedded case study with five autonomous subunits using different business processes and following different adoption and implementation approaches. Therefore, the findings are derived based on considerable variance reflective of humanitarian organizations beyond MSF. Practical implications: This study recognizes that HOs have unique routines that standard commercial ERP packages do not address easily at the field level. The primary contribution of this research is a set of design principles that consider these unique routines and guide ERP development in practice. National and international HOs that are planning to implement information systems, private companies that are trading partners of HOs as well as vendors of ERP systems that are looking for new opportunities would all benefitfrom this research. Originality/value: This study fills the gap in the humanitarian literature regarding the design of ERPsystems for humanitarian organizations that enable Triple–A supply chain capabilities and it advances the knowledge of the challenges of ERP design by HOs in the context of humanitarian operations
Greater Control and Transparency in Personal Data Processing
Get PDFAlthough the European General Data Protection Regulation affords data subjects more control over how their
personal data is stored and processed, there is a need for technical solutions to support these legal rights.
In this position paper we assess the level of control, transparency and compliance offered by three different
approaches (i.e., defacto standard, SPECIAL, Solid). We propose a layered decentralised architecture based on
combining SPECIAL and Solid. Finally, we introduce our usage control framework, which we use to compare
and contrast the level of control and compliance offered by the four different approaches