A large portion of Frankfurt UAS students are co-called first-generation students. For students who grew up in families without prior academic experience, social inequality can be amplified by the fact that it may be comparatively more difficult for them in socioeconomic, psychosocial, and biographical terms to find their way at the university and in their program. For this purpose, we want to study the effects on the students’ ability to act as actors within the institution and the suitability and correlation of the academic conditions at the Frankfurt UAS.
Study on cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology
Initial coin offerings (ICO) and cryptocurrencies are innovations that represent a virtual, unregulated, and border-crossing world. This stands in contrast to the real world with its 194 countries and its economic areas, which are governed by their own laws, regulations, and standards. These two worlds are not yet compatible – this will become the challenge of the coming years for political, economic, and social decision-makers. In this respect, the developments and consequences of these virtual innovations should be observed very closely. In addition, it will be important to find ways to integrate the benefits of this new technology into the existing financial systems.
Bitcoin is the most familiar example of cryptocurrency and has attracted great media attention due to its tremendous increase in value and the large subsequent value fluctuations. Regulatory agencies and central banks warn that a bubble might form in the segment which may pose great risks for investors and thus risks for market stability. Regulatory agencies view cryptocurrencies as digital accounting units. They are not a legal tender nor currency, cash, or checks. They are not considered electronic money as defined in the Payment Services Supervision Act.
For more information, download the study: Initial coin offering (German only)
Research project determines prerequisites for Halal logistics
Globalization requires new processes in logistics, in particular for the import and export of goods between Muslim and non-Muslim countries. Not only the roughly five million Muslims in Germany use products that are "halal", i.e. products that are "permissible" under the principles of Islamic norms. The practical research project "Halal logistics in air freight" by Dr. Yvonne Ziegler, professor for Aviation Management at the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences (Frankfurt UAS), strives to develop a potential analysis for the globally still relatively neglected area of Halal logistics in air freight as part of the food supply chain in a growth market with strongly increasing global demand for Halal products.
For more information see here...
Women and careers continues to be a hot topic and causes debates in business, science, and society. The media in particular provide a very polarizing picture. While the share of women in management positions has increased in the last few decades, women continue to be underrepresented in Germany at the management level. Studies show that women have less professional success than men. However, there are hardly any studies that look at the media depiction of career women in Germany. Media can be seen as having a defining role in the formation of opinions and stereotypes (see Thiele, 2015; Köntopp, 2014). Furthermore, they are a reflection of social role hierarchies and mirror cultural thought patterns and attitudes of society at large (see Velte, 1995). Thiele argues (2015, p. 237) that "[…] media companies and editorial offices act as "gendered organizations", i.e. as central locations in which social inequality between the genders is generated […]". Various studies have already dealt with the depiction of women in the media and advertising, but the topic of career women in general and specifically with a focus on private business and science is neglected in Germany. Only one research project of the Freie Universität Berlin and the Leuphana Universität Lüneburg studied the creation of images of women and men in journalistic reporting. The focus was on the media representation of male and female top politicians, economists, and scientists (see Lünenborg, 2010). Furthermore, there are no studies that explicitly look at the results of the women's quotas in management positions which were introduced in Germany in 2015. The study wants to evaluate the media effects of the law passed on April 24, 2015 for equal participation of women and men in management positions in private businesses and in public service (Federal Law Gazette 2015 Part I No. 17, p. 642). The main goal of the project is to find out the quantitative relationship in which career women and men are mentioned in select print media and with what attributes, characteristics, skills, and personality traits professionally successful women are depicted in this context.
Project team: Caprice Weissenrieder and Prof. Dr. Barbara Lämmlein
Duration: End of 2018
Dr. Yvonne Ziegler, Professor of Aviation Management at the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences (Frankfurt UAS), cooperates with businesses in the pharmaceutical industry and other Hesse universities as part of a research project on Pharma Supply Chain Risk Management. The goal is to develop an IT tool that is supposed to help pharmaceutical manufacturers to manage the Pharma Supply Chain on a risk basis. The total expenditures are listed at about one million Euros, half of which is carried by the project’s partners. The State of Hesse supports the practice-related research project "Pharma Supply Chain Risk Management in Air Freight" (project number 555/17-37) as part of the LOEWE 3 support guideline with a subsidy volume of about 500,000 Euros.
For more information see here...
The SPIRIX research project is based on a search engine for peer-to-peer information retrieval in XML documents that is continually developed. Based on this search engine, we are conducting the first study on the extent structural information of XML documents can be used in the distributed search on a peer-to-peer basis to make the search both effective and efficient in terms of resource use. In addition to technical experiments that are supposed to achieve performance and search quality optimizations, the project also studies social aspects such as privacy of the search user and security aspects.
Contact person: Prof. Dr. J. Winter
Information about the project: SPIRIX
Publications about the project: Publications about SPIRIX
Observers can see a strong worldwide increase in internet-based e-business, globalized business activities, and ever closer networking, also in terms of Industry 4.0. As a result, business processes increasingly take place across companies. This also concerns the corresponding flow of documents and data. A critical factor for success in the realization of complex value-added chains is the successful planning, management, and control of business processes that are usually implemented with IT support. In practice, one usually focuses on individual phases of process management or the involved documents or processes themselves. The possibility of continuous, i.e. modeling, analysis, and implementation of business processes across all phases, including the integration of the electronic exchange of structured documents and data, has still not been studied and implemented in practice very well.
For this reason, the XSIM project analyzes the possibilities of business process management (BPM) across all phases particularly in reference to its use across businesses, e.g. as a part of Industry 4.0. This is done on the basis of XML-based higher Petri networks, since in the meantime XML has established itself as standard for the exchange of structured data in the inter-business area and is suitable both for the structuring of the information to be exchanged and for use in business process modeling and implementation. A comprehensive BPM is developed and implemented, which also permits the integration of XML-based document management. In the prototype implementation, the focus lies on simulation (based on the modeling of business processes, XML documents, XML schemes, and filter schemes). This prototype in particular allows for the simulation of previously modeled business processes together with integrated XML document management, also in the inter-business context.
Contact person: Prof. Dr. J. Winter
Information on project: XSIM
The goal of the project is to discuss the current state of research about the under-researched field of lesbian women in the working world in Germany, in particular in management positions. Its primary goal is to study whether existing studies have addressed factors such as performance, work satisfaction, and careers of lesbian women. In addition, it is supposed to provide insight into the perception of women in the workplace and their environment and examine to what extent "outing" can be beneficial or detrimental to the career. Furthermore, the study would like to investigate to what extent women are able to completely tap their potential in business. Career-supporting and career-impeding factors are identified. The study looks at the working conditions in businesses as well as the role of the personal environment.
Project team: Prof. Dr. Regine Graml, Prof. Dr. Yvonne Ziegler, Caprice Weissenrieder
Duration: July 2017 - December 2017
Sponsor: Bundesstiftung Magnus Hirschfeld
Follow-up study of the manager survey conducted in 2006/2007 about salary and advancement negotiations.
Women in management positions continue to be underrepresented in Germany and earn clearly less than their male counterparts. For executives, the determination of salary can generally not be based on a workplace assessment. Differing assessments of equivalent activities thus have a decisive impact on the salary amount. Negotiation attitudes, negotiation skills, and negotiation strategies of women and men have a significant impact on the pay level and thus the salary gap. In our research project "Gender-specific negotiation skills and their effect on salary and advancement negotiations" conducted between 2006 and 2009 (with the financial support of the Hesse Ministry for Science and Art), we studied what role gender-specific negotiation skills of women played for their advancement and the obtained salary (Ruppert, A./M. Voigt (2009), Gehalt und Aufstieg, Mythen – Fakten – Modelle erfolgreichen Verhandelns, Aachen). This allowed us to show that the impact of negotiation was significant for the different career developments of female and male executives. We were able to show that gender-specific differences in negotiating skills have a negative effect on the success of female executives in salary and advancement negotiations. These gender-specific differences referred both to the general attitude towards salary and advancement negotiations and the gender-specific differences in terms of communication skills.
10 years have now passed since the data was collected in this study and the question arises whether these results still apply or whether there have been changes in the past 10 years and if so, what these changes are. Insights resulting from the planned follow-up study are necessary for developing solution concepts, interventions, and recommended actions in order to counteract the existing inequality due to gender and reduce indirect discrimination.
Project team: Prof. Dr. Andrea Ruppert, Prof. Dr. Martina Voigt
Duration: December 2016 - June 2018
Cooperation partner: BPW Germany (Business and Professional Women - Germany e.V.) and ULA - United Leaders Association, subsidized by the Federal Ministry for Families, Senior Citizens, Women and Youths
Subsidy amount: €34,980
It is said that women have improved remarkably in progressing within the organisational hierarchy during the last decades. However, they still lack access to power and decision-making positions compared to men (European Commission, 2015b). When assessing the distribution of women and men at different management levels in the private sector across various company sizes and sectors, available data present a slightly better picture. However, women hold only 26% of the positions in top management and 38% of second management level positions (Kohaut and Möller, 2013). Even though, women become more often (co-)breadwinners as well (Baran et al., 2014; European Commission, 2015b; Zellmer, 2015).
The issue of women’s career development is still of high interest due to several reasons (Burke and Ng, 2006; Cooper and Burke, 2002; Festing et al., 2013; McKinsey, 2011). In addition, research has repeatedly attempted to identify reasons and explain barriers women face with respect to career success (Eagly and Carli, 2007; Heilman, 2012; Morrison et al., 1987; Oakley, 2000). Moreover, different factors influencing the progression of women have already been analysed (Kirchmeyer, 2002; Melamed, 1995; Powell and Mainiero, 1992; Schneer and Reitman, 1995). However, studies often focus on barriers rather than factors that help women to go ahead. Therefore, this study aims to determine factors that have a positive influence on career advancements of female executives in Germany. Moreover, the analysis investigates the relationship between political skill, perceived organizational support, and career self-efficacy on career success of women in decision-making positions.
Promoting cooperation: Edinburgh Napier University
The "2nd Frankfurt career study - career perspectives of working mothers" takes stock of the current situation in an online survey of more than 1000 working mothers and records what political and business measures in the last 5 years actually had an effect and what working mothers want from their surroundings in society, the workplace, and politics in the future. How has the business culture changed, if at all? Are working mothers in Germany still disadvantaged in their career development and exposed to discrimination? What special opportunities and barriers do mothers experience and what behaviors do they encounter from their superiors / colleagues in German businesses? How successfully do they reintegrate when they go back to work after pregnancy and parental leave?
The objective of the study is to recommend incentive systems for business / policy / society based on the results in order to maintain and increase the share of women in businesses who are or want to become mothers and to use them better. In addition, the study is supposed to raise public awareness of the current wishes and problems of working mothers in Germany.
Project team: Prof. Dr. Yvonne Ziegler, Prof. Dr. Regine Graml, Astrid Kramer (Scient. MA)
Duration: June 2016 - May 2018
In view of the growing significance of suitable and effective compliance risk management in banks and financial services providers, Sebastian Rick's current research focuses on the limitation of compliance risks through the use of causal-analytic models for measuring the perceived effectiveness of compliance programs. The "compliance index model" developed by him in this context is currently the only empirical economic model that is able to do so. It measures objectively, reliably, and validly whether the employees of a bank or financial services provider accept a compliance program and it thus contributes to the limitation of compliance risks. The model makes it possible for users to measure the perceived effectiveness of a compliance program as well as the model-based development of strategic and operative action portfolios. These specific action portfolios help prioritize what has to be changed strategically and operatively to limit compliance risks.
Sebastian Rick's research is sponsored by the Frankfurt Institute for Risk Management and Regulation (FIRM).
Contact person: Sebastian Rick
The study empirically investigates how advantages in information production affect loan rates and, consequently, the interest income of banks. To examine whether cost reductions from superior monitoring are passed on to the borrowers, a new ex-ante measure of monitoring efforts of a bank is applied. This measure directly investigates the efforts of a bank at assessing credit risk in the lending business through the use of a survey conducted among all German savings banks. Using a unique dataset, I find a robust and significant negative impact of superior monitoring efforts on the interest income of the bank.
The results indicate that interest rates are sufficiently high to provide banks with economic rents but sufficiently low to limit excessive risk-taking by firms.
Contact Person: Prof. Dr. Dilek Bülbül