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Abstract English
Empirical evidence suggests that international ownership of local firms supports firm performance and growth through various channels such as financing, technology transfer, and improved access to international markets. This is particularly true for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that otherwise may lack access to a variety of vital resources. At the same time small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) formation may promote economic development. The relationship between firm performance and international ownership has been well explored for firms in developed economies but this is not the case for firms – including SMEs – in Africa and the Middle East. Largely due to lack of relevant cross-country financial data, existing literature on African and Middle-Eastern firms has presented survey-based evidence on firm performance while evidence based on detailed financial information remains lacking. The present paper aims at filling this research gap. We identify African and Middle-Eastern SMEs operating in the formal sector and examine the impact of ownership structure on firm performance. We use cross-sectional financial data covering about 25,500 companies – including about 30% SMEs – in 69 African and Middle-Eastern countries for the years 2006 to 2015. Our results indicate that international ownership has significant positive association with firm performance. For internationally-owned SMEs this appears to be true despite lower levels of equity and debt capital, implying that internationally-owned firms use international resources – other than capital – more efficiently!
Abstract Deutsch
Empirische Erkenntnisse deuten darauf hin, dass das internationale Eigentum an lokalen Unternehmen die Leistung und das Wachstum von Unternehmen über verschiedene Kanäle wie Finanzierung, Technologietransfer und verbesserten Zugang zu internationalen Märkten unterstützt. Dies gilt insbesondere für kleine und mittlere Unternehmen (KMU), die andernfalls möglicherweise keinen Zugang zu einer Vielzahl wichtiger Ressourcen haben. Gleichzeitig kann die Gründung kleiner und mittlerer Unternehmen (KMU) die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung fördern. Die Beziehung zwischen Unternehmensleistung und internationalem Eigentum wurde für Unternehmen in Industrieländern umfassend untersucht; dies ist allerdings nicht der Fall für Unternehmen – einschließlich KMU – in Afrika und im Nahen Osten. Da relevante länderübergreifende Finanzdaten oft nicht vorlagen, hat die vorhandene Literatur über afrikanische und nahöstliche Unternehmen vor Allem umfragebasierte Untersuchungen zu Unternehmensleistungen vorgelegt, während Evidenz, die auf detaillierten Finanzinformationen basiert, nach wie vor fehlt. Ziel des vorliegenden Beitrags ist es, diese Forschungslücke zu schließen. Wir untersuchen die Auswirkungen der Eigentümerstruktur auf die Unternehmensleistung afrikanischer und nahöstlicher KMU. Wir nutzen dazu Querschnittsfinanzdaten von rund 25.500 Unternehmen – darunter etwa 30% KMU – in 69 Ländern Afrikas und des Nahen Ostens für die Jahre 2006 bis 2015. Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen, dass internationale Eigentümerschaft eine signifikante positive Assoziation mit der Unternehmensleistung hat. Für KMU in internationalem Besitz scheint dies trotz eines geringeren Eigen- und Fremdkapitals zu gelten; dies impliziert, dass in internationalem Besitz befindliche Unternehmen internationale Ressourcen – außer Kapital – effizienter nutzen!
This Article introduces two research projects towards assistive robotic arms for people with severe body impairments. Both projects aim to develop new control and interaction designs to promote accessibility and a better performance for people with functional losses in all four extremities, e.g. due to quadriplegic or multiple sclerosis. The project MobILe concentrates on using a robotic arm as drinking aid and controlling it with smart glasses, eye-tracking and augmented reality. A user oriented development process with participatory methods were pursued which brought new knowledge about the life and care situation of the future target group and the requirements a robotic drinking aid needs to meet. As a consequence the new project DoF-Adaptiv follows an even more participatory approach, including the future target group, their family and professional caregivers from the beginning into decision making and development processes within the project. DoF-Adaptiv aims to simplify the control modalities of assistive robotic arms to enhance the usability of the robotic arm for activities of daily living. lo decide on exemplary activities, like eating or open a door, the future target group, their family and professional caregivers are included in the decision making process. Furthermore all relevant stakeholders will be included in the investigation of ethical, legal and social implications as well as the identification of potential risks. This article will show the importance of the participatory design for the development and research process in MobILe and DoF-Adaptiv.
Master thesis for the academic graduation as Master of Engineering in the interdisciplinary
study programme Environmental Management Systems and Urban Planning in Metropolitan
Areas / Umweltmanagement und Stadtplanung in Ballungsräumen at the faculty of Architecture,
Construction Engineering and Geo-Informatics.
Universities of graduation:
Hochschule RheinMain
University of Applied Sciences Frankfurt am Main (FRA-UAS)
Hochschule Geisenheim University
Emotional spaces
(2021)
Taking into account that architects have a pronounced influence on humans’ lives, it is their responsibility to design and build livable environments. For this, there is another crucial dimension that shapes the individual understanding of space in a way that has not yet been taken into account. This paper looks at living environments and their meaning for individual life and well-being. It introduces a theoretical background that sets its focus on buildings and exterior spaces and presents a different point of view. Here the theory of Emotional Spaces is introduced, referring to a connection between space and feelings and considering that it is not enough to plan buildings and open spaces merely with architectural qualities in mind. This paper presents a different understanding of space and proposes a new approach to the design process. It is based on a design concept that places people and all their needs in the center. In order to be able to design and plan architectural spaces according to the needs of human beings, it seems necessary to understand the individual, everyday life. The challenge is to understand the individual life story, which should then be put into a spatial context. From these insights, Emotional Spaces that are relevant for „good and successful” living can become visible.
Abstract English
Urban area tessellation is a crucial aspect in many spatial analyses. While regular tessellation methods, like square-grid or hexagon-grid, are suitable for addressing pure geometry problems, they cannot take the unique characteristics of different subareas into account. Irregular tessellation methods allow the border between the subareas to be defined more realistically based on the urban features like road network or POI data. This paper studies and compares five different tessellation methods: Squares, hexagons, adaptive squares, Voronoi diagrams, and city blocks. We explain how (open-source) POI data can be integrated into the tessellation process to build what we call “Local Geo-graphic Units” (POI-based tiles). These units are flexible and adaptable to the structure of the studied area and underlying data and could improve the performance of further analyses. The results of the various tessellation methods are demonstrated for the city of Frankfurt am Main in Germany. A simple clustering of Local Geographic Units for the studied city indicates that city blocks perform better than the other methods in the city segmentation in terms of reflecting the structure of this city.
Abstract Deutsch
Die Tessellierungen urbaner Gebiete ist ein entscheidender Aspekt bei räumlichen Analysen. Regelmäßige Tessellierungen, wie die Unterteilung in Quadrate oder Hexagons, eignen sich zwar für Probleme rein geometrischer Natur, berücksichtigen aber die Charakteristika der enthaltenen kleineren geographischen Einheiten nicht. Unregelmäßige Tessellierungen ermöglichen eine realitätsnahe Unterteilung basierend auf städtischen Merkmalen, wie dem Straßennetz oder POI-Daten. In diesem Beitrag werden fünf verschiedene Tessellierungsmethoden vorgestellt und verglichen: Quadrate, Hexagons, adaptive Quadrate, Voronoi-Diagramme und City-Blocks. Die Integration von (Open-Source) POI-Daten in den Tessellierungsprozess führt zu sogenannten „Lokalen Geographischen Einheiten“. Diese POI-basierten Einheiten sind flexibel und passen sich sowohl der Struktur des zu untersuchenden Gebiets, als auch der zugrundeliegenden Daten an und erlaube dadurch darauf aufbauende, detailliertere Analysen. Alle vorgestellten Tessellierungsmethoden werden an dem Beispiel Frankfurt am Main durchgeführt und präsentiert. Ein einfaches „Clustering“ der Lokalen Geographischen Einheiten zeigt, dass City-Blocks die Struktur der Stadt besser abbilden können, als die anderen vorgestellten Methoden.
The research project “start2park” closes a research gap by precisely measuring parking search duration (cruising for parking) – especially the starting point of search – using a mobile app developed for this purpose. Complete journeys’ location data and durations are recorded, including driving until the start of the parking search, the parking search process, and the footpath from the parking spot to the final destination. Therefore, the causal effects of parking search on driving duration as well as journey duration can be estimated. Cruising for parking is traffic that results from car drivers looking for (free) kerb parking that meets their expectations (for example, free of charge or close to their destination point) and drivers being not (fully) informed about available kerb space parking locations. Parking search traffic causes external costs. Therefore, traffic-planning options should be designed to reduce unnecessary parking search traffic. However, this requires reliable data on urban cruising for parking traffic. Previous empirical results on the share of cruising traffic in total traffic, average parking search durations and average parking search distances differ widely. We show that the causal effect of parking search on driving duration and journey duration has not yet been validly estimated in empirical studies, and we explain how this is done in the research project.
Service robotics offers great potential for retirement and nursing homes. In the present project Agebots (Implementation of service robotics in the field of elderly care), founded by the Swiss Innovation Agency (Innosuisse), a multidisciplinary team is investigating and testing the implementation of service robotics in elderly care. The pursued dimensions are human, technology, business, and law. The project is carried out in cooperation with two implementation partners: a retirement and nursing home and a robot manufacturer, both based in Switzerland. The project is still ongoing and will be completed by 2022. So far, the use of robots in elderly care has proven to be challenging regarding all different dimensions. These challenges have yet to be overcome to ensure a safe implementation that adds value for both caregivers and the elderly and efficiently supports the operations at the retirement and nursing home. The human centered and iterative approach of the present project allows an early identification of potential challenges and the end-users’ needs. This way, the challenges can be addressed proactively, prior to the implementation in the retirement and nursing home.
Abstract: English
Environmental sustainability is one of the greatest challenges of this century. It depends on both compliance with environmental protection laws and its integration into directors’ decision-making beyond these laws. In this regard, the duty to promote the company’s success stipulates in the Companies Act 2006 that directors, who are protected by Business Judgment Rule, shall consider their companies’ environmental impacts. Since the stakeholders’ interests are regarded as a means to increase shareholder value, directors may pursue their companies’ environmental sustainability through a business case. The latest changes to the UK Corporate Governance Code 2018 further encourage directors to consider environmental sustainability in their business decisions. They may also link environmental sustainability to mandatory and voluntary disclosures through publishing their companies’ achievements. As a result, directors have broad discretion to pursue environmental sustainability beyond environmental protection laws. However, evidence shows that directors frequently neglect this discretion, the environmental sustainability’s resulting business case and that they even cause environmental damages to increase (the short-term) shareholder value. This is due to the social norm of shareholder primacy, which is now exacerbated by Brexit’s and the Ukraine war’s unclear economic impacts as well as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In this regard, the current approach of the UK’s company law in the predominant form of narrative reporting laws is insufficient because of the resulting greenwashing possibilities. This paper’s main argument is thus that changes to the current legal framework for directors’ decision-making are needed to achieve more environmental sustainability. Accordingly, a new principle for the UK Corporate Governance Code 2018 could lead to a greater consideration of environmental sustainability in directors’ decision-making and increased shareholder value in times of rising societal awareness of climate change and a growing trend towards environmental activist shareholders.