Bøger i BestMasters serien

Recent literature on international entrepreneurship hints toward an increasing number of firms engaging in business activities across national borders from or near their inception.

Verena Schwaighofer analyses the currently transferred image of the United Arab Emirates as a tourist destination and to what extent the traditional Arabian culture is integrated into the image strategies of image developers in this country.

This research study brings theoretical insights on real-life negotiations in sales of professional services in Spain and Germany.

Previous research focused either on the relationship between strategic planning and performance or coordination mechanisms and performance.

Due to the purchase of many companies in recent years and a still growing Automotive Aftermarket business sector, it was moreover indicated that a reorganization of the Process Map is unavoidable.

The Libor Market Model (LMM) is a mathematical model for pricing and risk management of interest rate derivatives and has been built on the framework of modelling forward rates.

Speculative currency crises seem to have become a common and inevitable phenomenon in the international monetary system. Anja Zenker provides a comprehensive insight into the body of theoretical and empirical literature about currency speculation in fixed exchange rate regimes.

The author focuses on a method to price Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO) tranches. By comparing the tranches prices, it is possible to notice that the Clayton approach leads to smaller equity and mezzanine tranches. The senior and super senior tranches levels are higher when the dependence is modeled by a Clayton copula.

As rare earth elements represent the most critical materials, Anja Brumme provides a market analysis of rare earths, ascertaining that geological scarcity is not the main problem.

Shared value not only offers a new concept to face the current business environmental dynamics but it also responds to macro-economic challenges.

The literature on business model innovation mainly regards large enterprises and is not tailored to SME characteristics. Oana Buliga takes an exploratory look at whether SMEs use strategies which are mainly designed for large enterprises for innovating their business models.

Andre Roehm investigates the dynamic properties of two-state lasing quantum dot lasers, with a focus on ground state quenching. Additionally, the turn-on dynamics and modulation response curves of two-state lasing devices are presented.

Michael Schenk evaluates new technologies and methods, such as cryogenic read-out electronics and a UV laser system, developed to optimise the performance of large liquid argon time projection chambers (LArTPC). Amongst others, the author studies the uniformity of the electric field produced by a Greinacher high-voltage generator operating at cryogenic temperatures, measures the linear energy transfer (LET) of muons and the longitudinal diffusion coefficient of electrons in liquid argon. The results are obtained by analysing events induced by cosmic-ray muons and UV laser beams. The studies are carried out with ARGONTUBE, a prototype LArTPC in operation at the University of Bern, Switzerland, designed to investigate the feasibility of drift distances of up to five metres for electrons in liquid argon.

Currently, a new potential paragon of fundraising and financing, in particular crowd funding (CF) attracts a lot of attention. Scientific discourse on CF is still nascent, since existing studies and papers focus on the potential of CF and its basic principles.

Increasingly, luxury brands join forces with the arts today. Regardless of their growing practical relevance for the creation of contemporary luxury brands though, the varied forms of Luxury Brand-Art Collaborations (LBACs) have remained largely unexplored to date.

The Author shows that modelling the uncertain cash flow dynamics of an investment project deserves careful attention in real options valuation. The valuation results suggest that stochastic process choice can have substantial implications for valuation results and optimal investment rules.

Model-based recursive partitioning (MOB) provides a powerful synthesis between machine-learning inspired recursive partitioning methods and regression models. Hanna Birke extends this approach by allowing in addition for measurement error in covariates, as frequently occurring in biometric (or econometric) studies, for instance, when measuring blood pressure or caloric intake per day. After an introduction into the background, the extended methodology is developed in detail for the Cox model and the Weibull model, carefully implemented in R, and investigated in a comprehensive simulation study.

The master thesis of Kevin Berk develops a stochastic model for the electricity demand of small and medium-sized companies that is flexible enough so that it can be used for various business sectors. The model incorporates the grid load as an exogenous factor and seasonalities on a daily, weekly and yearly basis. It is demonstrated how the model can be used e.g. for estimating the risk of retail contracts. The uncertainty of electricity demand is an important risk factor for customers as well as for utilities and retailers. As a consequence, forecasting electricity load and its risk is now an integral component of the risk management for all market participants.

Various psychographic traits that most directly influence consumers' private label attitudes are the focal point of Stefanie Weiss' investigation. The hypothesized relationships between consumers' private label attitude and various psychographic traits are tested on a sample of German and Austrian consumers using an online questionnaire.

In his Master project Sven Herrmann for the first time carried out fundamental investigations into the development of polyoxometalate based ionic liquids (POM-ILs). The POM-ILs were obtained by charge balancing inorganic polyoxometalate (POM) anions with sterically demanding tetraalkylammonium or tetraalkylphosphonium cations. By functionalization of lacunary Keggin clusters with 3d-transition metals and charge balancing with tetraalkylammonium cations of differing chain length, a model system for the correlation of the molecular structure with macroscopic materials properties was obtained. In a systematic approach the syntheses via self-aggregation is presented. Analytic methods comprise UV-Vis, FTIR, NMR, EPR and Mobauer spectroscopy. For determination of the materials properties TGA and DSC were carried out and rheological studies shed light onto the flow characteristics of the highly viscous materials.

This book covers relevant topics of social media in the area of research institutes. Daniel Hurrle and Julia Postatny follow the research question of how social media can empower the communication of such institutes by using the example of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

Florian Auinger highlights the core weaknesses and sources of criticism regarding the VIX Index as an indicator for the future development of financial market volatility.

Jochen Szangolies contributes a novel way of dealing with the problem of the experimental testability of the Kochen-Specker theorem posed by realistic, that is, noisy, measurements. Such noise spoils perfect compatibility between successive measurements, which however is a necessary requirement to test the notion of contextuality in usual approaches. To overcome this difficulty, a new, extended notion of contextuality that reduces to Kochen-Specker contextuality in the limit of perfect measurement implementations is proposed by the author, together with a scheme to test this notion experimentally. Furthermore, the behaviour of these tests under realistic noise conditions is investigated.

Sandra Haschke presents a strategy to enhance the Fe2O3 electrode performance by controlled nanostructuring of the catalyst surface, based on anodized aluminum oxide coated by means of atomic layer deposition. Furthermore, she investigates the influence of underlying conductive layers and post-deposition annealing on the electrode performance and the associated changes in morphology and chemical composition. Exploiting all effects combined delivers an increase in steady-state water oxidation throughput by a factor of 2.5 with respect to planar electrodes.

Paul M. Geffert analyses the interplay of noise and time delay in non-excitable nonlinear systems and the modulation of stochastic effects. In particular, the author studies coherence resonance, which is a constructive effect of noise that occurs in nonlinear systems, and demonstrates that it can be modulated by time-delayed feedback. Analytical methods for the investigation of stochastic delay differential equations are developed. Noise or random perturbations and time delay are two phenomena which arise in many fields of physics, chemistry, or biology, just to mention a few examples. The investigated model is a generic Hopf normal form so that these methods and results can be transferred to many different areas of science.

Tamara Bernadette Aigner designed a set of biocompatible and biodegradable poly(organophosphazenes). In order to tailor their biological and chemical properties, she further modified these macromolecules by adding functional moieties via thiol-ene chemistry. The author used the same photochemistry for crosslinking to obtain a mechanically stable network. She further altered the degradation rate of the matrix as well as the mechanical properties by adding blending agents and created a porous matrix, which is necessary for cell invasion and communication, by a newly developed photocrosslinking particulate-leaching method. Thus, a modular hybrid system was established which is able to adapt to different microenvironments based upon tissue type.

Karl Striegler investigates novel materials for photocatalytic hydrogen evolution from water. Graphitic Carbon Nitrides are an interesting class of materials with a structure close to graphite. For overcoming certain limitations, the author used different approaches to functionalize the basic material. He deposited nanoparticles to enhance the catalytic activity and used copolymerization as well as sensitizing to increase the amount of harvested light.

Sebastian Uhlig presents the first experimental investigation of self-organized surface structures (LIPSS) generated by ablation from different (semiconductor and metallic) targets with an ultrafast white-light continuum (WLC) spreading in wavelength from 400-750 nm. The main goal is to study the possibility of LIPSS formation upon irradiation with an incoherent and polychromatic light source (e.g. the WLC) in order to discriminate between the two debated formation scenarios. The generation of a suitable WLC in terms of sufficient white-light pulse energy, broad spectral bandwidth, and low spatial coherence for the LIPSS generation, as well as the characterization of this WLC are additional important objectives of this work.

Melanie Weichselbaumer presents the synthesis of the monomers as well as the electropolymerization on Pt-electrodes. The electrolysis experiments were carried out for 40 hours and the products were analysed by gas chromatography and ionic chromatography. Pyridine-functionalized and Rhenium bipyridine-functionalized Polythiophenes can be used as heterogeneous catalysts for CO2-reduction.

Richard Moser shows how to use and upgrade toy bricks for the construction of a lightweight, low-cost and easy to reproduce tensile testing setup. Tailored for the characterization of elastomers and stretchable electrodes, the setup is capable of performing stress-strain studies along with resistance-strain measurements. Based on the underlying theory of material deformation and rubber elasticity, the author applies the setup to mechanically characterize polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) with different grades of stiffness. The versatility of the device is highlighted with the electromechanical characterization of stretchable thin film metal electrodes on PDMS. Applications of the author's setup range from using it as an educational tool in practical physics and engineering courses over being showcase in scientific exhibitions to its utilization as an inexpensive and reliable laboratory tool.