Marcus Wagner

Universität Augsburg | UNA · Faculty of Business and Economics

Forschungsfrage: Mit welchen nachhaltigkeitsbezogenen Spannungen sehen sich Mitarbeitende in ihrem Arbeitsalltag konfrontiert, welche Strategien wenden sie an, um erfolgreich mit widersprüchlichen Situationen umzugehen und wie kann ein nachhaltiges Personalmanagement sie dabei unterstützen? Methodik: Zur Untersuchung der Forschungsfrage wurden Inte...

This study analyzes the role of environmental uncertainty for the relationship between the level of green innovation and profitability and in doing so contributes towards answering the question when green product and process innovation pays off in three ways: First, as a novelty we take into account the level of innovations. Second, we address how...

Entrepreneurs are potentially powerful solvers of challenges faced by sustainable development, especially when they combine narrower technological expertise with wider social motivations. Yet, to what degree trade-offs exist between different motivations is still largely unresolved. In this paper, we examine the choices made by potential entreprene...

To understand the conditions that support employee green behavior across cultures, we develop and test a conceptual model that describes how normative cues from work team leaders and peers in combination with country cultural norms shape discretionary green workplace behavior. Data from 1,605 employees in five countries indicate that power distance...

This paper analyses data from a large‐scale survey on corporate action to support biodiversity and ecosystem services undertaken by firms of all sizes and across manufacturing industries. The analysis focuses on Germany as the largest economy by GDP in the European Union and analyses the uptake of activities directly aimed at protecting biodiversit...

Based on an integrated theoretical framework, we argue that socially responsible firms aspire to higher ethical and moral standards than other firms and foster higher intrinsic motivation to avoid downsizing. In line with this, we develop hypotheses proposing a negative association of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) with downsizing incidence...

As environmental concerns continue to draw attention from governments, businesses, and citizens worldwide, the so-called green behaviors of employees are being recognized as important for both the successful implementation of environmental management policies and as sources of upward influence that can hasten managerial responsiveness to environmen...

In this introduction, we first review the lessons learned in development economics about the ability of randomized control trials to analyse what Duflo refers to as the “plumbing problems” of policy implementation, as opposed to “engineering problems” of policy design. We then examine the papers published within this special issue from a plumbing-b...

This chapter analyzes the indirect effects of environmental management system (EMS) implementation and its certification and relates these to international governance in the context of new public environmental management. Building on a comprehensive quantitative dataset, it assesses the effects of ISO 14001 and EMAS (Eco-Management and Auditing Sch...

State universities in Germany are increasingly being transformed from institutions with traditional teaching and research responsibilities to have a third, societal role in sustainable regional and economic development. In doing so, universities support knowledge spillovers to improve sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystems that benefit economic rev...

Building on the observable trend toward increasing division of scientific labor in entrepreneurial ecosystems, we investigate the effects of different modes of implementation for external knowledge sourcing such as alliances and acquisitions. More specifically, by estimating a Poisson model based on 951 acquisitions by 209 companies from the biotec...

Organizational ambidexterity is the ability of organizations to balance exploratory and exploitative activities, and is essential if firms are to survive in dynamic environments. Furthermore, the ambidexterity hypothesis states that firms that have this ability (i.e. are ambidextrous) are more successful. However, this opens a number of questions,...

The aim of this paper is to analyse the indirect effects of environmental management system implementation and certification. Specifically, the paper comprehensively assesses the effects of International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) 14001 and European Union Eco‐Management and Auditing Scheme (EMAS) certification as well as experience with...

Firms’ environmental approaches frequently encompass strategies for pollution prevention and product stewardship. We apply resource-based theorizing to determine how these two strategies affect the likelihood that a firm will adopt firm-internal environmental-management standards and how such standards relate to organizational performance. We find...

Sustainability and environmental related innovation activities are important for the present and for the future. These innovations occur throughout the world and in different contexts. Manufacturing related organization may approach these activities from different perspectives. The question we raise is whether country-related differences, in this c...

Environmental injustice due to economic inequality and its correlates and consequences has been a focus for researchers and policy makers alike over many years, with much of that research focusing on race as the major determinant of inequality. In this paper we extend this literature by focussing on emissions from the oil refinery industry at the c...

Environmental injustice due to economic inequality and its correlates and consequences has been a focus for researchers and policy makers alike over many years, with much of that research focusing on race as the major determinant of inequality. In this paper we extend this literature by focussing on emissions from the oil refinery industry at the c...

Sustainability plays an important role as concerns the public image as well as performance of firms. This work focuses on both, social as well as ecological sustainability related topics, and their relation to environmental management systems. Based on an international large-scale survey project we provide for a 15-year period (ranging from 2001 to...

During their early development, academic spin-off projects are embedded in the context of research institutions. However, knowledge is still lacking on whether the influence of university structures on spin-off projects or the need for resources and the initial setting of these projects vary across research disciplines or university departments. To...

The purpose of this paper is to show the varying effects of alliance portfolio size and heterogeneity on innovation in biotechnology firms. Previous literature has indicated that the number and heterogeneity of partners in an alliance portfolio might have positive effects on innovativeness. Yet, engaging in multiple and heterogeneous collaborations...

Environmental behaviour plays an important role as concerns the public image and performance of firms, as well as for the achievement of sustainable development in society. This study investigates the behaviour of family firms regarding environment-related activities, innovation and performance. Opposing goals are found to impact environmental beha...

Innovation activities provide considerable challenges to small firms due to resource constraints. Conversely, large, established firms are often forced to buy technologies to remain innovative. This paper investigates the interplay of these two aspects in a specific software-based startup context. Based on structured interviews, the paper analyses...

The difficulties in moving towards corporate sustainability raise the question of how environmental and social management can be integrated better with economic business goals. Over the last decade, the relationship between environmental and economic performance, and more recently the interaction between sustainability performance and business comp...

Entrepreneurship for sustainable development can be defined following Katsikis and Kyrgidou (2008) as the “teleological process aiming at the achievement of sustainable development, by discovering, evaluating and exploiting opportunities and creating value that produces economic prosperity, social cohesion and environmental protection.” Child (2015...

This study builds on the pollution haven and induced innovation arguments as explanations for firm behavior with regard to international environmental management and argues both need to be integrated. This implies that foreign direct investment is capable of facilitating a “race to the bottom” and a “race to the top” simultaneously. Using novel and...

In high-technology industries, the use of acquisitions as a means of sourcing expertise is important, because it provides a potential remedy to the challenges of disruptive innovation. Investigating this issue empirically in the context of software-based high-technology industries with nested econometric, large-scale descriptive and case study meth...

With regard to environmental management, corporate social responsibility has become a major issue for firms. This chapter addresses specifically the role of moderators using structural equation modeling (SEM) by focusing on the question of whether firms empirically sustain efforts to simultaneously improve environmental and economic performance and...

Combining stakeholder, resource based and institutional theories suggests that stakeholder demands affect the environmental and social activities of firms, which in turn influence various performance aspects. This paper tests if stakeholder demands are related to the integration of management activities within the firm, and if such integration is p...

This paper addresses the factors that determine the survival of young software firms and startups. It specifically focusses on the role of venture capital and organizationally radical innovation in this. The interaction of venture capital investment with the type of innovation pursued by the software firm is shown to jointly increase survival in te...

This paper contains an empirical analysis of acquisition dynamics in the electronic design automation (EDA) industry. Using qualitative and quantitative data, we show that particular groups of EDA firms strongly contribute to acquisition activity in the industry at specific times. Based on this we provide empirical evidence that specialized firms p...

As a response to the growing public awareness on the importance of organisational contributions to sustainable development, there is an increased incentive for corporations to report on their sustainability activities. In parallel with this has been the development of ‘Sustainable HRM’ which embraces a growing body of practitioner and academic lite...

Firms’ environmental management strategies encompass the employment of environmental friendly technologies to reduce, change or prevent emissions in the production process (i.e., pollution prevention) as well as the environmental responsible “gestalt” of firms’ products (i.e., product stewardship). The present paper combines institutional and resou...

Based on socioemotional wealth theory, we argue that family and founder firms differ from other firms with respect to corporate social responsibility concerns. We further argue that the ownership and management dimensions of founder firms have opposite effects. Using a dataset of large public firms in the US, we show that family and founder ownersh...

Based on a large European dataset of the manufacturing sector, this paper analyses to what degree country-related interaction effects moderate the association of sustainability-related benefits to human resource management and the adoption of environmental management. Focusing on employee satisfaction, it confirms a positive association of the leve...

The entrepreneurship literature has identified several entrepreneurial traits as being important to become a successful entrepreneur. Using the Five Factor personality model we analyze differences between two types of entrepreneurs: Individuals founding an enterprise out of university employment and graduates who are not employed at the university...

New entrants to a market tend to be superior to incumbents in originating radical innovations. We provide a new explanation for this phenomenon, based on markets for technology. It applies in industries where successful entrepreneurial firms, or their technologies, are acquired by incumbents that then commercialize the innovation. To this end we an...

This paper empirically analyzes the effect of the inclusion of German corporations in the Dow Jones STOXX Sustainability Index (DJSI STOXX) and the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index (DJSI World) on stock performance. In order to receive robust estimation results, we apply an event study approach that is based on both a modern asset pricing model...

In high technology industries the option to use acquisitions as a means for technology sourcing is important. This paper investigates the determinants and dynamics of this for the context of software-based high technology industries specifically as concerns the association of acquirer characteristics with acquisition behavior and finds a substituti...

This article analyses whether benefits arising for human resource management from environmental management activities drive environmental management system implementation. Focusing on employee satisfaction and recruitment/retention, it tests this for German manufacturing firms in 2001 and 2006 and incorporates a rare longitudinal element into the a...

This paper tests the pollution haven hypothesis by examining the relationship between environmental regulation and foreign investment with consideration of the role of corporate social responsibility, which has so far been neglected. Using multinationals ’investment data from China, our results in general support the pollution haven hypothesis that...

Innovation activities in high technology industries frequently imply make-or-buy decisions because of the heterogeneity of firms' ability to pursue specific types of innovation. This paper investigates the factors determining the value of acquisitions in three distinct high technology industries, namely semiconductors, biotechnology and electronic...

Entrepreneurship for sustainable development has become an increasingly researched area, as it is one promising response to sustainable development challenges. This paper contributes with a large-scale empirical analysis at the person level, specifically addressing the match between pursuing sustainable entrepreneurial opportunities and social and...

The purpose of this article is to show the effect of different types of alliances on the innovation patterns of successful firms in the biotechnology industry. Using a new approach to measuring changes in innovation patterns across technology classes, the results show that alliances are formed to specialize in a certain research field, rather than...

The research study reported here analyses the link between sustainability-related and similar regulation and environmental and sustainability-related innovation in firms and ultimately the effect on economic performance and competitive advantage. Our study of these effects uses case study data and survey data for German manufacturing firms. Emphasi...

Innovation has been widely regarded as a panacea for sustainable development, but there remains considerable uncertainty about how it will lead to a more sustainable society. We analyze the role of innovation and business models for the link between the integration of sustainable management with other corporate functions and the economic and enviro...

Acquisition of innovative firms is a widely observed phenomenon in high-tech industries. On the basis of distinct advantages of large and small firms, in this paper, we build a tournament model with possible acquisition activity of large firms to derive hypotheses on interdependencies between acquisition frequency and post-acquisition success rates...

This paper analyses the role of integration of environmental aspects with corporate strategy in private firms as well as institutional factors relating to market demand, cooperation and regulation as antecedents for eco-innovations. Using a framework based on evolutionary economic concepts, the paper derives results from analysing nine case studies...

Innovation in high technology industries poses considerable challenges, frequently forcing firms to consider using acquisitions as a means of sourcing technology. This paper investigates such behaviour in a major high technology sector, namely the semiconductor industry. The paper focuses on differential effects of technology-related versus nontech...

Prior research has shown that family firms differ from non-family firms with regard to aggregate measures of corporate social responsibility (CSR). We argue that CSR is a multidimensional concept that comprises several aspects, which range from employee relations to ecological concerns and product issues. Based on an organizational and family ident...

The goal of this paper is to describe the link between financial performance and the level of sustainability. In a novel approach, the paper classifies firms based on past financial success to address a potentially reciprocal relationship. For the groups of better and worse performing firms and for the entire sample, the above link is then tested,...

This paper addresses the question of how a target firm's innovation activities relate to the acquiring firm's R&D characteristics, and more specifically, if the former substitute for, or complement the acquirer's activities.The paper investigates this question in three narrowly defined high technology industries by analysing the association of thre...

The purpose of this paper is to study empirically based on qualitative in-depth case studies as well as a quantitative survey the role of competitiveness-enhancing regulation and open innovation activities (especially the involvement of fringe stakeholder groups) for sustainability-related innovation and competitiveness. Using qualitative and quant...

The relevance of environmental activities has increased both in research and practice. Yet, there is only little systematic insight into such activities of firms, particularly regarding human resource management aspects. This study improves the empirical knowledge for the manufacturing sector, by exploring the incidence of environmental activities...

The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework to position sustainable entrepreneurship in relation to sustainability innovation. The framework builds on a typology of sustainable entrepreneurship, develops it by including social and institutional entrepreneurship, i.e. the application of the entrepreneurial approach towards meeting societal g...

Innovation activities of firms significantly depend on university-to-industry knowledge trans-fer. As part of this, engineers and scientists in this high-tech industry frequently leave univer-sities to found small start-up companies, which is a specific form of academic entrepreneur-ship. In particular, these mechanisms enable an important option f...

This paper looks at the extent to which stakeholder pressure is related to the integration of management practices within the firm and at the link of integration with self-reported economic and environmental performance as an outcome variable. It specifically analyses possible mediation and moderation effects through multiple-group AMOS comparing s...

Sustainable entrepreneurship has become an increasingly researched area, because it has caught the attention of policy makers as one promising response to sustainable development challenges. Given the emerging character of the field to date, however, most contributions remained conceptual or reported results of case study research. The discussion o...

The paper uses data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) to analyze entrepreneurial activities by foreigners in Germany. The results from our regression analysis are the following: First, foreigners in self-employment are found to earn more than foreigners in a regular employment position. Second, foreigners seem to gain more from self-emplo...

This paper analyses the earnings of self-employed foreigners in Germany with regard to enclave effects to establish whether the latter have an effect on incomes. It finds that earnings from self-employment vary, which can be explained by enclave effects. The results suggest, that almost no regional discrimination exists, which is indicative for a r...

R&D incentives of new entrants to a market may be shaped by the prospects of being acquired by an incumbent. In this paper, we analyze a two-stage innovation game between one incumbent and a large number of entrants. In the first stage, firms compete to develop innovations of high quality. They do so by choosing, at equal cost, the success probabil...

The permanent need for innovation activities in high tech industries challenges large firms. Small firms, on the other hand, frequently face decisions as concerns their growth which may, e.g., in the case of lacking complementary assets, lead them to sell-off to larger incumbents. This paper investigates how this leads to a division of innovation a...

Do individuals who are concerned by issues of sustainability also exhibit stronger entrepreneurial intentions? Given that existing imperfections in the market create numerous opportunities for entrepreneurship connected with sustainable development, adding individual sustainability orientation to models of entrepreneurial intention could increase t...

This article analyses the link between innovation with high social benefits and corporate social performance (CSP) and the role that family firms play in this. This theme is particularly relevant given the large number of firms that are family-owned. Also the implicit potential of innovation to reconcile corporate sustainability aspects with profit...

This paper analyses the link between sustainability management and economic performance. Its main research question concerns the association of social responsibility and environmental management with economic performance, determinants of the latter and possible moderation effects. Based on data collected from financial databases and Kinder Lydenber...

In this paper we discuss necessity and opportunity entrepreneurship. We use panel data to analyze how these two types of entrepreneurs differ in general, and in their ability to discover and exploit entrepreneurial opportunities. We find that the opportunities exploited by opportunity entrepreneurs are generally more profitable than are those explo...

This paper analyses empirically based on exploratory case studies as well as a quantitative survey the role of integrating users and other external parties with different corporate functions and management processes for innovatory activities and firm competitiveness, especially as concerns environmental and social aspects. Using multivariate regres...

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) refers to voluntary actions of firms to address the needs of societal stakeholders. Small and medium-sized firms (SMEs) are important agents of CSR, and information about the antecedents to their engagement in CSR activities is needed to inform practitioners, researchers and policy makers. The purpose of this p...

Entrepreneurship for sustainable development has become an increasingly reseazched area because it has caught the attention of policy makers as a promising response to sustainable development challenges. However, given the emerging character of the field to date, most contributions remained conceptual or reported results of case study research. The...

Based on arguments about long-term orientation and corporate reputation, we argue that family and founder firms differ from other firms with regard to corporate social responsibility. Using Bayesian analysis, we then show that family and founder ownership are associated with a lower level of corporate social responsibility concerns, whereas ownersh...

Eco-entrepreneurship has become an increasingly researched area, not least because it increasingly caught the attention of policy makers as one promising response to sustainable development challenges. Given the emerging character of the field, to date however most contributions remained conceptual or reported results of case study research. The di...

Do individuals concerned with issues of sustainability also exhibit strong entrepreneurial intentions? As existing imperfections in the market create numerous opportunities for entrepreneurship related to sustainable development, adding individual sustainability orientation to models of entrepreneurial intention could increase their explanatory pow...

This paper analyses the nature and details of the association that the integration of social and environmental considerations with corporate strategy has for different competitive advantages and innovation activities at the firm level. Its objective is to answer the question as to whether a positive link exists between integration and the effects o...

In this article we critically discuss the different perspectives that are currently in use for assessing the relationship between ecological and economic performance. Based on a review of the literature we propose that research up till now has made use of four distinct system boundaries: the firm, markets, production and consumption systems, and ec...

This paper analyses empirically based on exploratory case studies as well as a quantitative survey the role of integrating users and other external parties with different corporate functions and management processes for innovatory activities and firm competitiveness, especially as concerns environmental and social aspects. Using multivariate regres...

I address in a comparative perspective the question of whether environmental management systems and particular managerial activities to reduce negative environmental impacts have a positive influence on the probability of firms carrying out environmental innovations. Based on binary and multinomial discrete choice models, I study the relationship o...