ESTIMATING PROBABILITIES OF DEFAULT FOR GERMAN SAVINGS BANKS AND CREDIT COOPERATIVES
Daniel Porath
Savings banks and cooperative banks are important players in the German financial market. However, we know very little about their default risk, because these banks usually resolve financial distress within their own organizations, which means that outsiders can-not observe defaults. In this paper I use a new dataset that contains information about financial distress and financial strength of all German savings banks and cooperative banks. The Deutsche Bundesbank has gathered the data for microprudential supervision. Thus, the data have never before been exploited for statistical risk assessment. I use the data to identify the main drivers of savings banks’ and cooperative banks’ risk and to detect structural differences between the two groups. To do so, I estimate a default pre-diction model. I also analyze the impact of macroeconomic information for forecasting banks’ defaults. Recent findings for the U.S. have cast some doubt on the usefulness of macroeconomic information for banks’ risk assessment. Contrary to recent literature, I find that macroeconomic information significantly improves default forecasts.
pp. 214-231
COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING IN GERMAN- AND ENGLISH-LANGUAGE GENERAL MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING TEXTBOOKS
Andreas Hoffjan/Andreas Wömpener
We analyze the handling of strategic management accounting in the 20 general man-agement accounting textbooks that are perceived as most important in German- and in English-speaking countries. Our analysis shows that strategic management accounting is not integrated into textbooks within a coherent, consistent framework. However, the survey also shows that these textbooks often use several strategic management account-ing “subconcepts” which form a set of core concepts of strategic management accounting across the language areas. We identify these core concepts and elaborate on striking differences between the coverage of certain concepts in the German- and English-speaking worlds. In general, the German term “controlling” implies a more strategic emphasis than does its American counterpart, “management accounting”.
pp. 234-258
TRUST – A SOURCE OF SUCCESS IN STRATEGIC ALLIANCES?
Christoph Schumacher
I empirically test the role of trust in strategic alliances by using survey data from 67 German small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Empirical findings indicate that high trust levels are a good predictor of alliance success. This result is encouraging, as it suggests that well-performing relationships can be differentiated from low performers on the basis of mutual trust. Furthermore, the study shows that the level of safeguards used in an alliance is decreasing in the level of trust and increasing in the gain from opportunistic behavior.
pp. 259-278
RATIONALITY AND INSTITUTIONALIZED EXPECTATIONS: THE DEVELOPMENT OF AN ORGANIZATIONAL SET OF RULES
Nikolaus Beck
In this study I analyze changes of an entire set of organizational of rules over time. I also analyze how the size of individual rules develops over time. The theoretical background for this study is based on the bureaucracy theory of Weber and his successors and on the considerations of the New Institutionalism and contingency theory. I find that over time, the portion of the general rule mass continues to increase. This result corresponds to the considerations of the New Institutionalism, since the general section of the rule body con-tains the rules that are oriented to fundamental institutionalized management principles or legal regulations. However, my results also suggest that institutional adjustment and ra-tional management need not be mutually exclusive. Rather, both phenomena can co-exist within an organization.
pp. 279-300
