Open Access

Akademische Unternehmensgründungen besitzen für Wirtschaftswachstum und Beschäftigung unzweifelhaft eine besondere Bedeutung. Grundlage hierfür ist eine nachhaltige Sensibilisierung für den Gründungsgedanken und das Unternehmertum. Hinsichtlich der Anforderungen an die Sensibilisierungsmaßnahmen besteht allerdings noch eine Forschungslücke. Der vorliegende Beitrag beleuchtet auf Basis empirischer Untersuchungen die Frage der Sensibilisierung von Hochschulangehörigen zum Thema „Unternehmensgründung“. Der Fokus der Betrachtungen liegt auf den Sensibilisierungsinstrumenten, dem Zeitpunkt der Maßnahmen und den Auswirkungen auf die Zahl der akademischen Gründungen.

The market for external ratings is dominated worldwide as well as in the European Union (EU) by three major credit rating agencies (CRAs). These “Big Three” are Standard & Poor's (S&P), Moody's and Fitch Ratings. Due to the oligopolistic market structure and possible involvement in the 2008 financial crisis, the rating agencies have constantly come under criticism. This was associated with stricter regulatory requirements to ease the situation. The EU-Regulation on credit rating agencies („CRA-Regulation“) coming into force 2009 and its amendments in 2011 and in 2013 have mainly governed such regulation. The aim of the article is to analyse potential regulatory impact on the still inherent oligopolistic situation on the EU rating market in the context of the CRA-Regulation. Selected key figures are used to observe over a defined period of time if and how the dominance has changed. The motivation for this article is the observation, that political and private efforts to establish a European rating agency as a counterweight to the three major agencies and other approaches to increase competition in the rating market, followed, which has not been resounding to date. In summary, it is shown that new agencies have a potential impact on the EU rating market and that the three major rating agencies still dominate the market but within a changed environment.

The accounting of small and medium enterprises is specific, compared to the accounting of large enterprises, for several reasons. First of all, lower business volume implies less demanding accounting in terms of less turnover and the number of accounts to be processed, lower financial reporting requirements, more favourable tax treatment is expected and the like. Practical experience in the years of application of EU-accounting directives, which represent the framework of financial reporting of companies at the EU level, pointed to certain difficulties or excessive administrative burden of small and medium enterprises in relation to the requirements for large companies and identified areas for improvement. The complexity of these regulations as well as problems in practical application have led to the need to develop and publish a revised single accounting directive (2013/34/EU). This Directive was primarily adopted with the aim of simplifying the accounting and financial reporting of small and medium-sized enterprises. Today, it is common for small and medium-sized enterprises to go beyond the borders of one country. In the internationalization of business, SMEs face many challenges and potential barriers. First of all, it refers to financial, human and procedural barriers, but also to informational barriers related to regulations, rules and laws of other countries. Since the accounting and tax treatment of the same business transaction may differ between countries, it seems entirely justified to investigate whether there are differences in the regulation and regulation of the accounting system between the two countries. This paper compares the characteristics of small and medium-sized enterprises’ accounting systems between two economically strongly connected countries, Germany and Croatia, which is the main goal of this paper. It is well known that financial reporting is a particularly important, final phase of accounting data processing. Namely, financial reporting system of these two countries is compared by using the method of comparison and classification analysis. The types and scope of financial statements have been defined and the content of financial statements that SMEs are obliged to compile and publish has been analysed. The paper pays additional attention to the analysis of similarities and differences between these two accounting regulations as well as current events in the implementation of the revised accounting directive into national legislation, especially in simplifying the financial reporting of the smallest, but numerically most represented micro enterprises. The important finding of the research show that some changes have been made but there is still room to improve accounting regulations for this segment of entrepreneurship.

There are a number of well-established concepts explaining decision-making. The sociology of wise practice within public administration suggests that thinking preferences like the use of intuition form a cornerstone of public administrators’ virtuous practice. This contribution uses conceptual and theoretical resources from the behavioral sciences and public administration to account for individual level differences of employees with regard to thinking preferences in the public sector. Institutional frameworks and social structures may enable or impede the habituation of virtue. The contribution empirically investigates this proposition with respondents from North America and the European Union. The analysis investigates the behavioral dimension preference for intuition/preference for deliberation. An analysis of data from 333 employees from organizations in North America and 1644 employees from organizations in the EU reveal prevalent differences in the preference for thinking styles. The public and private sector differ significantly in terms of the preference for rational as well as for intuitive thinking. What is exciting is that private employees rank higher than public employees on both scales, whereas the difference in rational thinking shows a small effect and the effect size in regard of intuitive thinking is negligible. We explore possible explanations for such differences and similarities.

Im Unterschied zu Kapitalgesellschaften existieren für Personengesellschaften international unterschiedliche Besteuerungskonzepte, die sie entweder als transparentes oder als intransparentes Unternehmen qualifizieren. Die daraus oftmals entstehende ungleiche Besteuerung von Personen- und Kapitalgesellschaften ist wegen der nicht rechtsformneutralen Ausgestaltung der Unternehmensbesteuerung kritisch zu beurteilen. Der folgende Beitrag stellt zunächst die europaweite Vielfalt bei der Besteuerung von Personengesellschaften dar und untersucht anschließend die bestehenden Besteuerungsmodelle im Hinblick auf das betriebswirtschaftliche Kriterium der Rechtsformneutralität. In diesem Zusammenhang ist insbesondere zu untersuchen, ob die in einigen EU-Mitgliedstaaten bestehenden Misch- und Optionsmodelle Ansatzpunkte zur Erfüllung des Kriteriums bieten.