Compliance Management: Ein Konzept (auch) für kleine und mittelständige Unternehmen

Kurzfassung Fehlverhalten in Unternehmen bzw. durch deren Mitarbeiter kann in der Praxis zu Verlusten durch Umsatzeinbußen, Geldstrafen oder gar zu Haftstrafen führen. Ein Imageschaden kann zudem die Abwanderung von Kunden und Mitarbeitern zur Folge haben und somit wirtschaftliche Schäden vergrößern. Dies gilt für Großunternehmen ebenso wie für kleine und mittelständische Unternehmen, wenngleich KMUs dieser Problematik bislang eine geringere Bedeutung beigemessen haben. Compliance Management als Ansatz zur Bewältigung dieser Herausforderungen wird daher in KUMs in geringerem Maße als in den Konzernen umgesetzt, zumal keine explizite rechtliche Verpflichtung besteht. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit dem Konzept empfiehlt sich dennoch, um dessen Erfolgspotenzial ausschöpfen zu können. Zudem sollten sich KMUs als Marktpartner der Großen auf die Erwartungen der Konzerne vorbereiten. Unter Berücksichtigung der begrenzten finanziellen, personellen und zeitlichen Kapazitäten kleiner und mittelständischer Unternehmen werden hier die Anforderungen an ein erfolgsträchtiges Implementieren von Compliance Management aufgezeigt. Konkret werden das Aufbauen einer Compliance-Struktur sowie das Schaffen einer Compliance-Kultur beschrieben. Damit haben KMUs die Gelegenheit, Compliance Management zum Erfolgsfaktor zu entwickeln und sich zudem als integrer Marktpartner zu profilieren.Abstract Misbehaviour of companies or their employees may cause financial losses or can even have legal effects. A damaged image may furthermore lead to sinking customer and staff loyalty with an accompanying increase of the financial damage. This occurs in big corporations as well as in small and medium sized enterprises, even though small companies attach minor importance to these circumstances. Compliance Management as an approach to handle the challenges is therefore implemented in SMEs only to a slight extent, the more so as no legal obligation exists. However, an examination with the concept can be recommended to exploit its full potential for success. Furthermore, the small and medium sized businesses should be prepared for the upcoming expectations of the big companies. With regard to limited financial, personal and time resources of small and medium sized companies, the requirements for a successful implementation of Compliance Management are presented. In particular, the development of a Compliance-Structure and the creation of a Compliance-Culture are discussed. This offers an opportunity for SMEs to make Compliance Management to be their future factor for success and furthermore to make a name for being a market partner of integrity

Asset securitisation as a risk management and funding tool : what does it hold in store for SMES?

The following chapter critically surveys the attendant benefits and drawbacks of asset securitisation on both financial institutions and firms. It also elicits salient lessons to be learned about the securitisation of SME-related obligations from a cursory review of SME securitisation in Germany as a foray of asset securitisation in a bank-centred financial system paired with a strong presence of SMEs in industrial production. JEL Classification: D81, G15, M2

What if IAS/IFRS were a Tax Base? New Empirical Evidence from an Austrian Perspective.

In particular in Germany and Austria, but also in other countries, extensive theoretical and analytical research has been published on the potential tax effects in case IAS/IFRS were used as the basis for corporate taxation. Very few quantitative papers exist. This motivated us to conduct a study that quantifies the actual effects of a potential decisiveness of IAS/IFRS for the national tax base - without further questioning the usefulness of an IAS/IFRS relevance. Our paper extends existing research substantially. The research question of our paper deals with the measurement of differences in discounted tax burden in different scenarios, by simulation. Our sample comprises original data of 61 Austrian companies. The median of the difference between book values of IAS/IFRS single accounts and tax accounts for specific balance sheet items is determined. We then apply the result on the items of a typical corporate account derived from an Austrian database. As a result, depending on the term of items, we can calculate the discounted tax effects for different scenarios. It must be underlined that such highly confidential and detailed tax data is usually not available to researchers. The main preliminary finding of our empirical survey is that only in few cases we find essential differences between IAS/IFRS and tax accounts. Our evidence suggests that no dramatic change in the tax base has to be expected. Our study provides not only new empirical evidence but also a basis for further research on a possible common consolidated corporate tax base from an academic perspective. (author's abstract)Series: Working Papers / Institut für Revisions-, Treuhand- und Rechnungswese

Corporate Governance in Abhängigkeit von Unternehmensstruktur und Unternehmensgröße - eine betriebswirtschaftlich-juristische Analyse

Die vorliegende Studie bildet die erste von fünf Studien, die im Rahmen des Forschungsprojektes „Leitlinien für das Management von Organisations- und Aufsichtspflichten“ erarbeitet werden. Ziel dieser Studie ist es, die rechtlichen und betriebswirtschaftlichen Grundlagen zu analysieren und darzulegen, um wesentliche Kriterien zur sinnvollen Unterscheidung von Unternehmenstypen mit Blick auf die (Anforderungen an die) Corporate Governance zu identifizieren sowie rechtliche Grenzen und Problemfelder der Umsetzung und Durchsetzung von Organisationspflichten in unterschiedlichen Rechtsformen und gesellschaftsrechtlichen Konstruktionen aufzuzeigen

semester - Ausgabe Winter 2013

Schwerpunktthema: Studierende aus dem Auslan

Misselling (financial) products: the limits for internal compliance

This paper considers a firm that has to delegate to an agent, such as a mortgage broker or a security dealer, the twin tasks of approaching and advising customers. The main contractual restriction, in particular in light of related research in Inderst and Ottaviani (2007), is that the firm can only compensate the agent through commissions. This standard contracting restriction has the following key implications. First, the firm can only ensure internal compliance to a "standard of sales", in terms of advice for the customer, if this standard is not too high. Second, if this is still feasible, then a higher standard is associated with higher, instead of lower, sales commissions. Third, once the limit for internal compliance is approached, tougher regulation and prosecution of "misselling" have (almost) no effect on the prevailing standard. Besides having practical implications, in particular on how to (re-)regulate the sale of financial products, the novel model, which embeds a problem of advice into a framework with repeated interactions, may also be of separate interest for future work on sales force compensation. JEL Classification: D18 (Consumer Protection), D83 (Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge), M31 (Marketing), M52 (Compensation and Compensation Methods and Their Effects)