Kulturunterschiede bei Mergers & Acquisitions: Entwicklung eines Konzeptes zur Durchführung einer Cultural Due Diligence

Several investigations came to the conclusion that, considering in retrospect, most Mergers & Acquisitions were not successful. Differences in the corporate cultures are often quoted as being responsible for the failures. So, the question arises how such failures can be prevented in future. Conducting a Cultural Due Diligence is a possibility to examine differences in corporate cultures, even before a merger takes place. That is why, after a description of general culture concepts, we discuss various attempts at Cultural Due Diligence of consultancy firms. Referring to these attempts at Cultural Due Diligence as well as to the general culture concepts, we draft a further developed concept at the end of this working paper. --Culture,cultural due diligence,mergers & acquisitions

Human capital in Unternehmen: unterschiedliche Ansätze zur Messung des Humankapitals

After a short review on the history of human capital measurement we describe and discuss different approaches that are in use to assess the intangible assetts of an organisation based on knowledge and behaviour. While deductive indicators help to rise the questions on the value of intangible assests, they are inapproriate to build any managerial decision on them. Inductive methods like the Intangible Assets Monitor or the Intellectual Capital Navigator pathed the way to a better understanding of human capital. In the future more holistic appraoches like Balanced Scorecard and the assessments based on the Business Excellence Model of EFQM seem to be even more promising. Nevertheless none of the approaches can yet fulfill the demands of accounting standards. --Human Capital , Intellectual Capital

The Theory of Real Options as Theoretical Foundation for the Assessment of Human Capital in Organizations

The human capital represented by corporate employees involved in the information and knowledge economy is becoming an increasingly central value-creating factor in global competition. However, in contrast to other value-creating factors, human capi-tal is more difficult to measure, evaluate and manage. Due to human capital’s great importance for economic value creation, a series of studies on human capital evalua-tion have been published during the last few years. This paper discusses why so many traditional evaluation methods are only partly appropriate for categorizing, analyzing and evaluating human capital’s special characteristics. In particular, it is difficult for many traditional approaches to integrate notions of flexibility and options with regard to the human capital of companies. Our result shows that the real options theory provides a theoretical framework for the evaluation of human capital and allows a differentiated analysis that, on a qualitative basis, enables investments in uncertainties that are associated with human capital. This theory thus forms the foundation for the quantification of human capital’s inherent opportunities and risks. Consequently, this paper provides approaches for the future evaluation of human capital and a conceptual context for empirical studies.Human Capital, Real Options, Company Evaluation, Immaterial Assets, Company Value, Investment