Corporate Governance Of Family Firms In Subsequent Generations

This paper addresses the differences in corporate governance regarding generations of Austrian and German family businesses. Generations differ from each other significantly with respect to the percentage of non-family executives in management boards. The existence of a supervisory board differs between founder and subsequent generations, but it turns out that with transfer of ownership to subsequent generations, there is no noticeable trend concerning the percentage of non-family members in supervisory boards. Thus, this study demonstrates the importance of a comprehensive and profound analysis of generation-specific characteristics

House Banks in Out-of-court Reorganization: Evidence from Austria

The main purpose of this article is to study the role of house banks in out-of-court reorganization. Banks are traditionally one of the most important financial resources for firms. Especially in financially difficult times like those we now face due to the coronavirus, it can make a difference whether a bank supports its clients and accompanies firms through a crisis or not. With the help of relationship lending theory, we review the existing literature on this topic. Next, based on empirical findings from Austrian banks, we derive implications for corporate practice. The empirical study covers a sample of 658 firm reorganizations in Austria. The data were collected anonymously by different banks processing the cases in their workout departments between January 2011 and December 2013. Correlation analysis and logistic regression were applied to analyze the data. The findings indicate that house banks, despite their relationship of trust, must be critical in their assessment of reorganization projects due to the danger of zombie lending. The four most important prerequisites for completing an out-of-court reorganization were a new loan, an open and proactive communication policy on the part of the distressed company, management changes, and a financial contribution from existing shareholders. The findings show that bank-supported out-of-court reorganization has a high probability of success. A recommendation to entrepreneurs is to respond rapidly to financial distress and maintain open communication with stakeholders, in particular banks. The findings indicate that the implementation of Directive (EU) 2019/1023 on preventive restructuring frameworks in the European Union is crucial to enable bank-led reorganizations

Stakeholder Goals In Family Businesses: Evidence From Upper Austria

Research into the field of management accounting practices in family businesses is growing. A considerable number of publications in this field are now dedicated to exploring the differences between family and non-family businesses. This paper investigates stakeholder satisfaction and stakeholder information, which have thus far been neglected fields, both in management accounting and in family business research. Based on both contingency and stakeholder theory, we find that the contextual factors - firm type and firm size - cannot be regarded as determining factors in firms’ stakeholder goals

Taxonomic and functional analyses of intact microbial communities thriving in extreme, astrobiology-relevant, anoxic sites

Background: Extreme terrestrial, analogue environments are widely used models to study the limits of life and to infer habitability of extraterrestrial settings. In contrast to Earth’s ecosystems, potential extraterrestrial biotopes are usually characterized by a lack of oxygen. Methods: In the MASE project (Mars Analogues for Space Exploration), we selected representative anoxic analogue environments (permafrost, salt-mine, acidic lake and river, sulfur springs) for the comprehensive analysis of their microbial communities. We assessed the microbiome profile of intact cells by propidium monoazide-based amplicon and shotgun metagenome sequencing, supplemented with an extensive cultivation effort. Results: The information retrieved from microbiome analyses on the intact microbial community thriving in the MASE sites, together with the isolation of 31 model microorganisms and successful binning of 15 high-quality genomes allowed us to observe principle pathways, which pinpoint specific microbial functions in the MASE sites compared to moderate environments. The microorganisms were characterized by an impressive machinery to withstand physical and chemical pressures. All levels of our analyses revealed the strong and omnipresent dependency of the microbial communities on complex organic matter. Moreover, we identified an extremotolerant cosmopolitan group of 34 poly-extremophiles thriving in all sites. Conclusions: Our results reveal the presence of a core microbiome and microbial taxonomic similarities between saline and acidic anoxic environments. Our work further emphasizes the importance of the environmental, terrestrial parameters for the functionality of a microbial community, but also reveals a high proportion of living microorganisms in extreme environments with a high adaptation potential within habitability borders

Die Organisation des Controllings in österreichischen und bayerischen Familienunternehmen

This paper deals with the organization of management accounting and influencing context factors in family businesses, which has been a neglected field both in management accounting and family business research so far. Our study is based on a situative approach and uses agency theory, stewardship theory and the resource based view of the firm theory as reference theories. Our results indicate that there are significant differences in the organization of management accounting in family businesses and non-family businesses: Family businesses establish less management accounting departments and the heads of management accounting departments in family businesses less often hold a university degree. Mid-sized family businesses organize their management accounting system more often externally than non-family businesses. Amongst the group of family businesses, a higher degree of family influence rather hinders the establishment of management accounting departments, whereas the existence of non-family managers promotes their establishment