(Fine Dining) Restaurants in the Corona Crisis

The study summarizes the central results of two surveys in the field of (fine dining) restaurants, which took place during the shutdown of restaurants due to the corona pandemic (Corona Shutdown) between 22 March and 10 April 2020. A total of 654 people took part in the survey who work in the catering trade as cooks (n = 289), service staff (n = 136) and restaurant owners (n = 125). Guests (n = 104) also participated in the survey. The central results are as follows: 50% of the restaurants in our survey can survive for a maximum of 6 weeks if the corona shutdown is maintained. On average, the maximum is 9 ½ weeks. Respondents from restaurants that do not have a Michelin star rating estimate that they can only survive the Corona Shutdown for 8 weeks. Respondents from Michelin-starred restaurants estimate this to be 11 weeks, so that they can survive an average of almost 2 weeks more when shut down. In concrete terms, this means that if the corona shutdown continues, a large proportion of the restaurants will experience liquidity problems at the beginning of May, which will force them to give up their restaurant. • The effect of the political support activities that have been initiated is viewed very critically by employees in the field of (fine dining) restaurants. According to the assessment of the respondents, the survival of many restaurants cannot be secured by these support activities in the long term.Across all groups of employees, the short-time work compensation (Kurzarbeitergeld) is dominant. Service staff are particularly affected, accounting for 65% of the workforce, as opposed to 56% of cooks. At 12%, service employees are currently more frequently unemployed than the cooks surveyed. Overall, the financial situation in gastronomy is particularly precarious because the short-time work compensation not only reduces income, as employers often do not top up the full salary, but also eliminates additional income in the form of bonuses and tips. • Communication with the guests is maintained via various digital channels, which the guests also use. Guests make use of the newly created offers, such as take-away or delivery service, to provide local support to the restaurateurs. • Compared to the other groups of employees, the chefs are generally best able to deal with the Corona shutdown personally. They have various possibilities to make the situation more bearable (e.g. charity campaigns). The overall perception of stress is very high. In a group comparison, chefs have the lowest stress perception and the highest resilience. Especially the participation of some cooks in charity campaigns (e.g. "Cooking for Heroes") lowers their stress perception and increases their resilience

Who can reach for the Michelin stars? An empirical analysis of human, organizational, and motivational recources

Purpose: Research on the careers of fine-dining chefs is still underrepresented in the hospitality literature. Especially, there is a research gap in quantitative empirical evidence of answering the question of human, organizational, and motivational resources needed to become a top chef. The paper provides answers to the question which factors influence whether a chef will be awarded a Michelin star or not. Design/methodology/approach: Empirical evidence is given with the help of two quantitative datasets and eleven in-depth qualitative interviews with Michelin star chefs, three sous-chefs and two ‘Plate’ awarded chefs. The first quantitative dataset encompasses the short CV of all 429 chefs in Germany who received either one, two, or three stars from the Guide Michelin between 2004 and 2019. For the second dataset we conducted a survey with all 309 German star chefs who have been awarded in 2019 and additionally non-awarded chefs. Findings: The Michelin star awards can be taken as an objective career success measurement. Our analysis shows that chefs who were employed at a hotel or have an investor and/or completed a vocational training at a restaurant with a Michelin star chef are more likely to be awarded a Michelin star. Additionally, our study supports that Michelin stars fulfill different functions. On the one hand, the award measures the objective career success of chefs. On the other hand, it serves as a selective incentive to increase extrinsic motivation. Originality: Surprising is the result that award-winning and non-awarded chefs are equally highly intrinsically motivated but differentiate in extrinsic motivation. In this case the objective career success measurement and selective incentive coincide. Practical implications: A practical advice for restaurant or hotel owner and managers is that if they want to start a top restaurant, they should hire a Sous-Chef from a 2- or 3-Michelin star restaurant. And vice versa, chefs who want to make a career in the fine dining world should apprentice to top chefs who already have star awards

Die Organisation der Weiterbildung

Der Diskurs zum „Lebenslangen Lernen“ und der Bologna-Prozess haben eine Form der Wissensproduktion in den Blick gerückt, der bisher in der akademischen Ausbildung ein Schattendasein führte: die wissenschaftliche Weiterbildung. Zwar wird in vielen Positionspapieren und Hochschulrahmengesetzen davon gesprochen, aber eine reale Bedeutung hat sie bisher in Deutschland – im Gegensatz zum angloamerikanischen Raum – noch nicht. Bisher ist die wissenschaftliche Weiterbildung ausschließlich unter der Perspektive der Erziehungswissenschaft, genauer der Berufs- und Erwachsenenpädagogik betrachtet worden. Eine Forschungslücke besteht bisher darin, dass die wissenschaftliche Weiterbildung nicht aus organisationssoziologischer Perspektive betrachtet wurde (vgl. Weber 2005). Zur Schließung dieser Forschungslücke soll der Artikel einen Beitrag leisten. Die wissenschaftliche Weiterbildung ist an der Grenze der Organisation Universität angesiedelt und stellt eine institutionalisierte Grenzstelle zur Umwelt dar. Im Mittelpunkt dieses Artikels steht die Frage, wie diese Grenzstelle organisiert werden muss, damit die Brücke zwischen Organisation und Umwelt ihrer Funktion gerecht werden kann. Genauer formuliert lautet das Problem also: Wie kann wissenschaftliche Weiterbildung als Grenzstelle zwischen Universitäten und Unternehmen so organisiert werden, dass gemeinsame Wissensarbeit ermöglicht wird? Damit ist zugleich eine Form der Wissensproduktion beschrieben, die zunehmend ein immer größeres Gewicht erlangt

Social inequality in German football. Does money score goals?

The aim of this study is to empirically address the following research questions using 2001-2015 data from the German League Bundesliga: Is there a relationship between players’ salary and league table ranking? How distinct is the social inequality of the German League Bundesliga? How strong is the influence of the UEFA’s premiums on this social inequality? To answer these questions, the distinctiveness and self-organization of the German League Bundesliga are explained, and the league’s potential as a solution to the problem of social inequality is explored. The data record is also described. The results confirm that players’ salaries and their ranking in the league tables are correlated: money scores goals. Recently, however, the social inequality of the German League Bundesliga has increased. One reason for this increase is the strong influence of the money the UEFA has transferred and still transfers to the clubs

Requirements for knowledge transfer in hospitals

Much literature exists about knowledge transfer in general, but very little deals with the link between the micro-perspective of learning in organizations and structural, cultural, and cognitive constraints caused by the organization - particularly with regard to prerequisites of knowledge-transfer within groups in knowledge-based working processes. The main question of this article is: How can knowledge transfer be supported? We exemplify this theoretical question with the help of an investigation we accomplished in German hospitals. The aim of our article is to fill two detected gaps in the existing literature: First we analyze knowledge transfer as a double-sided process of providing and obtaining knowledge. Second we link structural, cultural, and cognitive perspectives together and give a theoretical underpinning of knowledge transfer. We will give empirical evidence from our survey which supports five of our six hypotheses: Possibilities of interaction, organizational culture, and intrinsic motivation are relevant requirements for knowledge transfer. Only team size is not a significant factor for transferring knowledge in hospitals. In detail we show in this article that different factors support providing or obtaining knowledge

Inwieweit unterstützen die Faktoren Motivation und Organisationskultur technikorientiertes Wissensmanagement in Krankenhäusern?

Wissen ist eine der wichtigsten Ressourcen in modernen Unternehmen, d.h. ein guter Umgang mit dem vorhandenen Wissen sollte daher – auch in Krankenhäusern - selbstverständlich sein. „Guter Umgang“ bedeutet dabei, dass Wissen (1) weitergegeben, aber auch neues Wissen generiert wird. Dies sind fundamentale Voraussetzungen für komplexe, wissensintensive Dienstleistungen. Prozesse im Krankenhaus sind vor allem dadurch gekennzeichnet, dass Personen verschiedener Berufsgruppen gezielt miteinander Informationen austauschen, um eine optimale Versorgung der Patienten zu gewährleisten. Somit hat der Prozess der Wissensweitergabe mit Hilfe von elektronischer Unterstützung einen wesentlichen Einfluss auf die Leistungsfähigkeit eines Krankenhauses. Zwar scheint Wissen keine knappe Ressource zu sein, die sich wie andere Ressourcen verbraucht, dennoch ist die Weitergabe von Informationen alles andere als selbstverständlich oder einfach (2). In der Vergangenheit hat sich gezeigt, dass allein die technische Unterstützung keinen Selbstläufer zur Wissensweitergabe darstellt: In der Praxis ist zu beobachten, dass es nicht ausreicht, ein technisches Tool in der Organisation zu implementieren und dann darauf zu hoffen, dass der einzelne Mitarbeiter sich mit seinen Informationen in das Tool einbringen (3) . Daher sind neben der technischen Möglichkeit noch weitere Faktoren nötig, damit Wissensmanagement auch den erwünschten Erfolg erzielt. In diesem Beitrag werden zunächst die Grundlagen und Möglichkeiten eines technikorientierten Wissensmanagements beschrieben. Daran anschließend werden die Begriffe „Motivation“ und „Organisationskultur“, welche in der Literatur häufig als fördernde Faktoren zum technikorientierten Wissensaustausch zitiert werden, definiert und auf den Faktor der Gruppengröße als wichtiges organisatorisches Gestaltungsmerkmal bei der Wissensweitergabe eingegangen. Im Rahmen eines aktuellen Forschungsprojekts in 11 Krankenhäusern in NRW werden von den Autoren derzeit die Voraussetzungen zur elektronischen Weitergabe von Informationen in wissensintensiven Arbeitsprozessen zwischen den Pflegekräften und der Ärzteschaft untersucht. Inwieweit die oben genannten Faktoren technikorientiertes Wissensmanagement tatsächlich fördern, wird mit Hilfe dieser empirischen Untersuchung geprüft. (1) Der Begriff Wissen wird in diesem Kontext nur metaphorisch gebraucht, da Wissen an sich nicht weitergegeben werden kann, sondern nur Daten oder Informationen, die dann im persönlichen Wissenskontext wieder zu Wissen transferiert werden (vgl. Wilkesmann 2005). (2) Vgl. Wilkesmann 2005. (3) Wilkesmann/ Rascher 2005

Knowledge Transfer in German Hospitals

Purpose – This article deals with the question: How can individual knowledge transfer of physicians be supported in hospitals? We concentrate at the individual level of knowledge transfer and distinguish between knowledge providing and knowledge obtaining as two different actions of knowledge transfer. We also empirically test influencing factors like organizational opportunities, organizational culture, and intrinsic motivation on the two knowledge transfer actions. Design/methodology/approach – We follow a sequential mixed method research approach and use qualitative and quantitative methods. In 2006, we distributed 667 questionnaires to physicians for our quantitative study and 192 usable questionnaires were returned. The distribution of age, gender, and the size of the hospitals reflects the situation in hospitals in North Rhine-Westphalia (Germany) and is representative in this respect. Findings – The results show that some organizational opportunities, organizational culture, and intrinsic motivation support physicians in providing and obtaining knowledge. Interestingly, these factors support providing and obtaining knowledge in different ways. Therefore, providing and obtaining knowledge have to be managed in different ways. Research limitations/implications – The survey only sheds light on the situation in German hospitals. To prove if our findings can be generalized, it is necessary to conduct additional research. Originality/value – The originality of this paper is that it investigates knowledge transfer at the individual level and empirically shows that physicians are motivated by different factors when they obtain and provide knowledge. Although our study is about physicians working in hospitals we think this idea is relevant also beyond this setting

Knowledge management as second level management

This article deals with the question: What enables organizations to manage knowledge transfer? We present principal-agent theory as a foundation to explain barriers of knowledge transfer. We show mechanisms which can solve the principal-agent problem by means of network, organizational, and motivational characteristics. Thereafter, we give some empirical evidence from a survey with medical doctors. The results show that network characteristics in form of direct channels for interaction, organizational characteristics, and intrinsic motivation can support knowledge transfer. These three factors are part of a ‘second level management’