Fachgruppensitzung Wirtschaft 2020

Organizer: Harald Conrad

Determinants of trust building in the Japanese online sharing economy (Mihaela Suhalitca, Universtität Duisburg-Essen)

Consumer-to-consumer (C2C) online economic activities, as part of the sharing economy, have emerged as an alternative to the goods and services provided by established industries. As trust is widely regarded as a precondition for consumers’ willingness to engage in online transactions, this paper proposed a model that tests which factors affect trust building among Japanese users of online C2C platforms and how this trust influences the users’ purchase intention. It is expected that knowledge-based determinants, such as familiarity and reputation, and institution-based determinants, such as website design and security, will have the most impact on trust building among C2C platform users.

Dealing with retrenchment in times of crises: The contingency effects of core competences and organizational capabilities for rigid and flexible strategies (Autors: Cornelia Storz, Lars Schweizer, Daniel Ehnes; Presenter Daniel Ehnes (Goethe Universität Frankfurt)

We examined two forms of labour cost retrenchment strategies, rigid and flexible retrenchment strategies. Guided by the resource-based view of the firm, we focus on two important questions: One, what are the different effects of rigid and flexible strategies on organizational outcomes? Two, how do organisational core competences and capabilities, i.e. technical and social skill sets, moderate the relationship between rigid and flexible strategies? To answer these questions, we use data from 242 retrenchment announcements from publicly listed Japanese companies during the last severe economic crisis (2008-2009).

Our results suggest that market reactions are shaped by the choice of the retrenchment strategy, and the firms’ dependence on its technical and social skill set. Our results also suggest that market participants evaluate rigid retrenchment strategies much more negatively if they threaten organizational technical and social skills. In contrast, however, firms which practice flexible retrenchment strategies that protect their organizational knowledge and preserve their skills, show positive market reactions. Our evidence suggests that capability-based contingencies matter when firms need to carry out retrenchment strategies.