Dominik Burger-Kloser

Based on theory of regulatory focus and organizational ambidexterity, we hypothesize that the level of engagement in exploration and exploitation in a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME) is affected by the respective CEO's chronic regulatory focus. In our analysis of survey responses from CEOs in Switzerland, we find that the CEO's level of promotion focus positively affects the firm's engagement in both, exploration and exploitation, while the CEO's prevention focus is negatively associated with the firm's exploration but not significantly related to its exploitation. The positive associations between a CEO's promotion focus and the firm's exploration/exploitation activities are enhanced under conditions of intense competition.

Being market oriented and entrepreneurial oriented in parallel is a potential remedy for small businesses engaged in saturated markets with high competition where products and services are easily replaceable and product variety is immense. Despite this relevance there is still a lack of knowledge on how small business managers can manage market orientation and entrepreneurial orientation in parallel to differentiate their offerings. This is especially prevalent in highly competitive environments. We investigate how market orientation and entrepreneurial orientation interact in saturated markets by concentrating on industries characterized by serious competition drawing on the example of the wine industry in Switzerland. Several contributions to extant literature are made.

Salespersons' empathy has received recognition by scholars and sales representatives. Despite its importance, definitions and conceptualizations of salespersons' empathy are rather heterogeneous. Thus, we used the method of systematic literature review to analyze 42 empirical articles. A research agenda focusing on salespersons' empathy's measurement, antecedents and moderators as well as effects on performance and relationship outcomes is presented to advance the field.

Organizational ambidexterity, a firm's pursuit of exploratory as well as exploitative activities, is an important driver of long term sustainability of any business. Particularly in small firms, CEOs substantially influence their respective organization's level of ambidexterity. We hypothesize and empirically show how a CEO's personality, particularly his or her regulatory focus, affects the respective firm's engagement in ambidextrous business activities. Specifically, we propose a positive effect of CEO's promotion focus and a negative effect of CEO's prevention focus on organizational ambidexterity. Moreover, we argue that competitive intensity moderates those associations. We test our hypotheses based on 155 survey responses of CEOs of Swiss SMEs.

In order to find out whether auditors particularly rely on results of substantive analytical procedures which indicate no significant difference between the auditor's expectation of recorded amounts and the book value, an experimental investigation was conducted. The findings show that auditors do rely on nonsignificant outcomes of substantive aggregate analytical procedures when assessing the likelihood of material misstatements. Although they overestimate the reliability of nonsignificant outcomes, they do not particularly rely on them. Instead, when adjusting the audit programme, their audit decisions are asymmetrical. Where outcomes are nonsignificant, they do not adjust the original proportion of tests of details, whereas they increase the proportion if the outcome is significant.