Eine ökonomische Analyse der wissensintensiven Dienstleistung Coaching

Executive summary of the cumulative dissertation of Peter-Paul Gross Economic analysis of the knowledge-intensive business service coaching Over the past 20 years, coaching has become one of the most popular human re-source development instruments. The roots of coaching can be found in the sport industry. At the beginning coaching was designed as a measure to support top executive managers. In the 1980s the first offers of coaching services appeared in Germany, inspired by American examples. To this day the expansion of coaching in Germany is an impressive success story. Since the occupation ‘coach’ is not protected everybody can label himself as a coach. Up to the present day there are no structural barriers for new coaching service providers to enter the German market for coaching services. As a consequence of the demand-driven boom and the ease for providers to enter the market coaching services were customized to a broader audience. As a human resource development instrument today coaching services are available to everybody who is willing to pay. Coaching services are offered and booked in all kinds of branches, all sizes of companies and all levels of hierarchy. Apart from the business context coaching services are also requested and booked in the private sector. Since ‘coaching’ as a label is used by providers for many different kinds of services customers are more and more confused. It is problematic for the market that there is no clear definition for coaching services available. Coaching services are offered in different levels of quality and price. The price range starts with zero euros for volun-tary coaching services and goes up to 500 euros per hour in the business sector. The development of coaching services and the intransparency on the coaching market built the reason and motivation for this economic investigation of coaching services. Based on an exploratory mixed-method approach several publications among the topic of coaching have been published. Five of them constitute this cumulative dissertation. The field of research has been limited by a focus on the supply and demand of coaching services within a business context. For the investigation coaching services were basically divided into Life- and Business Coaching. Life-Coaching focuses primarily on private occasions and concerns. Business-Coaching focuses primarily on vocational occasions and concerns. If in the following ‘coaching’ is written, Business-Coaching is meant. The first essay “Coaching from an economic prospective – Results of the first Mar-burger Coaching Survey 2009” defines coaching as a person oriented knowledge-intensive business service and shows relations from the topic of coaching to infor-mation economic theories. Descriptive results of the first Marburger Coaching Survey were used to give an overview on the structure of the German coaching market. To analyze the contractual relationship between coach and customer and/or coachee the Principal-Agent-Theory was used. After a short descriptive overview about signaling strategies of coachs this essay refers to screening strategies of coaching customers as well as on the management and the organization of coaching. In the second essay “The development of the German coaching market and the market potential of virtual coaching – An economic analysis” the demand driven development of the German coaching market is descriptively specified. Relations between information economic theory and the potential demand of virtual coaching have been made. In this publication the attitudes of employees towards coaching were analyzed in detail. Based on the famous paper of George Ackerlof (1970) “Market for lemons” the third essay “Coaching – The boom and its side effects” describes the problem of market failure in a market for services with credence qualities. On the example of the Ger-man coaching market strategies are discussed how market players can avoid market failure. In the fourth essay “How much would you pay your executive coach? An investigation of knowledge-intensive business services pricing” a multiple regression model was used to test the influence of signals and information surrogates on success factors like price and order rate of coachings. A theoretical contribution was made by the differentiation in easy and difficult to imitate signals. The result shows that difficult to imitate signals are the strongest predictors for several success factors of coaching. The fifth essay “Coaching for strengthening a company’s capabilities for innovation and change” discusses the relation between coaching as a tool of human resource management and the dynamic capabilities approach. The research question is if companies use coaching for strengthening their ability for innovation and change? This question can be answered descriptive- and positively. In sum, these five essays that constitute this cumulative dissertation build an exten-sive economic analysis of the knowledge-intensive business service coaching. It is questionable to what extent the results of this investigation of the German coaching market are transferable to other service markets. In any case, results show insights and effects about signaling and screening actions in a branch for a knowledge-intensive business service. A theoretical contribution to economic theory was made by the differentiation between easy and difficult to imitate signals in the fourth essay for instance. The descriptive results from the Marburger Coaching Surveys may be good base for further research in this service market. One further step to dig deeper may be the possible contribution of coaching services to the organizational capability for innovation and change. A further analysis on the level of mircofoundations may be a proper idea for a possible next step.