GBP Monitor: In Times of Crisis, Managers Continue to Focus Primarily on Balance Sheet Profits, while Social Goals Take a Backseat

Press Release of 15. Dezember 2022
Print version (PDF)

At the turn of the year, most managers have to evaluate the past financial year. How is the company performing? Have the annual targets been achieved? In view of the challenges posed by social and climate policy, there is an increasing demand for companies to set non-financial objectives and measure their achievement.

For this reason, since July 2021, the GBP has been asking which key performance indicators companies in Germany take into account when setting their goals. Once again this year, the data show that securing financial success takes precedence over other, non-financial goals: Only 11.1 percent of companies reported using non-financial key performance indicators to measure success, in addition to retained earnings or liquidity. This is even 3.6 percentage points less than in the previous year. “These figures clearly show that many companies are apparently still relying on hard financial indicators. Particularly in times of crisis, many companies understandably focus first and foremost on securing their own financial base. Social goals take a backseat”, says Professor Jannis Bischof, who holds the Chair of Business Administration and Accounting of the University of Mannheim and is project manager of the GBP.

It is thus a relatively small group of companies that focus on non-financial key performance indicators. Of these, almost 90 percent primarily consider employee satisfaction and 56 percent the company's image. Sustainability-related indicators such as CO2 emissions or water and energy consumption are taken into account by 35.4 and 29.3 percent of the companies respectively. However, this quota has increased significantly (up 12.1 and 10.1 percent respectively compared to the previous year). “This shows that – given the recent significant rise in energy costs – companies are increasingly recognizing the immediate impact of high resource consumption on financial success and how it can be justified as a goal in its own right,” Bischof says. By contrast, with only 8.9 percent, gender equality ranks last on the priority list.

In a comparison of sectors, education and training, human health and social work as well as IT and the service sector stand out for their consideration of soft factors, whereas non-financial key performance indicators are used particularly rarely in the construction and retail sectors. In a comparison of locations, the federal city states of Berlin and Hamburg take top positions, while Baden-Württemberg, Hesse, and Saxony-Anhalt bring up the rear.

The report also shows that the business situation of companies has continued to stabilize despite economic concerns: expected sales, investments and profits have declined only slightly compared with the previous month. 

The complete report on company trends in December 2022 (“GBP-Monitor: Unternehmenstrends im Dezember 2022”) can be found here: https://www.accounting-for-transparency.de/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/gbp_monitor_2022_12.pdf

Further information on the GBP monitoring report
The German Business Panel interviews more than 800 companies per month on the economic situation in Germany and collects data on 1) any expected changes in revenue, profit and investments, 2) economic decisions, 3) the expected default probability in the sector and 4) the satisfaction with the economic policy. Furthermore, GBP reports on particularly relevant questions once per month.

Background information on the German Business Panel
The GBP is the long-term survey panel of the trans-regional Collaborative Research Centre “Accounting for Transparency“ (www.accounting-for-transparency.de).

The Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) “TRR 266 Accounting for Transparency“ started in July 2019 and is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) for four years. It is the first CRC with a focus on business administration. Approx. 100 researchers  from the following nine universities are involved in the CRC: Paderborn University (host university), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, University of Mannheim, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, ESMT Berlin, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management and the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg. The researchers examine how accounting and taxation affect the transparency of companies and how regulation and firm transparency impact our economy and society. The CRC is funded with approx. EUR 12 million.

Contact:

Professor Dr. Jannis Bischof
Chair of Business Administration and Accounting
University of Mannheim
Phone: +49 621 181-1630
E-mail: jbischofmail-uni-mannheim.de

Yvonne Kaul
Research communication
University of Mannheim
Phone: +49 621 181-1266
E-mail: kaulmail-uni-mannheim.de