Data for our study were collected in the period from
September to November 2007 by means of a questionnairebased
survey. Our starting point was a database that
included contact details of German top 1500 companies
by sales volume from all industries except financial
institutions. The latter were excluded due to their specific
business models and accounting requirements. In the
course of data collection, another 231 companies had to be
excluded for various reasons (e.g., the lack of a controlling
department), so that finally 1269 companies remained in
our population.