Michael H. Kramarsch

Austrian-born Michael H. Kramarsch is one of the most active founders, investors and consultants in the HR management scene. At the age of 40, he parted ways with corporate consulting firms and, together with partners, founded hkp/// group in 2011. Under his direction, it has evolved into Germany’s most successful management consultancy for topics at the intersection of HR, strategy and finance.

Kramarsch is a leading expert in value-based management, corporate governance, performance management and executive compensation. He has provided expert advice to several government commissions such as Regierungskommission Deutscher Corporate Governance, chaired by Professor T. Baums (2001), and the Regierungskommission Deutscher Corporate Governance Kodex [German Corporate Governance Code - DCGK], headed by Klaus Peter Müller and Dr. Manfred Gentz (2012 to 2014).

As an investor, Michael H. Kramarsch focuses on HR startups. He holds equity in young companies such as Tandemploy, Talentwunder and Vote2Work, and also in the European Center for Board Efficiency (ECBE), which he co-founded. These interests in addition to his role as initiator and Co-Chair of the HR Startup Awards, presented annually since 2014, have made him one of the most distinguished HR startup experts.

Kramarsch is keenly interested in technology and its ethical challenges. This motivated him to establish the Ethics Advisory Council (Ethikbeirat) HR Tech together with the Association of German HR Managers (Bundesverband für Personalmanager, BPM) in 2019. The Committee, made up of renowned representatives from science, startups and well-established companies, considers itself a driving force for promoting the ethical and proper use of digital solutions in HR.

Michael H. Kramarsch regularly comments on the latest developments in business, society and politics in editorials, interviews and articles for leading media and prestigious publishers. A joint study with Prof. Fred G. Becker, one of the first of its kind in the German-speaking world on value-based management and incentivization, was published as early as 1997. His book on share-based management compensation (Aktienbasierte Managementvergütung, Schäffer-Poeschl), meanwhile in its second edition, is regarded as the German-language reference work on executive pay.