angel investors around the world we document that the choice between disintermediated individual angel investments and intermediated private equity and venture capital investments depends on legal economic and cultural differences we find evidence of this using pitchbook s comprehensive data on more than 5000 angel and 80 000 private equity and venture capital investments in 96 countries from 1977 to 2012 the data further indicate that investee firms funded by angels are less likely to successfully exit through either an ipo or an acquisition these findings are robust to propensity score matching methods as well as to clustering standard errors and excluding u s observations among other approaches

uncertainty avoidance and the preference for innovation championing roles this paper examines the preferences of 4405 individuals in forty three organizations from sixty eight different countries for four innovation championing roles the organizational maverick the network facilitator the transformational leader and the organizational buffer the study shows that the cultural value of uncertainty acceptance is significantly associated with preferences for these four championing roles it suggests that uncertainty accepting societies may be more innovative than uncertainty avoiding societies because of the greater legitimacy of those roles

venture management in japanese companies abstract this study based on a survey of reports on the subject published in japan since 1980 and an in depth analysis of 20 companies aims to understand the reasons why japanese firms have adopted western style venture management techniques and the organizational patterns they have created to implement them although they started relatively recently large japanese firms have adopted venture management methods in about the same proportion as their american counterparts the main reasons for this lie in the need to diversify out of mature industries to foster innovation to speed up new product development and to create an organizational vehicle permitting creative younger employees to develop their ideas the traditional characteristics of japanese firms have not been found suited to the latter two reasons the general pattern of organizing new venture activities was found to represent five different models ranging from company wide task forces to the creation of a separate new venture company these models constitute a decreasing order of integration of venture teams with other divisions and staff departments of the parent company the degree of integration of venture teams with the parent was found to be only partially related to the extent of diversification involved while task forces and new venture companies the two extreme categories represented increasing diversification the intermediate organizational forms were less uniformly related in separating the diversification variable into its technology and market components however a somewhat better explanatory link could be established companies in which new ventures drew upon the core technology tended to integrate their ventures with the parent more than others the other reasons for the weak link between diversification and integration was surmised to be the general trend toward encouraging entrepreneurship and speeding up the innovation process this was reflected in the authors interviews with companies and some overt behavior particularly the propensity to spin off new venture early and often the use of venture management methods in japan with its emphasis on youth and independence constitutes a partial renunciation of certain managerial policies and cultural traits that formed the strength of japanese companies in the past while certain aspects of traditional japanese management such as small group accountability shared division of labor and self organizing teams favor the implantation of venture management methods in japan others having to do with the seniority system and egalitarianism do not so far at least japanese managers have coped reasonably well with the organization frictions that one might have expected to arise partly because of the active interest and involvement of senior management the latter not only helped define the strategic context the domain of search but had venture teams report to them directly or indirectly in most cases

european union developing country ftas overview and analysis this paper explores the complex structures of recent free trade agreements ftas between the european union and developing countries surveys the main factors determining their economic effects and presents quantitative simulations of the effects of these agreements limitations of product coverage substantially reduce the potential benefits of the agreements compared to full bilateral free trade while only the mexico chile and turkey agreements have trade related commitments which are wider and deeper than the preferential reduction in tariffs in the case of egypt existing levels of protection mean that it is moving toward regional free trade with many domestic distortions still in place producing a significant loss for the egyptian economy

the economic performance of innovative small firms in the south east region and elsewhere in the uk thwaites a and wynarczyk p 1996 the economic performance of innovative small firms in the south east region and elsewhere in the uk reg studies 30 135 149 the paper explores the contribution of innovative small firms to local economic performance in different regional environments in the uk the empirical analysis is based on a sample of small independent firms listed on the spru innovation database 1975 83 it uses detailed financial and other data on each firm to examine their performance in different operational environments the results suggest that the average innovative sme exhibits many of the characteristics of a fast growth firm however the modus operandi of enterprise appears to differ between firms located in the south east region and other parts of the uk and these differences lead to variable outcomes in terms of employment asset and export growth thwaites a et wynarczyk p 1996 la performance economique des petites entreprises innovatrices situees dans la region sud est et d

an economic assessment of the common market organization for bananas in the european union abstract the main objective of this paper is to provide some estimates of how the world banana market has been affected by the common market organization cmo for bananas established in the european union eu on 1 july 1993 and modified in april 1994 we quantify the effects of the new eu regulation on world and eu prices on the structure of eu imports from latin american countries african caribbean and pacific acp countries and eu regional suppliers on the pattern of consumption in the various eu member states and on consumers and producers welfare using a static partial equilibrium model of the world banana market simulation results suggest that the two key variables in determining the effects of the cmo are the size of the tariff quota on dollar and non traditional acp bananas and the capacity of acp countries to exhaust their acp contingent share

consequences of cultural practices for entrepreneurial behaviors although national culture is an important regulator of entrepreneurship there is a dearth of studies that 1 explore the effects of national cultural practices on entrepreneurial behaviors by individuals 2 use appropriate multilevel research designs 3 consider the effects of culture on different entrepreneurial behaviors such as entry and post entry growth aspirations we combined global entrepreneurship monitor gem and global leadership and organizational behavior effectiveness globe data from 42 countries for 2005 2008 to address these gaps using a multilevel design we found societal institutional collectivism practices negatively associated with entrepreneurial entry but positively associated with entrepreneurial growth aspirations uncertainty avoidance practices were negatively associated with entry but not with growth aspirations and performance orientation practices were positively associated with entry our analysis highlights the differential effects of cultural practices on entrepreneurial entry and growth aspirations and demonstrates the value of multilevel techniques in analyzing the effect of culture on entrepreneurship

a model of cultural differences and international alliance performance we propose a model of cultural differences and international alliance performance to explain the ambiguous findings regarding the influence of national culture differences on alliance performance building on research on national organizational and professional cultures we argue that the closer the domain of a social group is to the value creating activities of an alliance the more disruptive cultural differences between the partners members of that social group will be organizational culture differences will tend to be more disruptive than national culture differences and differences in the professional culture most relevant to alliance value creation typically will be the most disruptive implications for research and managerial practice are discussed and the model s relevance for international r d alliances is highlighted

uncertainty avoidance moderates the relationship between transformational leadership and innovation a meta analysis transformational leadership is commonly assumed to facilitate employee innovation in all cultures drawing upon field studies from 17 countries this meta analysis revealed that supervisor transformational leadership is positively related to individual and team level innovation regardless of national boundaries however the relationship trended somewhat more strongly in countries with higher levels of uncertainty avoidance these findings suggest that employee innovation in most countries can be enhanced by investing in supervisor transformational leadership but organizations operating in countries with higher levels of uncertainty avoidance may benefit more from this strategy

knowledge transfer in international acquisitions this paper reports on a multimethod study of knowledge transfer in international acquisitions using questionnaire data we show that the transfer of technological know how is facilitated by communication visits meetings and by time elapsed since acquisition while the transfer of patents is associated with the articulability of the knowledge the size of the acquired unit and the recency of the acquisition using case study data we show that the immediate post acquisition period is characterized by imposed one way transfers of knowledge from the acquirer to the acquired but over time this gives way to high quality reciprocal knowledge transfer

scott a shane winner of the global award for entrepreneurship research scott a shane is the 2009 winner of the global award for entrepreneurship research in this article we discuss and analyze shane s most important contributions to the field of entrepreneurship his contribution is extraordinarily broad in scope which makes it difficult to pinpoint one or a few specifics that we associate with shane s scholarship instead they can be summarized in the following three points first he has influenced what we view as central aspects of entrepreneurship shane has been a leading figure in redirecting the focus on entrepreneurship research itself second he has influenced how we view entrepreneurship shane s research is arguably theory driven and it applies and develops theoretical lenses that greatly improve our understanding of entrepreneurship third he has contributed to how we conduct entrepreneurship research shane has been a forerunner in examining relevant units of analysis that are difficult to sample research designs and databases specifically designed for studying entrepreneurial processes and sophisticated analytical methods this has contributed to advancing the methodological rigor of the field summing them up the contributions are very impressive indeed

the socio cultural environment for entrepreneurship a comparison between east asian and anglo saxon countries this study uses a theory of face to identify predictors of interest in entrepreneurship in six east asian and four anglo saxon countries at the cultural level social status of entrepreneurship and shame from business failure predict interest in entrepreneurship better in east asian than anglo countries at the individual level social status predicts interest in entrepreneurship in the entire sample

relationship between individualist collectivist culture and entrepreneurial activity evidence from global entrepreneurship monitor data this paper examines how one dimension of national culture an individualist collectivist orientation is related to total entrepreneurial activity depending on the level of economic development measured by gdp per capita researchers have traditionally associated individualism with high rates of firm creation arguing that an orientation towards achievement and the pursuit of personal objectives dominant aspects in individualist cultures are determinants of entrepreneurial activity the current analysis shows that a country s culture correlates to entrepreneurship but cannot uphold the idea that higher levels of individualism mean higher rates of entrepreneurship using data from the global entrepreneurship monitor on 52 countries the results show that a country s entrepreneurship rate is negatively related to individualism when development is medium or low and positively related to individualism when the level of development is high thus individualism is not related to entrepreneurship in the same way in countries with differing levels of development

an assessment of the singapore skills development system does it constitute a viable model for other developing countries abstract in this paper we briefly describe the institutional background of singapore s successful national skills development model we devise a tentative framework to evaluate national level skills development efforts and we use it to assess the singapore model we argue that the model has the potential to move constantly toward higher skills equilibria we question however the long term sustainability of the model and whether it is transferable to other developing countries we conclude with some principles that other countries might use in organizing their own skills development systems

the network of relationships between the economic environment and the entrepreneurial culture in small firms abstract in this article we maintain that the cultural evolution processes of small firms are strongly influenced by the type of relationships that they establish with the economic environment in the first part of the article the main points of the discussion are set forth here the theoretical debate is presented and the existing relations between the entrepreneurial culture and the interaction of firms with their economic environment is analyzed in the second part of the article the methodologies adopted for the statistical analysis are explained and the results of the empirical analysis are presented finally in the third part the implications for practitioners industrial policies and future directions in research are discussed the importance of openness to change in the entrepreneurial culture is a basic assumption in this study it is well known that in small and medium firms entrepreneurs often demonstrate a resistance to change that limits the firm s competitiveness in some observed territorial and industrial contexts this resistance to change is determined by a cultural entrepreneurial homogeneity this homogeneity is a result of the similarity of the social educational and entrepreneurial experiences of the subjects observed indeed the entrepreneurs studied had for generations received the same education lived in the same area and come from the same social setting this entrepreneurial culture is typified by distrust of innovation and discontinuity which leads these entrepreneurs to favor already proven solutions and initiate the behaviors of others rather than take innovative actions principal component analysis has been used to identify the influences that various factors within and external to the firm have in the forming of an entrepreneurial culture and thus on the openness of entrepreneurs and firms to learning in the sample a trade off emerged between tendencies to homologous behaviors and the spirit of initiative through cluster analysis we identified categories of entrepreneurs with a different propensity to innovation regarding established firm routines learning entrepreneurs belong mainly to industries that serve the final consumer while bounded entrepreneurs tend to specialize in commodities more often for export the implications of our results might interest new entrepreneurs who can include this element when analyzing the viability of new ventures small already operational firms can evaluate opportunities arising from export processes or might adjust their position on the production filiere to be closer to the final market this empirical analysis should be reapplied to firms in areas with different environmental characteristics or to production filieres where the relationship between customer and supplier is different as for example in high tech industries so as to verify whether the intensity of the relations with the market differs according to external factors or the technological intensity of the industries examined

the effect of national culture on the choice of entry mode characteristics of national cultures have frequently been claimed to influence the selection of entry modes this article investigates this claim by developing a theoretical argument for why culture should influence the choice of entry two hypotheses are derived which relate culture to entry mode choice one focusing on the cultural distance between countries the other on attitudes towards uncertainty avoidance using a multinomial logit model and controlling for other effects the hypotheses are tested by analysing data on 228 entries into the united states market by acquisition wholly owned greenfield and joint venture empirical support for the effect of national culture on entry choice is found

economic creativity and innovation implementation the entrepreneurial drivers of growth evidence from 63 countries this paper examines the effect of culture on national innovation and prosperity because culture shapes the way people think about and behave in regard to risk opportunities and rewards it should influence the nature of entrepreneurial activity and by extension economic outcomes using structural equation modeling on a sample of 63 countries we propose and test a comprehensive explanation of how culture as an umbrella construct as opposed to an analysis of its constituent parts affects innovation and national prosperity we propose a two stage model of innovation and find support for our hypothesized relationship that economic creativity influences innovation implementation at the national level we find that culture does indeed influence economic creativity we also find that innovation implementation explained some of the variation in prosperity across countries by establishing that big picture culture matters to innovation the door has opened for researchers to evaluate this relationship using data from any one of a number of rival culture frameworks moreover these empirical finding buttress the theoretical arguments that culture powerfully shapes the character of national innovation

stability vs flexibility the effect of regulatory institutions on opportunity type how entrepreneurial opportunities are formed and exploited depends upon the institutional environment in which they are embedded the varying amounts of risk and uncertainty across and within heterogeneous institutional environments have important implications for the types of opportunity developed while the international business and entrepreneurship literatures consider the effect of environmental risk and uncertainty on firms risk and uncertainty are often treated as interchangeable or synonymous and rarely are both considered to be present together to address this we develop a new theoretical model based on institutional economics describing how institutional arrangements promoting stability thus supporting an entrepreneur s ability to assess risk will lead to more imitative opportunities while institutions promoting flexibility thus supporting an entrepreneur s ability to respond to uncertainty by iterating will foster more innovative opportunities we test this framework using cross national data across 40 countries from the gem survey finding that institutional arrangements that promote stability do lead to more imitation while institutions that promote flexibility foster more innovation by treating risk and uncertainty as distinct constructs our study makes theoretical contributions to research on institutional environments and opportunity types with implications for future research on subsidiary initiatives the evolution of mnes and born global firms

does culture still matter the effects of individualism on national innovation rates abstract does a society s culture affect its rate of inventive activity this article analyzes several independent datasets of culture and innovation from 62 countries spanning more than two decades it finds that most measures of individualism have a strong significant and positive effect on innovation even when controlling for major policy variables however the data also suggest that a certain type of collectivism i e patriotism and nationalism can also foster innovation at the national level meanwhile other types of collectivism i e familism and localism not only harm innovation rates but may hurt progress in science worse than technology

establishing a new business venture unit within a firm abstract the rapid growth of the united states as a whole is basically a story of the discovery and adoption of novel and improved ways of satisfying wants and needs previously these wants and needs have been championed by individuals such as j p morgan finance james b duke tobacco andrew carnegie steel cornelius vanderbilt railroads and john d rockefeller oil each of these entrepreneurs commercialized a new idea or invention the essence of the innovation process each bridged the gap between science and the marketplace by developing and commercializing a marketable innovation although even more of a need to reach the market as quickly as possible exists today the majority of the innovations commercialized each year come from new or smaller organizations often the ones with the least amount of capability and resources to accomplish the task existing businesses especially larger ones are in a much better position to bridge this gap these companies have the existing financial resources business skills and usually the marketing and distribution systems to successfully commercialize a new innovation recognizing this capability large companies have tried to instill an entrepreneurial spirit or an internal venturing program in an attempt to increase the amount and success of new offerings this activity has taken on a variety of forms one of which is the new business venture unit what are the characteristics of a new business venture unit are they more successful at introducing new products than autonomous entrepreneurs these and other questions were addressed in a research project of fortune 1000 firms consisting of a mail questionnaire and in depth personal interviews the majority of these firms did not have a new business venture unit 70 of those firms that did the average age of their unit was 5 3 years and the range of ages was from a few months to 20 years in addition the range of employees in the new business venture unit varied greatly from one to 100 firms in the primary product lines of chemical and medical products computers beauty products and feminine products tended to have new business venture units more than did firms in other product areas these units contained a variety of departments including marketing the most frequent finance and research and development through modest increases in the number of new products introduced each year the new business venture units also significantly increased the per centages of sales attributed to products introduced within the previous three years a good environment for a successful new business venture unit included encouraging new ideas allowing mistakes and failure making available the resources of the firm encouraging teamwork establishing broad per formance goals and an appropriate reward system and having top management strongly support the unit

the assessment knowledge skills and competitiveness the autumn 1988 issue of the oxford review of economic policy considered the uk s deficiencies in vocational education and training vet it was there that finegold and soskice first popularized the notion of the low skills low quality equilibrium this assessment originally introduces a range of articles which discussed developments in the decade that has passed since then in the same journal issue no 1 1999 it argues that despite massive policy initiatives there has been only limited improvement in the uk s relative vet performance considerable progress has been made in analysis of market failures affecting the supply of skills and in analysis of the possible causes and consequences of low employer demand for skills systems failure the recent competitiveness white paper reflects this improved understanding

cultural influences on national rates of innovation abstract the purpose of this research was to examine the effect of the cultural values of individualism power distance uncertainty avoidance and masculinity on national rates of innovation in 33 countries in 1975 and 1980 the study found that rates of innovation are most closely associated with the cultural value of uncertainty acceptance but that lack of power distance and individualism also are related to high rates of innovation this research suggests that nations may differ in their rates of innovation because of the cultural values of their citizens these findings have important implications for managers and policy makers first culture matters countries may not be able to increase their rates of innovation simply by increasing the amount of money spent on research and development or industrial infrastructure they also may need to change the values of their citizens to those that encourage innovative activity this concept in turn suggests that national rates of innovation are driven by more fundamental forces than economic conditions and that societal change may be necessary to make less innovative societies more innovative second the values associated with high national rates of innovation are those that many scholars have long argued are important at the firm level an acceptance of uncertainty appears to be necessary probably because innovation requires a tolerance for risk and change individualism seems to be important perhaps because of its association with autonomy independence and freedom lack of power distance appears important perhaps reflecting the role that tolerance of change in the social order and distribution of power play in the innovation process third the study indicates that the strength of the relationship between innovation and two cultural values individualism and lack of power distance were stronger in 1975 than in 1980 suggesting perhaps that these values are becoming less important in spurring the innovation process this finding supports the anecdotal evidence that many collectivist and hierarchical asian nations are becoming more innovative fourth this study shows that per capita income is a more important economic variable than industrial structure in determining national rates of innovation this finding confirms previous work that has shown that as nations become wealthier they become more innovative the reason may be that wealthier countries have more demand for innovations both because innovations are often laborsaving and because wealthier nations have greater demand for new and differentiated consumer goods

the salience of culture s consequences the effects of cultural values on top executive commitment to the status quo while top executives are argued to play a central role in strategic adaptation evidence suggests that they are not equally open to organizational change this study extends earlier investigation of the determinants of top executive commitment to the status quo csq to the international arena examining the influence of cultural values on executive open mindedness toward change using data from a survey of top managers in 20 countries analyses reveal that values of individualism uncertainty avoidance power distance and long term orientation are significantly related to executives adherence to existing strategy and leadership profiles further while confirming earlier findings that industry tenure is positively related to strategy csq results show that tenure does not significantly affect leadership csq once cultural values are controlled in summary the findings reveal that culture has an important impact on executive mindsets as demonstrated by the fact that executives of differing cultural background are not equally open to change in organizational strategy and leadership profiles second the findings suggest that executives views of appropriate leadership profiles reflect the imprint of cultural socialization moreso than professional experience finally and more broadly the study offers empirical support for the view that values figure prominently in shaping executives strategic and leadership orientations 1997 by john wiley sons ltd

the industrial policy of competitiveness a review of recent developments in the uk the article reviews the recent developments in uk competitiveness policy and explores its relationship with industrial policy including regional industrial policy it argues that competitiveness is virtually synonymous with productivity growth but that while four competitiveness white papers of the 1990s potentially broadened the scope of uk industrial policy the shift from sectoral to horizontal measures has in fact helped much reduce the content of this policy the article reviews current industrial policy and expenditure distinguishing between the areas of science and technology small firms and regional policy it argues that industrial policy is now a part of competitiveness policy being closely aligned to the efficiency role of government it finds that while policy has converged on a narrower set of measures the traditional boundaries between the science and technology small firm and regional policy components have become much less clear cut

cultural differences and capability transfer in cross border acquisitions the mediating roles of capability complementarity absorptive capacity and social integration this paper presents an integrative model of the impact of cultural differences on capability transfer in cross border acquisitions we propose that cultural differences affect the post acquisition capability transfer through their impact on social integration potential absorptive capacity and capability complementarity two dynamic variables the use of social integration mechanisms and the degree of operational integration of the acquired unit are proposed to moderate the effects of cultural differences on social integration and potential absorptive capacity the implications for acquisition research and practice are discussed