an examination of the antecedents and implications of patent scope this paper focuses on the concept of patent scope and contributes to existing research in three ways first it offers a re examination of the construct and identifies two dimensions of patent scope 1 the number of variations of the core inventive idea identified in the patent reflected in the number of claims in the patent e g merges and nelson 1994 and 2 the positioning of those variations in the inventive space which is reflected in the number of technological classes in which patent examiners classify those claims second it investigates the implications of patent scope for the firm s subsequent inventive performance and finds that when the scope of a patents spans across a higher number of technological classes the extent to which the inventing firm itself succeeds in building on the knowledge underlying its own patent is lower third it investigates the antecedents of scope and suggests that prior investment in scientific knowledge and in related inventive experience are two factors that affect the scope of the patents that firms develop the theoretical predictions elaborated in this paper are supported by an empirical examination of a longitudinal sample of firms in the photonics industry

towards an attention based view of the firm the central argument is that firm behavior is the result of how firms channel and distribute the attention of their decision makers what decision makers do depends on what issues and answers they focus their attention on what issues and answers they focus on depends on the specific situation and on how the firm s rules resources and relationships distribute various issues answers and decision makers into specific communications and procedures the paper develops these theoretical principles into a model of firm behavior and presents its implications for explaining firm behavior and adaptation 1997 by john wiley sons ltd

the attention stimulus of cultural differences in global services sourcing contrasting with extant research centred on the organizational challenges of sourcing services in culturally distant countries we show that cultural differences between home and host countries do not prevent firms from achieving their cost savings targets instead the effect is positive both for the captive and outsourcing governance models using insight from social psychology research and the theory of organizations we build the argument that the positive effect is due to cultural differences providing an attention stimulus for decision makers to thoroughly gather and process information on the costs and benefits of global sourcing thereby reducing the risk of cost estimation errors the empirical validation uses a data set of 624 global services sourcing initiatives obtained from the offshoring research network complemented with multiple external sources of cross country data on cultural differences languages geographic distance and education levels the main contribution of the article is to add much needed nuance to the otherwise monotonic negative view of cultural differences in extant global sourcing literature moreover the original theoretical framework and resulting attention stimulus argument we develop open new avenues for research on the consequences of cultural differences in international business operations more broadly

home country supportiveness unfavorableness and outward foreign direct investment from china what drives the outward foreign direct investments ofdis by emerging market firms emfs drawing on a strategy tripod framework this article proposes a theoretical model to predict ofdi by emfs from china specifically we use institution and industry based views to examine two facets of home country environment namely the supportiveness from home government and unfavorableness from home industry as important determinants of ofdi and compare the relative strength of these effects further we use the resource based view to argue that the effect of the home country environment is contingent on the international experience portfolios of emfs

what are the consequences of initiative taking in multinational subsidiaries the phenomenon of subsidiary initiative has received increasing attention in recent years but the consequences of initiatives and the associated dynamics of headquarters subsidiary relationships have received much less research attention building on resource dependence theory and self determination theory we argue that two basic goals subsidiary managers pursue are to achieve autonomy vis a vis corporate headquarters and influence over other units we investigate how a subsidiary s past initiatives contribute to its bargaining power and how headquarters response through granting attention or monitoring affects the realization of the subsidiary s goals using structural equation modeling our hypotheses are tested by drawing on a sample of 257 subsidiaries located in three different countries australia canada and the united kingdom our results show that subsidiaries are not able to increase their influence through initiatives unless they get headquarters attention we also find that subsidiary initiatives have a direct effect on subsidiary autonomy but the caveat is that initiatives also evoke headquarters monitoring which in turn decreases the subsidiary s autonomy in addition to providing insights into how subsidiaries can achieve their goals the paper also sheds light on the critical role headquarters plays in leveraging initiatives and the influence of individual subsidiaries in the multinational enterprise

divergent reactions to convergent strategies investor beliefs and analyst reactions during technological change an important outcome of technological change is industry convergence as a new technology spurs competition between established firms from different industries we study the reactions of securities analysts as important sources of institutional pressures for firms to the similar product market strategies undertaken by firms from different prior industries responding to industry convergence our empirical setting is the convergence between the wireline telecommunications and cable television industries in the period following the advent of voice over internet protocol technology controlling for firm financial performance and capabilities we find that analysts were consistently more positive toward the cable firms than toward the wireline telecom firms our findings further show that this divergence in reactions arises from differences in existing investor expectations and preferences concerning how firms create value stocks owned by investors with a greater preference for growth receive more positive reactions than those owned by investors with a greater preference for margins however this divergence in reactions shrinks over time as convergence unfolds and as investors shift their shareholdings in response to misalignment between their preferences and firms strategic changes reactions from analysts reflecting inertial expectations of investors may persist for a time despite changes to firms strategies thus creating challenges for some firms in responding to technological change and industry convergence while legitimating and enabling similar responses from their competitors

peer conformity attention and heterogeneous implementation of practices in mnes how do subsidiaries respond to normative demands from both their headquarters and local external constituents we propose that subsidiaries pay varying levels of attention to demands depending on their peers norm conforming behavior resulting in heterogeneous practice implementation we study the implementation of 25 practices associated with three corporate social responsibility csr issues in 101 worldwide subsidiaries of a multinational enterprise mne consistent with the idea that attention is limited and therefore selective we find that external peers conformity to the csr norm directs subsidiaries attention toward the csr related demands of external constituents at the expense of the demands from the headquarters however internal peers conformity increases attention to both external and headquarters demands related to csr as higher attention levels result in higher practice implementation internal and external peers conformity drives the heterogeneity of practice implementation in the mne our results suggest the need to rethink the influence of peers conformity on subsidiaries implementation of practices as it not only triggers mimicry based on legitimacy but also and simultaneously a more strategic response based on internal and external competitive threats and attention allocation

the formation of cross sector development partnerships how bridging agents shape project agendas and longer term alliances cross sector development partnerships csdps are project based collaborative arrangements between business government and civil society organizations in support of international development goals such as sustainability health education and economic development focusing on public private partnerships in development cooperation we examine different constellations of bridging agents and their effects in the formation of single csdp projects and longer term alliances we conceptualize bridging agency as a collective process involving both internal partner representatives and external intermediaries in initiating and or supporting roles we find that the involvement of external intermediaries eases the formation of single projects and longer term alliances however when projects are initiated by external intermediaries they tend to be repetitive and narrow in scope whereas projects initiated by internal partner representatives often explore novel agendas and embody a greater potential for social innovation yet the longer term pursuit of these agendas beyond single projects may require external intermediaries in supporting roles findings help better understand micro processes and collective practices of brokerage and alliance formation in transnational governance contexts and beyond

size r d productivity and decision styles we extend the size innovation debate by incorporating decision making style as a relevant factor in the innovation process we propose that the size of firms affects the scale and quality of product innovation through the adoption of different decision making styles using the literature on cognition we conceptualize decision making style as the degree to which firms rely on analytical information for decision making during the r d process using longitudinal data of spanish firms we show that as firms increase in size they rely more extensively on analytical decision tools for the innovation activity additionally we show that the size of firms is negatively related to product innovation productivity in terms of scale and positively related to the quality and that these relationships are mediated by firms reliance on analytical decision making style we discuss theoretical and managerial implications for innovation research and practice

globalization poverty and inequality what is the relationship what can be done forbes online of 27 february 20031 offers some information about the world s ten richest people much of the information would cause little surprise the list shows that big money comes from software innovation retailing scale economies the business of oil investment luck and inheritance what is however really striking more so as one ponders the matter is just how rich these ten people are 2 together they had in 2002 a net worth of us 217 billion ranging from bill gates in the lead with us 40 7 billion to john walton son of sam walton founder of wal mart at the rear with us 16 5 billion

standardization preferences a function of national culture work interdependence and local embeddedness both theoretical and empirical studies of professional service employee standardization preferences are relatively scarce using responses from 398 employees of an international public relations firm this study finds that employees from high power distance high uncertainty avoidance and high context cultures prefer greater standardization whereas employees from high individualism cultures prefer less standardization additionally work interdependence is positively associated with standardization preferences whereas local embeddedness is negatively associated with standardization preferences

international search behavior of business group affiliated firms scope of institutional changes and intragroup heterogeneity this paper investigates whether and when affiliation to business groups enables or constrains firms international search behavior during institutional transitions we theorize that given the unique structure and complex form of business group organizations the search behavior of affiliated firms is influenced by the degree of misalignment in outlook at the group and affiliate levels of management we identify the scope of institutional changes business group attributes and affiliate characteristics as sources of such misalignment the results from panel data on 298 firms from the indian pharmaceutical industry for the 1992 2007 period show that the constraining effects of business group affiliation are observed only when institutional changes are specific to the affiliates industry and not when broad institutional changes affect the business group as a whole moreover we observe heterogeneity in the search behavior of group affiliated firms first the degree of misalignment is greater in the case of affiliates belonging to older business groups and those that are more distant in terms of age and industry since the group s founding second by contrast and suggesting an alignment in outlook we find that affiliated firms that occupy a prominent position within a group or industry are able to bargain for and receive attention and support from the business group to undertake international search our findings have implications for research on the role of business groups in a changing institutional context and for the strategic adaptation of firms embedded in complex organizational and institutional settings

burr under the saddle how media coverage influences strategic change in this paper we introduce a new antecedent to the strategic change literature by examining the effect of media coverage on the extent of strategic change specifically we examine how negative media coverage may prompt firms to make changes to their resource allocations and then explore how the makeup of the board and firm performance can moderate this relationship we develop a theoretical framework to explain why media coverage may affect strategic change and then test our theory with a longitudinal analysis of 250 firms over a four year period the empirical results lend support to our theory of media influence on strategic change and suggest that the evaluations of firms by outside constituents may influence the decision making of executives

business group affiliation and firm search behavior in india responsiveness and focus of attention this paper investigates the effects of organizational form on problemistic search we contrast how indian firms affiliated with business groups and unaffiliated firms evaluate performance and react by adjusting their internal technology search and external market search we propose that compared with unaffiliated firms business group affiliated bg affiliated firms are more externally oriented in setting aspiration levels and more likely to respond to low performance in the market domain we find support for an external orientation of bg affiliated firms and find that group affiliation determines the responsiveness to performance feedback in different search domains the findings suggest a need to add considerations of organizational form and governance to the theory of organizational search

market watch information and availability cascades among the media and investors in the u s ipo market in this study we advance current research on social influence in markets by examining how the recency and availability of information about others actions within and between different communities influence their allocation of attention and their evaluations specifically we examine how the media and investors allocate attention to and evaluate newly public firms in the days following their initial public offerings ipos our findings have implications for understanding the fieldwide processes through which the value of new firms is established in markets

getting off to a good start the effects of upper echelon affiliations on underwriter prestige the initial public offering ipo is one of the most critical events in the lifetime of a young firm prior research has shown that firms tend to have successful ipos if they go public with the endorsement of a prestigious lead underwriter this paper examines the antecedents to receiving endorsement by a prestigious underwriter and links this to the experience base of a firm s upper echelon we theorize that the amount and type of upper echelon experience serve as important symbols of a young firm s legitimacy to critical outsiders we introduce a typology of upper echelon experience that distinguishes between upper echelon upstream horizontal and downstream employment based affiliations and suggest that these different types of upper echelon affiliations allay different types of endorser concerns regarding firm legitimacy affecting the endorsement process further we theorize that the relationships between upper echelon experience and investment bank prestige will be moderated by technological uncertainty we test our assertions on a comprehensive sample of public and private biotechnology firms that were founded between 1961 and 1994 and that went public between 1979 and 1996 analyses of the five year career histories of the over 3 200 executives and directors that make up the upper echelons of these firms show that firms with upper echelons with affiliations with prominent downstream organizations i e pharmaceutical and or healthcare companies and with prominent horizontal organizations i e biotechnology companies are more likely to attract the endorsement of a prestigious investment bank we also find that the greater the range of upper echelon affiliations across the categories of upstream horizontal and downstream affiliations the more prestigious the firm s lead underwriter we also find that these latter results are moderated by technological uncertainty the present research has implications for the study of organizational legitimacy interorganizational endorsements and entrepreneurship

multinationality portfolio diversification and asymmetric mne performance the moderating role of real options awareness the field of international business is fundamentally concerned with the implications of managerial actions that affect multinational risk and performance outcomes while portfolio diversification and real options theory are often used to describe the outcomes of multinational investment existing work often confuses the actions and predictions proposed by these theories this is concerning as the two theories emphasize different causal mechanisms managerial actions and conceptions of risk and performance whereas portfolio theory argues that passive management affects symmetric outcomes such as variance in returns by attaining a well diversified portfolio real options theory posits that managers actively shift subsidiary resources to affect asymmetric outcomes such as upside potential or downside risk by monitoring and responding to environmental changes affecting the portfolio this paper disentangles these two theories by focusing on unique predictions from real options theory that geographic dispersion of mne activities is associated with asymmetric outcomes that this association is contingent on management being aware of real options logic and that these effects are moderated by the degree of market uncertainty our findings confirm these predictions and suggest differences in the types of managerial strategies and actions required to effectively implement these distinct theories of the mne

explaining stakeholder evaluations of hrm capabilities in mnc subsidiaries this paper examines how functional and line management stakeholders evaluate operational human resource management capabilities in multinational corporation mnc subsidiaries we suggest that such evaluations are a function of two key structural factors 1 that focal subsidiary human resource hr departments respond differentially to the expectations of differently located stakeholders and 2 that the structural position of the stakeholder determines what cues he or she relies upon to construct the evaluation our findings show that the focal hr subsidiary department is likely to exert more effort towards meeting the expectations of line management stakeholders and we suggest that this is a function of line management s co location with the focal hr department second we find that co located line management stakeholders are more likely to rely on experience based cues when constructing evaluations whereas headquarters located functional stakeholders tend to rely on cognition based evaluation driven by their ability to compare across different subsidiary hr departments we contribute to the literature by going beyond existing research that has tended to focus on evaluation from the perspective of organizational behavior by providing a structural perspective on capability evaluation in mncs that combines the insights of role theory and cognitive choice heuristics

the sacrifices of micro borrowers in ghana a customer protection perspective on measuring over indebtedness this article measures the over indebtedness of micro borrowers it defines over indebtedness from a customer protection perspective based on the borrowers sacrifices we analyse the sacrifices borrowers experience and find that 30 per cent of borrowers are over indebted we then test risk management indicators of debt problems as predictors of over indebtedness over indebtedness is strongly related to delinquency and the debt to income ratio but not to debt amounts or to multiple borrowing although our model correctly predicts 72 6 per cent of cases even the best indicators identify only a few over indebted borrowers risk management is not enough to protect customers against over indebtedness but the industry needs to measure customer experiences directly

gaining access by doing good the effect of sociopolitical reputation on firm participation in public policy making this paper examines the role of firms sociopolitical reputations as proxied by their perceived engagement in socially responsible practices in public policy makers decisions to grant access in the policy making process i argue that policy makers dependencies motivations and decision making processes lead them to evaluate firms by using sociopolitical reputation as a differentiating heuristic i hypothesize that firms that construct stronger sociopolitical reputations will be granted greater access and that firms existing political activity and policy makers partisanship will moderate this relationship i test these hypotheses using an 11 year panel on congressional testimony reputation and political and financial characteristics for the s p 500 and find support for all three these findings support the existence of a sociopolitical dimension to firms reputations that affects how public policy makers evaluate firms demonstrating that corporate social responsibility pays political benefits this paper was accepted by jesper sorensen organizations

when do spinouts enhance parent firm performance evidence from the u s automobile industry 1890 1986 spinouts entrepreneurial ventures founded by ex employees of incumbent firms within the same industry have emerged in numerous industries some existing literature argues that they typically have a negative association with their parents performance because of the loss of human capital the disruption of organizational routines and subsequent adverse competitive effects more recent work however suggests that such negative effects may have been overstated and argues that there are conditions under which spinouts may be linked to enhanced performance of the parent i contribute to this literature by theorizing about and empirically testing for such conditions in particular using data from the u s automobile industry spanning 1890 to 1986 i find evidence that spinouts are associated with enhanced parent performance when they increase the parent s corporate coherence either through a the core competencies and capabilities domain by refocusing the parent s resources on the core or b the cognitive path by resolving a conflict at the top level of the parent s hierarchy i discuss implications for both research and practice

focusing firm evolution the impact of information infrastructure on market entry by u s telecommunications companies 1984 1998 organization structure acts as a lens on the environment gathering information and shaping its flow through a firm to inform managers choices this shaping of information flow happens through an organization s operating units which selectively process information from the environment and through the links between them which pass information between units we explore the relationship between this information infrastructure and firm strategy using structure and service information from the eight largest telephone service providers in the united states from 1984 to 1998 we find that firms with more units that scan areas of opportunity are more likely to enter a market while firms with more units that scan nonfocal areas are less likely to enter the market we also find that personnel links between units and the corporate level of the firm often constrain entry to new markets by dampening a unit s appetite for risk personnel links between operating units on the other hand can make a firm more likely to enter new markets particularly when the cooperating units combine different sets of information thus a firm s information infrastructure plays a dual role in shaping firm evolution leading toward some paths and away from others

industry technical committees technological distance and innovation performance abstract in most technology based markets industry technical committees tcs that establish new technical standards and specifications have assumed importance for companies as a critical source of information on existing and emerging technologies in this study we investigate how the technological distance of a tc from the firm will shape the impact of tc participation on the firm s innovation performance specifically we posit that participation in tcs that are central low technological distance to the company s existing product technologies and offerings will contribute to its competence enhancing innovation whereas participation in tcs that are peripheral high technological distance to current technologies and offerings will contribute to its new competence innovation given the need to interpret and apply the information internally we also consider the moderating effects of the firm s absorptive capacity and knowledge integration mechanisms the study hypotheses are validated by combining survey based and archival data related to a sample of 168 us based wireless telecommunication firms the findings provide broad support for the study theses and imply the need for companies to carefully plan the nature of their tc participation so as to advance the desired type of innovation broader implications for future research on external knowledge sourcing and competence based innovation are discussed

hunger inequality ethics and aid abstractthis article considers the inequality in the cross country distribution of hunger using multiple ethical underpinnings under sovereign equality each nation state receives equal weighting leading to the conclusion that hunger should be concentrated in a few large countries under the democratic ethic individuals receive equal weighting and the global distribution of hungry people is irrelevant inequality aversion deliberately prefers equal levels of hunger across countries these ideals are presented in a general social welfare function and compared to the actual changes in hunger during 1991 2001 the distribution of food aid to reduce both hunger and hunger inequality are considered

no news is bad news sensegiving activities media attention and venture capital funding of new technology organizations a significant body of research has examined how new organizations gain legitimacy and how gaining it affects their subsequent access to resources less attention has been given to the problem of how new organizations attract collective attention although related to legitimation the problem of attracting attention is distinct as attention and evaluation are distinct cognitive processes in this study we examine the allocation of collective attention to new organizations in a system of relationships within which new organizations seek to attract attention through their sensegiving activities the information properties of their sensegiving activities affect the level of attention they receive from different types of media and media attention in turn increases their perceived value potential in the eyes of venture capital investors vcs we examine these relationships in a sample of 398 information technology start ups that have obtained different levels of venture capital funding our results show that new organizations that engage in more intense and diverse sensegiving activities attract higher levels of industry media attention and that these effects are enhanced by the human capital of their founders and leaders diverse sensegiving activities are also associated with higher levels of attention from the general media but only the attention of specialized industry media is positively associated with the level of vc funding obtained these findings extend current research on information intermediation and institutional legitimation by demonstrating that media attention early in the life of new organizations affects how they are valued by a well informed expert audience such as vcs they also contribute to entrepreneurship research on the effects of new organizations strategies on their ability to secure resources and to research on vc funding decisions

exploring the locus of invention the dynamics of network communities and firms invention productivity departing from prior research analyzing the implications of social structure for actors outcomes by applying either an ego network or a global network perspective this study examines the implications of network communities for the invention productivity of firms network communities represent dense and nonoverlapping structural groups of actors in a social system a network community lens helps identify new ways to study firms access to diverse knowledge inputs in a dynamic system of interorganizational relationships specifically we examine how the membership dynamics of a network community affect the invention productivity of member firms by either enabling or constraining access to broad diverse knowledge inputs our findings suggest first that a firm reaps the greatest invention benefits in a network community with moderate levels of membership turnover second a firm attains the greatest invention productivity when its own rate of movement across different network communities is moderate third we find that community members located in the core of their network community can benefit more from membership dynamics and prior community affiliations than those on its periphery in empirical analyses we use the evolving community structure of the network of interorganizational partnerships in the global computer industry over 1981 2001 to predict firms patenting rates

recruitment knowledge integration and modes of innovation abstract this paper investigates how the strength and intrinsic characteristics of firms knowledge bases and processing routines have evolved with the past inflow of employees the empirical analysis is based on linked public register and innovation survey data for norway it finds that recruitment from universities research institutes and higher education institutions has increased the capacity of firms to generate technical inventions yet the organizational knowledge bases and processing routines on which commercial innovation output depends have been strengthened only by the recruitment that has occurred from related industries implications for research management and policy are drawn

unbundling the structure of inertia resource versus routine rigidity i work to unbundle the structure of inertia into two distinct categories resource rigidity failure to change resource investment patterns and routine rigidity failure to change organizational p

personal versus market logics of control a historically contingent theory of the risk of acquisition this paper develops and tests a theory of the historical contingency of the risk of acquisition using data from the higher education publishing market from 1958 1990 interviews and historical analyses are combined to identify two forms of capitalism personal and market and in particular to publishing to identify the institutional logics identified with each form of capitalism an editorial and a market logic hazard rate models are used to test for differences in the effects of these two logics on the organization and market determinants of acquisition publishers with relational network forms of organization in production and distribution were at a higher risk of acquisition in the market period but not in the editorial period competition in the product market increased the risk of acquisition in the market period but not the editorial period the covariates explaining the risk of acquisition change as a consequence of the evolution of capitalism and as a result of a firm s strategic and structural conformity with the institutional logic of the prevailing form of capitalism

structuring resource allocation decisions a framework for building multi criteria portfolio models with area grouped options multi criteria portfolio modelling has been extensively employed as an effective means to allocate scarce resources for investment in projects when considering costs benefits and risks some of these modelling approaches allow the grouping of projects into organisational areas thus also supporting the decision of resource allocation among organisational units in a way that is collectively efficient for the organisation however structuring in practice a portfolio model using this latter type of approach is not a trivial task how should areas be defined where should new projects be included how should one define the criteria to evaluate performance as far as we know there is very little indication in the operational research and decision sciences literatures on how to structure this type of model this paper suggests different ways to structuring portfolio models where projects are divided into areas and evaluated by multiple criteria and illustrates their use in two action research projects drawing on these experiences it then suggests a general framework for the structuring of such models in practice directions for future research are also identified

global income inequality while several international organisations have argued that income gaps between countries have increased during the last decades the opposite conclusion is obtained if countries are weighted according to their population size and if price level adjusted income data are applied inequality measures that give higher weight to the poorest countries also support this conclusion due to falling incomes in a number of poor countries however the gap between the richest and poorest countries has widened and unambiguous conclusions about welfare are difficult to draw

understanding the words of relationships language as an essential tool to manage csr in communities of place multinational enterprises mnes encounter relentless stakeholder pressures when operating across linguistic cultural and institutional boundaries our aims are to examine whether and how acquisition of language resources may help mnes to bridge these boundaries and reduce pressures on mne legitimacy by improving their corporate social responsibility csr outcomes we propose an mne model of language resource acquisition policy based on three language orientations language as problem language as resource and language as right using sociolinguistic tools an ecological analysis of how language affects mne stakeholder relationships and surveying 15 mining mnes from australia canada china south africa switzerland and the united kingdom operating in east africa our research found some mnes employ regional lingua francas like swahili and local leadership practices to build sustainable relationships with local stakeholders these local stakeholders are members of communities of place cofp who steward the land their ancestors have inhabited for centuries and their voices have grown as to how that land is used as their voices have grown mnes should improve csr outcomes with cofp through better communications a well designed language acquisition policy may improve such communication and so fend off threats to mne legitimacy

the link between social movements and corporate social initiatives toward a multi level theory this article offers a first step toward a multi level theory linking social movements to corporate social initiatives in particular building on the premise that social movements reflect ideologies that direct behavior inside and outside organizations this essay identifies mechanisms by which social movements induce firms to engage with social issues first social movements are able to influence the expectations that key stakeholders have about firms social responsibility making corporate social initiatives more attractive second through conflict or collaboration they shape firms reputation and legitimacy and third social movements ideologies manifest inside the corporations by triggering organizational members values and affecting managerial cognition the essay contributes to the literatures on social movements and csr extends the understanding of how ideologies are manifested in movement business interactions and generates rich opportunities for future research

paying the price the impact of controversial governance practices on managerial reputation this study directly examines the reputational penalties that managers pay when they engage in controversial governance practices that raise questions about managerial self interest these penalties

competitive behavior and nonfinancial objectives entry exit and pricing decisions in closely held firms because of the predominance of the assumption of profit maximization as the goal of the firm and its decision makers especially in the competitive strategy literature research has yet to investigate how differences in objectives might influence competitive actions such as entry exit and pricing decisions this represents an important gap in the literature given the fundamental role of objectives in decision making and widespread evidence that many firms especially those that are closely held are motivated by nonfinancial objectives in addition to an interest in financial returns to further our understanding of firms competitive strategy decisions we discuss how the presence of nonfinancial objectives in closely held firms leads to a weakening of the relationship between economic indications of profitability and competitive behaviors using a unique data set of nearly 4 000 closely held and non closely held establishments engaged in local competition in the texas hotel industry we find that the e

determinants of household energy consumption in india improving access to affordable modern energy is critical to improving living standards in the developing world rural households in india in particular are almost entirely reliant on traditional biomass for their basic cooking energy needs this has adverse effects on their health and productivity and also causes environmental degradation this study presents a new generic modelling approach with a focus on cooking fuel choices and explores response strategies for energy poverty eradication in india the modelling approach analyzes the determinants of fuel consumption choices for heterogeneous household groups incorporating the effect of income distributions and traditionally more intangible factors such as preferences and private discount rates the methodology is used to develop alternate future scenarios that explore how different policy mechanisms such as fuel subsidies and micro financing can enhance the diffusion of modern more efficient energy sources in india

a matter of location the role of regional social capital in overcoming the liability of newness in r d acquisition activities laursen k masciarelli f and reichstein t a matter of location the role of regional social capital in overcoming the liability of newness in r d acquisition activities regional studies external knowledge acquisition is a precondition for firms competitive advantage however young firms exhibit a lower propensity to acquire external research and development r d than their older counterparts the paper explores the role of regional social capital in moderating this aspect of the liability of newness the results show that young firms operating in regions with low levels of social capital are less likely to acquire r d externally however this is not the case in regions with high levels of social capital suggesting that the liability of newness in terms of acquisition of external r d does not play a role in these regions

venture capital investments and the technological performance of portfolio firms what is the relationship between venture capitalists selection of investment targets and the effects of these investments on the patenting performance of portfolio companies in this paper we set out a modelling and estimation framework designed to discover whether venture capital vc increases the patenting performance of firms or whether this effect is a consequence of prior investment selection based on firms patent output we develop simultaneous models predicting the likelihood that firms attract vc financing the likelihood that they patent and the number of patents applied for and granted fully accounting for the endogeneity of investment we find that the effect of vc on patenting is insignificant or negative in contrast to the results generated by simpler models with independent equations our findings show that venture capitalists follow patent signals to invest in companies with commercially viable know how and suggest that they are more likely to rationalise rather than increase the patenting output of portfolio firms

organizational structure and performance feedback centralization aspirations and termination decisions this study examines the effects of organizational structure and performance feedback on termination decisions in particular product phaseout using quarterly product level data on the major mobile handset manufacturers for the period 2004 2009 we analyze how product level feedback affects product phaseout and how these decisions are conditioned by organizational structure the extent to which decision making is centralized we argue that such structure affects termination in two ways directly through coordination and indirectly by shaping the interpretation of performance feedback our baseline models indicate that as performance increases above aspirations the rate of phaseout decreases we find that as performance declines below aspirations the rate of phaseout decreases but then increases when the product falls below a certain sales threshold we also find evidence that centralization amplifies the feedback effect above aspirations but attenuates it below aspirations this study links two pillars of the carnegie school aspiration levels and hierarchy to explain the complexity of phaseout following perceived success or failure we thereby augment the growing scholarship on performance feedback by considering some important conditional effects imposed by a centralized structure our focus on centralization expands the scope of theory concerning organization design by linking structure and cognition to explain firm behavior especially termination decisions

risk propensity in the foreign direct investment location decision of emerging multinationals a distinguishing feature of emerging economy multinationals is their apparent tolerance for host country institutional risk employing behavioral decision theory and quasi experimental data we find that managers domestic experience satisfaction increases their relative risk propensity regarding controllable risk legally protectable loss but decreases their tendency to accept noncontrollable risk e g political instability in contrast firms potential slack reduces relative risk propensity regarding controllable risk yet amplifies the tendency to take noncontrollable risk we suggest that these counterbalancing effects might help explain prior ambiguous findings on the relationship between experience slack and fdi decisions the study provides a new understanding of why firms exhibit heterogeneous responses to host country risks and the varying effects of institutions

coming forward the effects of social and regulatory forces on the voluntary restatement of earnings subsequent to wrongdoing we investigate the effects of social and regulatory forces on a firm s decision to disclose past wrongdoing by voluntarily restating its earnings with an eight year sample of more than 2 500 public firms including 170 voluntary restaters we find that firms are more likely to voluntarily restate their earnings in response to informal social pressures from other firms in their industry and less likely to do so in response to formal regulatory sanctions we also show that the impact of these forces varies with firm status we contribute to corporate governance and public policy research that examines the effectiveness of hard versus soft deterrence measures on firm compliance

sticky aspirations organizational time perspective and competitiveness managers evaluate the organizational performance by comparing it with historical aspiration levels and are more likely to make strategic changes when the performance falls below the aspiration level historical aspiration levels can be updated with different speed because a focus on current performance will lead to quickly adjusting aspiration levels where historical performance has low weight while a focus on past performance will lead to slowly adjusting performance levels where the current performance has low weight a simulation model of aspiration level learning and strategic change under uncertainty yields the following findings 1 slow adjustments of an aspiration level gives higher performance across different levels of environmental uncertainty 2 slow adjustments of aspirations will dominate in populations with different adjustment levels if low performing organizations are removed and replaced by organizations of the form currently performing best and 3 stronger selection leads to faster domination by slow adjusters empirical analysis of format changes in radio stations finds slow adjustment of aspiration levels to be prevalent and finds slower adjustment in competitive markets as predicted

perspective explaining influence rents the case for an institutions based view of strategy research in strategy has identified and tried to explain four types of rents monopolistic rents efficiency rents quasi rents and schumpeterian rents building on previous work on political and institutional strategies we add a fifth type of rent influence rents influence rents are the extra profits earned by a firm because the rules of the game laws regulations and informal rules are designed or changed to suit it to aid the analysis of the relationship between institutional context and firm performance and to provide a structure to guide research we develop a framework with five key components a an identification of the five fundamental problems of a market economy b a typology that describes the five different types of institutions that emerge to solve these problems c the market ordering mechanisms used by institutions to solve these problems d the common causes of weak institutional performance and e generic strategies used by firms to exploit these weaknesses of an institutional context to enhance firm performance we highlight potential applications of the framework as well as an illustrative research agenda that can advance the development of theory to explain the emergence and persistence of influence rents

determinants of firms backward and forward looking r d search behavior this study develops and operationalizes a behavioral forward looking search model by incorporating prospect theory organizational risk literature and the logic of the behavioral theory of the firm with recognition of the bounded rationality of decision makers and the goal directed rule based nature of organizations this model suggests that a comparison between firms performance expectation and performance target translates the cognitive representation of the firms future into their subsequent actions by examining the research and development r d expenditures of u s manufacturing firms from 1980 to 2001 this study explores how performance aspirations expectations and slack affect decision making about firms r d search investments the findings show that both performance feedback and performance prospect are important determinants of firms search behavior after controlling for firm industry and time effects in addition backward and forward looking determinants have interactive effects on search behavior firms problem driven search activity further increases when firms feel unlikely to achieve the performance target for another year in contrast search intensity is reduced when firms expect to improve their performance from an underperforming situation to an outperforming situation the findings suggest that future research on performance feedback and experiential learning should also consider the effect of forward looking prospects on firm behavior

which ties matter when the contingent effects of interorganizational partnerships on ipo success this paper investigates the contingent value of interorganizational relationships at the time of a young firm s initial public offering ipo we compare the signaling value to young firms of having ties with two types of interorganizational partnerships endorsement relationships such as those with venture capital firms and investment banks and strategic alliance partnerships we propose that under different equity market conditions potential investors in an issuing firm attend to different types of uncertainty attention to these different types of uncertainty affects investors perceptions of the relative value of a young firm s different kinds of endorsements and partnerships and hence ipo success results from a sample of young biotechnology firms show that ties to prominent venture capital firms are particularly beneficial to ipo success during cold markets while ties to prominent investment banks are particularly beneficial to ipo success during hot markets a firm s strategic alliances with major pharmaceutical health care firms did not have such contingent effects implications for understanding the contingent value of interorganizational ties are discussed copyright 2003 john wiley sons ltd

who i am and how i contract the effect of contractors roles on the evolution of contract structure in university industry research agreements in this exploratory study of university industry sponsored research agreements we investigate how organizational roles direct the relational learning of contracting personnel which subsequently influences contract evolution integrating theory with comments from field interviews we posit that as scientists gain contracting experience with an exchange partner their focus of attention on knowledge creation supports the establishment of a relationship based on technical competence behavioral experience and operational routines that cause the enforcement terms of subsequent contracts to become less detailed we also submit that contract administrators because of their focus on knowledge protection mitigating opportunism and enforcement primarily accumulate joint governance experience and establish administrative routines that cause the enforcement terms of subsequent contracts to become more detailed rich content analysis of monitoring and intellectual property terms of sponsored research agreements supports our theoretically grounded hypotheses

efficiency gains within firms under voluntary environmental initiatives this paper focuses on efficiency gains that voluntary environmental initiatives may achieve within the firm current debate concerning the extent and significance of inefficiencies within firms is critically important to the progress of energy and environmental policies several recent lines of inquiry in microeconomics help explain the persistence of inefficiencies within firms in addition two of the most prominent new approaches in the field of business strategy resource based strategy and the capabilities perspective focus on the heterogeneity among firms and the resulting pockets of inefficiency within firms they suggest at least three generic strategies for voluntary environmental initiatives challenging outdated organizational routines creating opportunities for differentiation or complementing firms resource investment trajectories these generic approaches suggest that there is considerable scope for further experimentation with voluntary environmental initiatives

why good firms do bad things the effects of high aspirations high expectations and prominence on the incidence of corporate illegality recent high profile corporate scandals involving prominent high performing firms cast doubt on assertions that the costs of getting caught decrease the likelihood such high performers will act illegally we explain this paradox by using theories of loss aversion and hubris to examine a sample of s p 500 manufacturers results demonstrate that both performance above internal aspirations and performance above external expectations increase the likelihood of illegal activities the sample firms prominence enhanced the effects of performance above expectations on the likelihood of illegal actions prominent and less prominent firms displayed different patterns of behavior when their performance failed to meet aspirations

the deterrence effects of vicarious punishments on corporate financial fraud this study extends the research on corporate financial fraud by developing a new perspective on the deterrence effects of vicarious punishments premised on social learning theory we posit that firms vicariously learn about punishments from their peers by picking up modeling cues environmental cues and social cues in the inhibitive learning process thus being deterred from committing future fraudulence using a matched sample of 604 observations of chinese listed firms between 2002 and 2008 our findings show that an observing firm is deterred from committing fraud if the peers in its industry are caught and punished we further find that such deterrence effects are subject to how the observing firm evaluates the possibility of being caught and the likelihood it will be punished the same way if it violates similar prohibitions in particular inhibitive learning effects are positively moderated by punishments of prominent firms and model observer similarity but negatively attenuated by the development of the legal system our study sheds light on the corporate fraud literature by illuminating the indirect inhibitive learning process from vicarious punishments and identifying the conditions for differential learning deterrence outcomes of the observing firms

to what extent is business responding to climate change evidence from a global wine producer most studies on climate change response have examined reductions in greenhouse gas ghg emissions yet these studies do not take into account ecosystem services constraints and biophysical disruptions wrought by climate change that may require broader types of response by studying a firm in the wine industry and using a research approach not constrained by structured methodologies or biased toward ghg emissions the findings suggest that both inside out and outside in actions are taken in response to climate change while attempts are made by the firm to curtail and reverse climate change through management of carbon emissions evidence suggests a clear pattern of actions designed to adjust to the adverse consequences of climate change as well the results both confirm and extend previous findings and suggest that the level and breadth of response to climate change is shaped by situated attention structural controls and industry type

learning patterns in venture capital investing in new industries using an organizational learning perspective we link the decision by venture capital vc firms to invest early in a new high technology industry to three experiential learning mechanisms the familiarity associated with accumulation of early funding decisions the shaping or imprinting effect of the firm s very first such decision and the decay or forgetting associated with the dormancy of prior such decisions we find support for these learning patterns using data on the investments made by us vc firms between 1962 and 2004

selective attention and the initiation of the global knowledge sourcing process in multinational corporations multinational corporations mncs frequently use their foreign subsidiaries to identify new opportunities to access external knowledge this article builds on the attention based view to examine how selective attention the focus on certain issues or answers at the exclusion of others works in the global knowledge sourcing process in mncs the results reveal an intriguing paradox while mncs may establish foreign subsidiaries far from headquarters to identify diverse novel knowledge and overcome local search headquarters decision makers tend to favor opportunities that are market proven and simply confirm what the mnc already knows subsidiary managers pre selling and selling efforts however can play a pivotal role in overcoming that bias this study combines detailed qualitative data with access to a proprietary database on 137 external knowledge sourcing opportunities in one of the world s largest mncs in the telecommunications sector

public support for innovation and the openness of firms innovation activities this study explores empirically the relationship between publicly funded schemes to support innovation and the openness of firms innovation practices using survey data from more than 5000 firms in 29 european countries we find that support policies for innovation both monetary and non monetary are related to an increase in the degree of openness of individual firms both in terms of the number of external partners with whom they collaborate and the number of open innovation activities they perform however the relationship between support and openness seems to be negatively moderated by the existence of previous innovative activity within the firm public support has more impact on less innovative firms and less influence when the firm is already innovative which could potentially indicate the existence of crowding out effects additionally our results suggest that non financial support is more strongly linked to openness than financial support for policy makers facing salient budgetary constraints this implies that institutions and government policies could potentially play a more important role than money in fostering open innovation this article contributes to the open innovation literature by tapping into the underexplored question of the role of public policies and has crucial implications for academics and policy makers

no place like home the effect of exporting to the country of origin on the financial performance of immigrant owned smes immigrants and sustained international migration are transforming developed western countries at an unprecedented pace and scale sustained international migration is also further accentuating the already dominant presence of immigrant entrepreneurs in the international business landscape these immigrant entrepreneurs often operate small and medium sized enterprises smes that primarily export to their country of origin however conflicting findings suggest theoretical ambiguity in how the level of country of origin export intensity influences the smes financial performance adopting a contingent perspective we theorize how and when socially embedded immigrant owners derive superior performance from high country of origin export intensity based on a sample of 2584 immigrant owned smes and 6391 firm year observations we find that smes led by immigrant owners with longer stays in their country of residence and whose country of origin is geographically proximate to their country of residence generate superior financial performance from high country of origin export intensity these findings are consistent with the view that immigrant entrepreneurs international financial success is a function of network and cognition based advantages linked to their level of concurrent embeddedness in their countries of residence and origin we also provide actionable insights for immigrant entrepreneurs and for policy makers tasked to design suitable export promotion programs

trade matters in the fight against poverty narratives perceptions and lack of evidence in the case of fish trade in africa two opposing views exist in the literature on the potential role that international fish trade plays in economic development while some claim that fish trade has a pro poor effect others denounce the negative effect of fish export on local populations food security and doubt its contributions to the macro economy in this paper we explore this debate in sub saharan africa our analysis did not find any evidence of direct negative impact of fish trade on food security neither did it find evidence that international fish trade generates positive pro poor outcomes this paper discusses the possible reasons for this apparent lack of development impact and highlights the unsupported assumptions underlying the current discourse about international fish trade we suggest that given lack of evidence for the development benefits of fish trade between africa and developed countries fisheries policy could consider support for regional africa to africa trade that meets the growing african demand for lower value fish means of overcoming barriers to intra african trade in fish are discussed

a behavioral theory of market expansion based on the opportunity prospects rule what explains organizational search and choice when multiple opportunities are available to the decision makers drawing on the behavioral view of the firm and on the attention based view this study proposes a theoretical model centered on the opportunity prospects rule to explain market expansion defined as the extent how many and the selection which of multiple available opportunities that are actually pursued by competing firms we test our model using longitudinal fine grained data on commercial banks undertaking more than 1 300 opportunity choices the findings show that firms do use the opportunity prospects rule when exercising market expansion choices and that slack and performance feedback moderate the effects of opportunity prospects this paper contributes to organizational decision making research and to the behavioral view of the firm by showing the importance of considering an opportunity driven approach by demonstrating the relevance of simplifying rules to explain the search for the consequences of alternatives by extending recent efforts to provide a more forward looking perspective to model organization behavior and by showing when slack and performance feedback moderate the effects on market expansion of the opportunity prospects rule

interaction value analysis when structured communication benefits organizations we present a mathematical model that predicts and explains the circumstances under which a management defined communication structure can add value to an organization this model provides a game theoretical basis for contingent organizational design by relating empirical observations of real organizations to the solution of a rational choice model based on game theory we constructed a multiple player noncooperative game in which players have full knowledge of and universal communication access to each other these players allocate the scarce resource of their attention among potential interaction partners it struck us that this game sometimes did and sometimes did not have a core i e a confluence of individual optima nash equilibrium that was also optimal for the whole group some circumstances allow the best structure to emerge from many individual decisions whereas other circumstances require the imposition of structured communication channels by a central decision maker strong management control of communication structure adds no value in business environments where the game has a core i e where a centrally imposed optimum would dictate the same communications patterns as those defined by the nash equilibrium that emerges spontaneously when each participant optimizes locally trade in an ideal market is the iconic example of such environments in our model other combinations of conditions fail to yield a core even though a single stable nash equilibrium always exists the difference between aggregate effectiveness at the nash equilibrium and the maximal feasible aggregate effectiveness that could be centrally dictated is the value that management can provide through enforcing the globally optimum communication regime the predictions of this simple model about the conditions that favor more or less structured communications agree surprisingly well with accepted organizational contingency theory our simple model thus provides a sound theoretical foundation for many aspects of contingent organizational design

making a marriage of materials the role of gatekeepers and shepherds in the absorption of external knowledge and innovation performance through interviews and a large scale survey of r d scientists and engineers this paper explores individuals attempts to absorb external knowledge focusing on their efforts to identify and assimilate external knowledge and promote its utilization extant research does not explicitly address whether individuals should better specialize in certain absorption efforts or rather work as generalists dedicated to a range of efforts we suggest that assimilation efforts increase the value of individuals efforts at external search and at promoting the utilization of external knowledge which culminates in two main absorption roles that can help individuals achieve greater innovation performance we argue that gatekeepers who combine external search with assimilation effort help to achieve innovation by contributing to building potential absorptive capacity while shepherds who combine assimilation with utilization effort aid innovation by building realized absorptive capacity we find support for these predictions and discuss the implications for research and managerial practice in open innovation