a quantile regression analysis of china s provincial co2 emissions where does the difference lie abstract china is already the largest carbon dioxide emitter in the world this paper adopts provincial panel data from 1990 to 2014 and employs quantile regression model to investigate the influencing factors of china s co 2 emissions the results show that economic growth plays a dominant role in the growth of co 2 emissions due to massive fixed asset investment and export trade the influences of energy intensity on the lower 10th and upper 90th quantile provinces are stronger than those in the 25th 50th quantile provinces because of big differences in r d expenditure and human resources distribution the impact of urbanization increases continuously from the lower 10th quantile provinces to the 10th 25th 25th 50th 50th 75th 75th 90th and upper 90th quantile provinces owing to the differences in r d personnel real estate development and motor vehicle ownership the effect of industrialization on the upper 90th quantile provinces is greater than those on other quantile provinces on account of the differences in the industrial scale and the development of the building industry thus the heterogeneity effects of influencing factors on different quantile provinces should be taken into consideration when discussing the mitigation of co 2 emissions in china

a profile of new venture success and failure in an emerging industry abstract this study examined three types of factors 1 the characteristics of the lead entrepreneur 2 startup processes undertaken during the founding of the firm and 3 firm behaviors after start up including management practices and strategic behaviors associated with new venture success and failure the research involved a field study of 26 small young firms 13 successful and 13 less successful or failed each engaged in the distribution of fresh juices in eight metropolitan centers about 30 of the total market in the united states both quantitative and qualitative data were collected through field work at each firm location a statistical analysis of data collected in a structured questionnaire was the primary method for testing the factors case studies of all of the firms were developed to provide qualitative support for the quantitative findings of the study results from these analyses indicated significant differences between successful and unsuccessful firms in all three categories lead entrepreneurs in successful firms were more likely to have been raised by entrepreneurial parents have had a broader business and more prior startup experience and believed they had less control of their success in business than unsuccessful entrepreneurs successful entrepreneurs seek to reduce risk in their businesses they work long hours have a personal investment in the firm and are good communicators successful firms were those initiated with ambitious goals lead entrepreneurs had a clear broad business idea which provided the adaptive torque required to overcome adversity confrontation and often a troubled financial condition effective startup or purchase required broad planning efforts that considered all aspects of the industry and firm successful firms spent more time planning 237 hours than unsuccessful firms 85 hours the use of outside professionals and advisors for help in solving specific problems during startup was important for success as well as the advice and information provided by other industry participants particularly customers and suppliers most ventures did not have written business plans nearly all purchased firms failed buyers of competitively troubled firms were negatively displaced generally unemployed managers who lacked broad management experience and while often well educated had no prior experience in purchasing a business successful firms were found to be more flexible participative and adaptive organizations these firms had employees who could perform the work duties of others and were likely to be managed in a way that provided these workers with the flexibility to modify their jobs to adapt to changing industry and organizational conditions lead entrepreneurs of successful firms were likely to spend more time communicating with partners customers suppliers and employees than the lead entrepreneurs of unsuccessful firms successful firms sought to become larger firms and embarked upon sales to broad sectors of the market successful firms achieved high market shares with market shares came higher financial returns less successful firms were restricted to narrow market sectors consisting of smaller customers and those more difficult to service while customer service remained an important concern the commodity nature of fresh juices failed to support differentiation and the narrowly focused firm was typified by high product costs and unprofitable operations

household carbon inequality in urban china its sources and determinants designing mitigation policies for households requires knowledge of household carbon distributions this study surveys the household carbon inequality in urban china and analyzes its sources and determinants using weighted household survey data different from existing literatures studying carbon inequality on the international or regional level we focus on the household aspect and first survey its characteristics by some comparisons by ascribing household carbon emissions calculated by the consumer lifestyle approach to several consumption categories with the method of gini coefficient decomposition we find that residential consumption with high carbon intensity is the most important source of household carbon inequality in urban china food consumption and the consumption of educational cultural and recreational services are the next largest sources because of the consumed quantities or carbon intensity the application of shapley decomposition shows the determinants of household carbon inequality in urban china and their contributions which are household demographic characteristics 59 74 household employment and income 24 31 household burdens 8 00 and household assets and financial plans 7 95 the policy implications of these results are also discussed

do women owned businesses have equal access to angel capital abstract women owned businesses are the fastest growing sector of new venture ownership in the united states although women s access to and use of debt and venture capital financing have been explored comparatively little is known about women s access to capital from private equity investors in this paper we examine the equality of women s access to angel capital the research suggests that women seek angel financing at rates substantially lower than that of men but have an equal probability of receiving investment we also document that women are more likely to seek and to a lesser extent receive financing from women angels

measuring the incentives to learn in colombia using new quantile regression approaches abstract this paper employs newly developed quantile regression techniques to investigate a policy that could differentially affect students performance the colombian vouchers were assigned using lotteries and were renewable as long as the students maintained satisfactory academic progress this second aspect of the program may provide incentives for low attainment students to work harder the evidence supports the hypothesis that incentives could account for the impact of the vouchers including lower repetition rate the effect of the vouchers is largest in the lower tail of the educational attainment distribution a possibility that was conjectured by others but has not yet been confirmed empirically the evidence suggests that the incentive effect of the program increases weak students test scores by at least 0 1 standard deviations roughly the score gain associated to a half year of school learning

gender bias and the availability of business loans abstract social structure values and gender socialization have undoubtedly disadvantaged women in the process of preparing for a career in business and there is a widely held view that women are subject to discrimination by financial institutions however the evidence to verify this belief has largely been from studies where women have claimed that they were subject to discrimination in the loan situation without either supporting evidence or control data from a sample of male loan applicants two experiments were carried out using a goldberg type procedure to test the belief that women are unfairly discriminated against when seeking a loan to establish a business venture carefully constructed scenarios of an application for loan finance to purchase a commercial enterprise were mailed to loan officers of major trading bank branches the scenarios were identical in all respects except for the sex and education level of applicants loan officers were asked whether or not they would approve loan finance for the proposed business purchase and to indicate factors that contributed to their decisions significant differences in response to female and male applicants were observed in both experiments in experiment i university education both sexes were equally likely to obtain a loan but education was considered a more important factor for the female applicant than for the male in experiment ii high school education the female applicant was less likely to obtain a loan than the male applicant the results support the widely held perception that women can experience gender discrimination when seeking start up capital such discriminatory behavior by loan officers may not be and probably is not intentional rather the pervasiveness of the social construction of differential gender roles in western culture is such that it is more likely that discrimination is unconscious and consequently more difficult to change

a qualitative study of managerial challenges facing small business geographic expansion abstract geographic expansion is a common growth strategy used by small entrepreneurial firms yet despite the importance of geographic expansion as a growth strategy it is a neglected area of small business research to date research in the area of small business growth has focused on broad issues such as the common obstacles to firm growth and the relationship between firm growth and firm profitability whereas this literature is suggestive it does not provide specific prescriptive advice to small business managers pursuing geographic expansion as a growth strategy as a first step in generating prescriptive advice in this area this study examined the managerial challenges that faced one small firm during the early stages of its efforts to expand geographically the subject organization referred to as the local advertising company lac operated in a single location from 1968 to 1990 as a means to initiate firm growth the owners of the company opened eight new locations in 1991 and eight more in 1992 however problems ensued this study used a qualitative research methodology to conduct an assessment of the managerial challenges facing the lac during its geographic expansion effort seventeen key employees of lac were interviewed for the study the qualitative case study methodology used provided an opportunity to gather in depth information from informants regarding their individual assessment of the managerial challenges encountered by lac during its geographic expansion collectively the respondents identified a number of specific management issues that became problematic during lac s geographic expansion effort through a content analysis technique these issues were organized into 15 thematic categories including training recruitment and selection the relationship between the field staff and the original owners and 12 others each of these categories represents the separate managerial challenges faced by the company during its geographic expansion the study provides a descriptive analysis of each of the 15 categories of managerial challenges that emerged the research results suggest that the successful management of a geographic expansion growth strategy requires managers to deal with a unique set of issues for example the training of new employees may become problematic when the most experienced personnel in the firm reside in the home office and the new trainees are located in widely dispersed geographic locations in addition the results of the study provide an extension to both practical and theoretical knowledge in three distinct areas planning for growth managing growth and the reasons for growth first the results of the study support the importance of planning for growth but suggest that planning must be complemented by learning and a willingness to evolve one s plan as growth progresses in terms of the management of growth the case shows that running a small business and growing a small business do not include the same skill set the owners of lac had been quite successful managing their single location for 22 years however this ability to run a business did not complement the need to anticipate start up problems in new remote sites which is inherent in a strategy of geographic expansion in addition the case demonstrated that the management of growth requires a cognizance on the part of the original owners of a firm to delegate control finally with regard to the reasons for growth researchers generally characterize firm growth as being motivated by either economic e g economies of scale or emotional reasons e g employing family members the owners of lac initiated firm growth for the purpose of wealth creation to fund their retirements this illustrates that firm growth can be motivated by a combination of both economic e g wealth creation and personal e g retirement security reasons

women business owners and terms of credit some empirical findings of the canadian experience abstract most previous studies of this topic have followed a methodology of selecting a sample of women business owners and then questioning them on their experience with their own business es although financing frequently is noted as a major problem previous studies suffer from the absence of a control group a corresponding group of male business owners with whom to compare experiences furthermore previous studies have tended to ask the respondent if she believes that she was treated any differently because she was a woman a leading question which could potentially bias the conclusions previous work reveals a pervasive perception that there is discrimination by bankers against women business owners a conclusion based on a widespread but subjective perception by some women owners however there also appears to be a lack of real statistical evidence moreover it is not clear that personal feelings of apparent reluctance displayed by some bankers carry over to professional judgements and to systematically different terms of credit one of the contributions of this paper is that a comparison of the actual experiences of both female and male business owners in their relationship with financial institutions are compared over a fixed period of time every attempt has been made to carry out these comparisons in a rigorous statistical manner another contribution arises because the findings to be described here are based on a broad and comprehensive study of the small business banking relationship and did not exclusively focus on the male female issues thus any bias that could have occurred in other studies by focusing on women business owner problems is likely to be minimized the findings described in this study are based on a total of 3 217 business principals responses to a national survey the number of women business owners in the sample was 153 in aggregate it was found that the financing conditions for women principals are less favorable than those for male business owners however it was also found that female owned firms tend to be both younger and smaller than male owned firms in the sample moreover woman business owners were more likely to be proprietors than their male counterparts and were less likely to be incorporated businesses in addition a statistically significant tendency for businesses owned by women to be characterized by lower rates of sales growth than those owned by men was also identified these differences between patterns of small business ownership between men and women allow alternative explanations of what might at first seem to be an apparent gender bias in order to separate the effects of ownership patterns from potential gender bias it was necessary to focus on the effect of the gender of the owners by holding constant those factors which provide alternative explanations of the aggregate results this was accomplished by creating benchmark subsamples of male respondents by matching women respondents with male respondents on the basis of age size industry growth rate and organization form of the businesses when this was done one area was identified in which statistically significant gender related differences remained that of collateral requirements for a line of credit apparent gender related differences in the other aspects of banking practices rates of loan approvals cosignature requirements requirements for loan collateral and interest rates on loans and lines of credit can be accounted for by the differences in the characteristics of male and female owned businesses the difference in the collateral required of men and women owners is an important difference collateral requirements were identified as a major concern by a high proportion of all survey respondents in fact collateral requirements appear to be the major banking related concern of small businesses the line of credit is viewed to be essential to growth and survival yet a lower proportion of women owners than men owners report having a line of credit thus it seems that development of the banking relationship including the establishment of a line of credit has proven more difficult for women than for men

new venture internationalization strategic change and performance a follow up study abstract although many scholars business experts and government agencies enthusiastically advise all firms including new and small ventures to internationalize such advice does not appear to be based on empirical evidence few researchers have empirically examined the link between new venture performance and the internationalization of new ventures at best the evidence suggests that there is no significant relationship we used a sample of 62 u s new venture manufacturers in the computer and communications equipment industries during the late 1980s these industries were purportedly globalizing and may have been leading other industries into increased international operations we found that higher levels of internationalization percentage of foreign sales to total venture sales were associated with higher relative market share two years later however there was no significant direct relationship between percentage of international sales and subsequent return on investment roi perhaps international operations simply cost more than expected or perhaps as macmillan and day 1987 found in their study of corporate ventures over a 4 year time period increases in market share may be a prelude to higher roi as scale benefits translate into higher profitability however the 2 year time period of our study may simply not be long enough for investments in higher market shares to produce improved profits during the 2 year study period many of the ventures changed their level of internationalization of the 36 ventures who were domestic no international sales in the prior study 10 expanded into international markets over the 2 years of the 26 originally international ventures international sales of at least 5 half increased their percentage of international sales nine reduced it and four stayed the same whereas the average change in international sales percentage of the ventures was only 2 9 percentage points the large standard deviation of 13 0 percentage points and the leptokurtic distribution 9 2 reflected the dramatic changes made by some of the ventures using subgroup analysis we examined these changes in percentage of international sales in conjunction with changes in strategies and performance ventures that had increased international sales relative to those that had not exhibited more positive associations between the degree of strategic change and performance as measured in terms of both relative market share and roi increased international sales in technology based new ventures seems to require simultaneous strategic changes in order to positively impact venture performance this study is a follow up to mcdougall s 1989 finding that technology based new ventures that had sales in foreign markets had significantly different strategies than similar ventures that sold their products only domestically the current study enriches the previous findings by adding consideration of 1 changes in degree of internationalization 2 changes in strategy and 3 venture performance although we found no performance penalty associated with increasing international sales alone indiscriminant advice for new ventures to sell in foreign markets without other supporting strategic actions is inconsistent with our findings internationalization alone did not lead to increased profitability entrepreneurs of young technology based firms who are considering internationalization should take heed of our results internationalization of sales does not appear to be a simple matter of applying established strategies and procedures developed for a domestic arena successful internationalization appears to require changes in the venture s strategy as well

gender as a determinant of small business performance insights from a british study the performance of small businesses that is the ability of small firms to contribute to job and wealth creation through business start up survival and growth has been an important area of policy and academic debate in the 1980s surprisingly little has been written about gender and small business performance our literature search revealed only a small number of studies of any substance on this subject though over forty made some mention of it most studies shied away from direct examination of quantitative performance measures such as jobs created sales turnover annual growth tending to concentrate on qualitative measures of success or failure the paper examines small business performance and gender using data obtained from a survey of 600 300 women 300 men scottish and english small business ownermanagers part of a three year study on the impact of gender on small business management analyses suggest that the relationship between gender and small business performance is complex but that gender still appears to be a significant determinant even after other key factors are controlled for

a longitudinal study of the competitive positions and entry paths of european firms in the u s pharmaceutical market this paper combines the statistical insights of dynamic strategic group analysis with the qualitative richness of historical analysis to explore the modes of entry expansion paths and competitive postures of european firms in the u s pharmaceutical market patterns of entry and market development over a 20 year period are analyzed the roles of strategic assets and competencies in determining both the entry strategy and the final competitive posture of these firms in the u s market are discussed

why is electricity consumption inconsistent with economic growth in china studies have indicated that there exists a relatively stable and positive correlation between electricity consumption and economic growth and there should not be a large deviation between them however the deviation between electricity consumption and economic growth in china during the asian financial crisis and global economic crisis sparks intense debates we attempt to explain the deviation from the perspective of inventory investment adjustment in the business cycle using the svar model in this paper the results show that the effects of inventory investment adjustment shock and electricity consumption structure shock on the deviation are positive but tend to be negative for electricity efficiency shock the results of historical decomposition of these shocks also show that the inventory investment adjustment shock is the main factor that influences the deviation during the global economic crisis economic fluctuation in the short term can not change the economic development pattern and the characteristics of electricity demand once the economy returns to stable growth the deviation between electricity consumption and economic growth will shrink and disappear soon

gender differences in firm performance evidence from new ventures in the united states abstract prior studies examining the performance of female and male owned firms have generally reported that female owned firms underperform male owned firms however it is conceivable that the performance measures used by previous studies and or their inability to control for key demographic differences may have contributed to this finding for example few studies use size adjusted performance measures and yet we know that female owned firms tend to be smaller than their male counterparts similarly risk is typically not considered even though evidence suggests that women tend to be more risk averse than men we use a longitudinal five year database of more than 4000 new ventures that began operations in the u s in 2004 to determine whether potential differences in the performances of female and male owned firms disappear when appropriate performance measures are used and important demographic differences are controlled for in the models the performance measures we examine include 4 year closure rates return on assets roa and a risk adjusted measure sharpe ratio univariate test results confirm our expectation based on both liberal and social feminist theory that there is no difference in the performance of female and male owned new ventures provided performance is appropriately measured further these results are supported by our multivariate analyses which control for demographic differences such as industry experience and hours worked our findings should be of interest to researchers financiers advisors and policy makers perhaps more importantly our findings should also ensure that women who are contemplating starting a new venture are not discouraged from doing so by a false belief that new ventures initiated by women are less likely to succeed than those initiated by men

estimating the marginal abatement cost curve of co2 emissions in china provincial panel data analysis abstract this paper estimates the marginal abatement cost curve macc of co2 emissions in china based on a provincial panel for the period of 2001 2010 the provincial marginal abatement cost mac of co2 emissions is estimated using a parameterized directional output distance function four types of model specifications are applied to fit the mac carbon intensity pairs the optimal specification controlling for various covariates is identified econometrically a scenario simulation of china s 40 45 carbon intensity reduction based on our macc is illustrated our simulation results show that china would incur a 559 623 yuan t roughly 51 57 increase in marginal abatement cost to achieve a corresponding 40 45 reduction in carbon intensity compared to its 2005 level

effect of credit guarantee policy on survival and performance of smes in republic of korea this study evaluates the effect of credit guarantee on smes at the firm level to estimate the effect of credit guarantee we analyze relations between credit guarantee the survival of guaranteed firms and their productive performance the result indicates that credit guarantee frequency enabled guaranteed firms to achieve good performances in general on the contrary the effect of guarantee amounts is ambiguous in that there is difference between the contemporary effect and the lagged effect therefore we conclude that credit guarantee satisfied partially its goal to alleviate smes difficulty in acquiring finance and to stabilize employment

firm survival in traded industries does localization moderate the effects of founding team experience prior studies of the impact of founder team industry and start up experience on firm survival have paid little attention to location decisions or cluster effects in this paper we focus on young firms doing business in industries that compete for customers in geographically dispersed markets traded industries we examine whether regional concentrations localization of related industrial firms moderate the effects of founder team industry and start up experience on firm survival the study draws on firm level data from the kauffman firm survey and on county business patterns data from the us census bureau we found that localization negatively moderates the positive effects of founder team prior industry experience on firm survival we did not find significant moderating effects of localization on founder team prior start up experience our findings highlight the importance of accounting for location decisions and cluster effects when evaluating the human capital inputs of founder teams

entry order market share and competitive advantage a study of their relationships in new corporate ventures abstract this research explored the extent to which entry order the decision to enter a market early as a pioneer or to wait and follow determines not only market share but other competitive factors such as position and promotion that late entrants might hope to employ to overcome a pioneer s advantages the study analyzed data on 119 nonservice new corporate ventures consumer and industrial from the profit impact of marketing strategy pims research data base str4 based on a review of the strategic management and marketing literatures three hypotheses on the effects of entry order were generated and subsequently tested the first hypothesis states that pioneers achieve higher market shares than followers since a priori the market share for the pioneer has to be larger than the market share split among later entrants the issue is the rate at which the early entrant s market share will decrease as additional businesses enter what we term the degree of lateness effect later entrants have the choice of being an early follower that is entering the industry soon after the pioneers or waiting until the industry matures late entrants a high degree of lateness effect would indicate that early followers would gain higher market shares than late entrants an analysis of the data indicated that pioneers have significantly higher market shares than followers and that little degree of lateness effect existed between early and late entrants the second hypothesis states that pioneers will achieve differentiation advantages in such areas as product and service quality promotion and technological positioning greater than followers there is considerable theoretical and empirical evidence that pioneers are able to generate competitive advantages through name recognition image leadership the establishment of technical standards which make switching to other products difficult and superior consumer information advantages due to market lead times an analysis of the data indicated that pioneers have significant competitive advantages in product service quality and technology over followers the one area where pioneers did not have a competitive advantage over followers was in advertising and promotion the third hypothesis states that followers will achieve cost advantages greater than pioneers while learning curve theory suggests that pioneers will enjoy cost price advantages contrasting arguments can be made that followers can enjoy lower costs by coattailing on the pioneer s efforts to educate consumers develop a dominant design and create an infrastructure to span the gap from raw material suppliers to finished good deliveries we suggest that because pioneers are likely to have attained differentiation advantages followers will have only one alternative left compete on the basis of price and become the lowest cost producer an analysis of the data indicates that while followers do appear to have lower prices than pioneers followers do not have significantly lower cost structures this result implies a lower level of profitability for a follower strategy overall the results of this study advance the notion that new corporate ventures should enter as pioneers rather than as followers pioneers had higher market shares and stronger competitive positions higher quality more differentiated products and better service than followers followers appear to have few successful competitive options available outside of promotion for gaining market share

the impact of education experience and inner circle advisors on sme performance insights from a study of public development centers in this study we investigate the effects of entrepreneurial human capital on sme performance using data on 2 713 smes within the european union performance was measured in two ways profitability as roa and productivity as revenue per employee results indicate that both profitability and productivity are positively related to industry specific knowledge possessed by the ceo owner prior to starting up the firm and the general business knowledge acquired once the firm is up and running experience as a result of having previously worked in a firm in the same industry before starting a business was related to productivity but there is no relation with profitability there is a link between performance and inclusion of other ceo owners in the founder s inner circle of advisors this relationship is positive when the advisor s venture has experienced failure and negative when the advisor s venture has been successful we discuss the significance of these findings for research and practice

an examination of the influence of industry structure on eight alternative measures of new venture performance for high potential independent new ventures abstract this study examined the influence of the structure of new ventures entered industries on eight alternative measures of new venture performance for 199 high potential independent new ventures each of the 199 entrepreneurial ventures had undertaken an initial public offering ipo within the first 6 years of the venture s founding date and were free of corporate sponsorship or prior corporate parentage specifically this research examined the influence of 1 stage of the life cycle 2 industry concentration 3 entry barriers and 4 product differentiation on eight alternative measures of new venture performance the eight measures of new venture performance examined in this research consisted of 1 change in sales 2 sales level 3 net profit 4 earnings before interest and taxes 5 return on sales 6 return on assets 7 return on invested capital and 8 return on equity most prior research examining the influence of industry structure on new venture performance has 1 utilized only one or two measures of new venture performance as indicators of the venture s overall effectiveness and efficiency 2 often failed to provide theoretical justification for the measure s of new venture performance or industry structure examined and 3 utilized data derived from questionnaires and or the pims data base of corporate sponsored new ventures in addition prior industry structure studies examining independent new ventures have often utilized relatively small sample sizes this study sought to advance the progress in the field of entrepreneurship with regard to understanding the influence of the structure of new ventures entered industries on new venture performance by 1 examining eight alternative measures of new venture performance 2 providing theoretical justification for the measures of new venture performance and industry structure examined and 3 utilizing the largest nonquestionnaire data base of independent new ventures developed to date this research found that the stage of the life cycle of the venture s entered industry was the most important determinant of new venture performance among the four industry structural elements examined stage of the life cycle had a statistically significant relationship at a 0 05 level with the majority of the new venture performance measures examined in this research in addition ventures entering industries in the introductory stage of the life cycle achieved the highest levels of venture performance particularly when compared with those ventures that entered industries in the mature stage of the life cycle however this study did not find a statistically significant relationship between stage of the life cycle and change in sales this suggests that there is a trade off between profitability and sales growth and that new ventures that undertake an ipo have a stronger focus on achieving profitable operations rather than sales growth during the initial years after their ipo this may be due to pressures placed on the new ventures to achieve profitability by the external credit market conversely this research found that 1 industry concentration 2 entry barriers and 3 product differentiation did not have statistically significant relationships at a 0 10 level with any of the eight alternative measures of new venture performance examined in this research however this research did find that over 90 of the new ventures entered industries characterized by 1 a low degree of industry concentration and 2 a high degree of product differentiation the relative absence of new venture entry into industries characterized by 1 high degrees of concentration and 2 low degrees of product differentiation provides support for prior theory which suggests that successful entry into such industry environments may be substantially more difficult in sum the results of this research suggest that high potential independent new ventures that undertake an ipo should enter industries in the introductory stage of the life cycle in addition the results of this research suggest that industries characterized by 1 relatively low degrees of industry concentration and 2 highly heterogenous products may be necessary but not sufficient conditions for successful entry by high potential independent new ventures seeking to raise equity capital through an ipo

intangible assets entry strategies and venture success in industrial markets abstract this study assesses the impact of intangible assets on the venture success of firms as they enter into industrial markets that are new to them a new market is one that is geographically new for the firm or is a product market where this firm did not originally compete the analysis is based on the profit impact of market strategy database which contains information on 91 new ventures into industrial markets five hypothesis were tested in this study 1 h1 high levels of intangible assets will be positively associated with performance of firms entering new markets 2 h2 high levels of intangible assets increase the likelihood of success regardless of the timing of entry 3 h3 in explaining venture performance there will be a positive interaction effect between promptness of entry and level of intangible assets pioneer entrants will benefit substantively more from high levels of intangible assets then will later entrants 4 h4 high levels of intangible assets enhance success irrespective of aggressiveness of entry 5 h5 in explaining performance there will be a positive interaction between level of intangible assets and aggressiveness of entry firms with high levels of intangible assets will gain substantively more from aggressive pricing promotion and high quality than firms with low levels of intangible assets one specific intangible asset corporate image is empirically analyzed and the results support our hypotheses a strong corporate image enables the firm to achieve greater success when they enter into new ventures and the interaction of image with aggressive promotional pricing and quality strategies is significant in explaining this success implications for practioners are high image firms reap enormous benefits from increased promotional efforts high quality and aggressive entry low image firms are severely penalized when they aggressively enter a market and may he better off entering the market slowly and at low prices

employment change in independent owner managed high technology firms in great britain there is a growing volume of literature that points to the potential for small technology based firms to achieve substantial employment growth as a direct consequence of such work this sector of any economy has attracted increasing attention from national and local governments concerned with finding ways of revitalising economically deprived localities and creating employment opportunities this paper provides up to date empirical evidence surrounding the ability of small high technology firms to create additional jobs in great britain in addition key founder and business characteristics are isolated which are significantly associated with employment change in growing high technology firms over the 1986 to 1992 period with respect to factors influencing these high levels of employment growth a high firm size in 1986 was found to act positively on employment growth as was a graduate level education for the key founder on the finance side firms which had access to and used a multiplicity of sources of start up finance tended to grow faster futher on the basis of our results we would suggest and recommend a government policy which at the firm level actively encourages high technology firm start ups who record higher rates of survival than firms in more conventional sectors as well as providing support for existing high technology firms who have already demonstrated the inclination and ability to grow in employment size

contextual influences on the corporate entrepreneurship performance relationship a longitudinal analysis abstract over the past several years corporate entrepreneurship has been widely touted by executives and researchers alike as an effective means for revitalizing companies and improving their financial performance for the most part the call for greater entrepreneurial behavior on the part of established companies has been accepted on faith as an inherently desirable objective the implicit logic behind the pervasive belief in the value of corporate entrepreneurship seems to be that risk taking innovation and aggressive competitive action the key elements of entrepreneurial corporations will help in identifying and pursuing lucrative product market opportunities and in providing new bases for achieving superior competitive positions but what do we really know about the financial consequences of corporate entrepreneurship most of the evidence that corporate entrepreneurship pays off is anecdotal in nature or based on cross sectional studies that focus on the short term implications of entrepreneurial behaviors as such in a definitive sense we know very little about the financial consequences of corporate entrepreneurship in an attempt to improve our understanding of this issue this article describes a study of corporate entrepreneurship and its impact on company financial performance data were collected from three different samples over a seven year period to assess the longitudinal impact of corporate entrepreneurship on firm performance these samples consist of 24 medium sized manufacturing firms representing 14 industry segments 39 chemical companies and 45 fortune 500 industrial firms representing five industry segments data were gathered on each sample using both primary and secondary sources regression analysis was then used to analyze the data the results suggest that corporate entrepreneurship has a positive impact on financial measures of company performance this effect on performance which tends to be modest over the first few years increases over time suggesting that corporate entrepreneurship may indeed be a generally effective means for improving long term company financial performance moreover the results indicate that corporate entrepreneurship is a particularly effective practice among companies operating in hostile environments as opposed to benign environments the study has three principal implications for practicing managers first the study documents the general financial viability of engaging in corporate entrepreneurship this is not to suggest that corporate entrepreneurship is a panacea for improving financial performance however entrepreneurial behavior when considered on the whole i e across firms and industries is associated with superior financial performance second the study suggests a need to use a long term time horizon in order to adequately judge the financial consequences of corporate entrepreneurship the use of a shorter evaluation period may not allow sufficient time for entrepreneurial actions to have their full market and corresponding financial impact finally the study identifies the context specific character of effective entrepreneurial practice specifically corporate entrepreneurship appears to be a particularly effective strategic practice among firms operating in hostile business settings

what determines the level of informal venture finance investment market clearing forces and gender effects we undertake the first research to move analysis beyond estimating the propensity for a person to become an informal investor and onto the core concern which is the total volume of venture finance we find that a 1 increase in entrepreneurial activity increases the number of informal investors by 1 7 however the average invested amount declines by 0 8 leading to a net positive total increase of about 0 9 this result indicates that to a considerable extent demand for informal investment creates its own supply as a result the research finds that market forces help solve finance constraints for new ventures and hence lessen the need for public policy intervention this effect is stronger for males than females

gender biases in bank lending lessons from microcredit in france the evidence on gender discrimination in lending remains controversial to capture gender biases in banks loan allocations we observe the impact on the applicants of a microfinance institution mfi and exploit the natural experiment of a regulatory change imposing a strict eur 10 000 loan ceiling on microcredit descriptive statistics indicate that the presence of the ceiling is associated both with bank mfi co financing and with harsher treatment of female borrowers to investigate causal links we develop an econometric approach that addresses the concerns of selection biases multicollinearity and endogeneity our empirical findings suggest that the change in the mfi s gender related attitude was triggered by banks through co financing hence we speculate that co financing pushes ceiling constrained mfis to import whatever biases in loan granting that the banks are prone to overall this paper stresses that apparently benign regulations such as loan ceilings can significantly harm the women s empowerment efforts made by mfis

discontinuance among new firms in retail the influence of initial resources strategy and gender abstract women owned businesses represent one of the fastest growing segments of the u s economy their rate has increased more than six fold since 1970 despite this growth rate the number of firms owned by women still lags behind that of men and the sales and income of women owned firms are significantly lower than those of men owned firms the discrepancy between the number of businesses owned by women and men and their economic success has been a popular theme among researchers some have suggested that performance differentials result from disparate structural positions women and men occupy in work and society whereas others attribute the differences to deep rooted interpersonal orientations this study examines whether the performance differences can be explained by variations in initial resources and founding strategy we test whether women have fewer start up resources and if they do whether they can compensate for these deficiencies through their founding strategy recent work in social psychology argues that strategic choice is shaped by experiences to which individuals have been subjected and that women and men have fundamentally different socialization experiences we test the assumption that if the strategy that women owners adopt exploits the unique capabilities they derive from their socialization they can improve the performance of their firms and ward off discontinuance we examine the discontinuance pattern of 203 new firms in the retail industry this industry was selected because women entrepreneurs often choose to operate in this industry giving us a basis for comparing women owned and men owned firms we classify the firms into six strategy archetypes the arche types range from a broad focus where founders emphasize multiple strategic foci simultaneously to narrowly targeted differentiation strategies we assume that the experiential base of women entrepreneurs limits their successfully executing pricing strategies we hypothesize that women led firms decrease the odds of discontinuing by adopting one of two strategy types 1 narrow differentiation strategies that seek to satisfy a narrow segment of the market and that do not rely on pricing or 2 broad generalists strategies that emphasize service and quality but not pricing and take advantage of women s capability for handling multiple stakeholders simultaneously the results offer support for using an integrative model to explain the performance of women owned firms women owned firms have higher odds of discontinuing than men owned firms and women appear to have fewer resources to start their businesses women owners were less likely to have instrumental experience from working in the retail industry and start their businesses on a smaller scale then men but were no less likely then their male counterparts to have access to credit from formal financial institutions or to be disadvantaged by starting fewer other new businesses despite some apparent situational disadvantage resource deficiencies do not appear to affect the odds of women owned businesses discontinuing as much as they do men owned initiatives the findings indicate support for the supposition that women owners can use founding strategy to decrease the odds of discontinuing business a broad generalists strategy that represents a multi focused approach was found to benefit women owned businesses most overall the results suggest that men use prior business experience and human capital to affect the survival status of their businesses women appear to find strategic choice more beneficial future research is recommended to further elaborate the integrative model special attention should be given to developing alternatives to measures traditionally used in gender research many researchers charge that those typically used reflect male derived measures similarly greater attention should be given to understanding why the scale of women owned businesses at start up is substantially smaller than that of men since scale has been shown to be related to subsequent growth and survival

using an extended lmdi model to explore techno economic drivers of energy related industrial co2 emission changes a case study for shanghai china although investment and r d activities can exert significant effects on energy related industrial co2 emissions eice related factors have not been fairly uncovered in the existing index decomposition studies this paper extends the previous logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi decomposition model by introducing three novel factors r d intensity investment intensity and r d efficiency the extended model not only considers the conventional drivers of eice but also reflects the microeconomic effects of investment and r d behaviors on eice furthermore taking shanghai as an example which is the economic center and leading co2 emitter in china we use the extended model to decompose and explain eice changes also we incorporate renewable energy sources into the proposed model to carry out an alternative decomposition analysis at shanghai s entire industrial level the results show that among conventional macroeconomic factors expanding output scale is mainly responsible for the increase in eice and industrial structure adjustment is the most significant factor in mitigating eice regardless of renewable energy sources the emission reduction effect of energy intensity focused on by the chinese government is less than the expected due to the rebound effect but the introduction of renewable energy sources intensifies its mitigating effect partly resulting from the transmission from the abating effect of industrial structure adjustment the effect of energy structure is the weakest although all the three novel factors exert significant effects on eice they are more sensitive to policy interventions than conventional factors r d intensity presents an obvious mitigating effect while investment intensity and r d efficiency display an overall promotion effect with some volatility the introduction of renewable energy sources intensifies the promotion effect of r d efficiency as a result of the green paradox effect finally we propose that co2 mitigation efforts should be made by considering both macroeconomic and microeconomic factors in order to achieve a desirable emission reduction effect

gender borrowing patterns and self employment some evidence for england the purpose of this paper is twofold first we try to identify whether women have different borrowing patterns from men when trying to get into self employment along with the factors that explain these different propensities second we try to quantify the impact of these differences in borrowing propensity on women s willingness to become self employed the empirical analysis is carried out on a sample of individuals drawn from the english household survey of entrepreneurship 2003 our results show that 1 women are less likely than men to seek external finance and that 2 gender differences in access to finance are affecting adversely the transition into self employment

new firms societal contribution versus survival potential abstract new business firms are now considered a major source of new jobs economic growth technical innovation and economic flexibility they may provide a major strategic advantage for the united states in world competition a more complete precise understanding of the dynamics of new firm development their societal contributions and factors affecting their survival has considerable policy and managerial significance a study of new firm contributions and survival was completed to determine whether the same factors would account for both they do not the research began with a substantial body of descriptive information on 551 new firms initiated in minnesota between 1978 and 1984 the initial data were collected in the summer of 1984 a one year follow up was completed in 1985 to determine new firm survival the sample was representative of all major industry sectors and all regions of the state about 60 were located in the minneapolis st paul urban area attempts to predict current 1984 contributions indicated that age was not a significant factor older new firms did not contribute more than younger new firms the developmental pattern primarily the average annual growth rate was highly related to sales or jobs provided in 1984 next most significant was the industry of the new firm manufacturing distributive services and business producer service new firms provided more significant contributions the one year follow up was able to determine the survival status of 548 of the 551 firms slightly less than 10 48 had not survived major factors related to survival appeared to be age high death rates at 2 3 years and attention to financial matters

regional energy efficiency carbon emission performance and technology gaps in china a meta frontier non radial directional distance function analysis abstract at present china is the largest primary energy consumer and carbon emitter in the world meantime china is a large transitional economy with significant regional gaps against such backgrounds the calculated results of energy and carbon performance indicators may be biased without considering heterogeneity across regions to this end after incorporating region heterogeneity this paper provides detailed information regarding energy efficiency carbon emission performance and the potential of carbon emission reductions from regional perspectives which may be important and useful for policy makers our main findings are as follows firstly there is significant group heterogeneity across regions in china in terms of energy efficiency and carbon emission performance secondly there are no considerable differences between total factor and single factor performance indices since there is limited substitutability between energy inputs and other production inputs finally significant carbon emission reductions can be made by catching up for regions with low energy efficiency and carbon emission performance looking ahead the chinese government should adopt measures to promote improvements in terms of energy efficiency and carbon emission performance in the short term

microcredit an answer to the gender problem in funding microfinance institutions mfis target people excluded from the traditional banking system by providing start up capital to these under financed individuals they enable a greater number of women to start their own business particularly in sectors where initial capital requirements are high our study follows a portfolio of 3 640 microcredit applicants in france over the 2000 2006 time period identifying mfi client profiles and bringing to light gender differences in borrowers compared to a wider sample of entrepreneurs this study shows that the male female gap found amongst company creators is also maintained amongst the clienteles of mfis empirical results also suggest that gender is a decisive factor regarding the amount of credit provided to borrowers when comparing with other factors in the borrower and firm profile thus to a certain extent mfis are found to reinforce gender inequalities in france

a study of the impact of owner s mode of entry on venture performance and management patterns abstract this study examines if firm performance and the associated patterns of management vary with the owner manager s mode of entry into the firm in owner started os buyout bo and family firms ff prior research suggests that these three types of firms differ on certain managerial characteristics but has not examined the role of the owner manager s mode of entry in determining firm performance on the one hand and its influence on the firm s management pattern on the other we collected data from 345 firms employing four to 99 employees operating in four northeastern states self reported return on assets roa annual sales business strengths competitive strategies and management practices were compared for os bo and ff firms performance was found to vary with owner s mode of entry the 227 os firms average roa was significantly higher than that of the 61 family firms and the 57 bo firms successful start up owners may have enjoyed greater profits because they assumed greater risk compared to those who opted to buy an existing venture or took over a family firm annual sales were highest for ffs second for os firms and the lowest for bos in terms of management patterns owner started firms rated themselves significantly higher on business strengths and tended to have higher self ratings for competitive strategies and operations strengths than did ffs or bos all of these differences were significant after controlling for the age and size differences among the firms indicating that mode of entry did directly impact performance as well as the management patterns examining the impact of mode of entry versus management patterns on venture performance we found that while the os mode of entry was associated with greater roa this was primarily due to the different management patterns adopted by the oss looking at annual sales the ff mode of entry was associated with higher sales and this was independent of the types of management patterns adopted by the firms a priori bos would appear to be in a better position to achieve superior performance but this was not so in this sample further analysis revealed different paths to profitability for the three entry modes for os firms high roa was associated with operating in the service and retail sectors developing a broad range of business strengths and offering competitively priced but higher quality customized products for oss roa was also enhanced by using informal and personalized management practices sales performance was greatest when oss employed trained staff for functions such as budgeting and sales for ffs roa was enhanced by broad ranging strengths but it was hurt by price and quality competitiveness mainly because on average their lower prices were not supported by a competitive cost of goods sales performance was greatest when ffs had owner managers with extensive industry experience were conservative in adding workers emphasized product customization relied on written reports but avoided long range operations planning management patterns of bos were not related to their roa but their annual sales were marginally higher when the acquiring owners had extensive industry background and employed a large workforce thus this study confirms our hypotheses that performance and management patterns vary across mode of entry as does the effectiveness of strategic management patterns further our findings concurred with previous studies which suggested that sales performance and profitability were likely to be influenced by different management actions this study demonstrates that owner s mode of entry is an important explanatory variable for variations in performance as well as management patterns venture ceos need to recognize that different management approaches may be needed for success depending upon whether they founded purchased or inherited their firms

gender disparity in angel financing this study uses unique hand collected data from a televised entrepreneurial pitch competition to examine gender differences in obtaining angel financing results indicate that while the yield rates between male and female teams do not differ a gender disparity in the amount of angel funding does in fact exist female teams receive less capital and provide more equity relative to their male counterparts even when controlling for typical determinants of investment such as industry and prior company success further we find that female teams receive investments with lower valuations than their male counterparts largely because they initially offer higher equity stakes for less capital thus this suggests that limitations to angel financing of female entrepreneurial ventures may be partly self imposed

a quantitative content analysis of the characteristics of rapid growth firms and their founders a group of firms that is attracting attention are rapid growth firms these firms are of particular interest because rapid growth is an indication of market acceptance and firm success by studying rapidgrowth firms researchers can help all firms better understand the attributes associated with firm growth despite these positive outcomes however rapid firm growth is difficult to achieve and maintain this study adds to the literature through a quantitative content analysis of the narrative descriptions of 50 rapid growth firms and a comparison group of 50 slow growth companies the purpose of the study was to draw from the narratives a list of empirically grounded growth related attributes that are associated with rapid growth firms the findings of the study resulted in the advancement of a conceptual model of the attributes of rapid growth firms in four areas founder characteristics firm attributes business practices and human resource management hrm practices

the impact of managerial networking intensity and market based strategies on firm growth during institutional upheaval a study of small and medium sized enterprises in a transition economy varying institutional environments provide the foundation for a great deal of international business research yet relatively little empirical work has examined the determinants of small and medium sized enterprise sme growth during institutional upheaval although the importance of sme development for economic transition and growth is widely acknowledged our paper addresses this gap in the literature by examining how the competitive strategies of smes evolve during institutional transitions and assessing the implications for firm growth using data collected from 135 smes in 1993 and 200 smes in 2001 we find that managerial networking intensity i e developing and maintaining relationships that may be used for business purposes declines markedly over time whereas the importance of market based strategies increases managerial networking intensity is strongly associated with firm growth early in the institutional transition process but not later market based strategies are not associated with firm growth in either time period drawing on convergent insights from multiple theoretical perspectives we argue that changes in strategy are concurrently driven by socially constructed norms that legitimize new ways of competing and delegitimize old ones and by knowledge acquisition and learning which provide managers with a more diverse set of tools with which to exercise their strategic choices

start up capital does gender matter female and male entrepreneurs differ in the way they finance their businesses this difference can be attributed to the type of business and the type of management and experience of the entrepreneur indirect effect female start ups may also experience specific barriers when trying to acquire start up capital these may be based upon discriminatory effects direct effect whether gender has an impact on size and composition of start up capital and in what way is the subject of the present paper the indirect effect is represented by the way women differ from men in terms of type of business and management and experience the direct effect cannot be attributed to these differences and is called the gender effect we use of a panel of 2000 dutch starting entrepreneurs of whom approximately 500 are female to test for these direct and indirect effects the panel refers to the year 1994 we find that female entrepreneurs have a smaller amount of start up capital but that they do not differ significantly with respect to the type of capital on average the proportion of equity and debt capital bank loans in the businesses of female entrepreneurs is the same as in those of their male counterparts

international versus domestic entrepreneurship new venture strategic behavior and industry structure abstract international entrepreneurship is defined in this study as the development of international new ventures or start ups that from their inception engage in international business thus viewing their operating domain as international from the initial stages of the firm s operation one hundred and eighty eight new venture firms in the computer and communications equipment manufacturing industries are classified according to the percentage of their sales in the international market ventures with no sales derived from international activities are considered domestic new ventures and ventures with sales from international activities comprising greater than 5 of total sales are considered international new ventures the strategy and industry structure profiles of international new ventures are significantly different from domestic new ventures the internationals pursue much broader market based strategies seeking a strategy of broad market coverage through developing and controlling numerous distribution channels serving numerous customers in diverse market segments and developing high market or product visibility the internationals also emphasize a more aggressive entry strategy building on outside financial and production resources to enter numerous geographical markets on a large scale securing patent technology is also an important component of their strategy this suggests that the internationals compete by entering the industry on a large scale seeking to penetrate multiple markets with the recognition that external resources are necessary to support such an entry whereas both the domestics and the internationals characterize domestic competition as being relatively intense the international new ventures compete in industries with higher levels of international competition it is not clear from this research whether the new venture selects an industry with a high degree of international competition and therefore responds with an international orientation or because the new venture has an international orientation it perceives or recognizes a higher degree of international competition another industry structure difference is the internationals perceived higher degree of restrictiveness due to government regulation it is unclear whether this restrictiveness motivates new ventures to seek less regulated international environments or if it indicates that when competing internationally the new venture is confronted with increased regulatory requirements domestic new ventures are distinguished by their emphasis on a production expansion strategy and customer specialization strategy the production specialization strategy consists of focusing on limited geographical markets maintaining excess capacity and pursuing forward integration the customer specialization strategy incorporates the production of a specialty product that is purchased infrequently thus for both of the domestic strategies a consistent closeness between the producer and consumer is implied this may be an important basis underlining the new venture s decision to compete in an exclusive domestic context this study offers initial support for the notion of international entrepreneurship by its findings that there are significant differences between new venture firms competing domestically and new ventures choosing to also enter international markets

gray marketing as an alternative market penetration strategy for entrepreneurs conceptual model and case evidence abstract gray marketing is said to occur when authentic branded products reach the consumer through marketing channels other than that of the authorized distributor weigand 1991 free riding was first offered by tan et al 1995 tan et al 1997 as an alternative explanation for the occurrence of gray marketing we extend the authors work to show that free riding can be an alternative strategy to niching for entrepreneurs contemplating entry into established markets almost exclusively the existing literature on gray marketing treats the phenomenon as a pricing problem and fails to recognize it as a market entry opportunity for start up entrepreneurs the gray marketing strategy is appropriate for start up entrepreneurs in view of their resource limitations and the risk of being a first mover in market development we show in this paper that an entrepreneur can successfully penetrate an established market by following a gray marketing strategy this is because it can be optimal for the incumbent supplier to accommodate the entrepreneur gray marketer even if the former could force the latter out of the market through aggressive counter actions we developed a conceptual model using game theoretic concepts to aid entrepreneurs in understanding the strategic interactions amongst parties involved in gray marketing and to identify the conditions under which entrepreneurs can successfully penetrate a market via gray marketing the deductive or game theoretic approach we feel is most appropriate because gray marketing involves multiple party interactions and conflicts of interests as moorthy 1985 showed the game theoretic methodology is most suited to analyzing the behavior of market participants in such a situation this paper identifies the conditions under which gray marketing would be profitable and sustainable for entrepreneurs first by targeting markets that are already well established by the larger firms the entrepreneurs risk of failure due to demand uncertainty is reduced in addition they need not incur substantial costs for market developmental efforts furthermore the free riding strategy provides entrepreneurs with the opportunity to enter profitable markets that are currently supplied by larger firms instead of being restricted to markets ignored or disdained by the latter second entrepreneurs are able to benefit from the second mover advantages in following the free riding strategy as late entrants into the market entrepreneurs could learn from the experiences of the larger firms and avoid costly mistakes by imitating the product strategy of the larger firm entrepreneurs could also achieve cost savings in r d and product development costs all these effectively reduce the entrepreneur s cost of entry into the market hence even with limited resource at their disposal entrepreneurs could still enter the market successfully finally by following the free riding strategy entrepreneurs are able to nibble at the market shares of the larger firms this is possible because of the difficulties and costs faced by the larger firms in countering entries made by the entrepreneurs thus the larger firms are left with little choice but to accommodate the entry of the entrepreneurs into the market when the costs of countering the entrepreneurs entry are sufficiently large the free riding strategy becomes feasible for entrepreneurs even if they do not posses competitive advantages over the larger firms our paper thus demonstrates that entrepreneurs do have an alternative market entry strategy besides the commonly prescribed niching strategy it also shows them when such a free riding strategy would be most beneficial and most likely to succeed these are further illustrated and supported through two real life cases involving companies in the luxury cars and cosmetics industries in singapore

new firm survival industry strategy and location abstract how important is the physical location of a new firm for its chances of survival location of a new firm whether in urban metro or rural vicinities can have important impacts on performance outcomes urban locations often contain a wealth of diverse resources but may also have a greater number of competitors rural locations may lack diversity but can enable the firm to exploit a niche with limited competition we suggest that a simple examination of new firm location will not adequately predict survival chances rather the impact on location of the new firm will be influenced by the industry in which the new firm operates and by the strategy the new firm pursues the industry of the new firm is examined by focusing on where the new firm is located in the value chain we predict that a new firm upstream in the industry value chain will have better chances of survival than new firms downstream in the industry value chain new firms with broadly focused strategies are hypothesized to have greater survival chances than new firms strategically positioned to exploit a narrow market focus and we predict that new firms in urban locations will have greater chances for survival than new firms in rural locations

determinants of satisfaction for entrepreneurs this study considers the extent to which entrepreneurs are satisfied with their businesses in their third year of business ownership entrepreneurial satisfaction might be viewed as a basic measure of performance it may bear upon decisions by individual entrepreneurs about whether to invest more time and money whether to cut back or whether to close down it may also influence whether entrepreneurs work effectively with their customers and employees for researchers the investigation of why in particular settings some entrepreneurs may be more satisfied than others may aid in the interpretation of past research which has used this as a performance measure this research draws upon a theoretical framework used in investigations of employee satisfaction called discrepancy theory it suggests that individual satisfaction is determined in part by whether there is a gap between actual rewards or performance and the individual s goals or expectations in this research it was hypothesized that entrepreneurs emphasizing primarily noneconomic goals such as doing the work they wanted to do would have higher satisfaction when the business was experiencing lower levels of performance for higher levels of performance there would be no difference in essence the satisfaction of those emphasizing economic goals would vary more with economic performance a related hypothesis was that for this sample of start up firms many of which would be experiencing low levels of performance those emphasizing noneconomic goals would have higher average levels of satisfaction this was based upon the expectation that many start up firms would be experiencing marginal performance so that the gap between goals and performance would be greater for economically oriented entrepreneurs the research also focused upon expectations because one aspect of discrepancy theory suggests that satisfaction decreases if there is a gap between expectations and performance accordingly it was hypothesized that controlling for performance entrepreneurs with higher initial expectations would subsequently have lower levels of satisfaction previous research suggests that membership in particular demographic groups may influence expectations this led to hypotheses that older entrepreneurs female entrepreneurs and minority entrepreneurs would have lower levels of initial expectations this in turn may influence later satisfaction thus it was hypothesized that controlling for performance entrepreneurs in each of these groups would have higher satisfaction because their initial expectations would be lower the study utilized a sample of 287 entrepreneurs who were followed over a 3 year period the data on predictors of satisfaction were gathered in year 1 when the average owner had been in business for 11 months the satisfaction measures were gathered 2 years later by that time there should have been some stabilization in the routines of the business and the entrepreneur could reflect upon historic performance and experiences in judging the extent to which business ownership had been satisfying the data were analyzed primarily using path analysis in which it was hypothesized that certain variables would have both direct and indirect effects upon satisfaction it was found that the satisfaction of entrepreneurs emphasizing economic goals was not more sensitive to economic performance at least within the range of performance considered in this sample for this group of firms many of which appeared to be experiencing marginal performance those emphasizing noneconomic goals did express higher levels of satisfaction it had been expected that those with higher initial expectations would later be less satisfied because they would have a greater expectation performance gap however the opposite was found those who were more optimistic initially were more satisfied later even when controlling for performance demographic influences on initial expectations were examined contrary to expectations none of the demographic traits was significantly related to initial assessment of likelihood of success older entrepreneurs women entrepreneurs and minority entrepreneurs were just as optimistic as those in other groups the relationship between membership in these demographic groups and later satisfaction was also examined no significant relationships were found for older entrepreneurs and minority entrepreneurs however there was some evidence p 07 that women entrepreneurs were more satisfied with business ownership two of the most interesting findings were those related to initial expectations and to women entrepreneurs contrary to discrepancy theory those who had higher initial expectations were later more satisfied not less this may suggest as staw and ross 1985 found in a longitudinal study of employee satisfaction that attitudes are in part a function of stable individual traits those who had a positive view of their initial prospects later viewed the experience of business ownership more favorably regardless of subsequent performance for women entrepreneurs the higher levels of satisfaction may reflect a view that they have fewer attractive alternatives it may also be that they discover greater relative satisfaction from the day to day aspects of business ownership for entrepreneurs and their advisors the findings suggest that particular goals attitudes and backgrounds are likely to be associated with greater satisfaction this may influence whether entrepreneurs stay with marginal businesses for researchers the study provides insight into discrepancy theory by considering its application to entrepreneurs rather than the hired employees normally studied in addition subjective measures of performance such as satisfaction have often been used in previous research on entrepreneurial performance this study casts light on why in particular settings some entrepreneurs may be more satisfied than others

technology based adolescent firm configurations abstract managers and stakeholders of entrepreneurial firms have an obvious vested interest in understanding those factors that contribute to the success or failure of such firms insight into strategic and contextual factors related to success for 162 adolescent 5 12 years old firms competing within a variety of rapidly changing technology based industries results from this study analyses focus on pinpointing patterns of strategy context and performance in the first stage of analysis six nonmutually exclusive dimensions of strategy were identified 1 technology product leader 2 product market breadth 3 marketing sales expertise 4 quality service 5 customer alliances and 6 specialization second cluster analysis was conducted to group the firms on their overall pattern of strategic emphasis six groups clusters were identified each group corresponded with one of the following four strategy quadrants 1 defenders k specialists 2 entrepreneurs r specialists 3 analyzers k generalists and 4 prospectors r generalists subsequent analysis of variance demonstrates significant differences across the six clusters on three contextual variables environmental instability stage of product development and firm age and on six outcomes rd direct sales and support these firms compete on their reputation in their targeted market segment their ability to find and sell to a narrow range of customers and customer service this strategy occurred in relatively stable and mature industries and resulted in high performance in operating efficiency market development financial stability and overall performance sales growth was average cluster 2 n 12 spin offs reliant on contracts with original employers these firms represent an outsourcing opportunity for larger companies not desiring to develop in house expertise in a product area they are the youngest and the smallest and have products in the earliest stage of development their environment is relatively stable given the dependence of their large customers for their product they are average performers except for having relatively high operating efficiency they trade high performance for the security of long term arrangements with major clients cluster 3 n 39 marketing and sales expertise targeted at narrow market these firms likely assemble and package others technological products or if they manufacture follow the technological developments of their competitors they create value through their marketing and sales expertise and effort and through customer service support they face average environmental instability and stage of product development this strategy however creates insufficient value added for the long term viability of the firms they have low performance on sales growth market development operating efficiency and financial stability and also have low expectations for their future prospects cluster 4 n 23 technology leaders with a high degree of specialization quality and service these firms differentiate their products based on technology leadership in a specialized product domain where high quality and service are emphasized they compete in relatively unstable environments attributable to rapid technological change and are in an early stage of product development they are relatively small consistent with their narrow product domain they have the highest performance on r d results sales growth and future prospects and are very high on overall performance cluster 5 n 24 lacking in a clear strategic profile these firms lack any clear pattern of strategic activity although faced with average environmental instability these firms compete in the most mature product areas therefore while other firms are becoming more entrenched in their competitive positions advantages these firms are floundering they are poor performers and lack long term viability they score low on sales growth market development r d results operating efficiency and overall performance cluster 6 n 46 broad and aggressive product market reach with relatively high quality and service these firms pursue a full line of products sold through a wide variety of methods this approach evolved in a highly unstable environment due to rapid change and growth yet has a large number of growth opportunities they are highly successful in market development sales growth and financial stability they are also highly optimistic about their future prospects this identification of firm configurations can help managers and stakeholders recognize the relationships among strategy context and performance for young technological firms this should lead to more effective managerial decisions on strategic and contextual issues leading to better performance

failure or voluntary exit reassessing the female underperformance hypothesis abstract we reevaluate the female underperformance hypothesis by challenging the assumption that female owned ventures are more likely to fail instead of equating exit with failure we draw on exit literature and feminist theories to argue that female entrepreneurs are actually more likely than males to exit voluntarily we argue for further gender differences by using an even more fine grained conceptualization of entrepreneurial exit failure exit for personal reasons and exit for other professional financial opportunities post hoc analyses also point to within gender heterogeneity depending on family status a sample probe of 219 spanish entrepreneurs who had exited their business supports our overall reasoning

regional convergence and national inequality this paper explores the implications of regional income convergence for measures of inequality at the national level in general such convergence occurs as poorer regions overtake more developed ones it is difficult to imagine any realistic scenario in which rising incomes in poorer regions would not have the effect of reducing absolute poverty at the same time it seems reasonable to assume that national inequality would fall as the mean incomes in the various regions converge given these general presumptions the recent economic history of regional convergence between the southern united states and the rest of the nation is quite puzzling over the last twenty five years mean family income in the southern united states has gone from about 80 of the national mean to about 93 at the same time inequality in the south and that in the non south have been changing only slightly when measured by gini coefficients under these circumstances with no serious deterioration in intraregional measures of inequality we would expect to observe a substantial reduction in national inequality as these two broad regions converge in mean incomes nevertheless there has been no significant decline in the national gini coefficient this apparent paradox is in contrast to an earlier period in u s history in which regional convergence occurred while national inequality was falling smolensky 1961 1963 the purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the relationship between regional convergence and overall inequality is far from obvious in particular we shot that the convergence of mean incomes among regions ceteris paribus is not a sufficient condition for a reduction in common measures of ov erall inequality such as the gini coefficient the ceteris paribas conditions here are that the distribution of population across regions and the relative distribution of income within each region are held constant the proof of this assertion is made in section ii in section iii we demonstrate the relevance of this analysis to the u s case we show that the simple mean convergence of family incomes between the southern united states and the rest of the nation over the last twenty five years should not have been expected to have a direct effect on national inequality the naive link between regional income convergence and national income distribution does not hold up in this important case hence the arguments of section ii are more than analytical curiosa in a situation where the direct effects of income convergence are insufficient to reduce overall inequality there is the possibility that the broader process of regional convergence achieves this result more indirectly regional convergence may involve economic changes that work on intra regional income distributions or the distribution of population across regions in ways favorable to greater national equality in section iv we speculate on such indirect effects from a theoretical point of view we conclude that the direction and extent of such interactions are not obvious

mobility and modality trends in us state personal income we examine the mobility and modality trends in us state per capita personal income and its components during the 1929 1999 period we find strong evidence of convergence for states but that the tendency towards convergence and the associated mobility within the distribution varies during the period and especially for the 1980s our analysis of convergence by income component suggests that transfer income contributes more to the observed convergence than does asset income we also note that distributional mobility need not be accompanied by high rank mobility and find that trends toward convergence in the us have tended to preserve rank ordering cet article cherche a examiner les tendances de mobilite et de modalitequant aux revenus personnels par tete et a ses composants aux etats unis pendant la periode qui va de 1929 a1999 il s avere de fortes preuves d une convergence entre etats qui varie au cours de la periode etudiee et qui va de pair avec une variation de la mobilite associee au sein de

relatedness and corporate venturing does it really matter abstract although many studies have focused on the issue of relatedness in corporate venturing it is still unclear whether high or low levels of relatedness between a new venture and the parent firm leads to success as measured by venture performance in this study we raise the question of whether or not relatedness plays a determinant role in affecting success at the venture level the study analyzes data on 88 new industrial product corporate ventures from str4 the corporate start up database of the pims project based on a review of the strategic management and corporate entrepreneurship literature this study generates five hypotheses concerning the relationships among relatedness the intangible assets of the parent firm the entry strategy of the new venture and the venture s market share two rival hypotheses on the general impact of relatedness on venture performance are generated theoretical and empirical evidence suggest that highly related ventures benefit from existing resources exploiting corporate know how and sharing experience effects this leads to the first hypothesis which states that high related ventures achieve higher market shares relative to low related ventures on the other hand the disadvantages generally associated with high levels of relatedness such as higher coordination costs political problems associated with resource sharing appear to negatively affect the profitability e g r01 or the direct costs of the venture leading to the rival hypothesis results indicate that there are no significant differences in the market shares achieved by high medium and low related ventures and that therefore relatedness does not affect venture performance the third hypothesis predicts that given the parent firm has developed high levels of intangible assets high related ventures achieve higher market shares than low related ventures prior research has shown that intangible assets have a positive effect on venture performance high related ventures make possible higher levels of exploitation of the intangible assets held by the parent firm than low related ventures other things being equal if well managed these assets can neutralize the negative effects of high relatedness thus a positive interaction between relatedness and intangible assets should take place results support the hypothesis and show that the highest market shares are achieved by those ventures with high levels of relatedness and high levels of intangible assets two rival hypotheses concerning relatedness and its effects on the aggressiveness of entry strategy of the venture as measured by relative price relative promotional effort and relative product quality are generated the first hypothesis states that the more related the venture the more aggressive the entry strategy high relatedness implies high levels of resource sharing that should decrease the incremental costs needed to launch the venture thus high related ventures have greater amounts of resources to be used for aggressive entry strategies than low related ventures the rival hypothesis states that the less related the venture the more aggressive the entry strategy there is empirical evidence that increased resource sharing is associated with increased direct costs thus as compared with low related ventures high related ventures might be handicapped in pursuing aggressive entry strategies results indicate that there is no significant relationship between relatedness and the aggressiveness of the entry strategy overall this study suggests that the decision concerning the degree of relatedness does not explain by itself venture performance nor does it explain the entry strategy chosen at the venture level only when combined with the intangible assets held by the firm at the corporate level does relatedness appear to determine venture success implications for practioners are top management cannot decide a priori whether or not a new corporate venture should be highly related to the parent firm high image firms should only venture in highly related businesses building image at the corporate level pays if various high related ventures are present suggestions for further research are also offered

examining the influencing factors of co2 emissions at city level via panel quantile regression evidence from 102 chinese cities ascertaining the influencing factors of carbon dioxide emissions in chinese cities is an important issue for policy makers this paper investigates the effect of several determinants on carbon emis

why do most firms die young a model is developed to explain why most firms die in the first few years of trading a risk averse entrepreneur with initial capital endowment faces a brownian motion in net worth over time to balance return profits growth and risk variance of profits she adopts a portfolio strategy choosing market positioning to achieve an optimal combination of risk and return at each instant given her financial and human capital endowments and attitude towards risk failure occurs when the firm s value falls below the opportunity cost of staying in business the resulting distribution of failure is inverse gaussian implying for specific parameter values a positively skewed failure curve of the type observed in practice in addition the model presents a novel measure of management human capital mhc which implies that high mhc entrepreneurs will have higher absolute and marginal profits growth than low mhc entrepreneurs at given levels of risk

the temporal nature of growth determinants in new bank foundings implications for new venture research design abstract several authors have suggested the founding period as a critical time in the development of a firm arguing that the resource and decision choices made at this point have a substantive impact on the firm s future yet historically most studies have measured new venture choices considerably after the founding period we suggest that the uniqueness of the founding event is important and test its validity through the examination of two implicit assertions these implicit assertions are those of temporal stability and temporal locus of growth determinants

technology strategy and new venture performance a study of corporate sponsored and independent biotechnology ventures abstract new ventures companies eight years or younger play a major role in the development of an emerging high technology industry corporate sponsored new ventures those supported by an established corporation and independent ventures those founded by independent entrepreneurs frequently battle for industry leadership and financial success whereas both venture types use technology to achieve financial and market success little is known about the differences in their technology strategies technology strategy is the plan that guides a new venture s decisions on the development and use of technological capabilities this strategy covers six major areas the first is selecting the pioneering posture where a venture decides whether or not be among the industry s first companies to introduce new products technologies to the market the second is determining the number of products to be introduced to the market the third is choosing the extent of a venture s use of internal and external r d sources internal sources usually refer to in house r d activities external sources may include purchasing or licensing of technology from other companies or joining strategic alliances to acquire that technology the fourth is deciding the level of r d spending the fifth is selecting the combination portfolio of applied and basic research projects whereas basic r d advances science applied r d leads to new products and technologies the sixth and final dimension is the venture s use of patenting to protect any competitive advantages it might gain from its r d activities this article reports the results of a study that explored the differences in the technology strategies and performance of corporate and independent ventures the biotechnology industry was chosen to test the study s hypotheses using 112 ventures seven of the study s hypotheses focused on the potential variations in technology strategy between corporate and independent ventures independent ventures ivs were expected to surpass corporate ventures cvs in pioneering new products technologies using internal r d and emphasizing applied r d cvs were expected to surpass ivs in introducing new products using external r d sources spending on r d and patenting the study s remaining three hypotheses covered possible variations in new venture performance nvp and their sources the results showed that ivs focused more on pioneering pursued a more applied r d portfolio and emphasized internal r d more than cvs cvs utilized external technology sources spent more heavily on r d stressed basic r d and used patenting more intensively than ivs these results were consistent with the hypotheses however contrary to expectations there were no significant differences between cvs and ivs in the frequency of new product introductions probably because most ventures were at the invention rather than the commercialization stage the results on the nvp of cvs and ivs were counter to expectations ivs outperformed cvs probably because of the high motivation of the iv owners who reaped the rewards of growth and profitability also whereas cvs may have greater access to the resources of their sponsors political conflicts and rigid corporate controls might have reduced their ability to achieve competitive advantages the results also indicated that cvs and ivs appeared to gain competitive advantages from different technological choices pioneering a focus on applied r d and extensive use of the internal r d sources were also positively associated with the performance of ivs heavy r d spending the use of both internal and external r d sources frequent product introductions and patenting were positively associated with the performance of cvs finding that technology strategies significantly impacted nvp should encourage executives to consider pursuing a formal technology strategy likewise the finding that different dimensions of technology strategy influenced the performance of cvs and ivs in different ways has practical implications cv managers can learn from their higher performing iv rivals also because established companies frequently acquire ivs information about their technology strategies can be valuable in assimilating the acquired ventures overall the results show that technology strategy is an important factor in enhancing new venture performance

the importance of focus to market entrants abstract one of the most difficult questions facing entrepreneurs is how broadly to serve a heterogeneous market that is whether it is better to serve a narrow segment of the market hoping to flourish by gaining a relatively high and increasing market share within that segment or whether it is better to attempt to appeal to a broader cross section of the market thereby allowing the firm to succeed with a lower market share among the customers whom it is targeting a narrower focus permits more concentrated use of fixed resources facilitates the building of customer loyalty and lowers the threat of retaliation from generalist incumbents but requires a much higher market share within the firms target market to succeed porter 1980 has identified three generic strategies available to firms low cost differentiation and focus by focus he means that the firm should develop the ability to serve a particular target customer group very well often at the expense of other potential customer groups implicit in the firm s choice to adopt a focus strategy is that it must address the question of how broadly to focus in terms of any given product attribute given its resources and opportunities a fundamental element of the firm s choice of focus is that it is affected by and in turn affects that of its rivals that is focus is a strategic variable in the sense of the word strategic meant by game theorists each firm s optimal choice of action depends on the actions taken by other firms the literature on the optimal degree of focus for new ventures has reached very mixed conclusions the early authors looking at the question were fairly consistent in their recommendation that a highly focused or niche strategy was generally most appropriate later authors recommended that new ventures should enter markets aggressively facing larger incumbents head on the latest studies develop what we describe as a contingency approach arguing that the best approach depends on industry conditions we think that this literature is now at a point where we can advance our understanding by looking at specific industries in some detail as our understanding expands broader empirical work is becoming increasingly difficult because of the number of factors that must be built into any cross sectional model of new venture performance we hope then to develop an understanding of one industry that is generally similar in nature to many other industries from this understanding conclusions of interest to both researchers and practitioners can be drawn future studies of other industries with different fundamental structures will provide similar benefits more specifically this paper is an empirical inquiry into the microbrewery segment of the u s brewing industry designed to investigate the relative merits of specialist firms different degrees of focus the question addressed is whether focus affects specialist firms short run performance in an industry where there are entrenched generalists as well as many new entrpreneurial specialist entrants the analysis confirms several widely held beliefs of industry participants and observers that microbreweries are far more likely to attempt to serve too broad a market segment than to focus too narrowly that microbreweries are in direct competition with imports and that microbreweries benefit from having many microbrewery rivals within the same state furthermore there appear to be some small learning and or reputation effects in the operation of microbreweries as well as a minor novelty factor that benefits recently opened establishments we must note however that the majority of the variation in the performance of microbreweries stems from differences in the management organization or market of individual breweries not captured explicitly by other variables included in the study this finding perhaps should not be surprising given the huge variation in the backgrounds skills and outlooks of microbrewery owners during the segment s early days the lessons learned from this research are of obvious importance to entrepreneurs in many industries it is a very common situation for an entrepreneur to enter a stable industry in which established firms are already in place serving a broad cross section of the market our findings show that in such circumstances a narrowly focused approach to the market is best we can think of numerous examples of where entrepreneurs have either succeeded by focussing on a particular segment of the market or failed by not doing so in fact there are many cases in which firms have done first one and then the other for example and people express airlines at first flourished by focussing on the needs of budget conscious leisure travellers and then collapsed in part because it began to try to serve business travelers and others who are less price sensitive on certain routes one of the hallmarks of an entrepreneurial business is that it suffers severe resource constraints because the entrepreneur s choice of breadth of focus will have profound effects on the resource requirements of the business it is clear that the choice of which segment or segments of the market on which to focus is a fundamental decision made by all entrepreneurs this paper serves to illustrate the importance of this focus decision and to provide some guidance for entrepreneurs concerning the appropriate degree of focus to adopt in entering an established market

capital market myopia abstract the purpose in writing this article is to focus attention on a phenomenon we call capital market myopia a situation in which participants in the capital markets ignore the logical implications of their individual investment decisions viewed in isolation each decision seems to make sense when taken together however they are a prescription for disaster capital market myopia leads to overfunding of industries and unsustainable levels of valuation in the stock market we use the winchester disk drive industry to elucidate the phenomenon we argue that capital market participants should have seen the problem coming they should have known that valuation levels were absurd based in large part on the greater fool theory the data necessary to anticipate the problem were readily available before the industry shakeout began and stock prices collapsed there are several lessons which we believe can be learned by careful examination of the disk drive experience in the period under study these include taking the broad view of the industry is the key to profitable investment the investment mania visited on the hard disk industry contained inherent assumptions about long run industry size and profitability and about the future growth profitability and access to capital for each individual company these assumptions had they been stated explicitly would not have been acceptable to the rational investor certainly there are valuations which arise which cannot be justified under any circumstance these are the times for the manager to raise money from the public capital markets those managers who took advantage of unsustainable valuation levels now have a chance to survive the shakeout growth is not equivalent to profitability the high growth rate in the industry made it the focus of considerable managerial investor and technological attention the industry attracted so many resources that the growth had high probability of being unprofitable excesses in the capital market turned an opportunity into a disaster profits for some are not equivalent to a good business many players made high profits by investing in the hard disk drive business including the investment bankers and certain of the venture capital groups which invested early enough to catch the wave of euphoria in the stock market and still sell under rule 144 many others rode the cycle up and down without liquidity for many buyers of disk drive stocks in 1983 losses were massive short term successes of some gave the illusion of long term profitability for all investors should not be fooled by such invevitably ephemeral successes market instability can be all bad news very rapid change often creates entrepreneurial opportunity it also creates risk analysis of the hard disk drive industry reveals the dark side of rapid technological evolution and of customer instability early players are often preempted by changes in technology and in customer needs early birds are not always winners in product markets but late comers are almost always losers recognizing the chain one of the more important lessons to be learned from the tale of the disk drive industry is that all players entreprenuers venture capitalists investment bankers industry analysts and investors must recognize the chains involved in such a process first there was a technological chain a series of bets on technological advances in disk drive components disk drive designs and end user designs then there was a financial chain a series of related bets on the internal financial health of each player in the technological chain and on the nature of access to capital in the private and public markets the likelihood that any player in the disk drive industry would prosper without a serious setback due to a weak link was effectively zero indeed weaknesses in the chain were created by exactly the same people whose financial success depended on an unbroken series of favorable outcomes during this same period the public capital markets were also a large supplier of funds to the disk drive industry the total amount of money raised in public offerings of common stocks for participants in the industry was over 800 million during the middle part of 1983 the capital markets assigned a value in excess of 5 billion to 12 publicly traded venture capital backed hard disk drive manufacturers the strong market valuation of these companies paralleled the boom in other high technology stocks and rising valuation levels in the stock market in general table 2 contains data on stock prices and valuation levels for some disk drive manufacturers and table 3 provides general data on the economy and capital markets

new venture strategy and profitability a venture capitalist s assessment abstract this study uses theoretically justified criteria from the industrial organization io strategy literature and applies it to a new domain namely venture capitalists decision making specifically the study investigates the types of information venture capitalists utilize when evaluating new ventures and how venture capitalists use this information to assess likely new venture profitability in the interest of advancing our understanding of the decision making policies of venture capitalists this study addresses many of the limitations of previous research a review of io research suggests important relationships between a number of strategy variables and new venture profitability some of the relationships proposed by io strategy research are contingent in nature the strategy variables and their relationships with profitability are investigated in the domain of venture capitalists decision making individual and aggregate decision making analyses identified those strategy variables criteria venture capitalists utilize in assessing likely new venture profitability namely timing key success factor stability lead time competitive rivalry educational capability industry related competence timing key success factor stability interaction timing lead time interaction and timing educational capability interaction on average the most important criterion for venture capitalists in their assessment of profitability is industry related competence the second tier of importance is competitive rivalry timing and educational capability the third tier of importance is lead time key success factor stability and timing lead time interaction other interactions are less important therefore while venture capitalists use contingent decision policies main effects dominate if venture capitalists use a reported 8 to 12 minutes on average to evaluate a business plan sandberg 1986 then this study s findings may help the inexperienced venture capitalist allocate time towards assessing those attributes of primary importance although more complex relationships exist between the attributes the inexperienced venture capitalist can take comfort from this study s findings that main effects dominant amongst senior venture capitalists senior venture capitalists may take less comfort from their importance placed on main effects in light of research from io which suggests the importance of contingent relationships the results may also have practical application towards training how should venture capital firms train their new employees should venture capital firms rely solely on experienced venture capitalists lecturing the inexperienced on the criteria they use in assessing a new venture proposal like most decision makers venture capitalists have limited insight into their assessments and venture capital firms need to be aware of the gap between espoused policies and policies in use the information being taught needs to be supplemented with venture capitalists decision making research that investigates decision policies in use such as this study venture capitalist training could also involve experiential learning in conjunction with cognitive feedback about the decision policies used to accelerate the learning process experiential learning using cognitive feedback maximizes industry related learning while minimizing the cost of inexperienced decisions for the entrepreneur seeking capital this increased understanding of venture capitalists decision making may help them better target their business plans and presentations at those criteria venture capitalists find most critical to the profitability of a new venture

do young firms owned by recent immigrants outperform other young firms this study compares the performance of new businesses owned by recent immigrants with that of other new firms it addresses an on going unresolved discussion in the academic and professional literatures by drawing on a large sample of canadian business owners whose firms began trading between 2000 and 2004 and using taxation data to track 2004 to 2008 performance the results provide empirical evidence that young immigrant owned exporter firms outperformed young domestically founded firms whether or not they exported however immigrant owned young enterprises that did not export underperformed other young firms owner level factors such as gender growth intentions and experience also influenced growth performance among young smes the results provide evidence that suggests that immigrants have resources such as access to international networks that provide competitive advantage over non immigrant owners that export or aspire to export not all immigrant business owners however are able to lever such advantages the implications of the findings for research and policy are discussed

corporate versus independent new ventures resource strategy and performance differences abstract this study examines differences between independent ventures ivs which are established by individual entrepreneurs and corporate ventures cvs which are controlled by larger companies it focuses on differences between these ventures related to the resources strategies and performance of firms in the computer and communications equipment manufacturing industries thus the findings increase the understanding of the different challenges faced by each venture type and provide insight into how each venture type should be managed the study finds that managers of cvs and ivs emphasized different resources and strategies specifically cvs emphasized the following resources internal capital sources proprietary knowledge and marketing expertise ivs emphasized external capital sources technical expertise and development of brand identification they also differed in their strategies ivs pursued greater strategic breadth more customer service and focused more on specialty products the findings that cvs had less strategic breadth was surprising in that cvs emphasized resources such as internal capital sources which could make pursuing broad strategies more feasible for cvs it is possible that some cvs do not pursue broad strategies because they may be infringing upon someone else s turf within the corporation and thus may be discouraged in spite of finding significant strategy and resource differences the study found that ivs and cvs did not differ in performance and that resources were not directly related to performance based on the concept of equifinality it follows that both venture types can be equally successful even if they follow different roads to success success may be less a function of the different resources ivs and cvs have and more a function of what strategies the firms choose based upon their resources strategy variables did relate to performance a low cost strategy lowered performance regardless of venture type and the influence of an aggressive strategy i e wide strategic breadth on performance depended upon venture origin managers pursuing a low cost strategy may have had lower performance if they became penny wise and pound foolish missing opportunities in their efforts to lower costs this suggests that regardless of venture type managers of new ventures in these industries and perhaps in other volatile industries may need to be opportunistic this study indicates that pursuing broad strategies increased the performance of ivs and decreased the performance of cvs this finding was surprising in that cvs had greater resources which one might think would lead to successful implementation of aggressive strategies in securing enough resources to pursue aggressive strategies from their parents cvs may lose the freedom of action they need to cope with the dynamism of high technology industries this suggests that managers of cvs within the computer and communications equipment manufacturing industries should either not pursue broad strategies or if pursuing broad strategy they should maintain their flexibility in contrast ivs that pursued broad strategies achieved higher performance indicating that perhaps ivs unencumbered by the bureaucracy that characterizes cvs may be able to pursue aggressive strategies while simultaneously maintaining flexibility thus this study offers iv and cv managers several valuable insights first it argues that managers of each type of venture may need to pursue different strategies to increase venture performance and make optimal use of their unique resources furthermore it suggests that cv managers encounter difficulties in applying resources to strategies and not in accessing resources whereas political obstacles may occur cv managers may primarily encounter these difficulties when trying to implement strategies rather than when accumulating resources from the parent suggesting a pitfall that managers of cvs and their parents need to avoid although this study has indicated that both venture types can be equally successful it suggests that they may face different obstacles and follow different roads to success

dealing with resource disadvantage generic strategies for smes this paper identifies three generic strategies for smes taking into account explicitly their resource disadvantage in addition to the much advocated niching strategy we show that smes can free ride on the bigger firm s market development efforts and or they can form strategic alliances to force accommodation by the bigger rivals contrary to conventional arguments we show that success in niching is not conditional upon the continued ignorance of the niche by the bigger firms it is also not true that the smes must have a cost advantage vis a vis the bigger firms in order to niche or to free ride successfully the bigger firms faced with entry into their markets by smes encounter the classical chain store paradox the three generic strategies proposed here are designed to force accommodation by the bigger firms

the community dynamics of entrepreneurship the birth of the american film industry 1895 1929 the study of entrepreneurship has traditionally focused on the founders of new organizations especially those that emerge as leaders in the creation of new industries much of this work follows what gartner 1989 called the traits approach studies of this type posit a causal link between the founding and success of new organizations and the personal attributes of the entrepreneurs however more recent research has documented the many ways in which successful entrepreneurship requires more than just the right person a multitude of factors operating at both the organizational and evironmental levels of analysis also affect the success of entrepreneurial efforts examples include technological change shane 1996 changes in sources of firm capital cable and shane 1997 changes in strategic alliances eisenhardt and schoonhoven 1996 personal networks ostgaard and birley 1996 national environments shane and kolvereid 1995 location choice stearns carter reynolds and williams 1995 and national culture shane 1992

success of start up firms the role of financial constraints although there are some studies that empirically test the impact of financial constraints on the success of start ups the persistence of this impact is not well understood using survey data for a cohort of swiss start ups that were observed during a period of 10 years we find that financial constraints are not only a problem of the first years although the negative impact of financial constraints on firm survival disappears with increasing age of the firms profit is persistently negatively affected by financial constraints copyright 2014 the author 2013 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

strategies of high performing new and small firms a reexamination of the niche concept abstract entrepreneurs seeking to position new or small firms in industries populated by well established competitors are frequently advised to seek the protection of a market niche there shielded by market characteristics which render the niche uninteresting to larger rivals small firms are urged to compete at the fringe of the market this article challenges this conventional wisdom citing industry and firm characteristics which under certain conditions create opportunities for successful direct competition by some small or new firms against much larger and established competitors however the authors caution that the conditions which created the opportunity may erode in time rendering the successful challenger vulnerable either to retaliation by the larger firm or challenge from subsequent entrants examples of successful direct confrontation by relatively small competitors are drawn from mature low tech industries a rapidly growing high tech industry and the service sector

the order and size of entry into international markets abstract when entering markets managers must decide when to enter as well as how many resources to commit to the entry the study finds that larger initial resource commitments do not result in higher market share and market survival in international markets instead to improve performance in international markets managers should strive to be first entrants further first entrants typically commit fewer resources suggesting that this strategy can be pursued by firms with limited resources

the diana project pioneering women studying pioneering women the 2007 winner of the international award for entrepreneurship and small business research is the diana project team candida brush nancy carter elizabeth gatewood patricia greene and myra hart the diana project builds on the vast experience of the team in the field of entrepreneurship in general and women entrepreneurship business growth and venture capital in particular the diana project has investigated the supply and demand side of growth capital for women entrepreneurs the research contributes to entrepreneurship theory as well as to practice filling a void in knowledge on growth oriented women entrepreneurship in this article we present and discuss the research contribution of the diana project in the areas of entrepreneurship women entrepreneurship and venture capital we specifically discuss the value of researching a specific group of women entrepreneurs those who want to grow their businesses that very clearly demonstrates the positive potential of female entrepreneurship the diana project has also moved research on women s entrepreneurship forward since its framework does not treat women entrepreneurs as other i e the project does not presuppose that women s entrepreneurship is similar to or different from men s entrepreneurship it assumes that women s entrepreneurship is entrepreneurship and studies it from that point of view

initial human and financial capital as predictors of new venture performance abstract this research seeks to predict the performance of new ventures based on factors that can be observed at the time of start up indicators of initial human and financial capital are considered to determine how they bear upon the probability of three possible performance outcomes 1 failure 2 marginal survival or 3 high growth four categories of initial human and financial capital are examined general human capital represented here by the entrepreneur s education gender and race may reflect the extent to which the entrepreneur has had the opportunity to develop relevant skills and contacts management know how embodied in the entrepreneur or available through advisors or partners reflects management specific skills and knowledge without regard to the kind of business industry specific know how reflects specific experience in similar businesses financial capital is one of the most visible resources it can create a buffer against random shocks and allow the pursuit of more capital intensive strategies which are better protected from imitation the study utilizes a longitudinal study of 1053 new ventures representative of all industry sectors and geographical regions the research departs from most previous studies in considering different measures of performance marginal survival and growth and in considering explicitly whether the factors contributing to marginal survival differ from those contributing to high growth it was found that measures of general human capital influenced both survival and growth except for gender with women owned ventures being less likely to grow but just as likely to survive management know how variables had more limited impact having parents who had owned a business contributed to marginal survival but not to growth number of partners contributed to growth but not to survival management level prior employment in non profit organizations or not having been in the labor force and the use of professional advisors did not have significant effects industry specific know how contributed to both survival and growth amount of initial financial capital also contributed to both the usefulness of the model is enhanced by the fact that the resource variables considered are relatively easy to assess and all can be considered at the time of start up although some of the human capital variables cannot easily be changed the benefits or risks associated with each can be assessed in some cases potential problems can be identified so that plans can be modified to improve prospects overall it appears that using a model based upon the initial human and financial capital of the venture it is possible to predict the performance of new ventures with some degree of confidence

aggressiveness of response to new business opportunities following deregulation an empirical study of established financial firms abstract certain researchers have argued that industry structure constrains a firm s ability to respond to new business opportunities an important research question is to determine the relationship between organizational structure and strategy and a firm s response to new business opportunities this article measures how established financial firms respond to new business opportunities following deregulation and then compares these activities to accepted well known strategy typologies and structural arrangements using secondary data the new business venturing activities of the entire population of texas savings and loans n 270 was determined following an industry deregulation forty four of these savings and loans s ls then were identified as having a high level of venturing activity whereas 71 s ls were characterized by a low level of venturing activity a questionnaire describing specific well known strategies and structural arrangements was mailed to the top managers of these 115 s ls telephone interviews were obtained from 99 of the 115 s ls receiving questionnaires chief executive officers and executive vice presidents from 37 high level venturing activity s ls and 62 low level venturing activity s ls responded twenty eight of the 37 high level venturing activity s ls reported the use of a prospector type strategy whereas 52 of the 62 low level venturing activity s ls reported having a defender strategy this final sample of 80 s ls 28 52 was used in all subsequent data analyses total assets of the s ls sampled ranged from 10 2 million to 4 1 billion dollars a covariance

the internationalization of new and small firms a resource based view abstract this paper seeks to enhance understanding of the internationalization of small and medium sized enterprises smes the study focuses upon the following issues can the characteristics of principal founders businesses and the external environment at one point in time be used to explain at a later date whether a firm is still an exporter or a nonexporter whether exporting firms are larger in size than nonexporting firms whether exporting firms report superior performance than nonexporting firms and whether exporting firms are more likely to survive than nonexporting firms to address these questions this study draws upon a sample of 621 manufacturing construction and services businesses located in twelve contrasting environments in great britain surveyed first in 1990 91 and then re interviewed in 1997 a resource based view is reviewed to identify the range of factors encouraging some owner managed smes to enter export markets four categories of human and financial capital are examined general human capital resources the principal founder s management know how the principal founder s specific industry know how and a principal founder s ability to obtain financial resources that can act as a buffer against random shocks variables relating to resource availability in the external environment were also collected and considered control variables previous studies have highlighted substantial industry differences in the propensity for businesses to enter export markets as well as to survive the principal industrial activity of each business in 1990 91 was therefore considered a control variable variables collected during the 1990 91 survey were selected to explain variations in the propensity to export reported by surviving independent firms in 1997 after elimination of missing values the working sample was reduced to 116 independent firms for this study 86 nonexporters and 30 exporters in 1997 in addition the 21 variables were selected to explain variations in business size in 1997 profit performance relative to competitors reported in 1997 changes in employment over the 1990 91 to 1997 period and business survival over the 1990 91 to 1997 period 213 survivors and 395 nonsurvivors multivariate statistical analysis confirmed that previous experience of selling goods or services abroad is a key influence encouraging firms to export businesses with older principal founders with more resources denser information and contact networks and considerable management know how are significantly more likely to be exporters further businesses with principal founders that had considerable industry specific knowledge are markedly more likely to be exporters businesses principally engaged in the service sectors and those located in urban areas are significantly less likely to be exporters a key finding of this study is that the explanatory variables significantly associated with the propensity to export sales abroad are not the same as those significantly associated with selected size and performance measures the resource based explanatory variables selected fail to significantly detect employment growing firms over the 1990 91 to 1997 period they also fail to significantly distinguish surviving independent firms from nonsurviving firms results from this study will provide policy makers and practitioners with additional insights into the key resource based factors associated with the decision by new and small independent firms to export sales abroad practitioners and policy makers can focus upon the characteristics of principal founders businesses and the external environment to predict the subsequent propensity of an independent firm to be an exporter policy makers and practitioners who want more new and small firms to export outside their local areas may prefer to target their resources and assistance to the relatively smaller proportion of firms that have the business and principal founder profiles that are significantly associated with a firm being an exporter

regional earnings inequality in great britain a decomposition analysis this paper investigates the degree of earnings inequality in great britain over the period 1975 96 using individual based data it finds that the contribution of within group inequality to both earnings inequality cross sectionally and to its trend over time is substantially more important than the contribution of between group inequality thus the primary source of increasing inequality in the overall earnings distribution is increasing inequality within regions and not differences in average earnings between regions a decomposition of the gini coefficient is also adopted to illustrate how regional convergence in average earnings has been accompanied by increasing overall earnings inequality in the uk a partir des donnees aupres des particuliers cet article cherche a examiner l importance de l inegalite des revenus regionaux en grande bretagne de 1975 a 1996 il en resulte que la contribution de l inegalite a l interieur du groupe a l inegalite des revenus par echantillon et sur le temps s avere nett

modeling new venture performance an analysis of new venture strategy industry structure and venture origin abstract this study examined the relative role of strategy industry structure and origin independent vs corporate or parental venture on the profitability and growth of 247 new ventures in two segments of the information processing industry computer related and communications related equipment manufacturing each of the 247 ventures was eight years old or less most previous research examining the role of these three factors in new venture performance has examined them singularly or in limited combinations with very few firms in their sample the theoretical agenda in this study was to advance this research stream by simultaneously examining origin strategy and industry structure as well as the interaction between strategy and industry structure using a large sample of new ventures the applications agenda in the study was to uncover patterns in the interactive role of strategy structure and origin that might provide meaningful insights to aid strategic decisions in new ventures from the theoretical perspective the study found that variability in new venture performance was better accounted for when all three factors were included in a statistical model overall these results suggested that new venture strategy and industry structure and their interaction are essential for understanding new venture performance while origin is secondary more important in explaining market share growth than higher profitability several study findings may be of interest to the practicing new venture strategist the study uncovered eight basic strategy patterns across the 247 firms a detailed description of these eight distinct patterns is provided in appendix a of this article overall performance results suggest that no one strategy is always the best new venture strategy but when we examined the fit of different strategies with different industry structures we were able to distinguish high from low performing new ventures dramatically in other words specific new venture strategies were very effective in some industry settings and ineffective in others for example new venture entrepreneurs were able to successfully enter and compete in high barrier industries by employing strategies emphasizing superior product quality and higher customer service alternatively when entry barriers were low strong marketing skills offered the best advantage the key to the success of these marketing oriented ventures was the establishment of a distribution system in which products were pulled through by their strong brand identification and name recognition these venture managers supported brand identification and name recognition with a high level of advertising and promotion experience and gave constant attention to adding new channels of distribution although earlier studies suggested that parented new ventures are more effective in achieving profitability origin was not a significant explainer of profitability for the new ventures in this study much has been written recently that argues for creating an entrepreneurial climate in a corporation many corporations have wholeheartedly embraced efforts to foster an independent spirit among parented ventures so much so that many corporations have attempted to replicate an independent climate in their corporate sponsored start ups rather than an origin difference between new ventures perhaps it is the difference in the climate or spirit of the venture or more specifically the manner in which the corporation manages the start up that accounts for profitability differences

convergence of the south and non south income distributions 1969 1979 income distribution and inequalities in the southern united states are analyzed and compared with data for the rest of the country the evidence presented in this paper reveals that in the 1970s the souths income distribution either converged or moved significantly closer to the income distribution of the rest of the country the degree of convergence depends on the definition of the recipient unit and to a degree on the particular cost of living index used to deflate southern and non southern incomes the convergence is attributed in part to the labor unionization in the northeast and the resulting relocation of companies to the south data are from the 1970 and 1980 censuses and concern total household income excerpt

filling the institutional void the social behavior and performance of family vs non family technology firms in emerging markets family businesses fbs are said to treat their employees with unusual consideration to form a cohesive internal community they are also claimed to develop deeper more extensive connections or relationships with outside stakeholders both behaviors may increase the viability of a business intended to support an owning family and its later generations such social linkages we believe may compensate for the lack of capital product and labor institutional infrastructures in dynamic emerging economies this survey study of a most challenging emerging market sector namely korean hightechnology businesses argues three major points 1 relationships of community and connection will be more common in fbs than in non fbs 2 these relationships will enhance performance in emerging market hightechnology sectors which because of their competitive complex and everchanging nature rely on significant expert knowledge and social capital within and outside the organizational community 3 the performance of fbs will benefit more from these community and connection relationships than the performance of non fbs because in these personally intimate settings employees and external partners will be especially likely to return the generosity of a visibly active owning family or to penalize its selfishness significant empirical support was found for most of these hypotheses

corporate ventures into industrial markets dynamics of aggressive entry abstract this article reports a study of the effect of aggressive entry by firms venturing into new industrial markets there are three main sets of results first there is a significant correlation between the competitive attractiveness of the target industry and the initial share objective set by the corporation venturing into that industry second the downstream share objective set at the launch of the venture is significantly correlated with several key marketing strategy and investment strategy options made by the firm at the start of operations third if most of these key strategy decisions are made under the assumption that a high share position will rapidly be achieved their resulting performance in terms of both market share and roi is superior to firms which enter with less aggressive share aspirations these results are particularly appealing to the large established firm which has the resources and thus can both afford to absorb the cost of failure and afford to make significant front end investments in aggressive initial marketing expenses and investments in initial plant capacity for such firms a feasible strategy for a new venture into an industrial market could be to if possible but not essential seek industries markets to enter which are less likely to provoke rivalrous responses set aggressive market share targets invest aggressively in initial plant capacity develop aggressive sales force sales promotion advertising service quality and or pricing programs relative to competitors as appropriate to the particular industry being entered the reason we suggest that the programs be aggressive as appropriate is that different strategic options are likely to be more effective in one industry than another for instance aggressive advertising and sales promotions could be more effective for consumables while aggressive sales calling programs and superior service delivery could be the more effective route for capital goods businesses

entrepreneurial ability venture investments and risk sharing a number of issues that relate to the desirability and implications of new venture financing are examined within a principal agent framework that captures the essence of the relationship between entrepreneurs and venture capitalists the model suggests 1 as long as the skill levels of entrepreneurs are common knowledge all will choose to involve venture capital investors since the risk sharing provided by outside participation dominates the agency relationship that is created 2 the less able entrepreneurs will choose to involve venture capitalists whereas the more profitable ventures will be developed without external participation because of the adverse selection problem associated with asymmetric information 3 if a costly signal is available that conveys the entrepreneur s ability some entrepreneurs will invest in such a signal and then sell to investors these entrepreneurs however need not be the more able ones the implications for new venture financing of these and other findings are discussed and illustrated by example

subjectivity in credit allocation to micro entrepreneurs evidence from brazil this paper estimates the impact of loan officer subjectivity on microcredit granting by exploiting an exceptionally detailed database from a brazilian microfinance institution the loan officers collect field data meet with applicants and make recommendations to the credit committee which has the final say on both loan approval and loan size ls the loan officer s subjectivity is captured through gender bias our estimations indeed show subjective gender gap in ls this gap is almost exclusively attributable to loan officers we interpret this finding as evidence that despite monitoring and wage incentivization microcredit officers let their subjective preferences interfere with loan granting we conclude by suggesting alternative means to curb subjectivity in credit allocation to micro entrepreneurs

high profit strategies in mature capital goods industries a contingency approach high profit and low profit strategic gestalts in two different types of mature capital goods industries are examined multiple avenues to high profits are found within both types but they differ

racial and gender discrimination in the micro firms credit market evidence from trinidad and tobago this paper examines the market for loans from banks to micro and small enterprises in trinidad and tobago it tests for the presence of racial and gender discrimination it takes the reported refusal to grant loans to groups when all other indicators of credit worthiness are taken into account as evidence of discrimination the paper distinguishes between application and denial rates it finds that once all other indicators of credit worthiness are taken into account neither application nor denial rates differ significantly by gender reported denial rates are however higher for africans compared with other ethnic groups implying the possible presence of discrimination

employment and smes during crises the persistent increasing duration of unemployment has become an issue during economic crises although lay offs at large firms normally make headlines during crises we still know little about the potential impact of firm size on adjustment behavior in a crisis we studied effects of firm size on employment growth during economic slowdowns using a rich microeconomic database for the 1988 2007 period in portuguese manufacturing industry the results show that economic downturns affect firm growth negatively this negative effect is found to be higher for larger firms both during and immediately following crisis periods small and medium sized enterprises smes emerge as potential stabilizers in downturn periods however larger firms seem to be able to quickly recover from downturn periods our results contribute to the scarce literature and to the understanding of the portuguese case where many smes secure most jobs these first results may be useful because smes play a determinant role in other european union economies

analysis of energy efficiency and energy savings potential in china s provincial industrial sectors abstract because industrial sectors in china are energy intensive improving energy efficiency and promoting energy savings in these sectors are of great importance for the further sustainable development of china s economy using a proposed meta frontier data envelopment analysis dea this paper analyzes the total factor energy efficiency and energy savings potential in china s provincial industrial sectors for the years 2000 2014 from three perspectives namely the technology gap management and scale the results indicate that 1 driven by technological progress energy efficiency during the sample period was greatly improved though the expansion of technology gaps between regions and the decline in scale efficiency represented two significant handicaps 2 the current energy efficiency in china s industrial sectors remains extremely low indicating that there is considerable potential for energy efficiency improvement and energy savings and 3 the sources of energy inefficiency and energy savings potential in china s industrial sectors exhibit spatially distinct characteristics accordingly it is determined that most of china s eastern provinces should focus on improving scale and management efficiency whereas most of its central and western provinces should concentrate on three factors narrowing the regional technology gap improving management efficiency and optimizing the industrial scale

patterns of growth competitive technology and financial strategies in young ventures abstract young independent technology based ventures have an increasingly complex array of strategic choices about how they can grow while simultaneously competing on the basis of their technological capacity and skills in their markets given the central importance of these choices to the success of the venture there should be a close integral relationship among them similarly financial strategy choices also enter this relationship growth and competition place tremendous resource demands on the young technology based venture and financial strategy choices therefore must also be factored into the choice taking process the choice taking perspective is basic to this inquiry as other researchers have pointed out young entrepreneurial ventures typically do not utilize highly formalized strategic planning processes robinson and pearce 1983 strategy formation in such firms tends to be informal and episodic strategy may be revealed best through the pattern or set of choices taken at a point in time and over time from a choice taking perspective then the critical questions become the following a are there identifiable patterns of growth technology and financial choices b what factors shape or determine which choices are taken and c are these patterns related to venture performance these questions were explored by using data from a survey of 100 ceos of young independent technology based firms across three industries the results generally support the idea that patterns of choices can be identified several of these patterns are related to the ventures demographic characteristics such as form of ownership and scope of sales importantly stage of development was not related to those patterns nor to the performance of the ventures the highest performing ventures were found to be pursuing internal innovation through r d for product breakthroughs this finding is surprising since young ventures at the stage at which most were found in this sample would traditionally be expected to emphasize product extensions and modifications we need to better understand why young ventures would choose to innovate internally for breakthroughs in their growth stages and how well they are able to do so a major implication of this research is that the ceos of young technology based ventures are being presented with a much larger menu or array of choices at many points in time than conventional stage based models of venture development have postulated one explanation of this possibility is that the firm life cycle is being compressed by relatively new conditions such as the availability of more and earlier capital through joint venturing and alliances and shorter product life cycles indeed a follow up survey a year later with 77 ceos from this sample confirmed that joint ventures and alliances were the number one choice being pursued to gain access to distribution channels and new markets what is troubling about this possibility is that the skills and capacities of these young ventures may be limited in comparison with the richness and complexity of the available choices in the follow up survey the sources of information that were by far the most relied upon for strategic decision making were other internal senior managers and board members outsiders such as lawyers ranking distantly behind the leaders of these ventures need to be fully supported in evaluating negotiating and managing these often highly complex relationships