different shades of green global oil and gas companies and renewable energy abstract the long term energy transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy raises critical questions about the future of oil and gas firms this study asks why some oil and gas firms are committed to renewable energy while others continue to maintain a distinct fossil fuels focus with little or no investment in renewable energy the analysis reveals that there is a wide range in the degree to which oil and gas firms have invested in renewable energy some firms have no investments and others have investments in multiple renewable energy technologies across many countries we examine a combination of country based institutional factors and firm based knowledge and experience factors that could impact oil and gas firms decisions to invest in renewable energy activity regulative and normative pressures impacted renewable energy investments as did environmental citizenship and the degree of internationalization the study s integration of country level factors with firm level experiences provides insights into how firms are dealing with the energy transition by examining areas such as sustainability and regulatory policy the paper sheds light on the ways in which scholars can tap into measures and methods that can extend traditional ib research

prospect theory and the risk return relation some belgian evidence in this study fiegenbaum and thomas s application of prospect theory to empirically derived risk return relations was replicated and extended with belgian accounting data four profitability varia

asset stock accumulation and sustainability of competitive advantage given incomplete factor markets appropriate time paths of flow variables must be chosen to build required stocks of assets that is critical resources are accumulated rather than acquired in strategic factor markets barney barney j 1986 strategic factor markets expectations luck and business strategy management sci october 1231 1241 sustainability of a firm s asset position hinges on how easily assets can be substituted or imitated imitability is linked to the characteristics of the asset accumulation process time compression diseconomies asset mass efficiencies inter connectedness asset erosion and causal ambiguity

organizational inertia and momentum a dynamic model of strategic change this study provides an empirical test of hannan and freeman s theory of structural inertia we examined the changes organizations undertook in response to a major environmental change in addition

toward a model of risk in declining organizations an empirical examination of risk performance and decline scholars who study organizational decline have argued that declining organizations reduce or eliminate their riskier activities such as innovation further they cite reduced risk taking as a primary contributor to further decline scholars with an interest in risk per se come to the opposite conclusion low performing firms often take more risks than other firms and such risks reduce subsequent performance this study attempts to resolve these conflicting views by examining the risk of firms in decline our model based on cyert march s cyert r m j g march 1963 a behavioral theory of the firm prentice hall englewood cliffs nj behavioral theory of the firm includes six basic variables 1 performance 2 slack 3 aspirations 4 expectations 5 risk income stream uncertainty and 6 organization size as a measure of decline the estimated model includes prior levels of risk and performance in the risk and performance equations respectively as controls this study uses data on 34

technological innovation in canada a comparison of independent entrepreneurs and corporate innovators abstract this paper compares a sample of 124 independent high technology entrepreneurs with 112 corporate entrepreneurs intrapreneurs involved in developing and introducing high tech innovations across canada the study investigates the general management and technical problems faced by these entrepreneurs and contrasts their approach to such issues as market research financing and production the approaches used by the two groups in analyzing their markets and in planning and financing of innovations are compared and contrasted in general the independent entrepreneurs were technically trained usually possessing engineering training but no general management training or experience neither themselves nor members of their management team corporate entrepreneurs were as likely to come from management backgrounds as technical or else supported their lack of general management skills by adding people to their team with skills in marketing finance and manufacturing their problems were more often defending their ideas to management within the corporation obtaining funding and other resources within the firm and finding a corporate mentor to assist them in such areas as fighting political battles providing rewards and incentives for team members and creating the proper overall environment or culture for innovation within the corporation the lack of general management training and experience by the independent entrepreneurs led them to rate various marketing problems as the most serious difficulties in rating the obstacles to launching their innovations the innovations of the independent entrepreneurs were all new products while some of the corporate innovations were new systems or processes often installed within the corporation so the markets for these innovations were also within the corporation and required less of a marketing effort corporations were also much better prepared to handle problems in the marketing planning and operational areas but they had more problems of an interpersonal nature such as the unwillingness to consider alternative approaches the most significant difference in the obstacles encountered was that independent entrepreneurs listed their five most important problems as marketing difficulties in launching their new products corporate entrepreneurs also rated imperfect market analysis as their most important problem but it was closely followed by the lack of entrepreneurial talent within the company these obstacles lead to the primary recommendation of cooperative agreements of partnerships between large and small firms to solve some of these difficulties corporate responses indicated significant difficulty in gaining support within the corporation while independent entrepreneurs did not have to justify their efforts to a corporate hierarchy

transmission investment in the peruvian electricity market theory and applications abstract this research presents an application of the mechanism in hogan et al 2010 hrv to promote electricity transmission network expansion in the peruvian electricity transmission system known as sein sistema electrico interconectado nacional the hrv mechanism combines the merchant and regulatory approaches to promote investment into transmission grids this mechanism gives incentives for efficient investment in expansion of the network by rebalancing over time the fixed and variable charges of a two part tariff in the framework of a wholesale electricity market with locational pricing the expansion of the network is carried out through the sale of financial transmission rights ftrs for the congested lines the mechanism is applied for 103 nodes of the sein using detailed characteristics of generators nodes and transmission lines under laspeyres weights and linear cost of expansion of transmission capacity it is shown that prices converge to lower price levels as a result of increased transmission capacity

a dynamic perspective of internal fit in corporate venturing abstract managers of corporate parents and their ventures have long been faced with the question of how closely to tie the parent and venture a close connection may enable a venture to capitalize on the competencies and resources of the parent however venture autonomy could prevent corporate inertia and bureaucracy from constraining venture growth the lack of consensus on this issue leads us to the first of two complementary research questions that we address in this paper what is the effect of internal strategic fit between a corporate parent and its venture on venture performance we suggest that a tight fit is positively associated with venture performance because of the venture s access to its parent s resources managers and researchers alike have often observed that growing enterprises are dynamic entities in the case of corporate ventures this implies that the relationship between parent and venture evolves over time our second research question directly addresses this issue by asking does the relationship between a corporate parent and its venture s evolve over time and if so how we identify two dimensions of the fit between corporate parents and their ventures relational and economic a relational fit reflects organizational culture and structure while an economic fit is a function of the needs of the venture and the resources of the parent we develop a series of hypotheses and test them with survey data from 97 canadian corporate ventures for the purposes of this study we define success as the ability of a firm to meet internal milestones on schedule we find that the degree of fit between a corporate parent and its venture does affect the success of a venture and that success is associated with high levels of awareness commitment and connection further the relational dimension of the parent venture interface appears to have a greater association with venture success than does the economic dimension our data support the idea that the parent venture relationship is dynamic in nature as ventures in our sample generally lessened their economic connections with their parents as they matured or vice versa we did find however that the relational bonds remained more or less intact the exceptions to these general trends were an increasing emphasis on financial targets along with decreasing ceo involvement as ventures matured both of these findings make intuitive sense greater financial independence is accompanied by greater financial accountability and as a venture gains in both independence and accountability there is less need for the ceo to provide air cover these two issues aside the basic model of enduring relational ties and diminishing economic ties was supported as well the increasing accountability is consistent with our expectation that a close connection is preferable to high venture autonomy

entrepreneurial retrenchment among small manufacturing firms abstract strategic management researchers have traditionally focused on growth oriented strategies for small firms yet studies of small businesses have consistently cited overzealous pursuit of growth as the number one contributor to financial decline and failure record numbers of small firms are finding themselves confronted with declines of sufficient magnitude to require the implementation of turnaround strategies much has been written about turnaround strategies for large corporations the problem is that the commonly recommended turnaround strategies are not often feasible for small firms unfortunately there are no investigations reported in the literature that approach the subject of turnaround from the perspective of the small market share businesses the purpose of this research was to explore turnaround from the small firm perspective the study focused on the turnaround strategy most often referred to as entrepreneurial retrenchment i e the aggressive pursuit of cost and asset reduction the results showed that firms that pursued entrepreneurial retrenchment were more successful than firms that continued to pursue growth with the preexisting configuration of assets even after a period of extensive cost cutting the findings suggest strongly that managers of successful small market share firms must be able to quickly recognize and ameliorate underper forming assets when they encounter turnaround situations the findings were a result of empirical analyses of 33 small market share firms that had encountered turnaround situations turnaround situations were initially identified by the incidence of at least two successive years of declining profitability that exceeded any industry wide decline that may have occurred over the same time period the firms were subsequently contacted to verify that they considered the timeframe to indeed coincide with a period during which their managerial actions were targeted to achieve a performance turnaround each of the firms was then classified according to the direction of their cost and asset changes over the turnaround period nonretrenchers were those firms that did not achieve net reductions in costs or assets for any years after the decline cost retrenchers were those firms that achieved net costs reductions but not asset reductions for a minimum of one year succeeding the decline finally entrepreneurial retrenchers were those firms that sustained a minimum of one year of asset reductions in addition to cost reductions in the years immediately after the decline although entrepreneurship research has traditionally focused on developing and investing in new businesses little has been done on the issue of asset restructuring that precedes entrepreneurial endeavors in established companies robinson and pearce 1988 for single businesses the essence of entrepreneurship is the ability to quickly respond to marketplace opportunities the underside of this pursuit is the ability to quickly reposition assets to accompany ensuing moves for competitive viability for single business firms an inability to respond quickly to financial downturns creates turnaround situations therefore an examination was prepared to determine the value of retrenchment as a means to achieve turnaround and financial stability the results were produced through an analysis of longitudinally collected financial data that was used to profile each firm s turnaround situation severity their classification of retrenchment and the degree to which they were able to successfully achieve a return to predownturn financial performance

an incentive mechanism for electricity transmission expansion in mexico abstract this study proposes an incentive regulatory framework for expanding electricity transmission in mexico a two part pricing model is implemented within a combined merchant regulatory structure three cases are considered in the first a monopolist with postage stamp tariffs serves the whole country using uniform prices in the second case one firm holds a regional monopoly in each of the five electricity areas in the third a monopolist operates in all areas of the national electricity system and discriminates in the prices it charges in each of the regions this approach is described and then applied to the mexican electricity transmission network using real data the study compares all three cases in terms of profits capacity increases and network expansion the results are found to depend on two effects the economies of scale effect in which the maximum level is reached with a single network and the discriminatory effect that results when a firm can discriminate among types of consumers the economies of scale effect produces greater capacity and network expansion whereas the discriminatory effect increases profits

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

prediction of failure of a newly founded firm abstract the rate of mortality among newly founded firms is very high failure statistics universally show that over 50 of newly founded firms will fail during their first five years the economic financial and social losses resulting from these failures are significant thus it is valuable to try to develop methods to predict and to avoid such failures however there are only very few studies dealing with failure prediction methods for newly founded firms the aim of this study was to develop such methods that would also have practical value failure was defined as cash insolvency the aim was to develop a failure prediction model based on financial statement data from newly founded firms the ratios based on these data are hard measures and easy to calculate also for a person forced to only use publicly available information a prediction model based on these ratios could then be a practical method for financial analysts and other interest groups in evaluating the failure probability of a new firm this model does not require information about management products or markets because it rather deals with the symptoms of failure than the causes the study is based on a supposition that failure process in a newly founded firm is characterized by a too high initial indebtedness and by too low revenue financing as compared with the budget this supposition was supported by the empirical results based on the comparison of the financial ratios in first four years between 20 failed and 20 nonfailed small newly founded entrepreneurial industrial firms these results may give an explanation as to why some newly founded firms will fail and some will survive this explanation is of course based on the development of financial variables in the very first years the results showed that it is possible to some degree to predict the failure of a newly founded firm already in the first year after foundation the prediction accuracy will increase when the data of failure is approached the best univariate predictors proved to be stockholders capital to total capital ratio indebtedness cash flow to net sales ratio revenue financing and cash flow to total debt ratio sufficiency of revenue financing to pay financial obligations the prediction accuracy can be increased by adjusting the critical value of the ratio stepwisely to the year of operation thus the optimal critical value will change year by year after foundation the prediction accuracy can slightly be improved by a multivariate analysis this kind of multivariate model also included the logarithmic size net sales of the firm as a variable so that the probability to fail increased when the size increased the results also showed that the same multivariate model estimated for older small firms can be used as a failure prediction model for newly founded firms however this requires that quite different critical values are selected for both types of firms to summarize the results show that the failure of a newly founded firm is to some degree predictable by univariate or multivariate analyses the failure risk is increased with high indebtedness insufficient revenue financing and large size in the first years hence the risk to fail can be reduced by using less debt as initial financing and by paying special attention to the generation of a sufficient amount of revenues in initial stages furthermore it may be less risky to start business operations with a smaller rather than larger initial size

marginal pricing of transmission services an analysis of cost recovery this paper presents an in depth analysis of network revenues computed with marginal pricing and in particular it investigates the reasons why marginal prices fail to recover the total incurred network costs in actual power systems the basic theoretical results are presented and the major causes of the mismatch between network costs and marginal revenues are identified and illustrated with numerical examples some tutorial and others of realistic size the regulatory implications of marginal network pricing in the context of competitive electricity markets are analyzed and suggestions are provided for the meaningful allocation of the costs of the network among its users

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

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

out of the frying pan why small business managers introduce high risk products abstract some managers in small firms who are disappointed with their firm s current performance will introduce new products to improve the situation although untested in a small business context prospect theory suggests that managers who are less satisfied may be more likely to introduce products with riskier characteristics the current study confirmed this finding that managers who were less satisfied introduced products into less familiar markets and required more resources the study also provided tentative evidence that these characteristics may decrease the product s economic performance and the manager s subsequent satisfaction with the business suggesting that a dangerous downward spiral may occur

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

marginal pricing of transmission services a comparative analysis of network cost allocation methods a strict marginal network pricing policy is not able to generate enough revenues to recover the cost of the primary transmission service other related network services are ignored here this cost recovery problem requires the stipulation of a complementary charge which completes the network marginal revenues this paper evaluates numerically and qualitatively three different allocation methods of the complementary charge marginal participation factors mean participation factors and benefit factors the evaluation has been applied to the spanish electrical system model

entrepreneurship and the initial size of firms abstract it is clear that entrepreneurs and their firms can vary widely nevertheless most of the research to date on entrepreneurship has examined central tendencies with relatively little attention devoted to entrepreneurial diversity this study examines one of the most distinguishing characteristics of young firms initial size the focus is whether smaller start ups differ from larger ones in the backgrounds of the entrepreneurs their processes of starting or the subsequent patterns of development in this longitudinal study an initial sample of 1903 young firms was examined to determine differences in characteristics of the entrepreneurs and in their processes of starting one year later data were obtained from 742 of these firms permitting analysis of how initial firm size was related to subsequent difficulties encountered and changes made as well as to performance as expected along almost every dimension these starting larger firms had the backgrounds that would seem to be necessary for the assembly of substantial resources they tended to have more education more management experience and goals that were more managerial in nature they also were more likely to have partners women were associated more often with smaller ventures but for this sample there were no differences in the representation of minorities between the smaller and larger start ups those starting larger ventures tended to rely more upon external investors and to start ventures more closely linked to their previous jobs both groups of entrepreneurs sought information from a number of sources but those founding larger ventures utilized professional advisors more whereas those starting smaller ventures utilized informal sources in the year after the first questionnaire differences between the two groups were less marked than expected both groups of surviving firms reported low levels of serious problems with the smaller ventures somewhat surprisingly reporting serious problems less often there were not many differences in changes made except that smaller ventures were more likely to lose partners and larger ventures were more likely to add branches or locations both groups reported high rates of mean growth in sales the smaller ventures with their small initial bases showed larger percentage increases smaller ventures also showed higher percentage increases in employment and surprisingly a greater increase in the absolute number of employees somewhat more of the smaller ventures had discontinued both groups included many firms that grew substantially and others that scaled back demonstrating the fluidity and experimentation characteristic of young firms for entrepreneurs and their advisors for public policy makers and for researchers any progress in understanding entrepreneurial processes should in the long run enhance venture performance the patterns observed here indicate that firms of different initial size tend to be associated with particular entrepreneurial characteristics processes of formation and subsequent patterns of development this diversity should be recognized in the development of assistance programs and university courses as well as in the interpretation of previous research for public policy makers the growth of these firms both small and large indicates the potential of economic contributions from entrepreneur ship further the growth of the smaller start ups suggests that even those ventures that appear to have few resources and modest potential can in the aggregate contribute substantially to the economy

starting up in a turbulent environment a process model of failure among firms with high customer dependence abstract this paper proposes a process model on how new and small organizations may fail based on prior research the paper builds a foundation for a process model and then elaborates it inductively by explaining how and why significant reversals and shifts occurred between 1983 and 1985 in the entrepreneurial organizational and ecological conditions of ten new educational software companies the process model states that all organizations engage in transactions with others in the normal conduct of business and it is inevitable that a certain proportion of these transactions fail the probability of transaction failures is a product of the failure rate at the level of the organizational population as well as the kinds of transactions in which individual firms engage new and small firms in a turbulent environment represent a subset of the organizational population particularly vulnerable to the chance occurrence of a failed transaction because of liabilities of newness and small size these firms lack legitimacy furthermore in many industries there is an absence of tangible physical assets that entrepreneurs can use as collateral to attract valuable resources and customers in such situations entrepreneurs often use transactions with key external constituencies as a surrogate to attract other resource constituents thus giving rise to a leveraged set of transactions this leveraging strategy however makes the set of transactions of the firm tightly coupled and when any one transaction in a tightly coupled set fails the set often collapses hence a small business firm in this situation fails when a transaction in which it is highly dependent or leveraged happens to fail the very strategies that contributed to overcoming the problems of liabilities of newness and small size turn out to be the root causes of failure the experiences of the courseware companies are generalized to a process model of failure of new small businesses in turbulent environments

financial performance patterns of new corporate ventures an alternative to traditional measures abstract this paper describes some of the limitations involved in using traditional performance measures to evaluate new ventures and suggests an alternative we argue that the use of traditional performance measures in the new venture setting can produce misdirected decision making by managers and misleading model development by researchers the traditional performance measures evaluated are return on investment cashflow market share gain and returns to stockholders the alternative performance measured presented is based upon an evaluation of patterns of improvement in return on investment across time these patterns of performance are mapped using regression analysis return on investment is regressed against time and the parameters of the resulting models parameters are themselves used as performance measures the beta coefficient is used to measure the overall rate of change in financial performance from year to year and the coefficient of determination r 2 is used to measure the predictability of change to combine the information available in each of these parameters into a single variable we multiply by r 2 and call the result v thus v is a measure of the velocity of improvement in financial performance across time adjusted for the level of variability in the performance trend much work remains to be done that could substantially improve the usefulness of v to managers and researchers more sophisticated approaches than the one used here might include weighting either or r 2 to fit the particular goal orientation of a given management team other model parameters might be used in conjunction with or in place of or r 2 to increase or improve the information captured in v measures of financial performance other than return on investment roi could also be used as the basis of calculating v even in its current simple form however v appears to be a useful performance measure in 87 of 112 ncvs studied v provided a useful summary of the pattern of performance s development in 25 of 112 cases there were important characteristics of performance that could not be captured by v the most important managerial implication of v entails the shift to evaluating a new venture on the basis of its progress toward a desirable end rather than on the end itself this provides a logical means of evaluating the financial performance of a new venture at an earlier time than would be possible otherwise

corporate venturing obstacles sources and solutions abstract there is a fundamental conflict between new venture and mature company management requirements as an enterprise evolves the focus for success shifts from sensing and seizing opportunity to protecting and utilizing the resources that have been acquired in surviving companies management practices change to accommodate this changing need the conflict arises when the mature company attempts to initiate internal new venture activities application of mature company practices to management of new corporate ventures is not only inappropriate but breeds failure to succeed with new ventures top corporate management must first understand the inherent differences in management needs for new ventures versus the mature organization and must then adapt a pluralistic management style that accommodates both needs this paper examines the rationale for ten establishment practices and the adverse effects they can have on new ventures from this analysis alternative entrepreneurial management practices are recommended the ten management practices examined are 1 enforce procedures to avoid mistakes 2 manage resources for efficiency and roi 3 control against plan 4 plan long term 5 manage functionally 6 avoid moves that risk the base business 7 protect the base business at all costs 8 judge new steps from prior experience 9 compensate uniformly and 10 promote compatible individuals some of the adverse effects of these practices include blockage of innovative solutions loss of competitive lead time entrepreneur failures high venture failure costs missed opportunities fluctuating venture strategies misread markets reduced motivation to take risks and loss of innovative employees recommended entrepreneurial management practices include restricting standard procedures to those appropriate for the venture controlling ventures by milestone planning rather than calendar budgets being more responsive to market feedback in adjusting plans focusing on critical issues for early determination of venture viability assessing and choosing affordable risks and making venturing a mainstream function of the business

entrepreneurial recovery strategies of small market share manufacturers abstract field studies of organizational decline and turnaround have provided evidence that economically troubled firms can undertake recovery from sharp financial losses in different ways as suggested by a recent stream of research the most promising of these ways is for businesses that have retrenched to initiate recovery strategies designed to redirect their remaining resources toward more promising product market combinations the choice of this set of alternatives known as entrepreneurial recovery strategies is the topic of the research that was undertaken entrepreneurial recovery strategies involve reformulation of a firm s products services markets or principal technologies in ways that represent a new or radically altered competitive posture they are contrasted to efficiency recovery strategies that entail retaining the current product market technology orientation but on a smaller and more efficient scale as these descriptions suggest the thrust of research on recovery strategies has been to merge the findings from entrepreneurship studies on new venture creation and corporate intrapreneurship with strategic management studies on retrenchment and recovery our project extends this process by treating recovery strategies as the central element in a turnaround model the research was specifically designed to address two research questions 1 which functional areas are most emphasized by small market share sms firms that pursue entrepreneurial versus efficiency recovery strategies 2 what are the performance implications for adopting entrepreneurial versus efficiency recovery strategies for mature industry sms manufacturers based on the cause of the performance downturn the research questions were investigated through an empirical analysis of 32 companies each of which controlled less than 1 of their mature manufacturing industry s total sales two executives from each of these companies responded to a 162 item questionnaire designed to assess the cause of a downturn that occurred anytime during the period of 1976 1985 any changes in strategy components during the recovery and the emphasis placed on specific functional level activities during the response to the decline additionally objective measures of performance were used to assess the performance implications of entrepreneurial and efficiency strategies the major findings from the research included 1 a high degree of strategy change among the participant firms 2 a focus on marketing and production functional areas by sms firms that pursued entrepreneurial recovery strategies and a focus on finance and management functional areas for sms firms that pursued efficiency recovery strategies and 3 a relatively poor level of performance among sms firms that pursued entrepreneurial recovery strategies the main implication from the study is that sms companies in mature manufacturing industries should consider the adoption of efficiency oriented recovery strategies to foster economic revival the research should be replicated in industries that vary both technologically and in stage of life cycle to determine if entrepreneurial strategies represent more viable alternatives in certain other turnaround situations or for other industry populations

stumblers and stars in the management of rapid growth this article examines the problems of managing a rapid growth firm we contend that instead of being a time for entrepreneurial celebration and relief a period of over 50 growth is a time for wariness and some very difficult decisions such firms face a fragile transition they are beyond being intimate cohesive entrepreneurial ventures but they have not yet become secure stable entities not only are they in flux but these firms are often disoriented by the pace at which change is occurring firms such as atari cray research cullinet osborne computers people express and rolm recently have faced or now face these challenges with very different degrees of success this article presents observations drawn from several sources a study of thirty rapid growth firms which we have underway literature and press accounts of rapid growth and our consulting and discussions with executives in such firms while far from definitive the article reports several themes that are very pronounced in the situations we have studied these themes are of two types 1 recurring challenges and traps faced by rapid growth companies and 2 characteristics af firms which seem to avoid or surmount these traps these are the four fundamental challenges that we see confronting rapid growth firms 1 1 instant size these firms double and triple in size very quickly this in turn creates problems of disaffection inadequate skills and inadequate systems 2 2 a sense of infallibility by virtue of their success to date rapid growth firms often view their strategies and behaviors as infallible the unfortunate irony is that they become convinced of their wisdom while the environment is turbulent and large competitors are entering 3 3 internal turmoil as a social organism a firm growing at 50 per year is under great strain there is a stream of new faces people who do not know each other and who do not know the company decision making suffers turf battles abound and people burn out 4 4 extraordinary resource needs rapid growth firms are typically cash starved instead of abundance they often face a bare bones existence each of these challenges calls for its own solutions but we have observed some overarching themes in firms that have successfully traversed a period of rapid growth the chief executive is able to envision and anticipate the firm as a larger entity the team needed for tomorrow is hired and developed today the original core vision of the firm is constantly and zealously reinforced new big company processes are introduced gradually as supplements to rather than replacements for existing approaches hierarchy is minimized employees hold a financial stake in the firm beyond developing these themes for success the article concludes with a brief discussion of the effectiveness of owner founders in rapid growth situations

supporting innovation and venture development in established companies abstract accumulated research findings call into question the ability of established corporations to develop and manage new ventures successfully this article argues that the problem comes in large part from failing to differentiate between the requirements of administrative management geared to managing existing activities and holding things in place to ensure continuation of already developed activities and the requirements of entrepreneurial management designed to create change by developing something new the two kinds of management are in tension and may interfere with each other but every established organization needs both in order to get both innovation and efficiency innovations and new ventures have four particular characteristics that account for their special management requirements uncertainty knowledge intensivity competition with alternative courses of action and boundary crossing thus entrepreneurial management to support creation of the new puts a stress on such features as visionary leadership patient money planning flexibility team continuity stability and interfunctional cooperation but the usual requirements of administrative management in established corporations contradict these principles thus some companies try to set their new ventures apart from the old to avoid conflicts in management requirements however this this only partially solves the problem all companies need both to manage ongoing activities and to create new ones with the proportions of each depending on the nature of the business they need to strike a balance between administrative and entrepreneurial management the problem of venture development in established corporations occurs when administrative management comes to dominate and innovation is not valued sufficiently the command system of administrative management needs to be replaced by a mutual adjustment system high innovation companies build mutual adjustment into their design they allow flexibility to move into an entrepreneurial mode they are characterized by broader jobs structures built around small business units or functionally complete project teams cultures stressing the ability of people to contribute more over time and easy access to the key power tools of information support and resources a more entrepreneurial corporation minimizes hard and fast rules and procedures governed by a rigidly defined command structure and emphasizes instead flexibility and broadly skilled sets of employees in flexible units that can be grouped or regrouped as changing circumstances require large corporations must institute deliberate programs to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship including removing the roadblocks of unnecessary administrative requirements encouraging integration across departments and functions changing budgeting and accounting procedures and providing internal venture capital and special project funds discretionary time and new business performance measures

does size matter simulating electricity market coupling between colombia and ecuador since the beginning of the liberalization era the integration of electricity markets has been promoted in many regions arguing that this will bring benefits in terms of security of supply and efficiency however little progress has been made in the last decades in most regions with some successful exceptions such as the nordpool and more research is needed to determine under which circumstances those benefits are achievable we develop a system dynamics model to analyze the potential benefits and risks of market coupling and to improve the understanding of its implications on policy design this model allows us to simulate the long term behavior of two interconnected countries under different interconnection scenarios and different policies regarding capacity payments the analysis is focused on colombia and ecuador which have been trading electricity for more than 10 years and offer an interesting case study given their complementarity in terms of hydropower supply however the results of the simulations show that this complementarity is not necessarily exploited while the relative size of the countries determines the magnitude of the potential benefits of integration the interconnector capacity plays a key role in achieving those benefits additionally both factors significantly affect the outcome of policies such as the implementation of capacity payments we conclude that capacity policies and integration policies need to be coordinated

the advantage chain antecedents to rents from internal corporate ventures abstract in this article we argue that the resource based perspective on strategy offers a useful basis for understanding the contributions to the firm of corporate ventures the heart of the resource based view of the firm lies in arguments set forth by penrose and by nelson and winter penrose 1959 argued that differential mechanisms for resource combination and utilization result in heterogeneity among firms even among firms with similar factor endowments nelson and winter 1982 argued that behavior in particular behavior with respect to the utilization of firm resources becomes routinized over time people are often unable to describe or reconstruct well honed repetitive routines with ease van de ven 1986 consequently no two firms are likely to develop identical routines and it is often difficult for one firm to copy routines originated in another the idea that resources may be combined in routinized but relatively idiosyncratic ways suggests that firms will develop enduring differences in resource profiles and consequently in strategic potentialities over time consider the benefits a corporate venture can offer entering new markets making a new product developing a new technology or reconfiguring internal processes all require changes to existing resource configurations and routines these changes can allow the firm to discover ways of combining its resources and to the extent that the new combinations incorporate difficult to imitate routines it will take some time before that combination can be matched by competitors in other words venturing is one mechanism through which a firm gains superior insight about and access to firm specific resources with future rent potential value so a substantive and desirable outcome of venturing is the generation of valuable new resource combinations specific to the firm which it alone may exploit the article presents a model of those conditions that are necessary antecedents to streams of ricardian rent from the venture five such conditions are proposed all of which must be met if the firm is to derive rents from its venturing activities the first antecedent to securing rent streams from venturing is the emergence of causal understanding of the drivers of the venture s performance new causal understanding creates insight into new opportunity areas next team proficiency is essential to translate causal understanding into coordinated delivery of the product or service to the market new competences emerge as a result of evolving causal understanding and team proficiency which allow the organization to achieve new purposes from these new competences there may then develop distinctive competences that will differentiate the firm from competing organizations these distinctive competences may then become competitive advantages if they can be deployed in delivering product or service attributes that are preferred by the market to the offerings of competitors and competitors cannot readily duplicate them rents can only ensue when these inimitable competitive advantages allow a firm to achieve either distinctive efficiency in the firm or distinctive value for the customers the final section of the article offers ways in which this framework could be used first for research purposes and secondly by venture management

small firm adaptation responses of physicians organizations to regulatory and competitive uncertainty this study addressed the pattern of small organizations s adaptation responses to uncertainty in the regulatory and competitive sectors of their environment using data from physicians in solo pract

welfare effects of discriminatory two parts tariffs constrained by price caps abstract tariff discrimination by a regulated monopolist is sometimes politically unfeasible on distributional grounds however under a simple regulatory constraint discriminatory two part tariffs provide a pareto improvement this suggests an implementable reform of the uniform tariff used in some public utilities