export market performance of oecd countries an empirical examination of the role of cost competitiveness we investigate the relationship between export market shares and relative unit labour costs using a long panel of 12 manufacturing industries across 14 oecd countries we ask how sensitive are export market shares to changes in relative costs and what determines this sensitivity both costs and embodied technology are important but neither can fully explain changing export positions we explore whether residual country specific trends might be linked to deep structural features of economies sensitivity to labour costs is lower in high tech industries and core erm countries industry elasticities have increased especially in industries subject to increasing product market competition

where do markets come from production markets have two sides producers are a fully connected clique transacting with buyers as a separate but aggregated clique each producer is a distinctive firm with a distinctive product each side continually monitors reactions of the other through the medium of a joint social construction the schedule of terms of trade each producer is guided in choice of volume by the tangible outcomes of other producers not by speculation on hypothetical reactions of buyers to its actions each producer acts purely on self interest based on observed actions of all others summarized through a feedback process the summary is the terms of trade schedule which reduces to constant price only in limiting cases the market emerges as a structure of roles with a differentiated niche for each firm explicit formulae both for firms and for market aggregates are obtained by comparative statics methods for one family of assumptions about cost structures and about buyers evaluations of differentiated products not just any set of firms can sustain terms of trade with any set of buyers there prove to be three main kinds of markets and three sorts of market failure within a parameter space that is specified in detail one sort of market paradox has a madison avenue flavor another is more conventional grind and a third crowded is a new form not included in any existing theory of markets current american industrial markets are drawn on for 20 illustrations of which three are presented in some detail inequality in firms market shares measured by gini coefficients is discussed

what is a relationship worth repeated exchange and the development and deployment of relational capital organization scholars have highlighted the value of relationships in fostering effective exchange suggesting that repeated exchange creates a relational asset with latent value derived from elevated social connections norms and simple expectations of exchange continuity yet the empirical evidence supporting such claims remains largely indirect as a consequence few studies have been able to directly examine how contextual factors shape the accumulation of this relational asset or define its value in application we directly measure the value of relationships between suppliers and a large buyer using the buyer s choices in internet enabled procurement auctions to estimate the degree to which stronger relationship histories with suppliers increase willingness to pay for high volume commodity like parts our setting also allows us to examine how this willingness to pay for relationships is shaped by the social context in which they develop and by the exchange context in which they are subsequently depl

the social structure of a national securities market in this article a national securities market the stock options market is characterized as a social structure represented by the networks of actors who traded options on the floor of a major securities exchange trading among actors exhibited distinct social structural patterns that dramatically affected the direction and magnitude of option price volatility the argument that this market is socially structured is constructed in four parts behavioral assumptions about the nature of economic actors models of micronetworks models of macronetworks and price consequences in the ideal typical model of the market actors are assumed to be hyperrational and never to act opportunistically with these behavioral assumptions the micronetworks of actors should be expansive a condition which would result in undifferentiated and homogeneous macronetworks such macronetworks would tend to reduce the volatility of option prices but in the empirical market studied here actors are subject to bounded rationality a

competition and corporate performance are people right to think that competition improves corporate performance my investigations indicate first that there are some theoretical reasons for believing this hypothesis to be correct but they are not overwhelming furthermore the existing empirical evidence on this question is weak however the results reported here based on an analysis of around 670 u k companies do provide some support for this view most important i present evidence that competition as measured by increased numbers of competitors or by lower levels of rents is associated with a significantly higher rate of total factor productivity growth

balancing exploration and exploitation in alliance formation do firms balance exploration and exploitation in their alliance formation decisions and if so why and how we argue that absorptive capacity and organizational inertia impose conflicting pressure

market share market value and innovation in a panel of british manufacturing firms this paper examines the empirical relationship between technological innovations market share and stock market value new developments in the estimation of dynamic count data models are used to control for unobserved firm specific heterogeneity we find a robust and positive effect of market share on observable headcounts of innovations and patents although increased product market competition in the industry tends to stimulate innovative activity furthermore the impact of innovation on market value is larger for firms with higher market shares we argue that our results are consistent with models where high market share firms have incentives to pre emptively innovate

price and authority in inter profit center transactions price and authority have traditionally been regarded as alternative social mechanisms for allocating resources however actual transactions whether inter or intrafirm can be evaluated in terms of the extent to which they combine both of these mechanisms an especially revealing example of this is the exchange of goods between two profit centers in the multi profit center firm three of the most common arrangements or transfer pricing polices for effecting these transactions are examined here exchange autonomy transfers depend primarily on price with no or minimal use of authority mandated full cost transfers involve a substantial exercise of authority relative to the use of price mandated market based transfers use both authority and price in important ways for all three policies the transaction costs of these internal transactions may exceed these costs on external transactions

a status based model of market competition this article explores the significance of status processes for generating and reproducing hierarchy among producers in a market it develops a conception of a market as a status order in which each

inter firm technology transfer partnership embedded licensing or standard licensing agreements when companies decide to engage in technology transfer through licensing to other firms they have two basic options to use standard licensing contracts or to set up more elaborate partnership embedded licensing agreements we find that broader partnership embedded licensing agreements are preferred with higher levels of technological sophistication of industries with greater perceived effectiveness of secrecy as a means of appropriability and when licensors are smaller than their licensees innovative differentials between companies innovative supremacy of the licensor and market and technological overlap between partners appear to have no effect on the preference for a particular form of licensing

cities regions and competitiveness turok i 2004 cities regions and competitiveness regional studies38 1061 1075 competitiveness is a complex concept used in a variety of ways and contexts the paper reviews some of the main ideas particularly as they apply to cities and regions its definition should include the relative position of a region s firms in external markets the productivity of local resources and the extent to which they are used competition takes both an institutionalized form local public agencies competing overtly for investment and other resources and more importantly a less organized form involving firms trading in wider markets there are two contrasting perspectives on the competitive advantages of city regions one emphasizes the benefits of scale and diversity that flow from concentrations of economic activity the other stresses the quality of the interactions between firms and supporting institutions recent studies suggest that the significance of localized business networks or clusters might be exagge

the role of market forces in assuring contractual performance the conditions under which transactors can use the market repeat purchase mechanism of contract enforcement are examined increased price is shown to be a means of assuring contractual performance a necessary and sufficient condition for performance is the existence of price sufficiently above salvageable production costs so that the nonperforming firm loses a discounted steam of rents on future sales which is greater than the wealth increase from nonperformance this will generally imply a market price greater than the perfectly competitive price and rationalize investments in firm specific assets advertising investments thereby become a positive indicator of likely performance

snap benefits and crime evidence from changing disbursement schedules in this paper we study the effects of the timing of nutritional aid disbursement on crime using two main sources of variation a a policy change in illinois that substantially increased the num

implicit understandings in channels of distribution formal agreements can be used to achieve coordination among channel members these agreements work by exerting explicit control over the members who make the agreements however implicit understandings can be used as a partial substitute for more formal agreements in this paper we show that implicit understandings can develop as channel members learn about each other s behavior we show that this learning leads to the use of the implicit influence each channel member has over the other s behavior the learning leading to an implicit understanding requires some form of experimentation or historical observation this learning results in an oscillating retail price when only one channel member learns the other s behavior both channel members obtain greater profits than when neither member learns and both channel members obtain less profits than when both members learn however the member who does not learn obtains more profits than the member who learns we also show that implicit understandings r

global microstructures the virtual societies of financial markets using participant observation data interviews and trading transcripts drawn from interbank currency trading in global investment banks this article examines regular patterns of integration that characterize the global social system embedded in economic transactions to interpret these patterns which are global in scope but microsocial in character this article uses the term global microstructures features of the interaction order loosely defined have become constitutive of and implanted in processes that have global breadth this study draws on schutz in the development of the concept of temporal coordination as the basis for the level of intersubjectivity discerned in global markets this article contributes to economic sociology through the analysis of cambist i e trading markets which are distinguished from producer markets and by positing a form of market coordination that supplements relational or network forms of coordination

how effective are fiscal incentives for r d a review of the evidence this paper surveys the econometric evidence on the effectiveness of fiscal incentives for r d we describe the effects of tax systems in oecd countries on the user cost of r d the current position changes over time and across different firms in different countries we describe and criticize the methodologies used to evaluate the effect of the tax system on

does government r d policy mainly benefit scientists and engineers conventional wisdom holds that the social rate of return to r d significantly exceeds the private rate of return and therefore r d should be subsidized in the u s the government has directly funded a large fraction of total r d spending this paper shows that there is a serious problem with such government efforts to increase inventive activity the majority of r d spending is actually just salary payments for r d workers their labor supply however is quite inelastic so when the government funds r d a significant fraction of the increased spending goes directly into higher wages using cps data on wages of scientific personnel this paper shows that government r d spending raises wages significantly particularly for scientists related to defense such as physicists and aeronautical engineers because of the higher wages conventional estimates of the effectiveness of r d policy may be 30 to 50 too high the results also imply that by altering the wages of scientists and engineers even for firms not receiving federal support government funding directly crowds out private inventive activity this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

firm scope experience historic multimarket contact with partners centrality and the relationship between structural holes and performance this study investigates characteristics that affect the relationship between firms positions in a network of collaborative ties with other firms and their performance firms located in similarly structured networks rich in structural holes may obtain different performance results depending on their 1 capacity to absorb heterogeneous information 2 ability to protect against partner noncooperation and 3 bargaining power in this paper i argue that firms with a wide scope of experience have superior absorptive capacity for dealing with heterogeneous information hence such firms will be able to extract performance improvements from network positions rich in structural holes furthermore firms with a high level of historic multimarket contact mmc with their partners are able to reduce the risks of partner noncooperation hence augmenting their performance compared to firms in open networks that do not enjoy mmc with their own partners finally firms of low centrality in the industry s network of alliances will extract performance benefits from enhancing bargaining power as a result of exploiting brokerage opportunities in open networks these arguments are corroborated in a study of relationships formed among investment banks advising on the merger and acquisition transactions in the united kingdom between 1992 and 2001

a unified systems perspective of family firm performance abstract theory and practice indicate that in family influenced firms the interaction of the family unit the business entity and individual family members create unique systemic conditions and constituencies that impact the performance outcomes of the family business social system habbershon and williams fam bus rev 12 1999 1 have suggested that these unique systemic family influences can be captured through an analysis of the resources and capabilities of the organization in this paper we pursue their line of thinking and more specifically examine the systemic relationship of resources and capabilities as a source of advantage or constraint to the performance outcomes for family influenced firms the idiosyncratic firm level bundle of resources and capabilities resulting from the systems interactions are referred to as the familiness of the firm wealth creating performance for family influenced firms is a function of the distinctive familiness generated by the family business system the performance model focuses on a particular subset of family influenced firms whose performance goal is transgenerational wealth and wealth creation potential we refer to those families that meet this premise as enterprising families we develop a unified systems model of performance that links the resources and capabilities generated in the enterprising families system with their potential for transgenerational wealth creation

capabilities and industrial policy lessons from the new zealand movie industry this article examines the new zealand government s creation of an internationally successful industry the activities of the new zealand film commission are examined with regard to the effect they had on the entrepreneurs they nurtured factors that contributed to success include the market driven nature of the policy and an emphasis on capability building support is found for the suggestion that government agencies should act like venture capitalists negative aspects of government intervention included political capture and smoke stake chasing

creating value through mutual commitment to business network relationships a structural model of business relationship development in a business network context is formulated and tested on delta from the european international marketing and purchasing imp project the e

technology and competitiveness this paper reviews the literature on technology and competitiveness first the concept of the international competitiveness of a country and various theoretical approaches on the relationship between trade and growth are discussed then a number of empirical studies of the impact of technology as evidenced by r d patents etc on exports are examined the final section summarizes the evidence and considers the lessons for policy copyright 1996 by oxford university press

does public assistance reduce recidivism under the personal responsibility and work opportunity reconciliation act prwora of 1996 individuals convicted of drug related felonies were permanently banned from receiving welfare and food stamps since then over 30 states have opted out of the federal ban in this paper i estimate the impact of public assistance eligibility on recidivism by exploiting both the adoption of the federal ban and subsequent passage of state laws that lifted the ban using administrative prison records on five million offenders and a triple differences research design i find that public assistance eligibility for drug offenders reduces one year recidivism rates by 10 percent

social capital for hire mobility of technical professionals and firm influence in wireless standards committees the movement of personnel between firms has been shown to have important implications for firms yet there has been little direct investigation of the underlying mechanisms we propose that in addition to their human capital mobile individuals carry social capital affecting the outcomes of the firms they join and leave by altering the patterns of interaction between firms in this study we examine how job mobility affects firm influence in a technical standards setting committee for u s wireless telecommunications we hypothesize and find that hiring individuals who are richer in social capital increases firm influence in technical standards setting committees by increasing the hiring firm s social capital we also find the benefits of hiring social capital are attenuated when an interfirm relationship is maintained by multiple individuals in contrast we find that the loss of personnel does not affect a firm s social capital or influence over standards directly but that it does have an effect on firm social capital and influence contingent on changes in the firm s business strategy in advancing these arguments we address the broader question of individuals as carriers of social capital and the conditions under which interpersonal connections are appropriable by firms

venture capitalists and cooperative start up commercialization strategy this paper examines the possible impact of venture capital vc backing on the commercialization direction of technology based start ups by asking to what extent if at all do vc funded start ups engage in cooperative commercialization strategies strategic alliances or technology licensing or both relative to a comparable set of start ups and with what consequences to address these questions i assemble a novel data set that matches firms receiving a federal research and development subsidy through the u s small business innovative research program to vc funded firms by observable characteristics in five technology intensive industries these data allow decoupling of cooperative activity resulting from start up development via the passage of calendar time from that due to association with vcs an analysis of the 696 start ups in the sample split by an external funding source suggests substantial boosts in both cooperative activity associated with vc backed firms and in the likelihood of an initial public offering

after the break up the relational and reputational consequences of withdrawals from venture capital syndicates organizational theorists are increasingly interested in the antecedents of terminating interorganizational relationships but have paid little attention to the disruptive consequences of such termi

the dynamics of job separation the case of federal employees summary in this paper we develop a model of workers quit decisions using panel data on a sample of us federal government employees we use maximum likelihood techniques to determine how much of the observed decline in quits with job tenure is a result of declining individual quit propensities state dependence rather than dynamic sample self selection heterogeneity the latter is found to be much more important than the former the effects of relative federal government wages and other variables on quits are also estimated the results are useful for analysing federal compensation policies

market networks and corporate behavior data on market relations between a large population of corporations and investment banks are used to study the organization market interforce the pattern of direct market ties between a firm and its banks forms of interfaces range from a long term exclusive tie the relationship interface to many short lived episodic ties the transaction interface with hybrid forms between the two poles contrary to widespread belief the article finds that strong relationships still exist transactions interfaces are rare most firms use hybrid interfaces a firm s interface is conceptualized as the intentional result of its efforts to reduce dependence and exploit power advantages observed interfaces are shown to be related systematically to various power dependence concepts including resource intensity number of transactions and dollar amounts raised criticality the availability of resource alternatives power asymmetry between a firm and its main bank organization size standardization of exchange and

labor market advantages of organizational status a study of lateral partner hiring by large u s law firms prior research demonstrates product market advantages of organizational status but largely neglects factor market advantages we propose that status is advantageous in labor markets because individuals generally consider employer status a nonpecuniary employment benefit dyadic analyses of lateral partner hiring by large u s law firms demonstrate two status based advantages in employee hiring and retention first high status firms are more likely than low status ones to hire an employee from a more profitable competitor second high status firms are most likely to lose an employee to a lower status competitor when the competitor is atypically more profitable we discuss implications of these findings for individual and organizational status attainment and for the stability of industry status hierarchies

hungarian western partnerships a grounded theoretical model of integration processes and outcomes international cooperative ventures icvs are known to be strongly influenced by the parent firms values practices and systems vpss however less clear is whether and why vpss actually adopted by an icv are those of either parent singly both parents jointly or neither parent this question is especially timely in the transition economies of central and eastern europe where cooperative activity with western multinationals is growing rapidly and where decades old legacies of communism abound in this exploratory study we used a multiple case study methodology to examine 17 hungarian western icvs results show that a majority of the icvs adopted the vpss of the western partner we develop a theoretical model of integration process and outcomes and suggest future research directions

ripples of fear the diffusion of a bank panic community reactions against organizations can be driven by negative information spread through a diffusion process that is distinct from the diffusion of organizational practices bank panics offer

social capital structural holes and the formation of an industry network the formation of a network is determined by the opposition of two forces the first is the reproduction of network structure as a general social resource for network members the second is the alteration of network structure by entrepreneurs for their own benefit the idea of reproduction is a conventional one in organizational sociology but has taken on increased importance due to the work of bourdieu and coleman in contrast burt stresses the entrepreneurship of individual agents in exploiting structural holes that lie between constrained positions though complementary the theories of social capital and structural holes have fundamentally different implications for network formation this paper investigates these theories by examining empirically the formation of the interorganizational network among biotechnology firms we propose that network structure determines the frequency with which a new biotechnology firm or startup establishes new relationships network structure indicates both where soci

the online shadow of offline signals which sellers get contacted in online b2b marketplaces this article extends the understanding of what impels buyers to contact particular sellers in online business to business b2b marketplaces which are typically characterized by sparse social structures and concomitant limitations in observing social cues integrating an institutional perspective with signaling theory our core argument is that offline seller characteristics that are visible online in particular geographic location and legal status convey credible signals of seller behavior because they provide buyers with information on sellers local institutional quality and the institutionally induced obligations and controls acting on sellers using unique data from a large italian online b2b marketplace between the fourth quarter of 1999 and july 2001 we find that both sellers local institutional quality and their legal statuses affect a buyer s likelihood of contacting a seller moreover consistent with the idea that a buyer s own local institutional quality generates a relevant reference point against which sellers are evaluated we find that a buyer is progressively more likely to contact sellers the higher their local institutional quality relative to the buyer jointly our findings imply that in online b2b marketplaces signals conveyed by sellers geographic locations and legal statuses may constitute substantive sources of competitive heterogeneity and market segmentation

network centrality and organizational aspirations a behavioral interaction in the context of international strategic alliances the authors wish to acknowledge the financial support provided by the spanish ministry of science and education under projects eco2013 48496 c4 2 r eco2013 48496 c4 4 r and eco2017 48496 c4 4 r

innovation and firm growth does firm age play a role this paper explores the relationship between innovation and firm growth for firms of different ages we hypothesize that young firms undertake riskier innovation activities which may have greater performance benefits if successful or greater losses if unsuccessful using an extensive spanish community innovation survey sample for the period 2004 2012 we apply panel quantile regressions to study the effect of r d activities on firm growth i e sales growth productivity growth and employment growth our results show that young firms face larger performance benefits from r d at the upper quantiles of the growth rate distribution but face larger decline at the lower quantiles r d investment by young firms therefore appears to significantly riskier than r d investment by more mature firms which suggests some policy implications

the politics of public aid to private industry the role of policy networks firms lobby for subsidies along geographic sector or factor lines and as a result receive subsidies with a local sectoral or factorwide scope this article investigates what determines the line of cleavage and thereby the scope of the subsidy the factor mobility hypothesis according to which an economic prior the degree of factor mobility determines the geometry of lobbying coalitions misses the fact that factor mobility is as much the product of policy and policymaking as it is its determinant this article argues instead that politicians maximize their chances of staying in power through the deliberate use of subsidies to structure the political debate and embed factor owners into stable policy networks individual factor owners in turn join these policy networks to lobby for monopoly rents capable of insuring them against adverse economic competition the model yields two testable hypotheses first right governments favor subsidies to capital whereas left governments favor subsidies to lab

complementarity status similarity and social capital as drivers of alliance formation using data on u s investment banking firms syndication in underwriting corporate stock offerings during the 1980s this study explores the factors that drive alliance formation between two specific firms we compare resource complementarity status similarity and social capital as a basis of alliance formation the findings indicate that the likelihood of investment banks alliance formation is positively related to the complementarity of their capabilities as well as their status similarity social capital arising from banks direct and indirect collaborative experiences also plays a very important role in alliance formation the number of deals given by a lead bank to a potential partner over the past three years has an inverted u shaped relationship to the probability that the lead bank will invite the potential partner to form an alliance our findings indicate that status similarity and social capital have a stronger effect on alliance formation in initial public offering deals than in secondary offering deals as the former are more uncertain than the latter using these findings we discuss the role of complementarity status similarity and social capital in alliance formation copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

top management s attention to discontinuous technological change corporate venture capital as an alert mechanism technological discontinuities pose serious challenges to top managers attention these discontinuities which often occur at the fringes of an industry are usually driven by innovative and often venture capital backed start ups creating new products and transforming existing industries in ways that are difficult for incumbent managers to understand against the backdrop of their existing cognitive schemata however failing to appreciate and embrace successful technological discontinuities might endanger incumbents very existence extending the attention based view we explore whether and how interorganizational relationships guide top managers attention either to or away from technological discontinuities we propose that homophilous relationships e g alliances with industry peers should exhibit a negative relationship with incumbents timely attention to technological discontinuities whereas heterophilous relationships e g with venture capitalists as a result of coinvestments should exhibit a positive relationship furthermore we hypothesize that the status of the partners strengthens the effect of homophilous and heterophilous relationships with the timely attention of top managers to technological discontinuities based on a longitudinal study of the incumbents in four information and communications technology industry sectors we find that heterophilous ties through corporate venture capital cvc coinvesting with high status venture capital firms exhibit a strong positive relationship with timely attention cvc when it connects senior management to high status venture capitalists through coinvestments has a special role in directing top managers attention to technological discontinuities and ensuing business opportunities implications for the understanding of the role of interorganizational ties as structural determinants of top managers attention are discussed

the economics of organization the transaction cost approach the transaction cost approach to the study of economic organization regards the transaction as the basic unit of analysis and holds that an understanding of transaction cost economizing is central to the study of organizations applications of this approach require that transactions be dimensionalized and that alternative governance structures be described economizing is accomplished by assigning transactions to governance structures in a discriminating way the approach applies both to the determination of efficient boundaries as between firms and markets and to the organization of internal transactions including the design of employment relations the approach is compared and contrasted with selected parts of the organization theory literature

the global configuration of a speculative trading operation an empirical study of foreign exchange trading this paper proposes a theory of firm boundaries based on fore knowledge development and exploitation in speculative or informed trading foreign exchange trading provides this study s empirical context from research on information economics we suggest optimal speculative trading operations are multiunit and globally dispersed alternatively transaction cost economics suggests atomistic actors prevail in the market for fungible commodities like currencies we also develop competing hypotheses about information technology s effects on foreign exchange trading operations speculation arguments predict that the global scope of trading operations will expand after the introduction of generic information technologies transaction cost economics proposes that when atomistic actors do not prevail trading operations will contract after this introduction we test competing predictions with models of the expansion contraction and net change in a firm s global dispersion we estimate these models with data from the population of banks worldwide engaged in interbank foreign exchange currency fx trading from 1974 to 1993 our results uncover two types of firms those that approach the atomistic actor of transaction cost economics and those that resemble the globally dispersed multiunit configuration from our speculation discussion these results encourage reflection on how the theory of the firm differs when firms trade to produce versus speculate

good jobs and recidivism i estimate the impact of employment opportunities on recidivism among 1 7 million offenders released from a california prison between 1993 and 2008 the institutional structure of the california criminal justice system as well as location skill and industry specific job accession data provide a unique framework for identifying a causal effect of job availability on criminal behaviour i find that increases in construction and manufacturing opportunities at the time of release are associated with significant reductions in recidivism other types of opportunities including those characterised by lower wages that are typically accessible to individuals with criminal records do not influence recidivism

strategic r d policy this paper uses a natural extension of lee and wilde s 1980 model to show that the outcome of technological competition between firms or countries depends on the resolution of two forces the profit incentive and the competitive threat using a duopoly model of a patent race the paper illustrates that by understanding the relative strength of these two forces one can not only go a long way to understanding the outcome of these races but also obtain crucial insights into the desirability of various r d policies the particular example considered in the paper is the subsidizing of r d effort copyright 1989 by royal economic society

network location and learning the influence of network resources and firm capabilities on alliance formation this paper presents a dynamic firm level study of the role of network resources in determining alliance formation such resources inhere not so much within the firm but reside in the interfirm networks in which firms are placed data from extensive fieldwork show that by influencing the extent to which firms have access to information about potential partners such resources are an important catalyst for new alliances especially because alliances entail considerable hazards this study also assesses the importance of firms capabilities with alliance formation and material resources as determinants of their alliance decisions i test this dynamic framework and its hypotheses about the role of time varying network resources and firm capabilities with comprehensive longitudinal multi industry data on the formation of strategic alliances by a panel of firms between 1970 and 1989 the results confirm field observations that accumulated network resources arising from firm participation in the network of accumulated prior alliances are influential in firms decisions to enter into new alliances this study highlights the importance of network resources that firms derive from their embeddedness in networks for explaining their strategic behavior copyright 1999 john wiley sons ltd

networks and small business growth an explanatory model to date there has been limited empirical research related to network theory with this article we have tried to fill this gap by testing an explanatory model of the impact of networks on small business growth to analyze this causal relationship the log linear technique was used the results suggest that networks have an influence on the growth of a small business especially through contacts with national and international entrepreneurs

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

behind the market stage where real societies exist part i the role of public and private order institutions this two part article is an attempt to clarify the social conditions upon which the viability and efficiency of the market system rest it strives to show that the embeddedness thesis that is an explanation based upon the existence of long run personal ties involving the use of reputation mechanisms among transactors cannot fully elucidate the question as to how the problem of trust is solved in market societies as explained in part i there are difficulties of both theoretical and empirical historical kinds and these explain why the market order needs to be sustained by private and public order institutions in part ii the role of generalised morality in backing or supplementing such institutions is discussed in the light of game theory and particular emphasis is put on the ability of moral norms to sustain honest behaviour by generating the right kind of preferences and establishing trust the vexed problem of the dynamics of norm emergence and erosion is then addressed with a view to showing

a strategic needs perspective on operations outsourcing and other inter firm relationships abstract this paper considers two issues the formation of inter firm relationships and the choice of governance form these have been widely investigated in both the strategic management and operations management fields this paper contributes to the literature in three ways first we address why firms enter inter firm relationships by hypothesizing that managers enter them to pursue three strategic needs that is efficiency effectiveness knowledge learning and global market access our first contribution evidences the relationship between the above strategic needs and a number of operational objectives that managers normally pursue in an inter firm relationship second we hypothesize how the achievement of the above strategic needs influences the choice of governance form third we compare our framework with the operations management approach to strategic networks by evidencing similarities between the two approaches and showing that managers pursue a similar approach when they face inter firm agreement issues whether agreements are supply chain or strategy oriented we empirically test our framework using secondary data consisting of 95 inter firm agreements our findings largely support the theoretical predictions and also have important practical implications first our results offer managers practice suggestions on what kinds of objectives can be pursued together in inter firm relationships to achieve specific strategic needs and which governance form is most suitable depending on the strategic need in question second we consider the strategic reasoning concerning inter firm relationship management and some engineering issues such as time and quality objectives that while largely considered in the operations management literature are often neglected in the strategic management field

investigating the microstructure of network evolution alliance formation in the mobile communications industry theories of network evolution frequently focus on network endogeneity which stresses predictable path dependent evolution rooted in previous network structure however theories of technological evolution and innovation remind us that networks may undergo significant change as technological discontinuities exert pressures on existing relationships and firms engage in exploratory search how can we incorporate sources of change into our theories of network evolution instead of focusing so squarely on sources of inertia by using recent advances in graph theory we develop a more flexible theory of network evolution by examining two patterns of partner selection that have the potential to change networks shortcut formation between relatively unconnected partner clusters and the entry of new firms into the main component of incumbent partners our findings suggest an important contingency for the endogeneity perspective structural homophily predicts shortcut formation but not alliance formation within clusters furthermore we demonstrate that the pattern of alliance formation between incumbents and new entrants to the alliance network is driven by a combination of endogenous and exogenous mechanisms new entrants attach to more prominent incumbents but they are more likely to attach with an alliance deal that comprises multiple partners we demonstrate these findings in an industry where systemic technology encourages cooperation and where network entry is prevalent the mobile communications industry from 1993 2002

do r d tax credits work evidence from an international panel of countries 1979 1994 this paper examines the impact of fiscal incentives on the level of rd and just under a 10 per cent rise in r d in the long run

in search of complementary assets the determinants of alliance formation of high tech start ups abstract why do new technology based firms ntbfs cooperate starting from teece s teece d j 1986 profiting from technological innovation implications for integration collaboration licensing and public policy research policy 15 285 305 conceptual framework and taking advantage of subsequent literature on alliance formation in the resource and competence based tradition and in the social structure perspective we derive an empirical model that aims at highlighting the inducements and obstacles that these firms face in alliance formation according to firm specific characteristics and the nature of the alliance in particular a distinction is made between exploitative commercial alliances and explorative technological alliances the econometric estimates based on a large sample of italian young high tech firms that are observed from 1994 to 2003 provide strong evidence supporting two key intuitions of teece s work first the combination of specialized complementary assets appears to be a key driver of the formation of exploitative commercial alliances by ntbfs more specifically patent holding affects positively the likelihood to establish commercial alliances but this propensity is found to rapidly decrease with firm size suggesting that as long as ntbfs become larger and possess specialized commercial assets their urge for commercial alliances diminishes second following the parallelism set forth by teece between search for alliance partners and access to external financing the analysis indicates that potentially beneficial alliances may not take place because of the high transaction costs faced by smaller ntbfs in this respect our results clearly support the view that sponsor institutions as public research organizations venture and corporate venture capitalists may sensibly reduce these costs and that their role crucially depends on both the identity of the sponsor and the type of alliance

interindustry r d spillovers rates of return and production in high tech industries this paper presents estimates of the productivity and factor bias effects of interindustry r d spillovers for five high tech industries each industry is distinguished as a separate spillover source the industries are each affected by r d spillovers and are themselves spillover sources thus a spillover network between the industries is estimated private and social rates of return to r d capital are calculated the private rates of return are generally greater than the returns to physical capital in addition the social rates of return are greater than the private rates the results show that there are significant differences between industries as to their importance as sources of r d spillovers this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

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

the role of contractual governance flexibility in realizing the outcomes of key customer relationships abstract an entrepreneurial firm s relationships with customers suppliers investors universities and other organizations have a significant and long lasting impact on the survival and success of the firm yet little research has focused on how the management of these relationships influences outcomes for entrepreneurial firms this paper focuses on the customer relationships of new technology based firms ntbfs we aim to contribute to the literature on the governance of exchange relationships between ntbfs and their customers further in so doing we seek to explore the implications of such governance for the performance of new firms because of their small size their liabilities of newness and their highly specialized knowledge intensive resources ntbfs are able to maintain only a limited number of close customer relationships consequently ntbfs often become highly dependent on one or a few of their customers in this study we focus on the relationships between ntbfs and their single largest customers we refer to the customer that accounts for the highest proportion of an ntbf s total revenue as the key customer strategic management literature resource dependence theory and transaction cost economics emphasize the risks associated with being dependent on an exchange relationship focusing on the opportunistic use of power by the exchange partner these perspectives suggest that firms can minimize their external dependencies and protect themselves against opportunism through the use of contracts the present paper expands this view by also examining how flexibility in exchange governance may unlock potential benefits or dampen potential dangers that an ntbf faces in its commitment to its single largest customer e g sharing the costs and risks of r d with the customer improving the reputation of the ntbf and realizing savings in sales and marketing costs we examine the extent to which the realization of the potential positive and negative outcomes of a high level of dependence are moderated by the flexibility of the exchange partners attitudes toward contractual agreements the research question that we seek to answer is does the manner in which a contractual agreement is implemented affect the outcomes of a customer relationship for an ntbf at high levels of exchange dependence on the key customer we develop a set of hypotheses that examines how the governance of the key customer relationship affects the ntbf s new product development reputation and sales costs when exchange dependence on the key customer is high we use the term contractual governance flexibility to refer to the extent to which the exchange partners are willing to adjust to changes in the relationship instead of relying on the contract we test the hypotheses with survey data from 195 ntbfs in the uk the results of regression analyses reveal that contractual governance flexibility moderates the relationship between exchange dependence and outcomes in relationships with a high level of exchange dependence greater contractual governance flexibility was associated with greater new product development and sales cost advantages no such benefits were realized for relationships in which exchange partners relied heavily on the contract these findings are important because they suggest that by relaxing formal contractual mechanisms governing a relationship ntbfs can derive benefits from key customer relationships that are characterized by a high level of dependence our findings suggest that at high levels of exchange dependence on key customers ntbfs can benefit when greater contractual governance flexibility is present our data indicated that interestingly ntbfs tend to do just the opposite at higher levels of exchange dependence ntbfs are inclined to rely increasingly on the contract by so doing they may fail to realize the potential benefits of the relationships such as gaining access to complementary resources and reducing costs these outcomes which may be derived from dependent exchange relationships by means of contractual governance flexibility can have a significant influence on the long term development and competitive advantage of an entrepreneurial firm

implicit contracts a survey 7mplicit contracts resolve the distribution of uncertainty and utilization of specific human capital between risk averse workers and less risk averse firms incomplete contracts are required to yield involuntary layoffs in contract markets otherwise contracts are efficient and pareto optimal by construction there is a close relation between contract theory and neoclassical labor market theory contracts smooth consumption but increase the volatility of labor supply and labor utilization to demand disturbances because contractural insurance eliminates the income effects of socially diversifiable risks this result is similar to the intertemporal substitution hypothesis however the price mechanism in a contract is substantially different contracts embody a nonlinear two part pricing scheme the lump sum part allocates the income consumption consequences of risks and the marginal pricing part allocates production and labor utilization this implicit pricing mechanism is in all respects flexible though the observed average hourly wage combines both parts and may give the outward appearanceof rigidity furthermore the observed average wage rate in a contract does not reflect marginal conditions necessary for structural econometric estimation indivisibilities appear necessary to account for the split between work sharing and layoffs contracts with private information are also considered in the nonlinear pricing context this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

dual market structures and the likelihood of repeated ties evidence from pharmaceutical biotechnology this paper analyses the role of repeated ties in the high tech pharmaceutical biotechnology industry a sector that is characterized by a strong dual market structure our most important finding is that previous ties in pairs of large pharmaceutical companies and small biotechnology firms have a negative effect on their subsequent partnering an explanation for this result is found in the context of understanding the specifics of large small coalitions in a high tech dual market structure unlike what is known about repeated ties in many other industries this high tech dual market structure indicates that r d partnerships between a small number of very large companies and a large group of dependent small firms are not characterized by mutual dependence similarity or equality

international r d rivalry and industrial strategy this paper presents a theory of government intervention which provides an explanation for industrial strategy policies such as r d or export subsidies in imperfectly competitive international markets domestic net welfare is improved by the capture of a greater share of the output of rent earning industries although the subsidy ridden noncooperative international equilibrium is jointly suboptimal behaviour of governments and firms is modelled as a three stage subgame perfect nash equilibrium the assumption that the government is the first player in this game allows it to influence equilibrium outcomes by altering the set of credible actions open to firms

short term projects and emergent careers evidence from hollywood the hollywood film industry is considered as a system of recurrent ties among the various major participants who usually work under short term contracts for single films this form of project based organization in seen as a response to uncertainty and risk in the film industry the paper examines the ways in which independent contractors producers directors cinematographers and actors organize and operate to reduce uncertainty and risk and to increase profits the analysis of data from 2 430 films made in the period 1965 80 establishes patterns of recurrent ties among participants who are at comparable levels of cumulative productivity with respect to earnings oscars oscar nominations and number of previous films the paper also considers the degree to which film earnings are influenced by the past productivity of the major participants

uk industrial policy old tunes on new instruments this paper discusses the current labour government s industrial policy as most recently reflected in its document on manufacturing strategy in the context of industrial policy in the uk over the last 50 years and the form that it has taken elsewhere in europe it concludes that the thematic priorities for uk industrial policy in the 1960s international competitiveness innovation competition and skills continue to be the key themes of uk policy today the paper presents data that illustrate the gaps that exist in key indicators of performance between the uk and its main economic competitors the difference between the 1960s and the 2000s is that there are new instruments of policy two areas in particular are focused on competition policy and technology policy and an attempt is made to assess the likely effectiveness of these new instruments the paper concludes that the international evidence base for these new approaches is reasonably robust but that it is still too soon to tell if they are having the hoped for impact on the performance of the uk economy copyright 2002 oxford university press

strategic alliance based sourcing and market performance evidence from foreign firms operating in china although foreign multinational firms from the triad regions increasingly use mainland china as both a sourcing and a marketing location no study has directly examined the sourcing strategy performance linkage using resource complementarity and resource dependence theory we extend the sourcing literature and apply these perspectives to an important transitional economy china these two theoretical perspectives suggest that product and uncertainty factors moderate the relationship between strategic alliance based sourcing sa sourcing of major components and market performance we find that at low levels of product innovativeness and technological uncertainty the use of sa sourcing is positively related to market performance however the effects of product differentiation and demand uncertainty on the sourcing performance relationship are insignificant journal of international business studies 2005 36 187 208 doi 10 1057 palgrave jibs 8400120

public policy towards r d in oligopolistic industries the importance of determining optimal policy towards r d cannot be exaggerated given the worldwide interest in fostering r d and given the significant differences between european and u s policies towards interfirm cooperation on r d moreover the problem is an inherently difficult one because of the complex nature of the r d process since r d is a component of fixed costs industries where it is important tend to be concentrated hence r d policy must go hand in hand with competition policy at the same time r d is like any form of investment in that it precedes the production stage hence issues of time consistency and strategic commitment inevitably arise in considering the choice of r d policy finally r d by one firm typically leads to spillovers wbich benefit other firms so that r d exhibits many of the character department of economics university college dublin belfield dublin 4 ireiatid for helpful discussions and comments we are grateful to two anonymous referees to pedro bartos steve martin massimo motta and damien neven and to participants at seminars in birmingham st andrew s and warwick at a cepr workshop on r d spillovers in lausanne at erwit 94 in caslel gandolfo eea 95 in prague the 1996 conference on industrial economics at universidad carlos iii de madrid and a meeting of the dublin economics workshop this paper was produced as part of the international economic performance programme of the centre for economic performance london school of economics supported by the u k esrc an earlier version was circulated as cepr discussion paper no 1243 see alexis jacquemin 1988 and stephen martin 1996 istics of a public good albeit one that is mostly privately produced tbe degree to which such spillovers occur and can be internalized is another crucial influence on the desirable pattem of intervention