new venture survival ignorance external shocks and risk reduction strategies abstract although scholars have long recognized the increased mortality risk that new ventures face in terms of a liability of newness most of the discussion around this risk has been in terms of the contextual constraints that new ventures face and the difficulties that managers have in overcoming them this emphasis is in part a reflection of the perils of newness but also stems from the retrospective and aggregate perspective taken by researchers although the macro level perspective of new venture mortality has made a significant contribution to our knowledge of mortality risk patterns there has been little interest in identifying how venture managers can address the risks that all new organizations face we argue that in order to make progress in explaining new venture survival a theoretical model is required that uses a more micro level perspective to explain new venture failure and the flip side new venture survival in this paper we develop such a model we establish a definition of mortality risk and argue that the liability of newness is largely dependent on the degree of novelty ignorance associated with a new venture novelty is viewed in three different dimensions viz to the market to the technology of production and to management novelty to the market concerns the degree to which the customers are uncertain about the new venture novelty in production concerns the extent to which the production technology used by the new venture is similar to the technologies in which the production team has experience and knowledge novelty to management concerns the entrepreneurial team s lack of business skills industry specific information and start up experience we argue that mortality risk increases with the degree of novelty in each dimension and with the number of dimensions in which the new venture is novel we propose that the decline in mortality risk occurs as the venture s novelty in each of the three dimensions is eroded by information search and dissemination processes this allows the new firm to become an established business and explains what we term the evolutionary path of mortality novelty and risk decline monotonically after a period of adolescence as ignorance decays over time due to passive learning we also propose that there is a strategic mortality risk path that reflects the impact of positive and negative shocks shocks are exogenous events that alter the overall degree of novelty at a point in time positive shocks decrease overall novelty while negative shocks increase overall novelty and reversals endogenous actions that increase the overall novelty of the new venture at a point in time on the mortality risk of a new venture if the incidence and effects of these disruptions can be managed then venture managers may be able to mitigate the mortality risk for their venture we argue that risk reduction strategies can be employed most of which impact on one or more of the dimensions of mortality risk in order to increase the firm s chances of survival a series of risk reduction strategies are proposed and their impact on the determinants of mortality risk is considered

politics time and the laffer curve why should a rationally motivated political decision process generate an inverse relationship between tax rates and tax revenues there would never seem a logical reason for increasing tax rates beyond maximum revenue limits in this note we explain how such a position can emerge and show why once in such a position political decision makers may find it difficult to escape

the tortoise versus the hare progress and business viability differences between conventional and leisure based founders social science researchers have long pursued answers to the puzzle of why some people achieve certain milestones more quickly than others and whether rate of progress matters for long run outcomes this tortoise versus hare puzzle raises the question of whether speed is a valid indicator of viability in an undertaking are those with slower rates of progress any less off in terms of long run achievement when compared to their faster counterparts we investigate this tortoise and hare puzzle in the context of business formation an activity pursued by millions in the united states our analysis of a nationally representative survey of u s business founders revealed that leisure based founders were slower to make progress initially but after a certain time threshold their progress was no different than other conventional types of founders more importantly leisure based founders showed more favorable initial economic and non economic outcomes as these founders were more likely to consistently report early sales and profitability and were more committed to investing time into their ventures our study findings have both theoretical and practical implications for the evaluation of venture performance when the rate of progress is considered to be a leading indicator of new business viability

human values and preferences for cleaner livestock production abstract this article analyzes the relationship between the preferences of european consumers for process attributes of pig farming broadly related to sustainable oriented practices and the individual human values as identified by schwartz a sample of 2437 nationally representative individuals from five european countries was analyzed using a generalized logit model our contribution suggests that european consumers are aware of the environmental impact of pig production swine production attributes that emerged as most significant in our survey are those related to the possibilities of pigs being raised outdoors less important bust still significant are the positive consumers preference for low fat content standard meat quality and small farm size finally our results suggest that consumers preferences are massively linked to individual values in particular consumers showing enhanced self transcendency and high openness to change values are likely to call for cleaner pork production systems on the contrary consumers with more pronounced self enhancement conservation and hedonism values are more likely to pay little attention to sustainability in the swine sector results allow to assess the social acceptance of the implementation of cleaner production processes in livestock production

the nature of government expenditures and the shape of the laffer curve abstract the existence of a negatively sloped section on the tax revenue tax rate relationship is shown to crucially depend on the nature of government expenditures it is proved that a sufficient condition for existence is that the government expenditures should take the form of cash transfers to consumers rather than being used to provide a government good

does start up financing influence start up speed evidence from the panel study of entrepreneurial dynamics why are some entrepreneurs able to start a new firm more quickly than others in the venture creation process drawing on pecking order and agency theory this study investigates how start up capital structure influences the time to either new firm founding or quitting the start up process the temporal aspect of the start up process is one that is often discussed but rarely studied therefore we utilize competing risk and cox regression event history analysis on a nationally representative sample of us entrepreneurs to investigate how start up capital structure impacts the time in gestation to particular kinds of start up outcomes our findings suggest that external equity has an appreciable impact on new firm emergence over time and that the percentage of ownership held by the founders attenuates the benefits of external equity

effects of an environmental tax on meat and dairy consumption in sweden this study evaluated the environmental impacts of introducing an environmental tax on meat and dairy consumption in sweden three meat products beef pork and chicken four dairy products milk fermented products cream and cheese and four pollutants generating environmental damage greenhouse gases ghg nitrogen ammonia and phosphorus were included in the analysis the unit tax applied corresponded to between 8 9 and 33 3 of the respective price per kg product in 2009 consumer response to the tax was calculated by econometric estimates of the almost ideal demand system aids for meat and dairy products using per capita consumption data and prices the results indicated relatively inelastic own price elasticities and high income elasticities for all meat products and slightly lower for dairy products simultaneous introduction of a tax on all seven products decreased emissions of ghg nitrogen ammonia and phosphorus from the livestock sector by up to 12

some analytics of the laffer curve abstract it is shown that in a general equilibrium model with one private good one public good labour and an income tax certain widely assumed properties of the laffer curve do not necessarily hold for well behaved functional forms it may not be continuous and may not have an interior maximum its slope depends on technology as well as on the tax elasticity of labour supply for certain technologies a more negative elasticity may imply a more positive slope moreover the relevant tax elasticity is a general equilibrium one which may differ in sign from the widely quoted partial equilibrium one

environmental costs of meat production the case of typical eu pork production abstract this paper aims to address two questions first what is the real cost of meat to society if taking into account the environmental costs arising throughout the product life cycle and second whether and how the environmental costs related to meat production can be reduced in addressing the issues we use pig meat production in the eu as a case study the environmental costs of meat are displayed first as characterized results at different midpoint categories e g global warming nature occupation acidification eutrophication ecotoxicity etc and then aggregated into a single score using conversion factors available from the stepwise2006 method overall the environmental costs of producing conventional pig meat are estimated to be 1 9 eur per kg which are of even larger size than the private costs of 1 4 eur in decreasing order of importance nature occupation has been found to be the main contributor to the costs 55 followed by global warming 21 and respiratory inorganics 18 a viable option combining improvement measures in three aspects feed use manure management and manure utilization reduces the environmental costs by a factor of 1 4 this results in an equal size of the environmental costs and the private costs

legitimating first organizing activities and the survival of new ventures abstract the process by which firm founders create new organizations is of considerable interest to evolutionary theorists and entrepreneurship researchers this article tracks the life histories of 223 swedish new ventures started between january and september 1998 by a random sample of firm founders we explore the effect of legitimating activities on the hazard of disbanding and the transition to other firm organizing activities during their first 30 months of life we find that undertaking activities to generate legitimacy reduces the hazard of venture disbanding and facilitates the transition to other organizing activities

panel studies of new venture creation a methods focused review and suggestions for future research longitudinal panel studies of large random samples of business start ups captured at the pre operational stage allow researchers to address core issues for entrepreneurship research namely the processes of creation of new business ventures as well as their antecedents and outcomes here we perform a methods orientated review of all 83 journal articles that have used this type of data set our purpose being to assist users of current data sets as well as designers of new projects in making the best use of this innovative research approach our review reveals a number of methods issues that are largely particular to this type of research we conclude that amidst exemplary contributions much of the reviewed research has not adequately managed these methods challenges nor has it made use of the full potential of this new research approach specifically we identify and suggest remedies for context specific and interrelated methods challenges relating to sample definition choice of level of analysis operationalization and conceptualization use of longitudinal data and dealing with various types of problematic heterogeneity in addition we note that future research can make further strides towards full utilization of the advantages of the research approach through better matching from either direction between theories and the phenomena captured in the data and by addressing some under explored research questions for which the approach may be particularly fruitful

environmental economic and social analysis of peri urban pig production abstract intensive livestock production expands rapidly around cities to meet the food demand and the improvement of people s living standard in developing countries such as china however little is known about the environmental costs and socio economic performances of these systems here the performance of peri urban pig farms in beijing was assessed using data of a comprehensive survey conducted on 92 pig farms during 2012 2013 and calculations with the nutrient flows in food chains environment and resources model 13 indicators related to environmental economic and social aspects were selected for this assessment this is an important study unravelling the complexity and dynamics of the pig production system in peri urban area results show that larger farms performed better than smaller farms mainly because large farms had lower feed cost and better manure management nitrogen and phosphorus surplus were negatively related to farm size and farm income positively when expressed per unit of pork produced nitrogen and phosphorus use efficiency at animal level ranged from 21 to 26 and 28 34 respectively meanwhile the rate of nutrient surplus was from 48 to 75 g nitrogen kg pork 1 for nitrogen and 4 9 g phosphorus kg pork 1 for phosphorus the four farm size classes farm income ranged from 0 02 to 3 1 yuan per kg pork results also indicated that recycling of manure for crop production was a proper way to lower nutrient surpluses and environmental costs in livestock production system the selection of indicators had great significance to the performance of the farm in terms of different purposes and needs more in depth and comprehensive research in conclusion the environmental economic and social performance of the farms was positively related to farm size there are significant opportunities for improving the performance of pig production systems in beijing through animal feeding lower feed conversion and crude protein and improving manure recycling through a further integration of crop and animal farms insights from pig production systems in peri urban region of beijing provide relevant guidance to the sustainable livestock production in cities of rapidly developing countries

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

out of sight but not out of mind why failure to account for left truncation biases research on failure rates we note at least three major issues in entrepreneurship theory that can be clarified by studying the survival chances of new ventures the extent to which entrepreneurs are so constrained by initial founding conditions that they are unable to learn the degree to which heterogeneity and innovative capabilities are lost due to the failure of new ventures and the imprinting effects of new ventures early days on their subsequent development however previous research on these issues has been inconclusive because of problems in research design and data analysis in this paper we shed light on new venture failure rates by assessing the validity and generalizability of previous findings we argue that research using registration data to study new ventures is very likely to generate biased results and that research attempting to track new ventures from a very early stage can still suffer from selection bias due to left truncation using a sample of new ventures from the panel study of entrepreneurial dynamics ii we provide evidence for the extent of such biases we offer a statistical solution to left truncation that can be easily applied in widely used statistical programs

planning for the market business planning before marketing and the continuation of organizing efforts abstract drawing on goal setting theory we argue that writing business plans before undertaking marketing activities should enhance the continuation of venture organizing efforts we examine 223 new venture organizing efforts initiated in the first 9 months of 1998 by a random sample of swedish entrepreneurs and show that those organizing efforts in which entrepreneurs completed business plans before talking to customers and beginning marketing or promotion had a lower hazard of termination than other organizing efforts

using the budget constraint to monetarise impact assessment results abstract recent developments in life cycle impact assessment lcia provide a basis for reducing the uncertainty in monetarisation of environmental impacts the lcia method ecoindicator99 provides impact pathways ending in a physical score for each of the three safeguard subjects humans ecosystems and resources we redefine these damage categories so that they can be measured in terms of quality adjusted life years qalys for impacts on human well being biodiversity adjusted hectare years bahys for impacts on ecosystems and monetary units for impacts on resource productivity the monetary value of a qaly can be derived from the budget constraint i e the fact that the average annual income is the maximum that an average person can pay for an additional life year since a qaly by definition is a life year lived at full well being the budget constraint can be determined as the potential annual economic production per capita at full well being we determine this to be 74 000 eur with an uncertainty estimate of 62 000 to 84 000 eur this corresponds well to the 74 627 eur willingness to pay estimate of the externe project differences to other estimates can be explained by inherent biases in the valuation approaches used to derive these estimates the value of ecosystems can be expressed in monetary terms or in terms of qalys as the share of our well being that we are willing to sacrifice to protect the ecosystems while this trade off should preferably be done by choice modelling only one such study was found at the level of abstraction that allows us to relate bahys to qalys or monetary units stressing the necessity for such studies we resort to suggest a temporary proxy value of 1400 eur bahy or 52 bahy qaly with an uncertainty range of 350 to 3500 eur bahy the practical consequences of the above described monetarisation values has been investigated by combining them with the midpoint impact categories of two recent lcia methods thus providing a new lcia method with the option of expressing results in both midpoints and an optional choice between qaly and monetary units as endpoint from our application of the new method to different case studies it is noteworthy that resource impacts obtain less emphasis than in previous lcia methods while impacts on ecosystems obtain more importance this shows the significance of being able to express impacts on resources and ecosystems in the same units as impacts on human well being

intuitive optimizing experimental findings on time allocation decisions with newly formed ventures abstract this paper offers a theoretical and an experimental analysis of decision making in an entrepreneurial context we investigate how individuals distribute their time between leisure and working activities and how they divide their working time between their newly formed venture and a wage job two questionnaire experiments with business and economics students are utilized to test benchmark predictions from an economic model which we complement with predictions based on behavioral decision theory differences between economic predictions and behaviors are found to be dependent on whether the venture dominates the wage job the wage job dominates the venture or none dominates the other implications for entrepreneurial behavior are derived for these three scenarios

complementary or compensatory a contingency perspective on how entrepreneurs human and social capital interact in shaping start up progress entrepreneurs can profit from both their human and social capital however research on how the two types of capital interact in shaping relevant outcomes has produced inconclusive results attempting to explain the inconsistencies in previous findings we suggest that the relationship between entrepreneurs human and social capital is neither fundamentally complementary nor fundamentally compensatory instead the nature of this relationship is contingent on the type of support derived from the network our analyses based on 474 solo nascent entrepreneurs from the psed ii support our reasoning while we find nascent entrepreneurs human capital and their financial social capital to positively interact in shaping start up progress we observe a negative interaction between nascent entrepreneurs human capital and their informational social capital implications for theory and practice are discussed

stretchwork managing the career progression paradox in external labor markets changes in employment relationships have diminished the degree to which internal labor markets shape careers using comparative field studies we examine how contract workers try to achieve career

the nascent entrepreneurship hub goals entrepreneurial self efficacy and start up outcomes entrepreneurship involves human agency the entrepreneurial process occurs because people are motivated to pursue and exploit perceived opportunities it is rooted in the theory that action is the result of motivation and cognition therefore this paper applies elements of goal theory and social cognitive theory to develop a motivational model of nascent entrepreneurial start up outcomes the objective of this model is to renew attention on motivational constructs in entrepreneurship research additionally it provides predictive value for the likelihood of new firm founding among nascent entrepreneurs results suggest that motivational antecedents among nascent entrepreneurs significantly influence the likelihood of quitting the start up process versus continuing nascent entrepreneurial start up efforts

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

when should entrepreneurs expedite or delay opportunity exploitation abstract we theorize on the performance implications of the timing at which entrepreneurs stop exploring their business opportunities and start exploiting them using an optimal stopping approach we characterize the time when exploitation should begin based primarily on when an entrepreneur s ignorance has been sufficiently reduced through knowledge accumulation this ignorance threshold captures a tradeoff between the time needed to increase legitimacy and the necessity to act now to minimize competition changes in legitimacy and competition are based on how entrepreneurs manage their knowledge tacit versus explicit under differing degrees of novelty for the business opportunity these changes in turn impact the performance and timing of opportunity exploitation

consumption leisure preference structure a new explanation of the evans jovanovic results for entrepreneurial choice this paper extends evans and jovanovic s 1989 ej model to explicitly consider the latent entrepreneur s consumption leisure preference structure and shows that an increase in his or her assets encourages entrepreneurial activity this result indicates that ej s finding may hold without the assumption of liquidity constraints

allocation of entrepreneurial attention abstract limited attention has been recognized by many economists as a scarce resource to be allocated among a given number of alternative uses however limited entrepreneurial attention is allocated between improving current operations and innovating new products which increases the number of current operations and perhaps the demands on the entrepreneur s attention the allocation of entrepreneurial attention thus endogenizes the number of uses to which attention can be allocated and the opportunity cost of attention this allocation has implications for the relationships between innovation firm size and monopoly profits between firm size and firm growth and the organization of the firm

the value of business planning before start up a decision theoretical perspective in this paper we analyze business planning from the perspective of the nascent entrepreneur we measure its value for the entrepreneur at the point where he must decide whether or not to plan and we contrast our results with empirical studies that compare firms performance after market entry within a formal decision theoretical framework we show that the value of planning is driven by the possibility of evaluating alternative actions and being able to improve strategies before market entry the main purpose of evaluation is to pursue good and terminate bad business ideas we show how the value of planning is determined by the venture under consideration and how it depends on the quality of planning our theoretical model yields several behavioral and statistical implications that we compare with empirical observations found in the literature in particular we show how our model of rational decision making can be used to explain important hypotheses and contradictory observations that have fueled the debate on business planning

uncovering the value of planning in new venture creation a process and contingency perspective researchers are engaged in a major debate on the value of business planning in new venture creation this study suggests a potential resolution by applying a process and contingency perspective the results indicate that planning is beneficial yet planning processes need to be governed by different planning regimes depending on the type of founding environment in highly dynamic environments entrepreneurs will get most value from planning when they focus on select planning activities and speed up the planning task in less dynamic environments they are better of pursuing a munificent approach to planning the analysis thus reveals a major component of theorization on business planning that has been neglected in previous discussions as for entrepreneurship teaching and practice the findings suggest the importance of an adaptive toolkit approach to business planning hypotheses were developed based on information processing and decision making theory and were tested with an ordered probit analysis on a sample of 100 start ups backed by venture capital

the road taken origins and evolution of employment systems in emerging companies excerpt drawing on a unique archive of qualitative and quantitative data describing 100 bay area high technology firms within their first decade this paper examines the models of employment relations espoused by company founders and bow those models shaped the evolution of human resource management within their organizations information gleaned from interviews suggests that founders and others involved in designing and launching these companies had blueprints for the employment relation that varied along three key dimensions the primary basis of employee attachment and motivation the primary means for controlling and coordinating work and the primary criterion emphasized in selection based on combinations of these three dimensions firms in our sample cluster fall into one of four distinct types which we label the star factory engineering and commitment models multivariate statistical analyses document how the founder s employment model shaped the subsequent adoption and timing of various human resource policies and documents over these companies early histories as well as the speed with which the first full time human resource manager was appointed the findings are strongly suggestive of complementarities and a tendency toward internal consistency among dimensions of human resource management and of strong path dependence in the evolution of employment systems in organizations some implications of these findings for transactions cost perspectives on the employment relationship are discussed

taxation as a social choice problem the scope of the laffer argument abstract this paper studies the form of the tax equilibrium set in simple diamond mirrlees models and characterizes the corresponding laffer curves the curves need not ever slope downward and can have multiple local maxima local information about them is thus not sufficient to place restrictions on optimal choice among tax systems in this simple framework the problem of choice among tax systems is shown to have no more structure than an abstract social choice problem