bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Managerial Ethics and the Ethical Role of the Manager
Authors: McMahon Christopher
Published: January 2015

The ethical dimension of management is determined by the social role that managers are understood as playing. For example, (i) Managers are agents acting on behalf of a principal or client; (ii) Managers are trustees for various corporate constituencies; and (iii) Managers are partners with governmental officials in an integrated system of political authority. If managers are agents acting on behalf of a principal/client, the moral dimension of management is the same as in any agency relationship. Managers of corporations are often thought to be agents of shareholders, but the law does not support this claim. The core of the “stakeholder” model holds that, morally, managers have the status of trustees not only for the shareholders but also for other groups – most importantly, employees, customers, suppliers, and neighbors of corporate facilities. Another way to understand the social role of managers looks at managers serving employees. In the government sphere, legitimate authority is authority that serves the interests of those over whom it is exercised. If so, then managers should be regarded not as servants of the shareholders or the stakeholders, but as servants of the employees. On all these ways of understanding the social role of managers, the moral structure of managerial decision‐making is the same. There is some goal that managers are understood as being responsible for promoting, and there are constraints, deriving from rights, on what managers may do to promote these goals.
Marketing and the Consumer
Authors: Robin Donald P.
Published: January 2015

Marketing is an open and non‐coerced exchange of values between the marketer and the consumer. The consumer is the final user of the utility in the exchange, and is the focus of marketing efforts developed to create enough perceived consumer value to precipitate the exchange. Society has set very broad limits on the freedom of choice within these exchanges. The marketer's information is usually far superior to the knowledge of the consumer leading to the “knowledge gap.” During his term, US President John F. Kennedy announced a bill of rights for the consumer intended to help address this.
Mergers and Acquisitions
Authors: Harris Robert S.
Published: January 2015

Mergers and acquisitions change contracts and, as a result, affect a wide array of stakeholders. As contracts are often imperfect and incomplete this recontracting process introduces a host of ethical issues. A society's structure of corporate governance (the shape of which may vary dramatically across political and cultural boundaries) sets down the rules of the market for corporate control and thus shapes how particular stakeholders are affected by business combinations.
Normative/Descriptive
Authors: Stephens Carroll U. , Shepard Jon M.
Published: January 2015

The field of business ethics draws upon two distinct theoretical bases: philosophy and the social sciences – most often social psychology and organization theory. The former base is normative, prescriptive, and held to represent values. The latter is descriptive, empirical, and held to represent “value‐free” facts. To ignore the normative aspects is to risk amoral social science, and to ignore the descriptive aspects is to risk unreal philosophy.
Research Centers for Business Ethics
Authors: Rowe Mark
Published: January 2015

Research centers dedicated to the study of what is good or right for individuals and groups of individuals engaged in business activity. Generally not‐for‐profit, business ethics centers are most effective when they combine theoretical inquiry and practical application. Most centers have multiple functions including research, teaching, the preparation of teaching materials, organizing conferences and seminars and the provision of speakers and scholars for public or media events.
Rights
Authors: Gewirth Alan
Published: January 2015

Examines the primary legal and moral appeals to rights, and identifies the controversies raised by or among the various treatments about who has rights to what, from conceptual, substantive, and normative perspectives. An initial treatment of legal rights distinctions among types of rights based on claims, liberty, power, and immunity (Hohfeld). Further discussion treats the subjective and objective elements of rights along with relevant justifications raised in each case. Provides specific examples of various rights claims and controversies among these legal views. The article also examines rights as personal entitlements, and addresses their normative necessity, their nature and justification, and their relative importance. Includes a discussion of moral rights, including positive rights and solely negative rights, highlighting the libertarian perspective. Addresses the relationship between moral arguments based on rights and on utilitarian perspectives.
Roles and Role Morality
Authors: Goldman Alan H.
Published: January 2015

A distinct role morality would consist in special norms that are to guide the conduct of those in certain professional or business roles. These norms would elevate the values central to those roles relative to ordinary moral deliberation and limit the authority of agents in those positions to act on ordinary moral considerations. The special norms might be justified by appeal to the fallibility of role occupants in ordinary deliberation or to a moral division of labor. But when such special norms, for example, the pursuit of profit by business managers, override ordinary moral considerations, common moral rights will be sacrificed in the process.
Self‐Interest
Authors: Wilbur James B.
Published: January 2015

This article discusses the meaning of self‐interest in philosophy and the effect of the more recent narrowing of the term on moral discourse. A more adequate conception of self‐interest is presented to protect the moral value of individualism.
Social Cost‐Benefits
Authors: Sagoff Mark
Published: January 2015

Cost–benefit analysis (CBA), when used as it was in the 1930s to measure the social return on public spending, made sense – and still makes sense – as a bulwark against “pork barrel” and other wasteful projects. When expanded to apply the principles and assumptions of welfare economics to social policy more generally, however, CBA imposes its own goal – efficiency – on society and justifies that goal by defining social welfare in terms of it. It then substitutes itself for both markets (which fail to be efficient) and political deliberation (which seeks goals other than efficiency) as an expert method for allocating public and other resources.
Trade Agreements, Ethics of
Authors: Dobson John
Published: January 2015

The World Trade Organization (WTO) (which grew out of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)) administers most trade agreements. The WTO and its activities on behalf of trade have proven controversial. Critics charge that the powerful WTO, operating with free trade ideology, enables multinational corporations to maximize their profits at the expense of local economies, especially those of the developing world. The key question is whether trade agreements genuinely promote fair trade or whether they enable powerful corporations to exploit those with less power.
Behavioral Ethics
Authors: Reynolds Scott J. , White Johanna
Published: January 2015

Behavioral ethics refers to a stream of social scientific research concerned with describing, explaining, and potentially predicting individual behavior that involves moral content and/or moral consequences. It represents a descriptive approach to ethics in that the researcher is primarily interested in understanding behavior as it occurs within the constraints of existing social prescriptions.
Christianity and Business Ethics
Authors: Calkins Martin
Published: January 2015

The moral language and operating norms of business find their roots in Judaism, Catholicism and Protestantism. Judaism gives business ethics a set of operative norms, upon which Christianity builds to identify principles, that reflect the complexity and diversity of business activity outside the ancient Jewish world. Early Christian traditions influenced heavily by the work of St. Ambrose, Augustine, and Thomas, plus the contemporary contributions of Catholic social thought articulated by Popes Leo XIII, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and others, contribute to concepts of justice, virtue and specific acts in business and management. Luther, Weber, and others writing in the wake of the Protestant Reformation introduce in the language and norms of business ethics concepts like the vocation or “calling” to business as a type of ministry, the work ethic, and the spirit of economic activity.
Climate Change
Authors: DesJardins Joseph
Published: January 2015

“Global warming” and “climate change” refer to systemic, planet‐wide changes to the earth's climate brought about by human activities. In recent years there has been a shift away from the language of “global warming” in favor of the language of “global climate change.” The rationale is that global warming refers to the average mean surface temperature, whereas global climate change refers to a broad range of climatic changes that would result from an increase in the average global temperature. Predictions made decades ago that increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide would lead to an increase in global temperatures have been well‐confirmed. However the consequences of those increased average temperatures are still unfolding.
History of Corporate Responsibility
Authors: Post James E.
Published: January 2015

The concept of corporate responsibility runs throughout the history of capitalism. For more than two centuries, nations have tried to reconcile two realities of capitalism: corporations are very efficient mechanisms for producing wealth, meeting consumer needs, and building industries. Yet, corporations often impose costly negative externalities on stakeholders – employees, communities, society. Society rightfully expects that successful corporations will abide by the rule of law and help meet the expectations and needs of the community.

Voluntary action, such as philanthropy, is part of the social contract that imposes responsibility on businesses for more than their narrow economic results.
Teleopathy
Authors: Goodpaster Kenneth E.
Published: January 2015

Describes a hazard that affects moral judgment in organizational settings; a hazard whose symptoms are fixation, rationalization, and detachment.
Triple Bottom Line
Authors: Glac Katherina
Published: January 2015

The triple bottom line (3BL) is, narrowly defined, an approach to measuring the success of an organization's activities that considers the organization's social and environmental performance in addition to the traditional financial performance. The term was originally introduced in the mid‐1990s alongside other existing frameworks, guidelines, and approaches to social and environmental accounting and reporting. Despite the increased popularity and adoption of the 3BL concept among business organizations, 3BL has come under scrutiny for a lack of specificity regarding the measurement of the social and environmental performance components. The difficulty of finding a unified measure for the two additional bottom lines has been considered a fundamental threat to the bottom line idea, which assumes, at least based on a narrow interpretation of the term, a final result or statement expressed in some unit of measurement. Despite the criticism, or maybe because of it, the debate in the literature is increasingly coalescing around a view of 3BL as a paradigm of sustainable business practice rather than a very specific approach to performance measurement or accounting.
U
nited
N
ations
G
lobal
C
ompact
Authors: Williams Oliver F.
Published: January 2015

The United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) is the world's largest voluntary corporate social responsibility project. Launched in 2000, the UNGC in 2014 had more than 10,000 participants – including over 8,000 businesses in over 135 countries around the world.

The UNGC has its mission as the development of a consensus on the ethical norms which should guide global business, focusing on human rights, labor rights, the environment, and fighting corruption.These ideals are outlined within the 10 key principles that signatories of the Compact make a commitment to upholding.

The UNGC is a first step on the ladder toward a responsible brand of capitalism. It is by no means a foolproof solution, but it does represent the beginnings of a paradigm shift in which “soft” trans‐national law is gradually complementing and completing “hard” national law.
Profit, Profits, and Profit Motive
Authors: Brady F. Neil
Published: January 2015

What are profits and how can they be justified? These questions are at the center of this article. In the first part, different positions and theories in the history of economic thought on the nature of profits are explored. The second part deals with the legitimacy of profits, specifically through the lens of Rawls's Theory of Justice and Robert Nozick's libertarian perspective. Of key importance from a business ethics perspective are questions related to the distribution of profits and to the motivation that underlies profit‐seeking.
Teams
Authors: Phillips Robert A.
Published: January 2015

A team refers to a special subclass of cooperative scheme characterized by a particularly high degree of interdependence and often focused on a single goal. A good, nonathletic example may be a project team within a manufacturing firm. Members spend many hours a day together, they share a common goal, they are more likely to go out of their way to assist teammates, and they depend upon one another more than the organization at large. The concept of a team indicates a higher level of commitment than other similar cooperative schemes and therefore will contain a higher level of ethical content. As the “principle of fairness” comes into play, one of the greatest problems with using teams is that there are often members who don't do their share. The principle provides a moral foundation for the obligations of individuals within a cooperative scheme as well as the obligations of the scheme to the individual. Some possible areas of controversy may help frame the issues. For example, can the majority (ethically) force their will on the minority or an individual for the sake of the team goal or purpose? Should the individual voluntarily yield to the team for the sake of the goal? Other possible ethical pitfalls exist, especially in a business context.
Business Angel Network
Authors: Sarasvathy Saras D. , Wiltbank Robert
Published: January 2015

Business angel “networks,” such as the Band of Angels in Silicon Valley and the Alliance of Angels in the Pacific Northwest have been forming at a rapid pace. It is estimated that there are over 150 business angel networks in the United States and several in European and Asian countries. Books and web sites on business angels continue to proliferate. From a research standpoint, however, in spite of the considerably larger magnitude of business angels when compared to VCs, we know less about the former than the latter.
Competitive Advantage
Authors: Miles Morgan P. , Darroch Jenny
Published: January 2015

This article defines the term competitive advantage and identifies pathways for creating a competitive advantage along with advantages such as superior performance, enhanced customer satisfaction, strong customer relationships and market leadership. In addition, the paper outlines challenges organizations face when trying to maintain a competitive advantage in the market segments within which it competes. The article also applies the term competitive advantage to different contexts: profit vs. no profit, and free vs. controlled markets.
Corporate Entrepreneurial Project Failure
Authors: Kuratko Donald F. , Shepherd Dean A.
Published: January 2015

The success of corporate entrepreneurial project depends on the commitment of management, the project leader, and the rest of the project team to the innovation effort. Commitment toward innovation typically stems from intrinsic motivation and while innovations often begin with creative ideas, individuals are typically most creative when they are passionate about what they are doing. Yet, despite considerable commitment by organizational members and given the increase in corporate innovative activity, entrepreneurial projects that are created to pursue new and unique opportunities can still fail – or “die” – due to the uncertain environment within which they develop. Regardless of the reasons behind a project's failure, those committed to the project will likely feel they have lost something important when the project fails. Although failure can be an important source of information for learning, this learning is not automatic or instantaneous. The emotions generated by failure (e.g., grief) can interfere with the learning process. This article explains the grief process, how it can be managed by individuals and organizations to enhance learning, and proposes a dual process model for recovering from grief, so that innovators can learn more from their project failures and remain committed to future innovative endeavors.
Corporate Entrepreneurship Assessment Instrument
Authors: Holt Daniel T.
Published: January 2015

The corporate entrepreneurship assessment instrument (
CEAI
) measures the key internal organizational factors that influence a firm's entrepreneurial activities and outcomes. These include: (i)
top management support
, the willingness of top‐level managers to facilitate and promote entrepreneurial behavior; (ii)
work discretion
, the top‐level managers' commitment to tolerate failure, provide managers decision‐making latitude, and freedom from excessive oversight; (iii)
rewards
/
reinforcement
, the use systems that reward significant achievements and encourage pursuit of challenging work; and (iv)
time availability
, the evaluation of workloads to ensure that individuals and group. Along with the scale's description, the evidence that has accumulated regarding the CEAI's reliability and validity is summarized.
Forms of Corporate Entrepreneurship
Authors: Kuratko Donald F. , Covin Jeffrey G.
Published: January 2015

The domain of corporate entrepreneurship is comprised of two categories of phenomena: corporate venturing and strategic entrepreneurship. Corporate venturing consists of entrepreneurial phenomena through which new businesses are created by, added to, or invested in by an existing organization. Its forms include internal, cooperative, and external corporate venturing. By contrast, strategic entrepreneurship consists of a broad array of entrepreneurial initiatives that do not necessarily involve new businesses being added to the firm. Strategic entrepreneurship involves the exhibition of organizationally consequential innovations that are adopted in pursuit of competitive advantage. The forms of strategic entrepreneurship include strategic renewal, sustained regeneration, domain redefinition, organizational rejuvenation, and business model reconstruction.
Corporate Ventures and Knowledge
Authors: Bogner William C. , Petricevic Olga
Published: January 2015

The role of knowledge, the different types of knowledge, and the processes of searching for and learning new knowledge are all critical components in understanding successful corporate venturing (CV). This article examines some of the recent insights into each of these areas and how they tie to the entrepreneurial activities of established firms. In particular, it links the firm's knowledge base to dynamic capabilities. This approach highlights the following key relationships between knowledge and dynamic capabilities: (i) new knowledge is one of the key outcomes of a firm's dynamic capabilities; (ii) firms produce new knowledge in part through specific dynamic capabilities for external knowledge search and selection, and (iii) firms produce new knowledge in part through specific dynamic capabilities for internal knowledge deployment and knowledge reconfigurations.
Entrepreneurial Action
Authors: McMullen Jeffery S.
Published: January 2015

Entrepreneurial action refers to “behavior in response to a judgmental decision under uncertainty about a possible opportunity for profit” (McMullen and Shepherd, 2006, p. 134). This view tends to conceive of entrepreneurs as change agents who catalyze the economy. Although motivated by self‐interest, entrepreneurial action is only rewarded to the extent that it creates a perceived contribution over existing solutions to current problems. Therefore, to become an entrepreneur, individuals must escape ignorance – discover, create, or imagine a solution that could be, but currently is not – and overcome uncertainty (doubt) that can delay or prevent them from introducing their innovation to the market. This involves assessments of a situation as both a third‐person opportunity – belief that a situation is an opportunity for someone – and a first‐person opportunity assessment – belief that a situation is an opportunity for the entrepreneur. For entrepreneurial action to occur, the individual must believe that a situation represents a first‐person opportunity. Profit is often validation of the veracity of this belief. The defining characteristic of the entrepreneurial action approach, therefore, is new value creation and the institutional change that it creates as a consequence of its occurrence.
Entrepreneurial Grief
Authors: Shepherd Dean A. , Wolfe Marcus T.
Published: January 2015

Failure is a way of life for entrepreneurs, and experiencing failure can lead to varying degrees of grief. In this chapter, we explore the reasons entrepreneurs experience grief as a result of project failure. We then detail why certain projects elicit greater or lesser levels of grief, as a function of the project's role in satisfying the entrepreneur's individual need for competence, autonomy, and relatedness. Next, we examine the phenomenon of anticipatory grief, and the potential advantages and disadvantages it provides for entrepreneurs facing an imminent failure event. Finally, we introduce an instrument developed to measure entrepreneurial grief as a result of project failure, as a tool meant to aid future research on this topic.
Ethics in Entrepreneurship
Authors: Harrison Jeffrey S.
Published: January 2015

This article examines entrepreneurship from two perspectives. First, entrepreneurship is associated with societal issues such as self‐determination, economic growth, and the concentration of wealth and power. These issues are shaped by national culture and moral values. Second, entrepreneurship is examined in terms of the values of individual entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurial Exit
Authors: DeTienne Dawn R.
Published: January 2015

Entrepreneurial exit is a critical component of the entrepreneurial process and one that is critical to the practicing entrepreneur. This article examines differences between failure and deliberate closure, how founders of privately held ventures make exit decisions, how they develop exit strategies, and the impact of those decisions. I begin by clarifying the different types of exit based on two dimensions – firm exit and founder exit. Both firm exit and founder exit as entrepreneurial culmination that occur when the firm fails and also through deliberate closure is refered here. Entrepreneurial departure occurs when the founder exits from the firm (e.g., forced exit, succession, harvest), but the firm remains in the market. Entrepreneurial recycling occurs when the firm exits, but the founder remains engaged in entrepreneurial activity (e.g., portfolio or serial entrepreneurs). In addition, a list of potential research questions, guiding theoretical perspectives, and critical references for researchers interested in each of these different types of exit is provided.
Family Business Emotions
Authors: M. Madden Timothy , Kellermanns Franz W. , A. Eddleston Kimberly
Published: January 2015

Family‐based social capital is a distinct resource for family firms because relationships with external stakeholders can be maintained from one generation to the next and family firms often participate in positive social exchanges with other family firms, building a community network of family firms. Given the kinship, loyalty, and trust that differentiate family firms from other forms of governance, research often highlights the benefits of positive emotions within family firms, such as reciprocal altruism and the maintenance of family harmony.
Harvesting the Entrepreneurial Venture
Authors: Petty William J.
Published: January 2015

Harvesting (or exiting) is the method owners and investors use to get out of a business and, ideally, reap the value of their investment in the firm. Many entrepreneurs successfully grow their businesses but fail to develop effective harvest plans. As a result, they are unable to capture the full value of the business they have worked so hard to create. Harvesting encompasses more than merely selling and leaving a business; it involves capturing value (cash flows), reducing risk, and creating future options – the reason we prefer the term
harvest
over
exit
.
Human Capital, Entrepreneurial
Authors: Coff Russell
Published: January 2015

The term “human capital” originates from the economics literature, where it is explored primarily as an investment that individuals make in knowledge and skills (Becker, 1964).
Entrepreneurial Identity
Authors: Hoang Ha , Gimeno Javier
Published: January 2015

Entrepreneurial identity refers to a person's set of meanings, including attitudes and beliefs, attributes, and subjective evaluations of behavior, that define him or herself in an entrepreneurial role. The construct of entrepreneurial identity encompasses how a person defines the entrepreneurial role, and whether he or she identifies with that role. By viewing firm founding as involving a role transition, we explore how entrepreneurial identity can influence successful founding behavior. We posit that when transition to the founder role involves high role novelty and role conflict that can lead to negative feedback, holding a complex and central entrepreneurial identity can facilitate the transition to the founder role by facilitating persistence while emphasizing role experimentation. In contrast, we posit that individuals with high identity centrality and low complexity would probably engage in limited search activities and ultimately become inactive but with an expectation of returning to entrepreneurial activity in the future. Overall, entrepreneurial identity is a dynamic construct whose development is influenced by network contacts that can in turn shed light on why some, and not others, become entrepreneurs.
Incubators
Authors: Neubaum Donald O.
Published: January 2015

Incubators are economic development tools and programs designed to promote and accelerate the growth of entrepreneurial companies through the provision of services and resources. Incubators offer start‐up firms many benefits, including low‐cost office or lab space, access to capital and other business and support services. As of 2011, the National Business Incubation Association (NBIA) estimates there are 7000 incubators worldwide, with about 25% of them occurring outside the United States. Technology incubators commercialize new technologies or create new innovation opportunities. Mixed‐use incubators foster new businesses of all kinds and might focus on specific industries or niches, such as biotechnology, information technology, or the Internet startups. Empowerment or microenterprise incubators are created by governments to address socioeconomic issues, such as creating jobs or revitalizing neighborhoods. The success of incubators is subject to debate, especially given their relatively high costs. High‐performing incubators generally have either a strong relationship with a research university, or a medical or research laboratory, or are located in a metropolitan area with high‐quality or technology‐based companies. Integrating incubator clients into the local technology development system, fostering relationship between incubator management and outside experts, and providing clients with access to critical resources are three keys for incubator effectiveness.
International Entrepreneurship
Authors: Oviatt Benjamin M. , McDougall‐Covin Patricia
Published: January 2015

The authors define international entrepreneurship as the discovery, enactment, evaluation, and exploitation of opportunities – across national borders – to create future goods and service (McDougall and Oviatt, 2005). The article traces the academic evolution of international entrepreneurship from its genesis in 1989, when it was narrowly focused on international new ventures to its broader boundaries that are the subject of scholarly inquiry today. The domain of international entrepreneurship includes two branches of study – the study of entrepreneurial activity that crosses national borders and the comparison of domestic entrepreneurship in multiple countries. Examples of well‐conducted research from each of the two branches are discussed in the article. Intriguing research questions for each branch are presented. The authors predict that researchers of the adolescent discipline of international entrepreneurship will continue to explore the boundaries of the domain.
Knowledge‐Based Assets in Entrepreneurial Ventures
Authors: Bakhru Anjali , Grant Robert M.
Published: January 2015

Knowledge has an intimate relationship with entrepreneurship. Knowledge is a critical input into the creation of new business ventures and a major area of entrepreneurship research addresses the sources of such knowledge, including the educational backgrounds of entrepreneurs, the origins of creativity, and role of established enterprises in supplying the knowhow used by new enterprises. Different types of knowledge are required at different stages of the entrepreneur process – a key distinction is between identifying entrepreneurial opportunities and building the capabilities of the new enterprise.
Minority Entrepreneurship
Authors: Greene Patricia G.
Published: January 2015

The topic of minority entrepreneurship is of ever‐increasing importance as more and more frequent questions and concerns about the legitimacy and accuracy of racial and ethnic categorizations are raised. Minority entrepreneurship remains a broad concept, the use of which is largely dependent on situation. The topic is also often intertwined with questions on immigrant entrepreneurship. There are a variety of national data sources available through the US government to understand the size and scope of minority owned businesses and an additional set of research projects that focus on tracking the startup practices of minority business owners. Theoretical work in this area is more limited and largely based in the field of sociology. The two primary research questions are: i) why are minority‐owned businesses underrepresented in the overall population of small businesses? and ii) why do existing minority‐owned businesses tend to stay smaller than their majority‐owned counterparts? Means of exploring these issues include research questions on demographics and resources of the owner(s) and the business(es), the startup process, business outcomes, economic development, labor market issues, and opportunity structures. Results from these studies will be useful to entrepreneurs, resource providers, educators, and policy makers.
National Culture and Entrepreneurial Orientation
Authors: Kreiser Patrick M.
Published: January 2015

This article examines the current research trends and future research directions related to national culture and firm‐level entrepreneurial orientation. The key current research trends explored are (i) the impact of national culture on the individual dimensions of EO and (ii) the impact of institutions that are reflective of national culture on EO. The directions for future research highlight (i) the need for further research assessing the impact of cultural differences on the measurement of EO and (ii) The need for research assessing the impact of national culture and institutions on the relationship between EO and performance. Taken together, future research studies should examine possible cross‐cultural measurement issues related to EO, as well as the impact of national culture and institutions on the relationship between EO and other organizational variables, in order to further refine our understanding of the EO construct.
Networks and Entrepreneurship
Authors: Cooper Arnold C. , Yin Xiaoli
Published: January 2015

Social networks of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial teams play a central role in the formation and development of new ventures. Specifically, the importance of strong, cohesive ties and weak ties and structural holes in venture formation and success depends on the competitive and relational characteristics of the network and industry structure.
Opportunity Exploitation
Authors: Wiklund Johan
Published: January 2015

Opportunity exploitation refers to activities conducted in order to gain economic returns from the discovery of a potential entrepreneurial opportunity.
Opportunity Identification
Authors: Grégoire Denis A. , Shepherd Dean A.
Published: January 2015

In this article, we summarize the bases and achievements of extant research on the identification, recognition, discovery, imagining and/or creation of entrepreneurial opportunities. After situating this topic's emergence within contemporary entrepreneurship research, we discuss a series of theoretical and methodological challenges inherent to studying opportunity identification. We then describe key empirical findings, and suggest avenues for future investigation.
Patent Protection
Authors: Santoro Michael D.
Published: January 2015

Patents are often essential to entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial ventures in protecting new technologies, new products, and intellectual property necessary to gain first‐mover advantages against larger, more established firms. However, obtaining patents can be a daunting task as many entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial ventures cannot afford the time and money to procure patent protection. Paradoxically, large, more established firms are often better equipped to procure patent protection, as they often have more resources, including patent attorneys, who are knowledgeable in patent procurement and who can handle the complex administrative issues surrounding securing a patent. We discuss these issues and offer thoughts on ways entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial ventures can combine property‐based resources in the way of patents, trademarks, and copyrights along with knowledge‐based resources, in the way of unique tacit knowledge and capabilities, to achieve sustainable competitive advantage.
Real Options
Authors: McGrath Rita G.
Published: January 2015

Real options reasoning has attracted significant attention for its challenge to conventional investment heuristics such as the net present value rule. Because options style investments can contain losses, offer access to attractive upside gains, and break monolithic decisions into sequential ones, the use of options has been seen as particularly attractive under high uncertainty conditions. Options logic has been seen as one way in which to combat under‐investment in innovation and entrepreneurial behavior. Debates include whether the logic of options is implementable in actuality and whether couching an investment in options terms leads to excessive optimism and over‐investment. Nonetheless, real options theory continues to be of particular interest to scholars seeking to understand the logic of investment in entrepreneurial ventures. Path‐dependent and sequential discoveries have long featured in explanations of the outcomes of entrepreneurial activities and options reasoning provides a financial complement to such discussions.
Social Status in Entrepreneurship
Authors: Milanov Hana
Published: January 2015

Drawing on a rich stream of sociological research, scholars of status have made important contributions to understanding of entrepreneurial phenomena. This article summarizes the extant thinking on status and introduces its definition, in order to discuss the relevance of the concept for scholars of entrepreneurship as well as, ways to operationalize the construct in empirical research. The article concludes with several considerations for future research.
Entrepreneurial Stories and Legitimacy
Authors: Lounsbury Michael , Glynn Mary A.
Published: January 2015

Entrepreneurial stories are crucial to how entrepreneurs construct and situate their identity within a particular institutional field in order to legitimate themselves and their novel products or practices. Such communications are at the core of what Lounsbury and Glynn refer to as cultural entrepreneurship which more generally refers to the processes by which entrepreneurs draw upon various cultural resources (e.g., stories) to construct their identities, gain legitimacy with key audiences, and access resources.
Strategic Entrepreneurship
Authors: Hitt Michael A. , Ireland R. Duane
Published: January 2015

Most firms throughout the world today face challenging and complex environments, making it difficult for them to achieve competitive success. Being able to identify and exploit opportunities across time and events is foundational to organizations' efforts to develop and exploit competitive advantages when facing these types of environments. After identifying or recognizing opportunities, firms must be able to innovate in ways that allow them to create unique value for customers. In turn, value creation is the source of a firm's ability to outperform rivals and earn above‐average returns as a result of doing so. Thus, competitive success is a function of a firm's ability to innovate and then find ways to exploit its innovations in the marketplace. This means that entrepreneurship, which is concerned primarily with identifying and exploiting opportunities as well as strategic management, which is concerned primarily with creating and sustaining a competitive advantage are both required for a firm's competitive success. The integration of entrepreneurship's focal activities with strategic management's focal activities is called strategic entrepreneurship. Herein, we describe strategic entrepreneurship and its central importance to a firm's ability to consistently outperform its rivals.
Uncertainty, Navigating of: From Scenarios to Flexible Options
Authors: Schoemaker Paul J. H.
Published: January 2015

This article describes how entrepreneurs can use external uncertainty, ambiguity, and turmoil to advantage by reframing them as hidden opportunities. A three‐step process discusses how and why. First, future uncertainties need to be analyzed and then synthesized into a limited number of possible scenarios that are beyond the control of the company. Second, the current strategy should be stress‐tested against these scenarios and adjusted in case it results in misfortune in one or more of the scenarios. The basic idea is to separate parts of the strategy that are robust across scenarios (meaning they work well in each scenario) from those strategy components that are fragile (meaning they work well in just one or two scenarios but not all of them). Third, investments in the fragile elements need to be approached from an options perspective in as far as possible. Rather than bet fully on fragile elements of the plan, entrepreneurs need to retain enough flexibility to adjust the plan if and when necessary. This means carefully monitoring and scanning those external events that could affect the strategy, either to exercise the embedded options in the strategy or to pull the plug on losing investments. The key is to manage these three‐step process as a dynamic compass for navigating the future.
University Spin‐Outs
Authors: Lockett Andy , Siegel Donald , Wright Mike
Published: January 2015

University spinouts (
USO
s) are a distinctive subset of new technology based firms, which relate to the university environment from which they emerge and the associated role of the academic within the new firm. In this essay, we explore the distinctive nature of
USO
s, and review four important dimensions of
USO
research. Drawing on the taxonomy developed by Mustar
et al
. (2006), we examine issues relating to: (i)
USO
creation, particularly in relation to the relationship with the parent university; (ii) USO development over time including growth; (iii) the staffing of
USO
s in relation to the nature and composition of the USO team; and (iv) the financing of
USO
s.
Venture Capital Research
Authors: Shepherd Dean A. , Zacharakis Andrew
Published: January 2015

Venture capital has had an outsized influence on funding high growth ventures, backing such companies as Google, eBay, and Twitter amongst others. This article places venture capital into the funding context by classifying types of venture capital firms (corporate and traditional) amongst other equity sources like individuals (angels) and brokers. The article then details what do; specifically, it looks at the pre‐ and post‐investment activities. Although venture capital has been extensively researched, there are still plenty of opportunities for continuing study. In the pre‐investment stage (includes all activities up and to signing the investment contract), fruitful avenues include deeper study of investment biases, differing investment contexts, quality of information surrounding investments, and the due diligence
process. In the post‐investment stage (all activities undertaken after the investment has been made), research might investigate conflict management between the entrepreneur and venture capitalist, and how reputation impacts the ability of the venture capitalist to add value. Finally, more recent research has started to study the founding of venture capital firms, specifically around raising funds. Venture capital continues to be a critically important source of capital for new ventures and an area for fruitful research.
Women's Entrepreneurship
Authors: Brush Candida G. , Greene Patricia G.
Published: January 2015

The growing rate of ventures being started by women and the increased proportion of the small business population accounted for by women are highlighted. Questions are raised as to why this growth has not been accompanied by a parallel increase in scholarly work on women entrepreneurs. Some of th key findings regarding women as entrepreneurs are summarized. Reasons for the lack of attention to important scholarly questions surrounding women's entrepreneurship are identified and explored. A number of key research questions are highlighted.
Entrepreneurial Resources
Authors: Alvarez Sharon A. , Barney Jay B.
Published: January 2015

This article defines the various entrepreneurial resources and explains how they are used to gain competitive advantage or exploit competitive imperfections. It also provides suggestions for future research in entrepreneurship.
Electronic Banking
Authors: Williams Jonathan
Published: January 2015

The article surveys developments in the field of electronic banking. Technological developments are helping the redefine the ways in which banks do business as well as reconfiguring their profit and cost structures. Cross‐country differences in the provision of such facilities are illustrated by relevant data.
Pension Funds
Authors: Clacher Iain , Draper Paul
Published: January 2015

This chapter presents an overview of pension funds and highlights some of the differences across different types of pension structures. In addition, the chapter discusses trends in the decline of defined benefit pension arrangements, the impact of regulation and taxation, and demographic changes.
Style Investing
Authors: Subrahmanyam Avanidhar
Published: January 2015

The literature on investing by “style” (e.g., growth/value, a particular industry or sector) is reviewed. Impacts of style investing on the price process and covariance risk are documented. Directions for future research are also discussed.
Debt Swaps
Authors: Sarkar Sudipto
Published: January 2015

Debt swap is a generic term for an exchange of debt with some other asset.
Deposit Insurance
Authors: Dennis Steven A. , Thurston David C.
Published: January 2015

Deposit insurance is like a put option, and if should be period as such. However, the
FDIC
continues to charge a level premium for most banks.
Dividend Growth Model
Authors: Barnes Paul
Published: January 2015

Gordon's dividend growth model (1962) is still the simplest and most practical method of estimating the intrinsic value of a stock/share. The difficulty applying it is the estimation of future growth of dividends and discount rate, the firm's cost of capital. Differences between the estimated stock value and the market price are attributable to differences between the analyst's growth forecast and the market's expectations. The model assumes a constant growth rate, although there are similar models that may be applied if the user needs to vary the growth rate at certain points in time.
Embedded Inflation
Authors: Alles Lakshman A. , Bhar Ramaprasad
Published: January 2015

A theory of the relationship between interest rates and expected inflation is contained in the well‐known hypothesis expounded by Irwin Fisher (1930).
Growth and Value Stocks
Authors: Lee Edward
Published: January 2015

Stocks can be classified into different styles.
Loss Aversion
Authors: Shumway Tyler
Published: January 2015

Loss aversion is one of the several behaviorally motivated descriptions of choice under uncertainty that together constitute the prospect theory proposed by Kahneman and Tversky (1979).
Markov
Switching Models in Finance
Authors: Timmermann Allan
Published: January 2015

Since their introduction into economics by Hamilton (1989), Markov switching models have become very popular in both applied and theoretical works in finance.
Mutual Funds
Authors: Seguin Paul
Published: January 2015

Mutual funds are equity claims against prespecified assets held by investment companies (firms that professionally manage pools of assets).
Noise Trader
Authors: Sias Richard W.
Published: January 2015

Black (1986) defines noise trading as trading on noise as if it were information.
Persistence of Performance
Authors: Glassman Debra A.
Published: January 2015

Performance persistence refers to a portfolio manager's ability to consistently deliver investment returns above (or below) a benchmark return.
Real Options
Authors: Paxson Dean A.
Published: January 2015

Real options are opportunities (or commitments) to acquire or develop or dispose real assets at a price determined (or estimated) in the present but settled, or delivered, in the future.
Regulation of
US
Equity Markets
Authors: Seguin Paul
Published: January 2015

The basic concept underpinning much of the US federal securities regulation is disclosure regulation.
Restructuring and Turnaround
Authors: Collett Nick
Published: January 2015

Corporate restructuring and turnaround occurs where there is a major rearrangement of stakeholder claims, possibly including a change of control.
Short‐Termism
Authors: Demirag Istemi S.
Published: January 2015

Short‐term pressures (
STP
s), could be defined as factors acting upon (or within) an organization, which cause decision‐makers (explicitly or implicitly) either to use a discount rate higher than its cost of capital or to choose some time horizon beyond which future revenues are ignored altogether, or both. Short term pressures are determined by internal and external factors that affect time horizon of firms' decision making resulting in sub optimal and /or economically irrational choice of investment decisions. While during the early 1990s many UK's private companies appeared to have suffered from short‐ termism, research into recent global financial crisis and public private partnerships (
PPP
s) suggest that UK banks and successive governments may have also suffered from the same short term pressures.
Speculation
Authors: Brookfield David
Published: January 2015

Speculation is often seen in pejorative terms, although it is widely recognized in trading and academic circles as providing a useful economic function.