Positive and negative synergies between the CEO's and the corporate board's human and social capital: A study of biotechnology firms

This paper contributes to the corporate governance literature by developing and testing theory regarding positive and negative synergies between the CEO's and the board's human and social capital. Using a sample of 360 biotechnology firms that went public between 1995 and 2010, we demonstrate that accumulated public company board experiences of the CEO and the board have positive synergistic effects on IPO performance whereas the current board appointments have negative effects. While scientific educational backgrounds have positive synergies, industry‐specific experiences produce either positive or counterproductive effects depending on the age and profitability of the firm. Thus, our paper contributes to the corporate governance and human and social capital literatures by describing the costs and benefits of specific types and combinations of CEO and board capital. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Towards a schematic theory of entrepreneurial alertness

This article is an investigation into Kirzner's concept of entrepreneurial alertness — its mechanism and its antecedents. By drawing from decision theory and schema theory, a model is developed to show how changes in the environment are mediated by entrepreneurial alertness and brought to the situated attention of entrepreneurs for evaluation. Entrepreneurial alertness is seen to be the application of unique schemata that allow the entrepreneur to impute meaning to environmental change that would not be imputed by other managers. It is argued that the alertness that allows entrepreneurs to see opportunity where others do not arises from differences in schematic richness, schematic association, and schematic priming. These three antecedents may therefore form a basis on which enhanced entrepreneurial alertness can be developed.     

UK export assistance: Are we supporting the best programmes?

This article provides empirical evidence to show that differences exist in how UK exporters rate factors in their export marketing effort between: (1) those that are believed to be desired by importers; (2) the possibility for improving performance of these factors by a change in emphasis by people in the exporting firms; and (3) what international business assistance is actually requested by firms. It then looks at differences between firms based on their level of involvement in exporting, i.e. stage of internationalization, and the extent to which they are successful. It therefore substantially builds upon previous research by showing that there are differences between the factors that firms believe are desirable to importers and how their performance could improve with the emphasis and assistance of internal and external change agents. Furthermore, it shows that exporting firms should not be seen as homogeneous and that significant differences exist between firms based on their level of internationalization and their level of success.

In this way, the study has implications for UK policy makers insofar as it questions the idea that export promotion policies should be standardized, and offers evidence to support the view that firms with different characteristics actually require different kinds of support.     

U.K. SMEs’ awareness,use, and perceptions of selected government export assistance programs: An investigation into the effect of the internationalization process

This study reports on an empirical investigation into U.K. managers’ behavior toward and perceptions about selected export assistance programs. Specifically, it investigates whether differences exist between managers of U.K. small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in various stages of internationalization in relation to their awareness and frequency of use of the programs, together with their perceptions about the timeliness, reliability, and availability of the assistance schemes. It provides a contribution to the knowledge in the areas of export management and public policy because despite the fact that a body of literature exists on the topics of both export assistance and the internationalization process of firms, there is a need to bring these two research topics together in the form of a single U.K. study to establish whether current export assistance procedures are suitable for managers from firms in different stages of export development. The rationale for such a study is that if managers of U.K. SMEs in different stages of the internationalization process differ in both their behavior toward and perceptions about government assistance programs, U.K. policymakers may need to reconsider the way in which services are provided to avoid wasting scarce resources.     

UK food shopping in the 1950s: the social context of customer loyalty

Food shopping – although often dismissed as dreary necessity – has always served a range of latent functions. In the 1950s, food storage limitations and tight budgets gave rise to weekly – often daily – shopping patterns that also allowed shoppers to meet certain social needs. Going to food shops, and the way that customer service was organized, produced significant interactional opportunities which were valued by participants. Exchanging news with other customers may have reinforced shopping patterns but shopkeepers, and knowledgeable assistants, were also useful intermediaries for product and usage information. Functional specialization in food commodities bestowed the aura of expertise, and direct accountability for the quality of what was sold provided a more personal style of retailing than is currently typical. Much depended on the perception of relationships. The 1950s were an important transitional period in the UK. Rationing gave way to wider choice and availability, while the market position of corner shops was increasingly eclipsed by town centre supermarkets. This article explores the social context of food shopping, and its relationship to the specific issue of customer loyalty.     

Investor Reaction to Inter-corporate Business Contracting: Evidence and Explanation

We examine the stock market reaction to 1227 inter-corporate ordinary business contract announcements reported by Dow Jones between January 1, 1990 and December 31, 2001. Around contract announcement dates, we find statistically significant positive average abnormal returns and abnormal trading volume for contractors, but insignificant positive abnormal returns and negative abnormal volume for contractees. Cross-sectionally, contract announcement period returns are higher for contractors who are small relative to the contract size, have higher return volatility, larger market-to-book ratios and higher profitability. The announcement period returns of contract-awarding firms are not significant and are only marginally related to cross-sectional explanatory factors. The results are consistent with two explanatory stories: contractor quasi-rents induced by the winner's curse and information signalling about contractor production costs. The results are not consistent with perfect competition, with contracts having positive net present values for both parties, and with a version of incomplete contracting theory.     

Pattern recognition and financial time‐series

This paper investigates financial time‐series from the perspective of a practitioner in artificial intelligence methods and pattern recognition. It presents results from statistical experiments which suggest that financial markets operate with a measure of inefficiency and predictability. However, identifying the nature of any regularities and patterns presents a difficult challenge to the artificial intelligence community, in that established techniques make assumptions about the underlying process that mostly prove to be invalid for this class of data. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.