The ecology of internal workplace giving at Indiana University: a case study of faculty and staff campus campaign communications and fundraising

• This collective case study examines university-specific philanthropic cultures, campus fundraising campaigns, and their impact on faculty and staff giving to the university. Drawing on both qualitative and quantitative data, the study documents fundraising strategies through interviews and materials analysis and assesses their results through quantitative data on characteristics of donors and their philanthropic gifts. Examination of fundraising methods reveals differences between demand and supply-side communication strategies with faculty and staff members as internal stakeholders and donors. Concentrating on the campuses of Indiana University, a large, highly diverse public institution in the American Midwest, this study includes analysis of the outcomes of the fundraising process across institutions of different sizes, demographics, and philanthropic cultures. The findings underscore the importance of exploring the characteristics that influence employee donation behaviors as context for the creation and enactment of fundraising campaigns and highlight the need for future research in the area of workplace giving.

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Entrepreneurship and strategic thinking in business ecosystems

Success in business ecosystems that include well-established companies and new ventures requires collaboration and competition, a task that demands strategic thinking to leverage a firm's resources and capabilities. Strategic thinking and the entrepreneurial activities in an ecosystem influence one another in a cycle that perpetuates and even sparks innovation. These interactions vary significantly across four types of business ecosystems—Orchestra, Creative Bazaar, Jam Central, and MOD Station—and determine the success and failures of new ventures and established companies. The nature and effect of the dynamic interactions in a business ecosystem can have profound implications for organizational success.     

International entrepreneurship in the post Covid world

How will the world look post Covid-19? What is the role of international entrepreneurship (IE) in this new world? This article attempts to answer these two questions. It highlights the changes caused by Covid and how they might affect the scope and types of international entrepreneurial activities in years to come. It also discusses how international entrepreneurs are likely to operate and shape the emerging world order. The article concludes by outlining the implications of these changes for IE scholarship, offering an agenda for future research.     

Enriching strategic variety in new ventures through external knowledge

To build profitable market positions, new ventures have to address multiple challenges on several fronts. These ventures can compete by being simple (focused) or applying varied ways to compete. The likelihood of these ventures remaining competitive depends on their ability to build novelty into their products and operations, an activity that requires infusing knowledge into their operations. Most ventures, however, have limited knowledge bases and the reach (scope) of their external connections is limited, a factor that prompts them to tap into different external sources in their local areas. This article reports an empirical study of 140 new ventures located in seven regional clusters in Spain. The results show that new ventures can enrich the variety of their strategic repertoire by accessing diverse sources of external knowledge and being exposed to external novel knowledge, while absorptive capacity moderates this relationship. The degree of social development of these clusters also has a positive impact on the strategic variety of new ventures, exhibiting an inverted U-shape curve.     

Maximizing the Impact of Organization Science: Theory-Building at the Intersection of Disciplines and/or Fields

The intersection of academic disciplines and fields provides an important forum for creative theory building. In this article, we identify three modes of theory building at the intersection and highlight their strengths and weaknesses. We position these three modes relative to one another using the 'impact wheel', which visually describes their influence on five domains: theory, field, discipline, researchers, and external stakeholders. Though impact on these domains varies across the three modes, maximum impact is created when theory building at the intersection uncovers new phenomena that revise the boundaries of existing disciplines and fields while giving birth to new ones. Such theorizing is infrequent and demands particular skills on the part of researchers to help organization science to realize more of its potential.     

The Effects of Ownership and Governance on SMEs’ International Knowledge-based Resources

Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play an important role in today’s global economy. However, there are significant differences in how they respond to the opportunities and threats in international markets. This study␣suggests SMEs’ ownership and governance systems significantly influence the development of knowledge-based resources necessary for internationalization. Using a sample of 384 US SMEs, we find a positive relationship between both the equity held by top management team members and venture capitalists and the development of these important resources. This positive association is further accentuated by the presence of independent outside directors on SMEs’ boards, supporting their monitoring and enterprising roles.      

Background and work experience correlates of the ethics and effect of organizational politics

Empirical studies exploring managerial views of organizational politics (OP) are scarce. Furthermore, the literature is replete with inconsistent results regarding the correlates of OP. In this paper, data collected from 302 managers were used to examine the association between seven background and work experience variables and managerial attitudes regarding the ethics, locus, affect of OP on the organization, and the motives behind political maneuvering in the workplace. The results, however, show that association between managers' background and work experience factors and attitudes regarding OP is weak. The results suggest several promising lines of inquiry for future research. Shaker A. Zahra is Assistant Professor of Management at the School of Business Administration of the Old Dominion University, Norfolk, virginia. His research focuses on the role of political factors in strategy development.     

Organizational politics and the strategic process

In this paper the relationship between organizational politics (OP), and company strategy and performance was explored. Data were collected from 55 manufacturing firms. Controlling for company assets and industry type, OP intensity was associated with various stages of the strategic process. In addition, it was negatively associated with overall company performance. These results were corroborated by canonical analysis. Another important finding was that the stage of company evolution moderates the OP-strategic process relationship. Finally, future research directions and implications for managerial behavior and ethics have been clarified.Dr. Shaker A. Zahra is Associate Professor of Strategic Management, Department of Management, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia 22030. His research centers on the role of board of directors in the strategic process, determinants of innovation in large corporations, and ethical issues associated with strategic choices.     

Unethical practices in competitive analysis: Patterns,causes and effects

Scholars and executives have expressed concern over the growing frequency of unethical practices in companies' conduct of competitive analysis — the process by which a firm gathers, analyzes, and interprets data about its rivals. This article reports the results of an exploratory study of 137 senior executives' perceptions of unethical competitive analysis practices, their causes, and their potential effect on industries, companies and individuals. The article discusses the implications of the results for developing guidelines to safeguard against ethical violations in competitive analysis.Dr. Shaker A. Zahra is Professor of Strategic Management at Georgia State University. He is author or coauthor of two books and over 130 journal articles, proceedings and professional papers. His research has appeared inStrategic Management Journal, Decision Sciences, Journal of Management, Journal of Management Studies, Long Range Planning, Journal of Business Venturing, Academy of Management Executive, Journal of Business Ethics, Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice, among others. Professor Zahra serves on the editorial review board of seven journals.