“To Own or Not to Own?” A Study on the Determinants and Consequences of Alternative Intellectual Property Rights Arrangements in Crowdsourcing for Innovation Contests

Firms are increasingly engaging in crowdsourcing for innovation to access new knowledge beyond their boundaries; however, scholars are no closer to understanding what guides seeker firms in deciding the level at which to acquire rights from solvers and the effect that this decision has on the performance of crowdsourcing contests. Integrating property rights theory and the problem‐solving perspective while leveraging exploratory interviews and observations, we build a theoretical framework to examine how specific attributes of the technical problem broadcast by firms affect the seekers’ choice between alternative intellectual property rights (IPR) arrangements that call for acquiring or licensing‐in IPR from external solvers (i.e., with high and low degrees of ownership, respectively). Each technical problem differs in the knowledge required to be solved as well as in the stage of development of the innovation process and seeker firms pay great attention to such characteristics when deciding about the IPR arrangement they choose for their contests. In addition, we analyze how this choice between acquiring and licensing‐in IPR, in turn, influences the performance of the contest. We empirically test our hypotheses analyzing a unique dataset of 729 challenges broadcast on the InnoCentive platform from 2010 to 2016. Our results indicate that challenges related to technical problems in later stages of the innovation process are positively related to the seekers’ preference toward IPR arrangements with a high level of ownership, while technical problems involving a higher number of knowledge domains are not. Moreover, we found that IPR arrangements with a high level of ownership negatively affect solvers’ participation and that IPR arrangement play a mediating role between the attributes of the technical problem and the solvers’ self‐selection process. Our paper contributes to the open innovation and crowdsourcing literature and provides practical implications for both managers and contest organizers.     

Employer training in Australia: current practices and concerns

This paper presents and analyses results from a research project on current trends in employer training in Australia. While the formal vocational education and training (VET) system is well‐researched, the everyday training that happens in workplaces is relatively under‐researched in Australia. Using some of the results of an employer survey undertaken in 2015, the paper describes and analyses employer‐based training across a range of industry areas. The survey included groups of questions on a range of matters, including the reasons why employers train, and how these relate to employers’ perceptions of their operating environment, and the structures they have in place to manage and organize training. Detailed data are provided about three specific forms of training: in‐house training and learning; the use that employers make of external providers of training; and employers’ use of nationally recognised training – training from the VET system. Finally the paper reports what managers said about the barriers to providing more training. The paper analyses the findings in relation to the literature and also identified changes over time in training practices in Australian companies. Implications for training policy and practice, as well as for future research, are identified.     

Use of typologies for ‘measuring’ self-identity change: methodological issues in longitudinal qualitative research

A microsociological research which traced the experience of 120 women (during five years of psychotherapy they undertook to resolve existential problems) used different typologies in the organisation of qualitative data. The major typology, of psychosocial identity was of importance not only in data-ordering, but also in appreciating the changes occurring to individuals during the psychotherapeutic process. The other two typologies were essentially of sensitising concepts but also represented structural social elements and broadened the microfocus to include features of four different therapies and therapeutic communities. This article discusses the methodological implications of this technical approach to ordering qualitative data, the actual research procedure used in the creation of the typologies and, in brief outline, their content.     

Nonprofit executive incentive pay

We utilize information only recently disclosed on Form 990 to examine the use, and consequences of, incentive pay at nonprofit organizations. Bonuses are common in nonprofits, as we observe that approximately 45% of the 44,000 organization-year observations in our sample reported paying CEO bonuses. We find that the bonuses are positively associated with profitability, competition from other nonprofits, firm size, available cash, and use of compensation consultants and committees, while negatively related to board oversight, donations, and grants. Our results also suggest that donors look unfavorably at the payment of bonuses; that is, bonuses are associated with lower future donations. Nonetheless, we find evidence consistent with the payment of bonuses incentivizing nonprofit executives, as despite reduced fundraising, future profitability and program services are positively associated with current bonus compensation.     

Sexual Minority Adults at a Seasonal Home Campground: An Examination of Common,Unique, and Diverse Leisure Motivations

We examined the motivations of sexual minority adults to vacation at a sexual minority-focused campground and how sexual orientation identity management was associated with leisure motivations. Twenty-nine men and 12 women who owned seasonal homes participated. In responses to open-ended questions, participants expressed many of the motivations typically associated with seasonal home leisure (e.g., socializing, escape, relax). The most frequently mentioned motivation was the sexual minority focus of the campground. The more participants were “out” in everyday life, the less likely they were to mention the sexual minority focus of the campground as a motivation for being there.     

Shedding gender stigmas: Work-life balance equity in the 21 century

The gender stigma of work-life balance (WLB) policies as concessions for mothers and female caregivers originated with the push by the Women's Movement for gender workplace equity in the late 20^th century. Unfortunately, this perception continues in the 21^st century and retains the additional stigma of employee participation in these policies—regardless of gender—as a detrimental career move. Thus, home and work responsibilities for professionals of all genders who desire more occupational flexibility remain unreconciled. Despite this dominant national and international outlook, this article encourages new century organizations and professionals to reject the traditional perception of occupational inequity through gender-colored glasses and instead contemplate the benefits of WLB policies void of gender stigmas. Specifically, organizations could re-create workplace culture with stigma-free WLB policies through administrative leaders’ embracement of and participation in such policies, which may pave the way for establishing occupational equity. Through workplace culture re-creation, organizations may then offer employees—regardless of gender, marital status, or company position—flexible work options to assist them in leading happy, healthy, and more productive lives.     

The CAPM strikes back? An equilibrium model with disasters

Embedding disasters into a general equilibrium model with heterogeneous firms induces strong nonlinearity in the pricing kernel, helping explain the empirical failure of the (consumption) CAPM. Our single-factor model reproduces the failure of the CAPM in explaining the value premium in finite samples without disasters and its relative success in samples with disasters. Due to beta measurement errors, the estimated beta-return relation is flat, consistent with the beta “anomaly,” even though the true beta-return relation is strongly positive. Finally, the consumption CAPM fails in simulations, even though a nonlinear model with the true pricing kernel holds exactly by construction.     

An ‘upside‐down’ view of rural health care

Access to high quality health care services plays an important part in the health of rural communities and individuals. This fact is reflected in efforts by governments to improve the quality of such services through better targeting of funds and more efficient management of services. In Australia, the difficulties experienced by rural communities in attracting and retaining doctors has long been recognized as a contributing factor to the relatively higher levels of morbidity and mortality in rural areas. However, this paper, based on a study of two small rural communities in Australia, suggests that resolving the health problems of rural communities will require more than simply increasing the quality and accessibility of health services. Health and well‐being in such communities relates as much to the sense of community cohesion as it does to the direct provision of medical services. Over recent years, that cohesion has diminished, undermined in part by government policies that have fuelled an exodus from small rural communities to urban areas. Until governments begin to take an ‘upside‐down’ perspective, focusing on building healthy communities rather than simply on building hospitals to make communities healthy, the disadvantages faced by rural people will continue to be exacerbated.     

Cross-Cultural Diversity,Leadership and Workplace Relations in Australia

Australia, as a multicultural society, faces many challenges, not the least of which is that of coping with increasing cultural diversity in the workplace, and - as the global trend continues, even accelerates, in the new millennium - managing cross-cultural issues will become more and more of a priority. The specific cultural diversity issue considered in this contribution is the relationship between perceived leadership behaviour and subordinate job satisfaction in two different cultural groups, Vietnamese and Australian. The validity of the leadership and job satisfaction theories in cultures other than the ones in which they originated is challenged, and it is argued that the change in business environments such as globalization, international mergers and acquisitions, and diverse cultural workforces has made the universal assumptions of these theories questionable.     

From public ideology to socio-material reproduction of agile principles: The case of pivotal labs

This paper focuses on how regular invocation of a public ideology helps sustain local work practices. Existing research acknowledges that there is a recursive relationship between the local practices and the public ideas, with local practices leading to the adaption of public ideas over time. There is little study of how public ideology sustains local practices over the longer term – seeing translation of the ideology as an ongoing process. Through a case study and web-based analysis of Pivotal Labs, an agile software development company, we contribute to socio-material translation studies demonstrating the manifestation of the public ideology in socio-material practices. We also introduce the concept of a collective cognitive bridge that supports the continued relevance of the public idea as a prop for these socio-material practices.