Effect of customer orientation and entrepreneurial orientation on innovativeness: Evidence from the hotel industry in Switzerland

While researchers have explored the relationship between customer orientation, entrepreneurship and innovativeness with business performance in different organizations, few such studies exist on the hotel industry. This current work investigates the potential influences of these variables on hotel industry performance. Data for this study was collected through personal questionnaires collected from 156 hotel managers and owners from German and French speaking cantons located in Switzerland in order to examine the interrelation between innovativeness, customer orientation, entrepreneurship and service business performance dimensions (i.e., profit goal achievement, sales goal achievement and ROI achievement). The findings support aspects of prior research, but also provide some new insights by exploring customer orientation and innovativeness simultaneously and revealing how these factors impact upon the performance of the Swiss hotel industry. In the light of existing literature, limitations and future research directions are subsequently addressed.     

Foreign direct investment and entrepreneurship: Does the role of institutions matter?

Development economics, international business, and entrepreneurship literature suggest that foreign direct investment (FDI) has significant positive spillover effects for entrepreneurial activities of host economies. However, the findings of past research are mixed, and they do not always confirm this suggestion. We argue that the reason for conflicting findings may be because of an incomplete understanding of the factors that influence the FDI-entrepreneurship nexus in different contexts. Previous studies have carried out only limited exploration of the contingencies in the FDI and domestic entrepreneurship relationship that may depend on the host country’s institutional capacity. We argue that not all countries can reap the rewards from FDI equally. Rather, we hypothesize that countries need to have a sufficient degree of institutional capacity relevant to specific conditions and appropriate threshold levels to successfully capture the positive spillover effects of FDI on domestic entrepreneurship. Utilizing panel data from 2006 to 2016 for 97 emerging markets, developing and developed countries (at different income levels), and a System Generalized Method of Moments (SGMM) estimator that controls for instrument proliferation in dealing with endogeneity problems, we test this hypothesis. We find that FDI has a negative (crowding-out) effect on domestic entrepreneurship at below-threshold levels of institutional capacity, and a positive (crowding-in) effect at above-threshold levels of institutional capacity. The crowding-out effect diminishes as the institutional capacity changes or improves to meet mutating economic environment conditions. Our findings are robust across a wide range of aggregate and disaggregate measures of different types of institutions and alternative empirical strategies.     

Creativity and Growth in: Edmund Phelps (2013), Mass Flourishing. How Grassroots Innovation Created Jobs,Challenge and Change

This article reviews the thesis presented by Edmund Phelps, Mass Flourishing. How Grassroots Innovation Created Jobs, Challenge and Change (Princeton University Press, 2013) that modern economic growth is an indirect outcome of human creativity, and that the object of enlightened policy ought to be to promote this creativity, or flourishing, rather than economic growth per se. The book is a remarkable contribution to the literature on economic growth, with its focus on how entrepreneurship and innovation generates endogenous growth and, more importantly to the author, improves human satisfaction.     

科技创业型企业融资的治理效应研究——基于外部环境调节作用的实证分析

本文以北京等地的科技创业型企业为考察样本,运用多元回归分析方法,检验科技创业型企业融资在外部环境调节下产生的治理效应。研究表明,外部环境与融资共同作用影响了企业的绩效和成长性,即外部环境对我国科技创业型企业融资的治理效应有显著性影响。具体而言,在技术环境和竞争环境影响下,股权融资对科技创业型企业的绩效和成长性有负向显著影响;在市场环境、技术环境和竞争环境影响下,债权融资对科技创业型企业的绩效和成长性有正向显著影响;在市场环境、技术环境和竞争环境影响下,可转换证券融资对科技创业型企业的绩效和成长性有负向显著影响。     

大学生创业的动态考察与思索——以北京市为例

近三年的连续调查表明,北京高校大学毕业生创业的比例不高,创业大学生的经营状况也比较困难,没成为我国创业型发展的主要推动力量.大学生创业率较低的成因是多方面的,一是大学生创业意识薄弱,具有生存型创业意愿的分别占43.9％、45.8％、42.9％,宁可失业也不选择创业的占32.2％、20.6％、25.7％;二是大学生创业能力不足,90％的大学生不具备足够的创业能力;三是创业环境较差.应采取多种措施全面推进大学生创业,大学生要提高创业意识和创业能力;高校要大力发展创业教育,加大宣传,扩大创业教育规模,提高教育质量;政府要形成尊重创业的社会氛囤,建立创业基金,成立专业化服务机构,深化户籍、社会保障制度改革,制定优惠政策,优化创业环境,以推动我国大学生创业活动.     

创业政策对大学生创业动力的影响实证研究

我国中央及各地方政府出台了一系列政策以激励大学生创业,但大学毕业生的自主创业比例及成功率均很低.本文从创业政策角度实证探讨了其对大学生创业动力的影响,对完善大学生创业政策具有一定的参考意义.以大学生为研究对象,在564份有效问卷的基础上,通过因子分析提取商务支持、金融支持、创业教育、配套措施、创业文化五个创业政策因子,以及内在、外在创业动力两个创业动力因子.实证结果表明,五个创业政策因子均与大学生内在、外在创业动力有显著正相关性,其中金融支持和配套措施对外在创业动力的影响最为显著,配套措施对内在创业动力的影响最为显著.     

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.     

Creativity in the opportunity identification process and the moderating effect of diversity of information

We employ two study designs for a more detailed examination of creativity in the opportunity identification process. We employ a correlational field study to test the hypothesis that divergent thinking affects venture growth through business idea generation. We use an experimental design to test the hypothesis that diversity of information moderates the effect of divergent thinking on business idea generation. Analyses based on 98 business owners across both study designs supported our hypotheses. Combining the findings from both designs points to boundary conditions of theories suggesting constraining information; this may weaken the indirect effect of divergent thinking on venture growth.     

Are entrepreneurs influenced by risk attitude,regulatory focus or both? An experiment on entrepreneurs' time allocation

“Hybrid entrepreneurs” — those who maintain a wage job while starting a new enterprise — outnumber pure entrepreneurs in many countries. Yet, how hybrid entrepreneurs allocate their working hours between these two activities is not well understood. To better understand the relationship between hybrid entrepreneurs' division of time between their wage jobs and new enterprises we develop a model that captures hybrid entrepreneurs' decisions on the tradeoffs between financial risk and return as it relates to time allocation. We test two hypotheses based on utility theory, and challenge them with two hypotheses based on regulatory focus theory in a controlled experiment with 25 early stage entrepreneurs and 29 undergraduate students. In the computer-based experiment, entrepreneurs' and students' time allocation decisions (tied to monetary incentives) are used to test what would motivate them to work more or less hours in their entrepreneurial startups. We find that the actual time allocation decisions of the student group are somewhat in tune with utility theory, but that the entrepreneurs' time allocation decisions are better explained by regulatory focus theory.     

地理距离与经济距离对创业知识溢出影响的实证分析

创业活动的产生源于对新知识的投资,创业活动通过“知识过滤”为知识溢出提供传播媒介,从而形成创业知识溢出。以我国内地30个省际区域2002-2009年数据为样本,运用空间动态面板数据模型实证分析我国企业家创业活动的影响因素,并从地理因素与经济因素两个方面探究创业知识溢出。研究结果表明,研发投入、专利申请量以及人均GDP对创业活动影响显著,创业活动存在显著的溢出效应,经济距离对创业知识溢出的影响比地理距离的影响更显著。