Resources,Capabilities and Entrepreneurial Perceptions*

abstract We review and develop a subjectivist theory of entrepreneurship that focuses on individuals, their knowledge, resources and skills, and the processes of discovery and creativity, which constitute the heart of entrepreneurship. First, we establish the fundamental importance of subjectivity in entrepreneurial discovery and creativity. Second, we build on Penrose (1959 ) to elaborate how entrepreneurs' perceptions and personal knowledge shape a firm's subjective productive opportunity set. Third, we explain that entrepreneurial perceptions and knowledge partly originate from entrepreneurs' experiences in specific business settings such as the firm, the management team, and the industry. Fourth, we highlight the causal connections between subjectivity in entrepreneurship and observed heterogeneity in firm‐level economic performance. Lastly, we suggest directions for further advancing a subjectivist resource‐based approach to future entrepreneurship research.     

Whither Solidarity? Transitions in Swedish Public-Sector Pay Policy

As part of a drive for efficiency and decentralization in government operations, Sweden is implementing a new system of pay administration in the public sector that is marked by a clear movement away from centralized wage negotiation and fixed salary increases towards more flexible and individualized pay rates. Despite rhetoric about performance and efficiency, the changes appear to be focused mainly on expanding wage differentials among occupational groups and offering market premiums to recruit and retain valued employees. Although the new pay system has not been integrated into a general management approach, it offers considerable challenge to the norms and values of solidarity that have traditionally been held so strongly in Sweden.     

Risk Management of Correlation Products

Trading units within the banking and dealer community that trade exotic instruments are well aware of the hazards of using traditional tools in analysing the risks resulting from positions taken in their specialised markets. The global risk management systems within these organisations have been slower to recognise the new risk profiles created by more recently traded exotic instruments. For traditional risks that are separable , the evaluation of risk at the individual trading units and the subsequent aggregation of risk across trading units captures the risks inherent in the portfolio. However, with non-traditional, non-separable risks, this division (by trading unit) and subsequent aggregation (by risk managers) of risks may obscure an increasing amount of risk found in the firm's trading operation.     

The resource-based view within the conversation of strategic management

The resource-based approach is an emerging framework that has stimulated discussion between scholars from three research perspectives. First, the resource-based theory incorporates traditional strategy insights concerning a firm's distinctive competencies and heterogeneous capabilities. The resource-based approach also provides value-added theoretical propositions that are testable within the diversification strategy literature. Second, the resource-based view fits comfortably within the organizational economics paradigm. Third, the resource-based view is complementary to industrial organization research. The resource-based view provides a framework for increasing dialogue between scholars from these important research areas within the conversation of strategic management. Resource-based studies that give simultaneous attention to each of these research programs are suggested.     

THE ADOPTION OF THE MULTIDIVISIONAL FORM OF ORGANIZATION: A CONTINGENCY MODEL*

This article examines the proposition that the multidivisional structure is determined by both power and efficiency imperatives. It is theorized that combining the coalitional power and information-processing perspectives of organizational choice enables us to explain and predict organizational form. The theory is tested on 291 Fortune 500 firms. The results largely confirm theoretical expectations. It is submitted that the multidivisional paradigm illustrates the central premises of the article: (1) a synthesis of efficiency and power perspectives is a viable research programme; and (2) theoretical pluralism increases empirical content and should be valued by those concerned with progress in the emerging field of strategic management.     

An empirical investigation of the effect of corporate charter antitakeover amendments on stockholder wealth

This paper tests competing theoretical explanations for the passage of corporate charter antitakeover amendments. The managerial entrenchment hypothesis suggests that antitakeover amendments are adopted by incumbent management to obtain job security at stockholders' expense. An alternative hypothesis is that antitakeover amendments are proposed in order to enable the management of the target firm to extract a higher price from the bidding firm and thereby benefit stockholders. Our event study from a sample of 409 firms that adopted antitakeover amendments in the 1974–88 period indicates a strongly negative effect on stockholder wealth, in support of the managerial entrenchment hypothesis that antitakeover amendments are adopted by managers at the expense of stockholders.