Impacts of Technology Adoption by Small Independent Food Retailers

This paper aims to understand the impacts of technology adoption on small independent food retailers in Portugal. Based on primary data, perceptions of the impacts were related to types of technology and retailer‐specific characteristics. Although technologies for managing customer relationships are the most frequently adopted, there is no empirical evidence that they yield strong perceived impacts on firms' performance. The complexity and novelty of such technologies seems to require time for firms and workers to become proficient in their use, and hence to generate perceived impacts on firms' performance.     

Frontier markets’ efficiency: mutual information and detrended fluctuation analyses

This study tests weak form efficiency in frontier markets. Mutual information and detrended fluctuation analyses are performed to assess global correlation and long range dependence in the stock markets of twenty three countries. The results indicate that Slovenia is the only case where there is evidence compatible with weak form efficiency. The relatively less inefficient markets are mainly located in Europe and America, and the relatively more inefficient mainly in the Middle East. This information is useful for investors, but also for the assessed countries’ regulators as they indicate that relevant impediments are preventing the exploitation of potential profitable opportunities.

     

Integral decision analysis in mutually exclusive capital investment projects. Case study: Hard Rock Cafe at Riviera Maya

Brands that have worldwide recognition are perceived as profitable businesses. One of the reasons for this perception might lie in the belief that these companies usually employ some degree of financial evaluation to make the right choice in terms of investment; Hard Rock Cafe is no exception. The brand opened one restaurant in the Riviera Maya in 2011 which closed within nine months. Could a better investment decision have been made if the Hard Rock Cafe Mexico management had followed the Integral Decision Analysis (IDA) method? This method gives decision-makers a chance to analyze mutually exclusive capital budgeting projects. The case study illustrates the type of elements that the model can yield, it provides a brief explanation on how this process could have been used by the Hard Rock Cafe management and it offers an explanation on how this knowledge might have helped in supporting a final investment decision. In conclusion, the IDA method used to analyze this project might reduce the risks in capital investments.     

Financial Development and Macroeconomic Performance

Atlantic Economic Journal -     

What determines fund performance persistence? International evidence

We study performance persistence across a global sample of equity mutual funds from 27 countries. In contrast to the existing U.S.‐based evidence, we find that net performance persistence is present in the majority of fund industries, suggesting that fund manager skill is commonplace rather than a rarity. Consistent with the intuition that more competition in the mutual fund industry makes remaining a winner fund less likely but keeping a loser fund at the bottom of the performance ranks more probable, we show that competitiveness explains the cross‐sectional variation in performance persistence.     

Public Debt,Economic Growth and Inflation in African Economies

We analyse the relationship between public debt, economic growth and inflation in a group of 52 African economies between 1950 and 2012. The results indicate that the limits of public debt are negatively related to economic growth and exhibit, from a given level of debt, an inverted U behaviour regarding the relationship between economic growth and public debt. Briefly, the high levels of public debt are coincident with reduced rates of economic growth and rising levels of inflation. Our results for three specific geographical areas resemble those of the overall analysis, despite some differences. In North African countries, the growth rates of the gross domestic product (GDP) and inflation also show an inverted U behaviour as the ratio of public debt/GDP increases. The highest rate of economic growth is recorded when the ratio of public debt/GDP is below 30% of GDP and corresponds to an average inflation rate of 5.33%. An identical behaviour of the GDP growth rates and inflation also appears in Sub‐Saharan countries until the third interval (60–90%). However, the highest growth rate of the GDP and GDP per capita is registered when the public debt/GDP ratio is in the second interval (30–60%). For the countries of the Southern Africa Development Community, the highest average rate of economic growth (6.8%) is similar to North African countries, when the ratio public debt/GDP is below 30% of GDP, with an average inflation rate of 11%. A number of robustness analyses were performed and the great majority of them confirm the general analysis.     

What do we [not] know about technology entrepreneurship research?

This study aims to review what we do (and do not) know about technology entrepreneurship (TE) research to date. Based on a categorized bibliometric analysis resulting from a systematic review of 135 scientific articles published in refereed journals over the past 27 years (1986–2013), we identify the core domains of TE, its intellectual structure, the scientific journals with a major impact in this field of research, and the affiliation and collaboration networks within it. Specifically, through a detailed analysis of article co-citations within the TE area, this study provides co-citation networks of authors, journals, and their respective clusters, revealing their rankings in terms of contributions to the TE literature. This comprehensive analysis can be used to enhance our understanding of TE and support further research in this field.     

Intrapreneurship and firm entrepreneurial orientation: insights from the health care service industry

Intrapreneurship affects our daily lives and is a research topic of great importance. Given the current economic climate, its relevance to firm performance has increased considerably both among academics and practitioners. Specifically, our approach has focused on the identification, analysis and explanation of the determinants/variables that influence the intrapreneurship process in the health care service industry, including the private, public and social sectors. The methodology employed consisted of collecting primary data via a questionnaire survey. The questionnaire was sent by e-mail to health care employees and middle managers from the northern and center regions of Portugal, and the study covered 202 professionals from 45 organizations. The results show that the participating health care team members present intrapreneurial behavior, and health care organizations create favorable internal conditions that support the theoretical concepts of intrapreneurship and firm entrepreneurial orientation (FEO).     

Enhancing individual entrepreneurial orientation measurement using a metacognitive decision making-based framework

Entrepreneurship, and individuals’ predisposition toward entrepreneurial activities in particular, i.e. Individual Entrepreneurial Orientation (IEO), has been gaining increasing relevance in academia and management practice alike. Understanding IEO is a critical element not only for its promotion, but for better and more informed managerial and investor decision making as well. As such, this study proposes a new framework for understanding and measuring IEO based on the integrated use of cognitive mapping and the interactive multiple criteria decision making (TODIM) method. We present the steps for building such a framework, as well as a practical application of these steps. The results are promising: the methodology applied allowed a large number of determinants of IEO and their relationships to be mapped; and, subsequently, ranked and weighted for the creation of an IEO measurement tool. The implications of the resulting framework for theory and practice, its limitations and possibilities for further research are also discussed.     

INSOLVENCY PREDICTION IN THE PRESENCE OF DATA INCONSISTENCIES

In this paper we use data inconsistencies as an indicator of financial distress. Traditional models for insolvency prediction normally ignore inconsistent data, either by removing or replacing it. Instead of removing that information, we propose a new variable to capture it; using it together with traditional accounting variables (based on financial ratios) for the purpose of insolvency prediction. Computational tests use three datasets based on the financial results of 2033 Brazilian Health Maintenance Organizations over 7 years (2001 to 2007). Sixteen classification methods were used to evaluate whether or not the new variable impacted solvency prediction. Tests show a statistically significant improvement in classification accuracy – average results improve 1.3 (p = 0.003) and 1.8 (p = 0.006) percentage points, for 10‐fold and leave‐one‐out cross‐validations respectively. In addition, the analysis of false positives and false negatives shows that the new variable reduces the potentially harmful misclassification of false negatives (i.e. financially distressed companies being classified as financially healthy) and also reduces the estimated overall error rate. Regarding the extensibility of the results, even though this work uses data from Brazilian companies only, the calculation of the financial ratios variables, as well as the inconsistencies, could be extended to most companies worldwide subject to governmental accounting regulations aligned with the International Financial Reporting Standards. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.