The role of the entrepreneurial encounter in the emergence of opportunities: Vallée’s Dallas Buyers Club

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to explore the conceptual potential of the Deleuzian notion of the encounter in order to better understand the genealogy of opportunities. We adopt a processual perspective of opportunities. In order to translate this notion to the domain of entrepreneurship, we analysed and interpreted Jean-Marc Vallée’s Dallas Buyers Club. This film follows the creation of the first club in the United States that illegally allowed HIV-positive people to supply themselves with foreign antiretroviral drugs from Mexico or Japan. The article highlights encounters in this process that disturb the entrepreneur’s belief systems and allow him or her to be open to potential opportunity. It finally explores how the encounter may improve our understanding of the political becoming of opportunities within the entrepreneurial process.     

Demographics,personality, contact,and universal‐diverse orientation: An exploratory examination

This study explores relationships between race, gender, agreeableness, openness to experience, contact, and a measure of attitudes toward diversity—universal‐diverse orientation (UDO). UDO consists of three attitudinal components: realistic appreciation (a cognition), comfort with difference (a feeling), and diversity of contact (a behavior). Results suggest that race, agreeableness, and openness relate to UDO attitudes, primarily due to the relationships of these variables with the behavioral component—diversity of contact. Identifying characteristics of tolerant people (e.g., agreeableness) and training managers in skills related to those characteristics may improve contextual performance and make managers better role models within the organizational context. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Judo Strategy: 10 Techniques For Beating A Stronger Opponent

The idea of judo economics, building on analogies with the sport of judo, has been around for at least 20 years. But taking these ideas further to judo strategy means that a framework of strategic principles can be developed to help companies put stronger opponents on the mat.     

The Effect of Earnings–Announcement Timing on Earnings Management

This paper examines whether firms which delay earnings announcements engage in earnings management. The cross–sectional version of the modified Jones 1995 model is used to estimate 'normal' accruals. Prior research has documented that, on average, delayed earnings announcements are associated with negative earnings surprises. Our evidence suggests that the market anticipates unfavorable earnings news when it observes reporting delays. As a consequence, late reporters appear to make the most of a bad situation by employing income–decreasing accruals in big–bath–type earnings management and in contractual renegotiations. We find that the magnitude of income–reducing abnormal accruals is related to the reporting lag.     

Gender-Based Vicarious Sensitivity to Disempowering Behavior in Organizations: Exploring an Expanded Concept of Hostile Working Environment

The purpose of this study was to explore evidence of gender-based vicarious sensitivity to disempowering behavior in organizations, expanding the concept of hostile working environment beyond the context of sexual harassment. Male and female graduate and undergraduate students viewed 10 video segments of Anita Hill's interview by U.S. senators during the October 1991 confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Nominee, Clarence Thomas. Although no significant relationship was found between the personal attributes of age and ethnicity to perceptions of disempowering behavior, female participants reported seeing significantly more offensive behavior in the video segments than did male participants. The results are discussed in terms of greater female sensitivity to common forms of disempowering behavior in organizations, and having a disparate negative impact and systematically placing women at a disadvantage in today's workforce.     

Policy options for afforestation in Flanders

This paper analyses current and alternative afforestation policy instruments in Flanders. First we select forest sites that maximize net social benefits given a constraint on the total area of new forests and then we select policy instruments that yield this optimal combination of sites. For each policy option, we calculate the associated costs for landowners and government as well as net social benefits for society. Our empirical illustration shows that the welfare gain is considerable if the afforestation subsidy is conditioned on an objective criterion rather than a case-by-case approach. Our results also show that it is worthwhile to consider alternative policy instruments, such as auctions, not previously used in Belgian legislation.     

Embedded industrial production systems: Lessons from waste management in zinc production

To meet the sustainability challenge private companies must implement corporate strategies and adopt novel technologies. The technical and social embeddedness of industrial production systems, however, complicates these systems' transition towards sustainability. In the paper, mechanisms and conditions are reported for the development and implementation of waste management options in embedded industrial production systems. The focus is on the Dutch zinc production industry, which had to deal with a major waste problem; the generation of jarosite. The industry's options were to increase the jarosite waste storage capacity, to develop a jarosite treatment process or to switch to a zinc-ore of low-iron content whereby no jarosite waste would be generated anymore. Required conditions appeared to be a combination of technological capability and technical embedding and favourable economics. Case study research, however, revealed that adequate stakeholder management is crucial to address social pressure exerted and to obtain external acceptance for any transition strategy. Whilst appropriate, internal technological capabilities are important, effective interactions with and enrolment of various firm-external actors are crucial. In the case of zinc, access to the heterogeneous external actor network was critical for the development of the jarosite treatment solution direction. In conclusion, both the technical, organizational and social embedding of new technologies are crucial for successful implementation.     

Agency Structure and Firm Culture: OSHA, EPA, and the Steel Industry

We compare models of Occupational Safety and Health Administration(OSHA) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) enforcementand compliance for steel plants during the 1980s. We find thatOSHA and EPA respond similarly to plant-level compliance andmeasures of hazardousness, but differently to firm-level complianceand risks of plant closing, and we relate the differences tothe agencies' differing organizational structures. Plant-levelcompliance is affected by enforcement pressure, compliance costs,and the firm's overall compliance behavior in similar ways forthe two regulatory areas, but environmental compliance was alsosensitive to plant size and risk of closing. Finally, we findthat the likelihood that a plant was in compliance with oneagency seemed at most weakly related to whether it was in compliancewith the other, but that plants likely to receive enforcementattention from one agency were also more likely to receive enforcementattention from the other agency.     

Behind closed doors: Sex bias at professional and managerial levels

U.S. companies have made important strides in combating sex discrimination in the workplace over the last two decades, but more subtle forms of sex bias still exist, often in decisions and behaviors that occur behind closed doors. This paper focuses on sex bias at professional and managerial levels. It explores sources of sex bias in the informal culture, selection and recruitment, task assignment, performance appraisal, promotion, and salary allocation, and then suggests action steps to help reduce sex bias in each of these areas.