The exit decision in the European venture capital market

This article analyses the exit decision in the European venture capital market, studying when to exit and how it interacts with the exit form. Using a competing risks model we study the impact on the exit decision of the characteristics of venture capital investors, of their investments and of contracting variables. Our results reveals that the hazard functions are non-monotonic for all exit forms and suggest that, in Europe, Initial Public Offering candidates take longer to be selected than trade sales. Moreover our results show that, in Europe, venture capitalists associated with financial institutions have quicker exits (stronger for trade sales), and highlight the importance of contracting variables on the exit decision. An unexpected result is that the presence on the board of directors leads to longer investment durations.     

Building ambidexterity: The role of human resource practices in the performance of firms from Spain

Both researchers and managers are increasingly interested in how firms can pursue ambidextrous learning—that is, simultaneously exploring new knowledge domains while exploiting current ones. In this study, we attempt to bring human resource management into this forum by introducing and testing how high‐involvement human resource practices shape the social climate that affects the firm's ambidextrous learning and subsequent performance. A field study of 198 companies from Spain showed that high‐involvement human resource practices were positively related to the social climate that, in turn, facilitates ambidextrous learning and improved performance. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Ethics and the Networked Business

Pushing through a logical continuum of closed- to open-system views of organizations necessarily changes the conceptualization of a firm from a strongly bounded entity to a configuration of networks and sub-networks, which exists and operates in a larger systemic network configuration. We unfold a classification of management processes corresponding to views of the firm along the closed/open-systems continuum. We examine ethical issues that are likely to devolve from these classes of management processes, and we suggest typical means by which managers will attempt to control their firms’ exposure to such issues. The final class of management processes examined focuses on the achievement of outcomes that are mutually satisfactory in the set of networks and sub-networks that constitute the focal firm, and that support the sustainability of the whole system. The article contributes to organizational theory, business ethics, and computer and information ethics by providing a comprehensive analysis of the impact of managerial views of the firm and of networks – virtual, social, informational – on managerial processes and on our understanding of how business ethics issues are linked to perceptions of what a firm is, does, and can do.     

Introduction to the Special Issue on the Impact of Network Ethics on Business Practices

Modern public relations practices have been dominated by appeals to impulses, desires, and images that affect publics defined predominantly in demographic terms. This paper argues that abandoning basic rhetorical assumptions about the ability of ordinary people to engage in practical reason has serious ethical implications for the marketplace as well as for society in general. The study applies recent rhetorical scholarship on issues of public discourse and rhetorical culture to public relations practices, considering how rhetoric can contribute to more effective and ethical public discourse in our dominant modes of marketplace communication.     

‘If it comes from Juazeiro,it’s blessed’! Liquid and solid attachment in systems of object itineraries of pilgrimages

ABSTRACT

Building on an interpretive approach, we employ the multi-sited ethnographic methods of ‘following the thing’ and ‘following the people’ to track the movements of consumers and objects during a Catholic pilgrimage in the Northeast region of Brazil. We find a system of object itineraries that exemplifies how pilgrims liquefy and solidify attachments to objects to relate to God and saints during movements between their home and the sacred site. We expand perceptions by showing how materiality and relevance to the self can be important even in liquidity. Our findings have implications to the understanding of consumption of the spiritual and liquid/solid attachment to sacred objects.     

Do Public Service Obligations hamper the cost competitiveness of regional airlines?

Panel data is used to model the cost of a set European and US regional air carriers between 1991 and 2002 to see the extent to which they are affected by Public Service Obligations or the US's Essential Air Service Program. Pooling the data set indicates that the Public Service Obligations in Europe do affect the economic performance of carriers, but this is not the case for the US's Essential Air Service Program.     

Managing knowledge through human resource practices: empirical examination on the Spanish automotive industry

This paper considers the relationship between human resource management (HRM) and knowledge management (KM). Specifically, it examines how the human resource (HR) practices that are expected to impact on employees’ abilities, motivation, and opportunity to engage in KM, do so by enabling knowledge sharing, knowledge maintaining, and knowledge creation within organizations. HRM expected to impact employees’ abilities include training and development practices. HRM expected to impact on employees’ motivation include rewards and appraisal practices. HRM expected to impact on employees’ opportunities including providing the support of trusting collaborative relationships. Therefore, HR practices impacting employees’ abilities, motivation, and opportunities are expected to be positively related to knowledge sharing and maintaining within organizations. HR practices impacting employees’ abilities, motivation, and opportunity are expected to be positively related to knowledge creation through their effect on knowledge sharing within organizations. Our research methodology uses a questionnaire survey approach to collect data from firms belonging to the Spanish automotive industry. Results from a final sample of 64 Spanish automotive firms show that HR practices aimed at motivating and giving employees the opportunity to behave as expected significantly affect knowledge sharing and maintaining. Further, knowledge sharing and maintaining is shown to mediate the relationship between HR practices and knowledge creation. The paper ends with a conclusion, limitations and implications for future research.     

The Legacy of Mexico's Agrarian Counter‐Reforms: Reinforcing Social Hierarchies in Calakmul,Campeche

In this paper, we examine how Mexico's 1992 counter‐reforms reinforced social hierarchies between two ‘classes’ of residents within three ejidos in an agricultural frontier in Campeche. We carried out qualitative research with 94 ejidatarios, 92 pobladores and 13 government officials. Our research shows that the reforms cemented the second‐class status of pobladores, as their access to land, natural resources such as firewood and governmental subsidies is now even more contested. Ejidal residents have responded to these tensions by invoking various conceptions of citizenship to press for different forms of justice. Ejidatarios seek to enforce their legal prerogatives by advocating a tiered citizenship, inflected with aspects of ‘market citizenship’, in which pobladores have less access to resources and voice. Pobladores seek inclusion in the ejido via a cultural model of citizenship built around a ‘civil sociality’. Despite this generalization, both groups also selectively move between and combine these citizenship frameworks to advance their claims.     

Reducing Brazilian greenhouse gas emissions: scenario simulations of targets and policies

This paper aims to evaluate the economic impacts of greenhouse gas emission reduction on the Brazilian economy. To this end, we developed an integrated input–output linear programming model for 2009 using the Supply and Use Tables and emissions data of the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology and Innovation. We simulated emissions targets for various potential scenarios in which the adopted policy design took account of sectoral composition in terms of emissions and available production technology. The results were directly affected by the high level of livestock emissions, counterbalancing this sector’s economic importance for Brazil. In the short term, sectoral emissions targets associated with taxation policy or emission permits could be developed in order to create private incentives to mitigate emissions. In this sense, the results also show that different sectoral targets may be able to balance environmental benefits with the possible economic losses incurred by such policies.     

The Determinants of Venture Capital in Europe — Evidence Across Countries

This article analyses the determinants of European venture capital activity. The main novelty of our work is in accounting for the idiosyncrasies of the European venture capital market. In particular, we investigate whether the size of the merger and acquisition market (M&A) is important in explaining venture capital. Moreover, our work is the first that analyses the impact of the degree of information asymmetry at the macro level, the direct impact of the level of entrepreneurial activity and the impact of the unemployment rate on venture capital activity. We use aggregate data from 23 European countries for the period 1998–2003 to estimate panel data models with fixed and random effects. Our results reveal that the size of the M&A market and the market-to-book ratio have a positive impact on venture capital activity whereas the unemployment rate influences the venture capital market negatively. These results highlight the importance of the exit environment and of the degree of asymmetric information for the venture capital market.