Manifestations of rural entrepreneurship: the journey so far and future pathways

Management Review Quarterly - Rural entrepreneurship has manifested into a diverse and progressive field of research in the last two decades. It has seen research amalgamating from different fields...     

On the Systemic Fragility of Finance‐Led Growth

The paper sets up a model of economic crisis by investigating the role played by movement in asset price as a driver of the dynamic interaction between the real and the financial sectors. Such movement influences income determination in the real economy in the short period through aggregate demand leading to the emergence of two macroeconomic regimes. A short period flow model, underpinned by the stock flow consistent accounting framework, is developed to formalize the dynamics of interaction between real and financial sectors mediated by movement in asset price, generates bistability, abrupt crashes, and systemic fragility in the macroeconomic regimes.     

Taking marketing strategy risks with seemingly no expected gains

This paper investigates the competitive rationale for firms to invest in marketing activities aiming to enhance valuation and achieve differentiation and competitive advantage, while carrying the strategic risks of causing unintended negative consequences. We build a stylized theoretical model where firms offering similar (homogenous) products are competing by determining their marketing strategy and pricing. Each firm must choose between several marketing activities that have different potentials of enhancing consumers’ product valuations while carrying some risk of lowering consumer valuation if unintended negative outcomes occur. The stochastic nature of marketing implies that (1) even when both firms invest the same amount of money aiming to enhance product valuations by the same level, there will be a variety of (posterior) vertical differentiation scenarios where the consumers could value either firm’s product as better as or worse than the rival’s. (2) The firms may employ marketing activities that do not even lead to gains in consumer product valuation in expectation. The duopoly model analysis indicates that associated with strategic pricing, even such stochastic marketing activities may constitute desirable strategies for two a priori symmetric firms in order to avoid a Bertrand type competition as the benefit from differentiation is found to be significant enough to offset the unintended negative outcomes. The oligopoly model analysis indicates that there is an increased incentive to take marketing risk when there is a greater level of competitive intensity in the marketplace. Preliminary experimental evidence is presented to support the main findings from theoretical model analyses. The paper thus provides important managerial implications for firms contemplating investment in seemingly risky marketing activities.

     

Social Media Index Valuation: Impact of Technological,Social, Economic,and Ethical Dimensions

Marketing practitioners have recognized a growing need to measure consumer-generated social media in a standard way since there are numerous social media indicators in use, making intra- and inter-company comparisons difficult. This paper identifies four social media dimensions for measurement and evaluation: technological, social, economic, and ethical; and, subsequently, measures social media. The study makes a contribution to social media literature by using analytic hierarchy process of developing a mathematical model for social media index valuation. The “social media composite index number” will serve as an industry benchmark signifying the organization's share and commitment to social media.     

When an NGO Takes on Public Participation: Preparing a Plan for a Neighborhood in East Jerusalem

It is often non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) that promote empowered participation processes, and assume active roles in leading them. However, the ability of NGOs to take on such processes is under‐theorized. In many cases empowered participation involving NGOs takes place without political support from above (or with limited or conditional support). Our goal in this article is to use a case study of participatory planning in East Jerusalem to theorize processes of empowerment in an oppositional political environment. We argue that it is useful to analyze such processes of empowered participation through the concept of power. We describe the process of empowerment as a speculative process in which the NGO has to hedge two mediums of power: it has to build the power of the community to discuss its own goals; and it has to simultaneously manage the transfer of decision‐making power from government bodies to the community.     

The role of a firm's strategic orientation dimensions in determining market orientation

Little is known about how various strategic orientation dimensions determine market orientation. The authors identify four key dimensions of a firm's strategic orientation as critical antecedents to market orientation: the firm's aggressiveness, its future orientation, the extent of marketing formalization, and risk proclivity. Moderating effects of two environmental forces, competitive intensity and technology turbulence, are also considered in light of their relationship with various dimensions of strategic orientation and market orientation. Using a survey with firms spanning multiple industries, the proposed effects are tested with latent class analysis with multiple regimes. The results, based on an optimal two-regime solution, show that that although market orientation is significantly impacted by these strategic orientation dimensions, the pattern of influence differs based on a firm's membership in one of two regimes.     

Securitization and distressed loan renegotiation: Evidence from the subprime mortgage crisis

We examine whether securitization impacts renegotiation decisions of loan servicers, focusing on their decision to foreclose a delinquent loan. Conditional on a loan becoming seriously delinquent, we find a significantly lower foreclosure rate associated with bank-held loans when compared to similar securitized loans: across various specifications and origination vintages, the foreclosure rate of delinquent bank-held loans is 3% to 7% lower in absolute terms (13% to 32% in relative terms). There is a substantial heterogeneity in these effects with large effects among borrowers with better credit quality and small effects among lower quality borrowers. A quasi-experiment that exploits a plausibly exogenous variation in securitization status of a delinquent loan confirms these results.     

Epistemic communities and the global alliance against tobacco marketing

The World Health Organization's (WHO's) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) is a major blow to the worldwide expansion strategies and marketing practices of transnational tobacco companies. As expected, the industry vehemently opposed the treaty, lobbying instead for voluntary agreements and regulation by the market. However, in spite of bitter and persistent opposition by the tobacco industry, the FCTC was adopted by WHO. If the tobacco industry “lost” its battle to prevent FCTC from being institutionalized, who “won” and how? Our research suggests that the efforts of the epistemic community—a like‐minded network of professionals whose authoritative claim to consensual knowledge provides them with a unique source of power in public policy decision making—won the battle by being able to better convince the decision makers as to the needs of the FCTC by relying on, and successfully disseminating, its knowledge, expertise, and ideas. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Why do venture capital firms exist? theory and canadian evidence

This paper investigates the role of venture capitalists. We view their “raison d’être” as their ability to reduce the cost of informational asymmetries. Our theoretical framework focuses on two major forms of asymmetric information: “hidden information” (leading to adverse selection) and “hidden action” (leading to moral hazard). Our theoretical analysis suggests four empirical predictions.1. Venture capitalists operate in environments where their relative efficiency in selecting and monitoring investments gives them a comparative advantage over other investors. This suggests strong industry effects in venture capital investments. Venture capitalists should be prominent in industries where informational concerns are important, such as biotechnology, computer software, etc., rather than in “routine” start-ups such as restaurants, retail outlets, etc. The latter are risky, in that returns show high variance, but they are relatively easy to monitor by conventional financial intermediaries.2. Within the class of projects where venture capitalists have an advantage, they will still prefer projects where monitoring and selection costs are relatively low or where the costs of informational asymmetry are less severe. Thus, within a given industry where venture capitalists would be expected to focus, we would also expect venture capitalists to favor firms with some track records over pure start-ups. To clarify the distinction between point 1 and point 2, note that point 1 states that if we look across investors, we will see that venture capitalists will be more concentrated in areas characterized by significant informational asymmetry. Point 2 says that if we look across investment opportunities, venture capitalists will still favor those situations which provide better information (as will all other investors). Thus venture capitalists perceive informational asymmetries as costly, but they perceive them as less costly than do other investors.3. If informational asymmetries are important, then the ability of the venture capitalist to “exit” may be significantly affected. Ideally, venture capitalists will sell off their share in the venture after it “goes public” on a stock exchange. If, however, venture investments are made in situations where informational asymmetries are important, it may be difficult to sell shares in a public market where most investors are relatively uninformed. This concern invokes two natural reactions. One is that many “exits” would take place through sales to informed investors, such as to other firms in the same industry or to the venture’s own management or owners. A second reaction is that venture capitalists might try to acquire reputations for presenting good quality ventures in public offerings. Therefore, we might expect that the exits that occur in initial public offerings would be drawn from the better-performing ventures.4. Finally, informational asymmetries suggest that owner-managers will perform best when they have a large stake in the venture. Therefore, we can expect entrepreneurial firms in which venture capitalists own a large share to perform less well than other ventures. This is moral hazard problem, as higher values of a venture capitalist’s share reduce the incentives of the entrepreneur to provide effort. Nevertheless, it might still be best in a given situation for the venture capitalist to take on a high ownership share, since this might be the only way of getting sufficient financial capital into the firm. However, we would still expect a negative correlation between the venture capital ownership share and firm performance.Our empirical examination of Canadian venture capital shows that these predictions are consistent with the data. In particular, there are significant industry effects in the data, with venture capitalists having disproportionate representation in industries that are thought to have high levels of informational asymmetry. Secondly, venture capitalists favor later stage investment to start-up investment. Third, most exit is through “insider” sales, particularly management buyouts, acquisitions by third parties, rather than IPOs. However, IPOs have higher returns than other forms of exit. In addition, the data exhibit the negative relationship between the extent of venture capital ownership and firm performance predicted by our analysis.