The opportunity not taken: The occupational identity of entrepreneurs in contexts of poverty

Innovative entrepreneurship is an essential but often missing outcome of poverty alleviation efforts. This qualitative study set in rural Ghana explores the occupational identity of entrepreneurs, the institutions that shape it in isolated “island networks”, and how it influences entrepreneurs' practices and decisions. We find that the institutional forces of “collectivism” and “fatalism” feature prominently. Being an entrepreneur in such settings means being a mentor, market link, and community safety net, and the types of opportunities entrepreneurs pursue are largely seen as pre-destined and inherited rather than individually chosen. As a result, the pursuit of innovative opportunities may be significantly limited.     

A dance of excellence,accessibility, money and national identity: A discourse analysis of the Royal New Zealand Ballet's website

This paper explores how the Royal New Zealand Ballet's (RNZB's) website is used to construct the organisation's identity. Recent changes to the New Zealand government's cultural policy regarding accessibility, accountability, and funding have seen arts organisations need to consider economic sustainability. We posit that the changing demands placed on elite arts organisations to accommodate both artistic and commercial values may create conflicting messages and tensions that impact on their identity. To explore these tensions, we applied Dryzek's discourse analysis to the RNZB's website. The study uncovered the key entities constructed on the website as the audience, sponsors, and dancers, then considered the power relationships between these entities as well as the explicit and implicit reasons the website had been constructed. The results of the study highlight that the RNZB has chosen to emphasise its normative identity as a creative arts organisation, which inevitably had to meet utilitarian needs of financial support in order to have longevity. By making money, access, excellence, and national identity a part of their overall identity, the RNZB have perhaps inadvertently created contradictions and ambiguity in their wider identity scheme. We conclude that the until the RNZB can run sustainably without government support, and the contradictions in their presented identity will most likely remain.     

Reducing perceptions of overqualification and its impact on job satisfaction: the dual roles of interpersonal relationships at work

A sizeable portion of the working population perceives that they are overqualified for their jobs. This is problematic, given that research consistently shows that such beliefs translate into lower levels of job satisfaction. Hence, it behoves human resource management (HRM) scholars to identify factors that influence perceptions of overqualification and also moderators that may reduce the negative effect of perceived overqualification on job satisfaction. In this study, we present a moderated path model that posits that the quality of the relationships that employees hold with their leader and with their team is not only antecedents of perceived overqualification but it is also hypothesised to weaken the negative relationship between perceived overqualification and job satisfaction. Survey data that were gathered from two organisations in the Netherlands (n = 183) supported the model. Implications for theory and practice in HRM are discussed. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd     

The link between perceived HRM practices,performance and well‐being: the moderating effect of trust in the employer

The present study examines the interaction between perceived HRM practices and trust in the employer on employee performance and well‐being. Specifically, the study tests whether trust in the employer moderates the relationships between perceptions of HRM practices and task performance (as rated by employees’ supervisors), organisational citizenship behaviour, turnover intentions and employee well‐being. Support was found for the majority of the hypotheses using data from 613 employees and their line managers in a service sector organisation in the UK. Trust in the employer moderates the relationships between perceived HRM practices and task performance, turnover intentions and individual well‐being, but not organisational citizenship behaviour. Implications of the findings for organisations and future research are discussed.     

Static profitability as a measure of deviations from the competitive norm

Recently, several industrial-organization economists have claimed that the rate of return on sales (II/S) is superior to the rate or return on assets (II/K) as a measure of monopoly power. This paper argues that there is no reason to prefer one index over the other. To make the point, an oligopoly model of optimizing agents is derived that yields II/K as a performance measure. The derivation leads to natural interpretations of the two indices and therefore to clarification of the circumstances under which each might be preferred.     

Coordination versus differentiation in a standards war: 56K modems

56K modems were introduced under two competing incompatible standards. We show the importance of competition between internet service providers in the adoption process. We show that ISPs were less likely to adopt the technology that more competitors adopted. This result is particularly striking given that industry participants expected coordination on one standard or the other. We speculate about the role of ISP differentiation in preventing the market from achieving standardization until a standard setting organization intervened.     

Spillovers in Space: Does Geography Matter?

Using U.S. firm level panel data we simultaneously assess the contributions to productivity of three potential sources of research and development spillovers: geographic, technological, and product market (“horizontal”). To do so, we construct new measures of geographic proximity based on the distribution of a firm's inventor locations as well as its headquarters. We find that geographic location is important for productivity, as are technology (but not product) spillovers, and that both intra and inter–regional (counties) spillovers matter. The geographic location of a firm's researchers is more important than its headquarters. These benefits may be the reason why local policy makers compete so hard for the location of local R&D labs and high tech workers.     

The Buffering Effect of Perceived Organizational Support on the Relationship Between Work Engagement and Behavioral Outcomes

The present study examined the commonly held assumption that a low level of work engagement leads to higher turnover intentions and employee deviant behavior. Employee survey results (n = 175) from a manufacturing organization in the United Kingdom showed that employee work engagement correlates negatively with lagged measures of turnover intentions and deviant work behavior directed toward the organization. The results suggest that perceived organizational support moderates the relationship between work engagement and turnover intentions and deviant behaviors directed toward the organization, such that perceived organizational support compensates for relatively low levels of work engagement. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The changing nature of artisanal work and occupations: Important for understanding labour markets

ABSTRACT

The social and political conditions within which artisans are required to work have shifted globally. The South African policy concern is to train bigger quantities and improve artisanal skills quality, while simultaneously providing more opportunities for young, black and women artisans. A concern for academia is how this shifting milieu will impact on our understanding of artisanal work and occupations and what implications should this have for further research. Using the concept of occupational boundaries, we investigate, at a micro level, real and perceived change to work in three artisanal trades. The study shows that while some elements have changed, the division of labour reinforces the traditional scope of artisanal work in relation to other occupational groups. The findings reconfirm the complex relationship between changes to work and the demand for skills, and importantly highlight the sociology of work as a critical but undervalued dimension in labour market analysis.     

Conjectures, firm characteristics, and market structure : An empirical assessment

This paper makes use of a unique data set to investigate how firms in the Vancouver, British Columbia retail-gasoline market view their rivals and how consumers in turn view these firms. Own- and rival-price elasticities of demand, conjectural variations, and Lerner indices are estimated for thirteen service stations in a submarket of Vancouver. These variables are then related to firm characteristics such as type of ownership, degree of horizontal and vertical integration, and type of service. In this way, systematic patterns in seller behavior and in buyer attitudes are revealed.