The role of innovation in venture capital: empirical evidence from European Union and EFTA countries

This article investigates the effects of innovation attempts on the venture capital and investment activity in the cases of the selected European Union plus European Free Trade Agreement countries using annual panel data and by controlling for real income growth and business sophistication. Our findings suggest that innovation has positively significant effects on venture capital in the cases without opt-out countries (United Kingdom and Denmark); however, these effects become negative in the cases with opt-out countries. Policy implications are provided in the conclusion section of this study.     

关于企业成本管理的探讨

成本管理是预算管理和绩效管理的前提,企业需要正确地将成本进行分类、计量和归集。恰当的成本管理制度可以帮助企业提升运营效率和业务绩效,同时企业的流程改善、突破和优化与成本管理密不可分。另外,管理者需要令客户对产品和服务满意,并且有效控制各项成本。企业成本管理不是单纯地降低成本,而是通过利用成本分析工具,有效地管理和规划资源,进而提高总体运营效率,保证企业总体绩效的持续改善。论文通过成本计算制度的制定方法和业务流程改善分析技术两方面对成本管控进行探讨。     

The Use of Different Endorser Types in Advertising: A Content Analysis of Magazine Advertisements

Most of the literature assumes that endorsements, particularly by celebrities, are a frequently used advertising strategy. However, no study has yet investigated the use of the different endorser types identified by academic literature. This study seeks to close this research gap by analyzing German print advertisements. It finds that endorsement strategy in general is used much less than academic literature assumes, and that the relative significance of the different endorser types is incongruent to expectations. Moreover, the data suggest that, contrary to the literature's assumptions, credibility is not the most important underlying construct for endorsement advertisements, the endorser type used is frequently determined by the product category that is being advertised, and campaigns based on authenticity and similarity are gaining considerable importance in advertising practice.     

Technologies in caregiving: professionals’ strategies for engaging with new technology

This article explores the adoption of new technology in organisations that provide senior citizen care. Inspired by Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory, we study how technology reduces complexity by identifying client needs and ensuring predictability in service delivery. However, how technologies are adopted in practice is not determined by technology since it is also structured by care-workers' continuous decision-making. Against this backdrop, we explore how technologies alter the conditions for decision-making in two settings of elderly care, and we describe how care workers seek to adapt technologies to their practical needs as well as conception of care ethics. Developing a systems theory approach, the article eschews a priori assumptions of technological constraint on care-workers’ professional autonomy, offering a more open-ended exploration of diversified strategies for coping with new technology. Our case studies show that employees develop diversified strategies for technology adoption, including both non-usage, heated resistance, excessive embrace, and creative adaption.     

External pressure or internal culture? An innovation diffusion theory account of small retail businesses’ social media use

COVID-19 put unprecedented external pressure on small businesses to adopt or increase use of social media while not all small businesses are internally ready for this rapid change. This study investigated the roles of external pressures and organizational culture of openness and learning in driving small retail business owners'/managers' social media use decisions by impacting their perceived usefulness and barriers, based on the innovation-decision process model from the diffusion of innovations theory and the theory of reasoned action. An online survey with structured measurements was administered to 411 U.S. small retail business owners/managers. Results from structural equation modeling revealed that external pressures positively influenced small business owners'/managers’ perceived usefulness and barriers and social media use intention. In addition, the culture of openness and learning positively influenced the perceived usefulness while mitigating the perceived barriers, thereby directly and indirectly influencing the social media use intention. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.     

The impact of purchasing strategy-structure (mis)fit on purchasing cost and innovation performance

The organizational design literature strongly supports the notion of “structure follows strategy”, and suggests that a misfit between the two has a negative effect on performance. Building on this line of argument, we examine to what extent the (mis)fit between purchasing strategy and purchasing structure impacts purchasing performance. We focus on cost and innovation purchase category strategies, and examine how the deviation from an ideal purchasing structure defined along three dimensions (centralization, formalization, and cross-functionality) impacts purchasing performance. Analysing data collected from 469 firms in ten countries, we demonstrate that a strategy-structure misfit negatively impacts purchasing performance in both cost and innovation strategies. We also find that purchasing proficiency is a mediator in this relationship between misfit and performance. Our findings aid managerial decision making by empirically validating the necessity of having the right purchasing structure for successfully executing different purchasing strategies.     

INTERNATIONAL RESERVE MANAGEMENT: A DRIFT‐SWITCHING REFLECTED JUMP‐DIFFUSION MODEL

We study the cost of shocks, that is, jump risk, with respect to reserve management when the reserve process is formulated as a drift‐switching jump diffusion with a reflecting barrier at 0. Inspired by the Brownian drift switching model, our model results in a more realistic dynamic behavior of international reserves than the buffer stock model. The new model can capture both the jump behavior in reserve dynamics and the leptokurtic feature of the increment distribution which has a higher peak and two asymmetric heavier tails than the normal distribution. Through the selection of an initial distribution that reflects certain steady state behaviors, the reserve process becomes a regenerative process. This selection enables us to derive a closed‐form expression for the total expected discounted cost of managing reserves, thus helping us to numerically find management strategies that minimize costs. The numerical results show that shocks at the reserve level have a significant effect on reserve management strategies and that model misspecification can result in nonnegligible additional costs.     

企业边界人员的私人关系与企业绩效——基于中国市场数据的元分析检验

企业边界人员与外部利益相关者发展私人关系是新兴市场中的普遍现象，但是“私人关系”是否真的会提升企业绩效？当前文献对此问题并未给出一致结论。文章基于105篇使用中国市场数据的中英文文献，运用元分析技术（Meta-Analysis)考察了私人关系对企业绩效的影响，并分析了企业所处的制度环境和市场环境，企业的生命周期、规模、所有制形式等内部特征对上述影响的调节作用。通过对392个效应值的集成分析，文章发现，尽管私人关系确实能提升企业绩效（ｒ=0.167），但是不同层面的私人关系（政治联系和商业联系）对不同类型的企业绩效（财务绩效、运营绩效和战略绩效）所产生的影响存在差异。同时制度环境、市场环境、企业特征均会显著地调节私人关系对企业绩效的影响。上述结论为新兴市场中的企业如何将私人关系转化为企业绩效提供了指导。     

互联网平台下商业模式创新的路径、经验和启示

互联网经济快速发展,基于互联网平台的企业创新行为具有鲜明的特色。纵向研究了三家企业的创新过程,发现互联网环境下,企业商业模式创新有三个特点:以客户为中心的战略准则,价值创造由企业转向客户;企业打破边界,加强合作伙伴之间的协同和柔性,大幅提高创新效率;企业提高管理不确定的能力,领导者、企业文化、管理模式帮助企业应对不确定性。同时,提出当前创新模式存在核心技术缺乏、生产端缺乏创新的潜在风险,并提出创新发展的建议:加强生产端互联网的建设,提高创新质量;深化完善商业生态系统建设,提高商业系统整体的创新能力。