Top Management Compositional Effects on Corporate Entrepreneurship: The Moderating Role of Perceived Technological Uncertainty

Because corporate entrepreneurship (CE) is central to firms' ability to compete, adapt, and perform in increasingly turbulent environments, there is a great interest in understanding its origins. To date, prior studies have overwhelmingly focused on the architectural factors—the structures, cultures, resources, and incentives—that shape entrepreneurial processes within organizations and the environmental conditions that stimulate entrepreneurial activity. However, some researchers have recently begun to argue that the requirements and challenges of CE fall most saliently on the shoulders of the firm's top management team. Focusing on various aspects of top managers' activities, roles, and processes, this line of research demonstrates the enabling role of top management teams in their firm's pursuit of CE. We extend this research by examining the impact of top management team composition in terms of human capital and social capital on CE. Additionally, because external environment perceptions within top teams shape their sociopolitical process and framing of the issues facing their firms, we submit that a team's level of perceived technological uncertainty moderates the impact of the team's human and social capital on CE. We find support for these arguments using multisource data from a sample of 99 high‐technology firms. The discussion finally traces the implications of our theory and findings for research and managerial understanding on CE.     

Corporate Culture and Commitment: Impact on Performance of International New Product Development Programs

To achieve success in today's competitive environment, firms increasingly must develop new products for international markets. To this end, they must leverage and must coordinate broad creative capabilities and resources, which often are diffused across geographical and cultural boundaries. Recent writings in the globalization and in the new product development (NPD) literatures suggest that certain “softer” dimensions that define the behavioral environment of the firm—that is, the firm's organizational culture and management commitment—can have an important impact on the outcome of these complex and risky endeavors. But what comprises these dimensions and what type of behavioral environment scenario is linked to high performance in the international NPD effort of firms has not been articulated clearly. This research focuses on these softer dimensions, with the objective of understanding and idengifying their specific makeup as well as their relationship to the outcome of international NPD programs. Based on an integration of three literatures—organizational, new product development, and globalization—the present study develops a research instrument, comprising 18 behavioral environment measurement items as well as several outcome measures, that is administered to a broad empirical sample of goods and services firms active in NPD for international markets. Using empirical results from 252 international NPD programs, three key dimensions are idengified: (1) the innovation/globalization culture of the firm; (2) the commitment of sufficient resources to the NPD program; and (3) top management involvement in the international NPD effort. These dimensions are used to derive four clusters of firms, where each grouping represents a distinctly different behavioral environment scenario. In a preliminary analysis, it is ascertained that other aspects of the firm such as “degree of internationalization,” location of the respondent to the NPD center, and other company parameters do not form the basis of cluster membership. By linking measures of performance to the four behavioral clusters, findings are developed that clearly support this study's hypothesis that international NPD outcomes are associated with the softer behavioral environment dimensions. Scenario performance ranges from “very high” to “very low” and appears to be linked clearly to the dimensions studied. The lower‐performing firms tended to emphasize positively only one, or sometimes two, of the three dimensions. The “best performers” were found to be firms with a “positive balanced” approach to international NPD, where all three behavioral environment dimensions are supported strongly. In other words, firms in this scenario have an open and innovative global NPD culture, they ensure that sufficient resources are committed to the NPD program, and their senior managers play an active and involved role in the international NPD effort. Given this evidence of a direct link between behavioral environment and international NPD performance, the present study's findings suggest some important messages for managers charged with the development of new products for international markets.     

CEOs’ Transformational Leadership and Product Innovation Performance: The Roles of Corporate Entrepreneurship and Technology Orientation

Product innovation is an important research topic that has stimulated significant interest among management scholars and practitioners. Leadership has been suggested to be a critical factor affecting product innovation. Numerous studies have documented that transformational leadership positively influences product innovation performance, which is conceptualized as the degree to which a new product and/or service has achieved its market share, sales, rates of asset return, rates of investment return, and profit objectives. However, there is a lack of studies examining the specific means through which transformational leadership influences product innovation performance at the firm level. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the processes through which such effect is achieved and to determine whether corporate entrepreneurship and technology orientation as intervening factors influence this effect. To test the hypotheses, data were collected from 151 matched top management team (TMT) members and chief executive officers (CEOs) from Chinese manufacturing firms. Two separate questionnaires were used to collect the data. TMT members’ questionnaire included measures of CEO's transformational leadership, whereas CEOs’ questionnaire included questions about corporate entrepreneurship, technology orientation, and product innovation performance. Hierarchical linear regression was used to test the hypothesized effects. The results of the analysis provided the support for the fully mediating role of corporate entrepreneurship on the relationship between CEOs' transformational leadership and product innovation performance. In addition, technology orientation was found to significantly moderate the CEOs' transformational leadership–corporate entrepreneurship linkage. Furthermore, the mediated moderation effect of corporate entrepreneurship on the relationships among CEOs’ transformational leadership, technology orientation, and product innovation performance was significantly supported. By studying leadership among CEOs, this study contributes to the research by elucidating the mechanisms through which transformational leadership influences product innovation performance. The mediating role of corporate entrepreneurship encourages managers to improve their leadership style so as to enhance the development of corporate entrepreneurship and innovation practices. The findings also show that technology orientation provides the conditions for the smooth translation of the CEO's transformational leadership into actual entrepreneurial activities. Hence, firms should prioritize technology orientation to optimize the implementation of transformational leadership so as to emphasize innovation and new venture creation.     

New Product Development: Impact of Project Characteristics and Development Practices on Performance

Concurrent product development process and integrated product development teams have emerged as the two dominant new product development (NPD) “best practices” in the literature. Yet empirical evidence of their impact on product development success remains inconclusive. This paper draws upon organizational information processing theory (OIPT) to explore how these two dominant NPD best practices and two key aspects of NPD project characteristics (i.e., project uncertainty and project complexity) directly and jointly affect the NPD performance. Contrary to the “best practice” literature, the analysis, based on 266 NPD projects from three industries (i.e., automotive, electronics, and machinery) across nine countries (i.e., Austria, Finland, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Spain, Sweden, and the United States), found no evidence of any direct impact of process concurrency or team integration on overall NPD performance. Instead, there is evidence of negative impact of the interaction between project uncertainty and concurrent NPD process and positive impact of the interaction between project complexity and team integration on overall NPD performance. Moreover, the study found no evidence of any direct negative impact of project uncertainty or complexity on overall NPD performance as suggested in the literature, but found evidence of a direct positive relationship between project complexity and overall NPD performance. The practical implications of these results are significant. First, neither process concurrency nor team integration should be embraced universally as best practice. Second, process concurrency should be avoided in projects with high uncertainty (i.e., when working with unfamiliar product, market, or technology). Finally, team integration should be encouraged for complex product development projects. For a simple product a loosely integrated team or a more centralized decision process may work well. However, as project complexity increases, team integration becomes essential for improved product development. There is no one‐size‐fits‐all solution for managing NPD projects. The choice of a product development practice should be determined by the project characteristics.     

企业社会责任与企业价值的相关性研究--来自沪市上市公司的经验证据

作者以我国上海证券交易所2003年521家上市公司为样本，研究了企业社会责任活动与企业价值的相关性问题。结果表明，从当期看。承担社会责任越多的企业。企业价值越低；但从长期看，根据关键利益相关者理论与社会资本理论。承担社会责任并不会降低企业价值。同时，本文的研究也表明资产规模、负债比率、重污染行业因素与企业承担社会责任活动显著正相关；财务状况或其他状况异常的ST类公司、前一年的盈利能力与企业承担社会责任活动显著负相关。     

公司治理、组织能力和社会责任--基于整合与协同演化的视角

公司治理、组织能力和社会责任是企业永续经营难以回避的关键问题，但在学术界它们是被分开来研究的．这很大程度上制约了对企业发展的综合思考。本文在批判性回顾已有相关研究成果的基础上．论述了三者作为企业价值运作机制的组成部分而具有的共同特征。本文基于整合视角而不是分离角度、基于动态视角而不是静态角度，将组织能力、公司治理和社会责任融合在一起，构建了三者的整合模型和演化过程，对其协同演化的“最佳实践”作了相关拓展．并提出初步政策建议。     

Learning in Design and Technology: The Impact of Social and Cultural Influences on Modelling

The paper introduces the highly problematic nature of modelling in design and technology education and examines the relationship between cognitive and concrete modelling. Its aim is to gain insight into what learners do, rather than what others say they ought to do in their learning activities. The variety of purposes that educators have for learners’ modelling are discussed through examining the contested curriculum justification for design and technology education itself. The paper proposes that learners’ modelling cannot be extracted from the social milieu in which they act and it provides some insights of these social influences through the analysis of two case studies. Their settings are a girls’ secondary school and a college of higher education. Each case study is presented independently but organised with a common format to consider a) the impact of assessment on learning intentions and outcomes; b) cultural influences on learning and modelling; c) social influences on learning and modelling. A discussion of the emergent themes considers implications for teachers. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The Impact of Employees' and Managers' Training on the Performance of Small‐ and Medium‐Sized Enterprises: Evidence from a Randomized Natural Experiment in the UK Service Sector

We investigate the relationship between employees' and managers' training and firm performance using a policy intervention that randomly assigned training support to small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises in the UK accommodation and food service sector. Because the number of firms self‐selected into training exceeded available places, training was randomly assigned to some firms, resulting in a randomized natural experimental design that allowed us to identify the average effect of training on treated firms. Our empirical results suggest that employees' training had a stronger positive impact on firms' labour productivity and profitability than that of managers'.     

Corporate Governance and Performance in Publicly Listed,Family-Controlled Firms: Evidence from Taiwan

Using a multi-industry dataset of 228 firms listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE) this paper analyses the effects of ownership structure and board characteristics on performance in large, publicly traded firms that are controlled by founding families. After taking account of possible endogeneity problems, we do not find that family control is associated with performance measured in terms of accounting ratios, sales per issued capital, earnings per share and market-to-book value. However, share ownership by institutional investors, and foreign financial institutions in particular, is associated with better performance. Our results indicate that board independence from founding family and board members’ financial interests have a positive impact on performance.     

外部治理环境与公司内部治理结构效应比较

本文以深沪两市1039家上市公司2001—2005年的严格平衡面板数据作为样本.实证分析了外部治理环境的不同程度和公司内部治理结构的不同安排对公司价值的影响效应,并分行业细分了这种影响效应的差异。实证回归的结果发现。在外部治理环境当中只有法治化水平对总体样本的上市公司价值有显著的影响作用.而在公司内部治理结构当中则证实了正U型的股权结构效应。此外.外部治理环境与公司内部治理结构对公司价值的影响效应会因行业而有所差异。然而。从整体上看.前者的效应都明显地小于后者。研究结果表明。对于中国特殊的证券市场环境而言。同样存在着公司内部治理结构的合理安排可以作为公司价值保护机制的可能性。     

知识管理、组织学习、项目管理核心能力与代建绩效的关系研究

以65个代建项目为研究样本,利用结构方程模型方法,对政府投资项目代建单位知识管理、组织学习、项目管理核心能力与代建绩效之间的关系进行实证研究,研究结果表明:在代建单位中,知识管理对组织学习具有直接的正向影响,组织学习对项目管理核心能力具有直接的正向影响,项目管理核心能力对代建缋效具有直接的正向影响,知识管理和组织学习通过项目管理核心能力间接的对代建绩效产生正向影响.研究结果对于代建单位从知识管理和组织学习的角度来提高代建缋效具有重要的参考价值.     

代理问题、公司治理与企业价值--以民营上市公司为例

本文运用代理理论对2002年在上海、深圳证券交易所上市的122家民营上市公司治理与企业价值进行理论分析与实证检验,发现民营上市公司治理包括在股权集中度、债务融资比重、金字塔式控股、控制权与现金流权偏离、流通股与非流通股价偏离等五个方向上存在着代理冲突,并指出引发民营上市公司代理冲突的首要原因是现行流通股与非流通股的股权割裂。     

Corporate environmental responsibility (CER) weakness,media coverage,and corporate philanthropy: Evidence from China

This study investigates the hidden connection between corporate philanthropy and corporate environmental responsibility (CER) weakness. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms in polluting industries and hand-collected data on corporate environmental performance and corporate philanthropy, we show that CER weakness is significantly positively associated with corporate philanthropy, suggesting that corporate philanthropy may be used by environmentally unfriendly firms to mitigate the negative influence of CER weakness and offset pressures from stakeholders. This finding also implies that Chinese enterprises in polluting industries are inclined to engage in greenwashing via the conduit of corporate philanthropy. In addition, media coverage reinforces the positive association between CER weakness and corporate philanthropy. Above results are still valid after controlling for the potential endogeneity between CER weakness and corporate philanthropy.     

Corporate Governance and returns on information technology investment: evidence from an emerging market

Prior studies have reported mixed findings on the impact of corporate information technology (IT) investment on firm performance. This study investigates the effect of corporate governance, an important management control mechanism, on the relation between IT investment and firm performance in the Taiwanese electronics industry. Specifically, we explore board independence and foreign ownership, which have increasingly become salient factors concerning corporate governance in emerging markets. We address their roles across firms of different sizes and in industries where degrees of competitiveness run a wide gamut. Our results show a positive moderating effect of board independence on the IT investment‐firm performance relation, especially when competition intensifies. Furthermore, we find that the greater the foreign ownership in small firms, the more positive the IT investment‐firm performance relation, suggesting that foreign investors may bring IT expertise to help small firms reap the benefits of using IT. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Managing Innovation Champions: The Impact of Project Characteristics on the Direct Manager Role*

A key challenge for organizations seeking to improve the management of innovation lies in determining when to lend direct managerial support, and how much support, to those championing such projects. This research provides insights into the connection between project characteristics and the type and frequency of direct manager involvement. As such, it addresses the following research question: how does the level of project innovativeness, strategic relatedness, and resource requirements impact the level of empowerment of innovation champions and the sponsor or supervisor role played by managers? The research method involves a survey of 89 project champions from four divisions of large, multinational Korean companies. The results show that when innovativeness was high but projects were strategically related, there was greater project champion empowerment but also a more frequent managerial sponsor role. This suggests it may be best to allow innovators, who are close to the project's markets, technologies, and industry conditions, to have greater freedom over objectives and decisions. Yet they may also need the advice and support of their managers to function optimally under the highly uncertain conditions that characterize innovative projects. This combination of empowerment and a sponsor role, though appropriate for highly innovative projects, may also require high strategic relatedness, however. On the other hand, when projects are less strategically related and when resource requirements are high, the analysis suggests managers are more likely to exert control. Managers may therefore need to become more closely involved in decision making for costly ventures representing new strategic directions for their organizations. Overall, this research suggests that both empowerment and manager roles are relevant to the management of innovation. These results offer academic value in recognizing the nature of the direct manager role under different innovation project conditions. It further reveals a need for academics to recognize both the supervisor and sponsor roles in the management of innovation. For managers, the findings suggest that for organizations to effectively develop and commercialize innovations managers need to recognize when certain projects call for different levels and types of involvement.     

Entrepreneurship,strategy, and organization: Individual and organization in the behaviour of the firm

The main purpose of this paper is to set out a number of ideas on business policy and corporate strategy which underlie a larger research project. It arises in part from a University Seminar in Industrial Economics which for many years provided a forum for academics and businessmen to discuss the growth and organization of particular firms: in part from the upsurge of interest in teaching business policy: and in part from a growing preoccupation, especially among business historians, with the decision-making processes within firms. These have wide implications for the understanding of the nature of entrepreneurship and strategy in the modern business corporation.     

The Effect of Corporate Governance on Investment: Evidence from Real Estate Investment Trusts

This study investigates the relation between firms' investment choices and various governance mechanisms, using a sample of real estate investment trusts (REITs). We find evidence that the responsiveness of REITs' investment expenditures to their opportunities depends on their corporate governance structures. Within the set of governance mechanisms that we examine, we find particularly strong links between investment behavior and ownership. Specifically, we find that the investment choices of REITs are more closely tied to Tobin's q if they have greater institutional ownership or if they have lower director and officer stock ownership. These results are consistent with institutional owners monitoring the firm's investment policies as well as with high insider ownership allowing managers to follow their own investment agendas.     

The Impact of the Corporate Mind‐set on New Product Launch Strategy and Market Performance

In the last decade, there has been an increasing interest in the link between new product launch strategy and market performance. So far, new product launch research has focused on this performance relationship without giving much attention to background factors that can facilitate or inhibit successful launch strategies. However, investigating such antecedents that set the framework in which different strategic launch decisions enable or prevent the market performance of new products is useful for enhancing the current state of knowledge. Drawing on the concept of a firm's orientation, the present study discusses the influence of the corporate mind‐set on new product launch strategy and market performance. It is hypothesized that the capability to successfully launch new products is based on the interplay between a firm's mind‐set (i.e., an analytical, risk‐taking, and aggressive posture) and its strategic launch decisions on setting launch objectives, selecting target markets, and positioning the new product. A research model with mediating effects is proposed, where the corporate mind‐set determines the launch strategy decisions, which in turn impact market performance. The model is tested with data on 113 industrial new products launched in business‐to‐business markets in Germany using a multiple informant approach. The results support the mediated model as the dimensions of the corporate mind‐set have a significant impact on most strategic launch decisions, which in turn significantly contribute to market performance. It is found that while an analytical posture relates to all three strategic launch decisions, risk taking and an aggressive posture have a significant impact on two, respectively one, launch strategy elements. These findings confirm the importance of investigating antecedents for a successful new product launch, as the corporate mind‐set serves as a background resource that sets the framework for successful new product launch decisions. In the final section implications for research and managerial practice as well as limitations of this research are provided.