A longitudinal study of the characteristics, business creation process and outcome differences of Canadian female vs. male nascent entrepreneurs

This paper concerns a longitudinal study, of a random sample of nascent entrepreneurs in Canada (based on an initial screening sample of 49,763 households). We study gender differences, including number and type of gestational activities, the characteristics of the business created, and the status of the start-up effort after the 4th year of data collection. Logistic regression is used to predict the creation of an operating business from gender and other variables. Four of nine gender difference hypotheses were supported. Findings show that women who are members of a start-up team are six times more likely to achieve an operating business.

A Model for Predicting Outcomes of Sexual Harassment Complaints by Race and Gender

Organizational scholars have studied the impact of sex on sexual harassment outcomes but left unexplored the influences of race. Thus, we use social identity theory to explore the role of race stereotypes and their influences on sexual harassment outcomes. We posit that stereotypes of African-American women tend to be much more negative than those of white women and this serves to marginalize their position both as victims of sexual harassment as well as complainants.

Efficiency vectors, efficiency and performance measures: new methods for ranking efficient organizational units

We present and discuss measures for analyzing productivity in deterministic frontier models. A new efficiency measure is introduced allowing for discrimination among efficient organizational units. In addition, a new performance measure for analyzing productivity of organizational units is presented. This measure fulfills various properties of efficiency measures but relaxes the indicator property. Both new approaches are based on the development of efficiency vectors which is a new vector measure for measuring efficiency. The vector components are efficiency measures related to subsets of a production possibility set. The new approaches are applied in the context of data envelopment analysis.

Optimal geographic diversification and firm performance: evidence from the U.K.

This paper examines the relationship between multinationality and firm performance. The analysis is based on a sample of over 400 UK multinationals, and encompasses both service sector and manufacturing sector multinationals. This paper confirms the non-linear relationship between performance and multinationality that is reported elsewhere in the literature, but offers further analysis of this relationship. Specifically, by correcting for endogeneity in the investment decision, and for shocks in productivity across countries, the paper demonstrates that the returns to multinationality are greater than those that have been reported elsewhere, and persist to higher degrees of international diversification.

Individual, organizational and environmental determinants of new firm employment growth: evidence from Latin America

New ventures are increasingly playing an important role in Latin American economies. However, little is known about the determinants of new firm growth in this context. The purpose of this study is to gain an understanding of the factors influencing new firm growth in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Peru. Individual, organizational and environmental factors are included in an empirical model, which is tested using data collected by face-to-face interviews with 582 entrepreneurs. Different specifications of employment growth and regression approaches are employed. Results suggest that growth strongly depends on the characteristics of the entrepreneur. National environment and firm-related factors are also important factors in determining growth.

Relief and Redress for Targets of Workplace Bullying

Workplace bullying is a particularly insidious form of counterproductive workplace behavior that results in significant costs to both targets and organizations. We explore existing and potential avenues of relief and redress available to targets. Relief refers to activities focused on eliminating the bullying as well as the mechanisms used to treat those who have been bullied. Redress refers to third-party remedies that involve the financial and/or non-financial compensation of targets. The optimal strategy for dealing with workplace bullying involves both effective organizational interventions to help prevent and address bullying incidents and strong legislative mechanisms to allow for restitution and compensation. This two-pronged strategy provides targets of bullying with multiple sources of relief and redress.

Entrenched management,capital structure changes and firm value

The relationship between managerial share ownership and the firm’s change in leverage around a security issuance is examined. We find that entrenched managers are not more likely to issue equity, however they do affect lower leverage by choosing debt issuances which are smaller and equity issuances that are larger than those chosen by managers that are not entrenched. The magnitude of the decline in leverage that occurs from before the issuance to after the issuance is positively related to managerial share ownership. In addition, this relationship is confined to only the “entrenchment” range of managerial share ownership. The market reacts negatively to an issuance announcement when managerial share ownership is high.

The Relationship Among Union Membership, Facets of Satisfaction and Intent to Leave: Further Evidence on the Voice Face of Unions

This study examined the impact of union membership on employees’ intent to leave their jobs across a number of facets of satisfaction, as a further test of unions’ voice face. Among the findings were that there were significant relationships between job, compensation, benefits, working conditions, and immediate supervisor satisfaction and intent to leave one’s job for nonunion employees. In contrast, only the relationship between job satisfaction and intent to leave was significant for union employees. Finally, over the facets of satisfaction where one would expect unions to have the most influence, the relationship between intent to leave one’s job and satisfaction was greater for nonunion employees than for union employees. These results provide a great deal of support for the effect of unions’ voice face.

Succession in family firms from a multistaged perspective

Succession in family-owned businesses has been revealed to be a multi-staged phenomenon with trigger events distinguishing one stage from the other. Our aim is to apply change management theory to this process to improve our understanding and to identify the key factors that should be taken into account when implementing it. To achieve this goal, we will review the existing literature about organizational change and will adapt it to succession in family firms. We will end with a case study, concluding that a good succession process is not the one which avoids conflict, but the one which successfully manages it.

Human capital and sustainable competitive advantage: an analysis of the relationship between training and performance

This article analyses the importance of training as a creator of human capital, which enables a company to obtain competitive advantages that are sustainable in the long-term that result in greater profitability. The study is based on the general theoretical framework of resource and capacity theory. The study not only analyses the impact of the influence of training on performance; it also attempts to analyse the nature of such a relationship in greater depth. This being the case, an attempt has been made to measure explanatory capacity from two different perspectives: the universalistic approach and the contingent approach. At the outset, two hypotheses are formulated that attempt to quantify the relationship from a universalistic perspective to later, in two more hypotheses, incorporate the potential moderating effect of the strategy into the model, in order to verify whether or not this strategy improves the explanatory power of our model of analysis.

Do liquidity induced changes in aggregate dividends signal aggregate future earnings growth?

Extant empirical literature does not provide abundant evidence for the information content hypothesis regarding firm-level dividend signaling. Although this is consistent with the argument against an optimal firm-level dividend policy, this does not imply an absence of an optimal aggregate dividend level. Aggregate dividends and earnings may exhibit stronger associations if aggregation filters out firm-specific earnings information and indicates macroeconomic trends. Using macroeconomic data, we show that aggregate payout ratios signal aggregate future earnings growth for horizons up to 4 years, and that excess aggregate liquidity plays an important role in this relationship.

Appearance-based Sex Discrimination and Stereotyping in the Workplace: Whose Conduct Should We Regulate?

Court treatment of sex discrimination and harassment claims based on appearance and gender stereotyping has been inconsistent, particularly where the facts involve reference to sexual orientation. Ironically, court willingness to allow such claims may turn on the choice of verbal or physical conduct by, or the sex or sexual orientation of, the alleged offenders. Because plaintiffs in such situations may assert retaliation claims to increase their chances of prevailing, employers should focus less on regulating aspects of personal appearance unrelated to job performance and more on problematic reactions by co-workers. Workplace civility policies may hold promise for limiting both legal liability and practical consequences in the absence of a legislative response.

The impact of desirability and feasibility on entrepreneurial intentions: A structural equation model

There is general agreement that attitudes towards entrepreneurship are determinant factors to decide to be an entrepreneur. In this context, this research is focused on analyzing the relationship between desirability and feasibility on university student’s intentions to create a new firm in Catalonia. A structural equation model supported by Krueger & Brazeal’s Model was tested with different groups of students. The main results reveal most of university students consider desirable to create a new firm, although the perception of feasibility is not positive. Also, there is a statistical significant and positively relationship between credibility and the intention to create a new firm.

Entrepreneurship as a non-profit-seeking activity

It is typically assumed that people engage in entrepreneurship because there are profits to be made. In contrast to this view, this paper argues that entrepreneurship is more adequately characterized as a non-profit-seeking activity. Evidence from a broad range of authors and academic fields is discussed showing that entrepreneurship does quite generally not pay in monetary terms. Being an entrepreneur seems to be rather rewarding because it entails substantial non-monetary benefits, like greater autonomy, broader skill utilization, and the possibility to pursue one’s own ideas. It is shown how incorporating these non-monetary benefits into economic models of entrepreneurship can lead to a better understanding of the phenomenon.

The contributions of productivity, price changes and firm size to profitability

Sources of profit change for Telstra, Australia’s largest telecommunications firm, are examined. A new method allows for changes, in a firm’s profits to be broken down into separate effects due to productivity change, price changes, and growth in the firm’s size. This in turn allows us to calculate the distribution of the benefits of productivity improvements between consumers, labor, and shareholders. The results show that around half the benefits from Telstra’s productivity improvements from 1984 to 1994 were passed on to consumers in the form of real price reductions.

How clusters can encourage entrepreneurship and venture creation. Reasons and advantages

The aim of this article is to define what is meant by clusters, their characteristics or determinants and the advantages they generate, focusing on the role they play in boosting entrepreneurship and new venture creation. In clusters, a balance is reached between cooperation and competition which becomes evident in the higher productivity of the companies because of their increased access to inputs, information, technology and institutions; or in greater innovation and venture creation. The cluster incentivizes the entry of new companies or start-ups. The hope is, then, that the new companies will revitalize specific regions where competitiveness has fallen and that entrepreneurship will contribute to economic development and improved country-wide competitiveness.

Debreu’s coefficient of resource utilization, the Solow residual, and TFP: the connection by Leontief preferences

Debreu’s coefficient of resource utilization is freed from individual data requirements. The procedure is shown to be equivalent to the imposition of Leontief preferences. The rate of growth of the modified Debreu coefficient and the Solow residual are shown to add up to TFP growth. This decomposition is the neoclassical counterpart to the frontier analytic decomposition of productivity growth into technical change and efficiency change. The terms can now be broken down by sector as well as by factor input.

Measuring performance in the presence of stochastic demand for hospital services: an analysis of Belgian general care hospitals

Since demand for hospital services is subject to substantial variability, the relationship between uncertain demand, excess capacity, hospital costs and performance should be investigated thoroughly. In this paper a waiting time indicator to proxy hospital standby capacity is incorporated into a multi-product translog cost function for Belgian general care hospitals. The indicator is derived from queuing theory and improves on the conventionally used (inverse of the) occupancy rate. The multi-product stochastic frontier specification allows calculation of cost elasticities and marginal cost of seven hospital departments, as well as the degree of economies of scale and scope and enables identification of differences in efficiency.

Incorporating correlation regimes in an integrated stressed risk modeling process

The practice of using stress tests to complement Value at Risk (VaR) estimates suffers from some limitations such as the lack of coherence between a statistical risk measure and a subjective one. On the other hand there is a wide consensus that using the same correlation matrix to design various stress tests is not likely to provide an accurate representation of relationship amongst risk factors in periods of market stress. In this paper we introduce a solution to these problems by explicitly considering different correlation regimes and incorporating the result of the stress test to the traditional market risk measurement models.

Stochastic productivity measurement

Stochastic productivity indicators are defined, and superlative measures of these indicators are derived. It is shown that, in the presence of complete markets or a common-expectations equilibrium, differences in the market values of firms are superlative indicators of cross-sectional productivity differences. Exactness results are used to decompose nonstochastic productivity indicators into a measure of true productivity change and a measure of ‘luck’. The decomposition is illustrated empirically.