Who become serial and portfolio entrepreneurs?

“Serial entrepreneurs” run multiple businesses in sequence while “portfolio entrepreneurs” run multiple businesses in parallel; they differ from “novice entrepreneurs” who have so far operated only one venture. The present paper is the first to model occupational choices between all three entrepreneurial types: It goes on to discuss its theoretical predictions in the light of independent evidence about serial and portfolio entrepreneurship from the extant literature.     

Generation Y female and male decision-making styles in Iran: are they different?

In the early 2000s the Iranian government liberalized investment regulations and many foreign companies entered this high potential market where end-user consumers mainly comprise young people. Unfortunately, there are few studies of shopping behavior. This study compares Generation Y female and male consumer decision-making styles to offer guidelines to Iranian and overseas marketers. Sproles and Kendall's Consumer Styles Inventory (CSI) was adopted. The results show some differences between female and male decision-making styles, suggesting that gender affects shopping behavior. Identification of new traits suggests that CSI cannot be applied without considering socio-cultural factors.     

Entrepreneurial processes in social contexts: how are they different, if at all?

Scholars have compared and contrasted commercial and social entrepreneurship along a variety of dimensions, suggesting that entrepreneurial antecedents and outcomes differ within a social context. However, little is known about whether entrepreneurial processes differ within social contexts. In this paper, we ask to what extent the antecedents and outcomes that make social entrepreneurship unique influence entrepreneurial processes. Using an inputs–throughputs–outputs framework, we assess the relationship between four antecedents (social mission/motivation, opportunity identification, access to resources/funding, and multiple stakeholders) and three outcomes (social value creation, sustainable solutions, and satisfying multiple stakeholders) to the dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation (innovativeness, proactiveness, risk-taking, competitive aggressiveness, and autonomy) (Lumpkin and Dess, Acad Manag Rev 21(1):135–172, 1996). Our analysis suggests that many entrepreneurial processes remain essentially the same or are affected only slightly. However, autonomy, competitive aggressiveness, and risk-taking are influenced to some extent by the presence of multiple stakeholders and access to resources/funding. Entrepreneurial processes may also differ when applied to efforts to satisfy multiple stakeholders and achieve sustainable solutions. We subsequently discuss the implications of our analysis for future social entrepreneurship research and practice.     

Purchasing behaviour of ethnicities: Are they different?

This paper investigates actual purchasing behaviour of different ethnicities. Using a national representative sample of Chinese and Malay households in Malaysia, with their continuous purchases of toothpaste, body wash, packaged tea and plain sweet biscuits recorded over a two-year period of 2011–2012, we found that overall there is significant difference between purchasing frequency distributions of the two ethnic groups. However, after controlling for household size, we found mostly no significant differences between the two groups at small and medium household size, but a significant difference at large household size. We also found that the purchasing frequency distributions of the two ethnic groups are accurately modelled by the negative binomial distribution (NBD). The NBD also accurately predicts future purchasing behaviour of the different ethnic groups, highlighting a new application of Conditional Trend Analysis (CTA) in this context. Since both ethnic groups fit these models well, we suggest they follow the same underlying pattern of buying behaviour in consumer good categories and do not differ due to ethnicity.     

Motorcycle safety programmes in Malaysia: how effective are they?

This paper presents the approach taken by the Malaysian Government to contain motorcycle casualties in Malaysia. It involves the exposure control, crash prevention, behaviour modification and injury control related to humans, vehicles and the environment based on pre-crash, crash and post-crash scenarios of motorcycle accidents. These initiatives emanated mainly from the research and development carried out by the Road Safety Research Centre at Universiti Putra Malaysia. Recent outcomes from these initiatives are presented and their impact is highlighted.     

The cost of injustice: overall justice,emotional exhaustion,and performance among entrepreneurs: do founders fare better?

Small Business Economics - In this paper, we build on the allostatic load model, developed in stress research, to explore the impact of entrepreneurs’ overall justice perceptions on emotional...     

The ecological conscious consumer behaviour: are the activists different?

In recent decades, concern about the environment has been increasing. Many individuals are now more worried about their purchasing behaviour and the consequences their actions could have for the environment. Managers are becoming more committed to responding to individual needs and desires in a responsible way, taking into account possible environmental damage. Previous studies concentrated more on explaining this phenomenon through demographic variables, but the trend now is towards explaining this through psychographic and environmental variables, which have already been shown to be the most significant in this context. This study sought to establish the relationship between activists and ecologically conscious consumer behaviour (ECCB) by analyzing the profile of green consumers (i.e. demographic and psychographic variables). To reach this objective, an online survey was conducted. The results of data analyses support the conclusion that activism is the strongest predictor of ECCB.     

Do founders matter? A study of executive compensation,governance structure and firm performance

This study compares founder-CEOs and professional CEOs in newly public firms in terms of executive compensation, governance structure, and firm performance. The paper applies a series of decomposition methods to separate founders' extrinsic characteristics from their intrinsic endowments. The paper finds that founder CEOs tend to earn smaller incentive compensation and smaller total compensation than professional CEOs. Founder-managed firms are associated with higher financial performance and are more likely to survive than professional managed firms. Firms with founder-CEOs are associated with even higher financial performance when the position of CEO and chairperson of the board is combined.     

Why are women left at home: are they unwilling to go on international assignments?

Increasing numbers of women may be climbing the corporate ladder, but when it comes to sending managers on overseas assignments, women are staying home. Is it that women are not interested in international careers, that for some reason companies are reluctant to send women abroad, or that women in foreign countries experience prejudice that prevents them from being effective on their jobs? Our results, based on an extensive survey of female expatriates and their supervisors, indicate that the key may lie in the significantly different views the women and their supervisors hold on the women’s interest in pursuing international assignments and in their expectations concerning the prejudice they are likely to encounter. In short, these parties typically do not openly discuss the issues surrounding this important management decision. In addition to presenting the results of our survey, this article discusses strategies to encourage companies to consider women for international assignments and that women can use to increase their chances of being considered. It also presents suggestions for future research.     

Recording discrepancies in Nielsen Homescan data: Are they present and do they matter?

We report results from a validation study of the Nielsen Homescan consumer panel data. We use data from a large grocery retailer to match transactions that were recorded by the retailer (at the store) and by the Homescan panelist (at home). The matched data allow us to identify and document discrepancies between the two data sets in reported shopping trips, products, prices, and quantities. We find that the discrepancies are largest for the price variable, and show that they are due to two effects: the first seems like standard recording errors (by Nielsen or the panelists), while the second is likely due to the way Nielsen imputes prices. We present two simple applications to illustrate the impact of recording differences, and we use one of the applications to illustrate how the validation study can be used to adjust estimates obtained from Nielsen Homescan data. The results suggest that while recording discrepancies are clearly present and potentially impact results, corrections, like the one we employ, can be adopted by users of Homescan to investigate the robustness of their results to such potential recording differences.     

Internal and external drivers for quality certification in the service industry: Do they have different impacts on success?

This paper presents the results of a study of hotels that are certified for quality management to identify the reasons for seeking quality certification. The authors analyse whether internal or external drivers for seeking certification have different impacts on benefits and the use of quality tools in the hotel industry. The analysis groups hotels according to the importance of their internal reasons for certification, and uses cluster analysis to identify the significant differences between groups of hotels. The findings for the 32 hotels analysed show that hotels that pursued certification for internal reasons develop better quality tools and have increased levels of benefits.     

Ad scepticism and retouch-free disclaimers: Are they worth it?

Abstract

The present study analyses the impact of ad scepticism on the way consumers perceive advertising and process its effects, and considers the influence of ad disclaimers. We conduct an experiment that explores three different contexts, namely (1) the total absence of ad disclaimers, (2) the presence of a retouch-free disclaimer and (3) the presence of a retouched disclaimer. By showing how ad scepticism fits in the advertising attitudinal approach, and how new digital developments affect consumers’ processing of advertisements, the results of this experiment can contribute to the marketing literature and clarify relevant topics for practitioners. This paper shows the significant influence played by ad believability and attitude towards the ad on behavioural intentions. This underlines, particularly for marketing practitioners, the importance of an ad’s believability and the credibility of its claims in the sales outcome. Most importantly, the framework offered by this paper shifts the attention towards the believability of advertising disclaimers aimed at clarifying the use of digitally enhanced images.     

Trade Liberalisation and Poverty: What are the Links?

This paper asks whether a developing country's own trade liberalisation could translate into increased poverty, and what information would be required to identify whether it will do so. It plots the channels through which such effects might operate, identifying the static effects via four broad groups of institutions – households, distribution channels, factor markets and government – and the dynamic issues of volatility, long–term economic growth, and short–term adjustment stresses. An increase in the price of something a household sells (labour, good, service) increases its welfare. Thus, the paper first explores the likely effects of trade liberalisation on the prices of goods and services, taking into account the distribution sector. Also critical is whether trade reform creates or destroys markets. Trade reform is also likely to affects factor prices – of which the wages of the unskilled is the most important for poverty purposes. If reform boosts the demand for labour–intensive products, it boosts the demand for labour and wages and/or employment will increase. However, not all developing countries are relatively abundant in unskilled labour and trade can boost demand for semi–skilled rather than unskilled, labour. Hence poverty alleviation is not guaranteed. Trade reform can affect tariff revenue, but much less frequently and adversely than is popularly imagined. Even if it does, it is a political decision, not a law of nature, that the poor should suffer the resulting new taxes or cuts in government expenditure. Opening up the economy can reduce risk and variability because world markets are usually more stable than domestic ones. But sometimes it will increase them because stabilisation schemes are undermined or because residents switch to riskier activities. The non–poor can generally tide themselves over adjustment shocks from a liberalisation, so public policy should focus on whether the initially poor and near temporary, setbacks. The key to sustained poverty alleviation is economic growth. There is little reason to fear that growth will not boost the incomes of the poor. Similarly, while the argument that openness stimulates long–run growth has still not been completely proven, there is every presumption that it will.     

Exports and governance: Is the Middle East and North Africa region different?

This paper aims to analyse whether better governance rewards economic performance and facilitates the integration of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region into the world economy. In comparison with other regions in the world economy, MENA countries suffer from important institutional deficiencies, which generate insecurity and difficult international transactions. Despite this fact, the relationship between trade and institutional quality in MENA countries remains unexplored. A gravity model of trade augmented with governance indicators is estimated for the exports of 19 MENA countries, their 189 trading partners and for all exporters in the period from 1996 to 2013. The main results indicate that improvements in five of the six governance indicators increase exports from MENA countries, whereas better governance in destination countries does not affect MENA exports. Instead, each of the six governance indicators used has a positive effect on bilateral trade for the entire sample of exporters (189). Moreover, the effect of country‐pair similarity in governance indicators suggests that a similar level of regulatory quality and rule of law in exporting and importing countries increases exports from MENA countries. Similarities in voice and accountability also foster exports for the average exporter, but not for MENA exporters.     

R&D investment of start-up firms: does founders’ human capital matter?

This article examines whether founders’ human capital affects not only actual investment but also required investment in research and development (R&D), using the original data of Japanese start-up firms. The estimation results indicate that higher levels of founders’ human capital, especially their education levels, increase both actual and required investment in R&D and thus do not necessarily contribute to reducing the funding gap for R&D.     

Pecking Order Theory versus Trade-Off Theory: are service SMEs�� capital structure decisions different?

This paper seeks to analyse if the capital structure decisions of service small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are different from those of other types of firm. To do so, we consider four research samples: (i) 610 service SMEs; (ii) 126 service large firms; (iii) 679 manufacturing and construction SMEs; and (iv) 132 manufacturing and construction large firms. Using the two-step estimation method, the empirical evidence obtained in this study shows that the capital structure decisions of service SMEs are different from those of other types of firm. Service SMEs’ capital structure decisions are closer to the assumptions of Pecking Order Theory and further removed from those of Trade-Off Theory compared with the case of other types of firm.     

How to protect your premium product from low-price competitors: Price,quality, or portfolio adjustment?

In a game-theoretic framework, I analyze how a brand manufacturer can thwart new entrants into its market. Three strategic options are considered, a price adjustment of the premium product, a quality adjustment of the premium product and a portfolio adjustment of adding a fighter brand. In a basic setup, I show that the incumbent's best response to entry is to choose a portfolio adjustment. If, however, the incumbent is uncertain about whether the rival firm will enter the market, a price adjustment of the premium product might be the better alternative if launching the fighter brand is associated with costs. Moreover, if technological progress improves the efficiency of product development, a combined quality and portfolio adjustment might be the best alternative for the incumbent.