Network advantage’s effect on exit performance: examining venture capital’s inter-organizational networks

This study investigates how a venture capital’s network affects its exit performance. While most network research focuses on individual characteristics such as centrality and density, this study explores the overall advantage that results from holding a network position (i.e., a network advantage). This network advantage is examined at the syndicate level, which is a group of organizations. Within this context, the study contemplates the syndicate’s network advantage and hones in on the syndicate’s network advantage diversity, because the composition of members’ network advantage within the syndicate as well as the syndicate’s network advantage itself may affect the syndicate’s performance. To do this, first it is hypothesized that both a venture capital syndicate’s network advantage and its network advantage diversity are positively associated with its exit performance. Next, the study predicts that a syndicate’s network advantage diversity negatively moderates the positive relationship between the syndicate’s network advantage and its exit performance. Then a two stage least squares analysis of 1137 venture capital syndicate investments largely confirms the predicted effects. A syndicate’s network advantage is shown to contribute to its exit performance. A syndicate’s network advantage diversity clearly weakens the positive relationship between the syndicate’s network advantage and performance, while its direct effect on performance is not significantly supported. Overall, these findings show that a syndicate’s network advantage and its diversity are critical determinants of its exit performance in the venture capital industry.

     

Exploring meta-organizations’ diversity and agency: A meta-organizational perspective on global union federations

In this paper, I explore theoretically the issues of meta-organizations’ diversity and agency through a cross-literature analysis, thereby establishing a bridge between two strands of literature that until now have strikingly developed in total isolation. I show that one of the most distinctive traits of global union federations relates to their meta-organizational activities that take place at the firm level and reflect a complex, multi-level meta-organizational configuration where the upper level interacts directly with second-order members but the intrinsic exteriority of global union federations to the corporate unions network positions them as “meta-organizational network brokers”. I also elicit two main dimensions of differentiation among meta-organizations that have been only indirectly delineated in the literature and which could constitute useful analytical tools for characterizing meta-organizations from a comparative perspective: (1) the degree of consistency between the goals of meta-organization secretariats and the objectives pursued by meta-organization members; and (2) the degree and direction of asymmetrical interdependence between the meta-organization itself and its members. I argue that both dimensions strongly condition the capacity for agency of their secretariat, and ultimately the degree of actorhood and the capacity of meta-organizations to act as autonomous and influential organizational actors.     

The impact of VIX on China’s financial market: A new perspective based on high-dimensional and time-varying methods

Based on the new perspective of high-dimensional and time-varying methods, this paper analyzes the contagion effects of US financial market volatility on China’s nine financial sub-markets. The results show evidence of non-linear Granger causality from the US financial volatility (VIX) to the China’s financial markets. Increased US financial volatility has a negative next-day impact on the stock, bond, fund, interest rate, foreign exchange, industrial product and agricultural product markets, and a positive next-day impact on the gold and real estate markets. US financial volatility has the greatest impact on industrial product market, following by stock, agricultural product, fund, real estate, bond, gold, foreign exchange, and interest rates. Major risk events such as the global financial crisis can cause an enhanced contagion effect of US financial volatility to China's financial markets. This paper supports the achievements of China's actions to prevent and resolve major financial risks in the period of the COVID-19 epidemic.     

Growth of born globals: the role of the entrepreneur’s personal factors and venture capital

This paper examines to what extent the human capital of entrepreneurs and the receipt of venture capital (VC) financing affect the growth of born globals (BGs). The study analyzes a sample of 242 BGs resulting from a survey on high-tech start-ups operating in the ICT and electronics sectors, located in different countries throughout the world. A multivariate explorative analysis controlling for the endogenous nature of VC is conducted. The results indicate that the experience of the entrepreneur in having previously established another entrepreneurial firm positively affects the growth of BGs. A negative effect is associated with the presence of heterogeneity in the management team in terms of education background. With regard to the linkage between financial capital and growth, it is found that both VC financing and the number of founders (a proxy for the availability internal capital) positively influence the growth of BGs.     

The evolution and determinants of Chinese property insurance companies’ profitability: A DEA-based perspective

The property insurance industry grows fast in China and it is necessary to further investigate the profitability of the Chinese property insurance industry. This study investigates the evolution and determinants of the profitability of 53 Chinese property insurers during the year 2013–2017. Profitability is measured by profit ratio efficiency by data envelopment analysis (DEA) methodology and a profit ratio change index is applied to compare the performance of these insurers over different periods. Tobit regression models are used to investigate several influencing factors of profitability. The empirical results show the importance of proper arrangement of costs and revenues for an insurer and help to better understand the effect of firm size, age, and product specification on profitability. Some policy implications and suggestions are also proposed.     

Women’s entrepreneurship: A model of business-family interface and performance

Recently, there are renewed calls to develop new models addressing the intricacies of women-owned businesses and the women that head them. A new conceptual model of women’s entrepreneurship that involves relationships between business-family-interface and firm performance is introduced in our paper. We test the model based on data from countries around the world and show that the model’s links depend on the country context. As a result, we identify new boundary conditions to the domain of female entrepreneurship. Implications are discussed.     

Getting the best solution from a supplier – A social capital perspective

Due to the current shift towards solution provision in many industrial markets, buyers are under increasing pressure to develop sourcing strategies to procure custom solutions for their firm in order to achieve competitive advantage. The question arises as to how buyers can ensure they get the best solutions from their suppliers and whether social capital can be applied to improve solution provision processes and value creation. Existing empirical research, however, has paid only little attention to the antecedents of suppliers’ solution provision performance, i.e., their capability to diagnose buyer needs and to design and implement solutions to meet them. We tested how social capital dimensions (relational, cognitive, and structural) relate to solution provision. The study uses empirical data obtained from a survey of 475 suppliers representing both manufacturing and service industries. Partial least squares (PLS) structural equation modeling (SEM) and polynomial regression were used to analyze the data. The results demonstrate that the availability of social capital in a buyer-supplier relationship is a relevant antecedent to successful solution provision activities. However, the different dimensions of social capital are found to compensate for each other to some extent. Our study further demonstrates that solution provision is not a monolithic activity but can better be understood as a multi-phase process (diagnosis, solution design, and implementation). Different aspects of social capital may have a different impact depending on the phase of solution provision. The successful diagnosis of buyer needs mediates the effect of social capital on solution design and implementation. It is also found that production characteristics of a buyer and the type of a supplier solution affect the role of social capital in solution provision process.     

Public values: citizens’ perspective

ABSTRACT

Drawing data from more than 2,000 US citizens, the current article focuses on empirically derived citizens’ public values. Objectives include: (1) to provide and analyse empirical data on citizens’ specific views about what does and does not constitute a public value, (2) to distinguish between ‘Contested’ and ‘Consensus’ public values; (3) to suggest some implications of citizens’ public value assessment in terms of their theoretical meaning; (4) to compare expressed vs. enacted public values (based on decision vignettes). Findings show widespread agreement about a handful of putative public values, but when enacted in vignettes responses are inconsistent.     

Does intellectual capital matter? Assessing the profitability and marketability of IC design companies

Under a highly competitive market and a dynamic industrial environment, how to evaluate and enhance an integrated circuit (IC) design company??s good performance is important. This paper develops a two-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) combined intellectual capital theory through financial and non-financial data to evaluate a performance process on the IC design company. It adopts a new slacks-based measure (SBM) to obtain a more accurate performance estimation and rank between companies. This paper further uses the Simar and Wilson procedure with a truncated regression to explore the impact of intellectual capital variables on performance and competitive advantage. From the study we suggest to the company in how to enhance precisely its performance to create company value and success.     

Comparative advantages of China’s wind energy products: a Belt-and-Road perspective

Quality & Quantity - By adopting the constant market share model and revealed comparative advantage approach, this paper measured the long-term trends of the comparative advantages of...     

Connectedness and risk spillovers in China’s stock market: A sectoral analysis

This paper shows how sectors in the Chinese stock market are connected and investigates risk spillovers across these sectors. Using graph theory and a recently developed time series technique, we are able to identify the systemically important sector in the market and the patterns of risk spillovers across sectors over time. Unlike standard econometric modeling, graph theory enables us to approach this question in a more reader-friendly way. The empirical results show that Industrial sector plays a central role and should thus be considered the systemically most important sector in the Chinese stock market. The spillover structure is found to be time-varying. While Industrial sector dominates the system for most of the time, other sectors such as Consumer Discretionary sector also occasionally appear as the central sector. Our empirical results also indicate that the simple correlation-based approach can produce equally useful information as more advanced econometric models.     

Banks’ capital,regulation and the financial crisis

This paper investigates whether regulatory capital requirements play an important role in determining banks’ equity capital. We estimate equity capital regressions using panel data of a sample of 560 banks for 2004–2010. Our results suggest that regulatory capital requirements are not first order determinants of banks’ capital structure. We document differences on the effect of most factors on banks’ share of equity according to the type of bank and to the region of the bank. Finally, we show that the determinants of this share are sensitive to the recent international financial crisis and to a set of regulatory country factors.     

The ‘T-Shaped Buyer’: A transactional perspective on supply chain relationships

This paper challenges the normative view of interdependent buyer-seller relationships and provides a more holistic perspective of the contextual reality that shapes buyer behaviour. By proposing an innovative qualitative methodology, which focusses on boundary-spanning, pre-sales interactions, the research penetrates complex and commercially sensitive buyer-seller relationships. The longitudinal research design uses web-based diaries and follow-up interviews to explore conditions of power based interdependence between buyers and sellers. The ensuing data is mapped using qualitative content analysis and the results are aggregated graphically for assessment. Using this approach the study develops a nuanced view of the dominant patterns of buyer behaviour, and challenges the opinion that a search for competitive advantage will strengthen cooperative relationships in conditions of power based interdependence. The paper introduces the metaphor of the 'T-Shaped Buyer' to explain the empirical findings and, while acknowledging the contextual limits of the study, suggests that this metaphor may cause both academics and practitioners to reflect on normative thinking.     

Afriat’s Theorem and Samuelson’s ‘Eternal Darkness’

Suppose that we have access to a finite set of expenditure data drawn from an individual consumer, i.e., how much of each good has been purchased and at what prices. Afriat (1967) was the first to establish necessary and sufficient conditions on such a data set for rationalizability by utility maximization. In this note, we provide a new and simple proof of Afriat’s Theorem, the explicit steps of which help to more deeply understand the driving force behind one of the more curious features of the result itself, namely that a concave rationalization is without loss of generality in a classical finite data setting. Our proof stresses the importance of the non-uniqueness of a utility representation along with the finiteness of the data set in ensuring the existence of a concave utility function that rationalizes the data.     

Asymmetric risk spillovers between Shanghai and Hong Kong stock markets under China’s capital account liberalization

In this paper, we investigate the asymmetric risk spillovers between Shanghai and Hong Kong stock markets under the backdrop of China’s capital account liberalization by measuring the Conditional Value-at-Risk (CoVaR) based on adjusted realized volatilities and variational mode decomposition based copula model. The empirical results show that, the asymmetric features of risk spillovers between the two markets are significant and manifest different states before and after the Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect and Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect schemes. More specifically, first, the downside risk spillovers from Hong Kong to Shanghai are significantly larger than its upside risk spillovers, while the risk spillovers from Shanghai to Hong Kong is on the contrary. Second, the short-run risk spillovers are more drastic than the long-run risk spillovers, except the risk spillovers from Shanghai to Hong Kong after the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect scheme. Finally, by comparing the risk spillovers from two directions, the importance of Shanghai stock market gradually rises up with the implementations of Stock Connect schemes.     

A providers’ perspective on supplier relationships in performance-based contracting

As companies are concentrating on core competencies, they increasingly require their suppliers to provide full solutions rather than individual offerings. Many of these solutions, a specific one being “performance-based contracting” (PBC), require a systems integration approach from the providers, who strongly depend on their sub-suppliers’ contributions. Yet, while research on PBC is increasing and some implications for the customer–provider relationship have been identified, no study has been undertaken to analyse the implications of PBC on the upstream suppliers, specifically how the relationship is impacted by results-oriented concepts such as PBC, how suppliers are aligned to the PBC outcome and how they participate in the performance-based compensation. This paper seeks to address this gap, combining a theoretical approach and an empirical approach. The challenges resulting from PBC on the supplier relationships of PBC providers are first analysed from an information economics perspective. Then, a case study approach with insights from typical PBC industries such as defence or aerospace was used to validate and enhance the study. The findings show that despite opposing assumptions in previous literature, PBC suppliers are not involved into the concept’s specifics in a dedicated way, giving away the potentials of a proper alignment. Based on this, a governance portfolio model for the PBC providers’ supplier relationships is developed. The paper is concluded with managerial and theoretical implications.