Mapping the antecedents of telework diffusion: firm‐level evidence from Italy

Previous literature has studied telework practices predominantly from the employees' perspective rather than exploring its use at the firm level. With the objective of contributing to reducing this research gap, the relationship between firms' adoption of telework and the firms' technological, organisational and environmental contexts is explored. Data were obtained from a survey conducted between 2005 and 2009 on a sample of 1,134 Italian firms in the Piedmont region. The results show an overall increase in the diffusion of telework primarily attributable to a rise in the adoption of ‘mobile’ work rather than home‐based forms of telework. The results also show that firms that had previously adopted information systems supporting core business processes and knowledge management were more inclined to adopt telework. Telework arrangements were more widely diffused among firms facing a growing and geographically dispersed market demand, and also in the contexts of higher levels of human capital and lower capital intensity.     

Business travellers' connections to home: ICTs supporting work‐life balance

This paper examines the role of information communication technology in enabling connections to home for work‐related travellers. Although digital connectivity for work‐related tasks are well researched, the use of digital technology for home communication is under‐researched. The study draws on a qualitative study of UK‐based organisations and business travellers to explore how these travellers use ICTs for personal use while ‘on the move’. The findings reveal that organisations are supportive of work‐life balance for employees, but fail to consider specific needs of those whose work takes them away from home. For business travellers, insights are gained into practices around connecting to home and the value of this virtual presence for relationships with family while absent and work‐life balance. The study identifies and discusses practice occurring around three activities; checking in, maintaining relationships with home and sharing experiences.     

Strategic frameworks for understanding employer participation in school‐to‐work programs

The knowledge and skills inherent in human capital are increasingly recognized as the essence of competitive advantage. Extending the emerging literature on capability building, this paper explores the strategic decision of participating in school‐to‐work programs from the transaction cost and resource‐based view of the firm. Using data from a national sample, we find that both strategic perspectives help to explain decisions to participate in school‐to‐work activities. Our findings indicate that school‐to‐work programs and activities may be understood as interorganizational strategies from a transaction cost view and evidence of a firm's motivation to develop human capital to build competitive advantage from a resource‐based view. Implications for school‐to‐work public policy development in the United States and future research are identified. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Disrupted work: home‐based teleworking (HbTW) in the aftermath of a natural disaster

Natural disasters disrupt the nature of work, promoting an urgent review of where work is performed. Home‐based telework (HbTW), a common form of telework, is increasingly promoted as a means to ensure continuity of operations in an emergency situation. While widely advocated, little is known of the challenges and outcomes of HbTW when employed in disaster situations. This article explores the organisational and employee experiences of HbTW in the aftermath of a disaster, drawing on data from over 240 public sector workers and their managers who worked from home following a series of earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand. Findings point to critical factors shaping the experiences and outcomes of HbTW in disaster situations. Significant variation in the experiences and perceptions of HbTW for team leaders highlights their pivotal role and heightened pressures to maintain control in complex disaster situations.     

A path to value creation for foreign entrepreneurs

Research summary : Firms founded by foreign entrepreneurs constitute an influential and growing part of the world economy. Yet, the existing research has given little consideration to the strategies of foreign entrepreneurs beyond their decisions to start a firm. In this article, we address this gap by examining how foreign entrepreneurs may bring value to their firms as firm managers. We argue that foreign owner‐managers may benefit their firms by having access to home‐country resources. We demonstrate that, compared to hired local managers, foreign owner‐managers reduce firms' operating costs by disproportionately hiring home‐country labor when this labor is more cost‐efficient. This effect is larger for labor‐intensive industries and for entrepreneurs from less wealthy countries. Managerial summary : Foreign entrepreneurs represent an important part of the world economy. Yet, we know little of how foreign entrepreneurs manage their firms. In this article, we examine whether foreign entrepreneurs and domestic managers hire different employees. We find that when foreign entrepreneurs manage their firms personally, they hire a larger number of foreign workers, and such workers are cheaper and more productive than the local labor. Conversely, domestic managers tend to hire local employees, despite their higher relative wages. Foreign owner‐managers are particularly valuable in labor‐intensive industries and when their home‐country labor is inexpensive. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Do foreign entrepreneurs benefit their firms as managers?

Research summary: The entrepreneurship literature has extensively studied an individual's decision to found a new venture, but it has little to say about the individual's choice to operate this venture personally or hire an agent. This decision is particularly challenging for foreign entrepreneurs, who, in addition to traditional factors, such as agency costs and personal preferences, need to take into consideration the benefits and liabilities of foreignness. Using novel data on foreign entrepreneurial firms and instrumenting for the owner‐manager choice with a visa policy change, we find that managing foreign entrepreneurs significantly improve firm performance. Our results further suggest that foreign owner‐managers reduce operating costs but have no effect on the firm's productivity and growth. Managerial summary: Immigrants represent a significant part of the population in the United States and Europe and are often more entrepreneurial than local nationals. However, a person starting a firm in a foreign country faces unique challenges. One important choice that a foreign entrepreneur has to make is whether to operate the firm personally or hire a local agent. Foreign entrepreneurs are often believed to be worse managers because they have limited local knowledge and skills. However, our results point to the contrary: We find that managing foreign entrepreneurs significantly improve firm performance by decreasing firms' operating costs. This happens because foreign owner‐managers often have access to unique resources, higher work incentives, and superior management skills acquired at home. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Good to be home? Time‐use and satisfaction levels among home‐based teleworkers

Home‐based teleworking (HbTW) has the potential to provide significant benefits to both employer and employee, but also presents considerable challenges. This paper considers HbTW among UK employees, specifically exploring distinctions in the time‐use of men and women home‐based teleworkers and the impacts of HbTW on employee satisfaction levels, using cross‐section fixed effects panel regression analysis of the British Household Panel Survey. Findings reveal that total time‐use in work activities among men and women home‐based teleworkers is relatively comparable, but the distribution significantly different. For women, housework represents a particular time constraint, reflecting continued presence of the ‘double‐shift’. Homeworkers report greater levels of satisfaction, yet they are more pronounced in respect to paid work than leisure time. Extensive hours of housework reported among women may explain these differences. Nevertheless, home‐based teleworkers report greater levels of satisfaction than other workers, suggesting considerable benefits especially for working mothers.     

Foreign‐based competition and corporate diversification strategy

Since the mid‐1980s U.S. domestic firms have faced significant increases in foreign‐based (i.e., import) competition as reductions in barriers to international commerce have resulted in markets and industries becoming increasingly global. Despite the growing and widespread importance of foreign‐based competition, the influence that such competition may exert on corporate diversification strategy is a question largely overlooked in the strategic management literature. This paper examines the impact of foreign‐based competition in a firm's core business on both the level and nature of a firm's diversification strategy at the corporate level in a panel dataset of U.S. firms over the period 1985–94. Our findings provide the first evidence that increased foreign‐based competition is indeed a statistically significant factor explaining both the reduced business‐level diversity and the increased strategic focus of U.S. firms that has been widely perceived over the past two decades. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Equity‐based incentives and collaboration in the modern multibusiness firm

Research summary : This paper examines the role of equity‐based incentives in fostering cross‐business‐unit collaboration in multibusiness firms. We develop a formal agency model in which headquarters offers equity and profit incentives to business‐unit managers with the objective of maximizing total expected firm returns. The resulting compensation contract provides a rich mechanism for aggregating value from collaborative interactions across business units, aligning managers' efforts with the firm's growth prospects and organization structure and managing the dual risks in profits and firm market value. The inclusion of equity incentives elicits higher levels of own‐unit and collaborative efforts over the profits‐only contract. Our results suggest that equity‐based incentives are most beneficial when profitability is uncertain relative to long‐term growth prospects, in firms pursuing related diversification strategies, and in periods of rising equity markets. Managerial summary : Equity‐based compensation such as restricted stock grants and options are increasingly common, not only for CEOs and other top executives, but also for business unit managers and other non‐C‐suite employees. The paper studies the role of such “global” incentives in enabling multibusiness firms to benefit from cross‐unit collaboration. Results from our model show that managerial contracts that include appropriate levels of equity incentives, in addition to profit‐based incentives, generate higher own‐unit and collaborative efforts. We also find that equity incentives are likely to be most beneficial for large firms in high‐growth sectors, for firms pursuing a related diversification strategy, and in periods of rising stock markets. The model can also provide useful guidance on designing return‐maximizing compensation contracts for business unit managers in different firm, organizational, and industry contexts. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Corporate entrepreneurship initiatives: Antagonizing cognitive biases in business model design

Entrepreneurs designing novel business model configurations face cognitive biases that derive from limited mental capacity to deal with complex and uncertain decision contexts. Building on the notion of the business model as an idiosyncratic mental representation that organizes managerial understanding of value creating and value capture, we investigate how entrepreneurs cope with cognitive biases inherent in business model design. We conducted a total of 35 in‐depth interviews with entrepreneurs situated in 15 corporate entrepreneurship initiatives in Germany. Our study results suggest that entrepreneurs counter cognitive biases by combining intuitive and deliberate reasoning approaches. Specifically, we identify five cognitive mechanisms and two higher level cognitive processes undergirding entrepreneurial reasoning in the design of new business models. Our findings provide empirically grounded insights into the cognitive perspective in business model research and help to theorize managerial reasoning during the process of business model design.     

Strategic human capital management in the context of cross‐industry and within‐industry mobility frictions

Research Summary: We develop and test a theory examining how frictions that restrict mobility across industries and frictions constraining mobility within an industry can co‐occur to effectively isolate individual human capital, ultimately changing the firm's make‐versus‐buy decision for human capital. Empirically, we demonstrate that when cross‐industry frictions in the form of limited skill transferability and within‐industry frictions in the form of noncompete enforceability are both present, employees exhibit longer tenures, firms hire workers with less initial experience, firms change the amount and nature of training provided, and wages marginally increase. These findings suggest that sufficiently strong and complementary mobility frictions shift the emphasis of firms’ human capital management practices toward internal development of human capital relative to acquisition on the external market. Managerial Summary : In the face of frictions to employee mobility both within and across industries, which we capture empirically using measures of noncompete enforceability and limited skill transferability across industries, firms tend to hire less experienced workers, such workers exhibit longer tenures, and firms invest more in their training, particularly in the development of new skills. Our findings imply that for firms operating under such complementary frictions, better hiring and internal development capabilities are particularly important for performance, while those firms without such capabilities may benefit from considering ways to circumvent the mobility frictions, including moving out of the focal state or lobbying for different noncompete laws.     

Demand‐side strategy,relational advantage,and partner‐driven corporate scope: The case for client‐led diversification

Research Summary: We advance research on corporate diversification by joining insights from the demand‐side and relational views in strategy to offer a novel theory of client‐led diversification. We propose that client‐led diversification results from a combination of the customer‐driven opportunities emphasized in the demand‐side view and the creation of added value through relational assets that is a central tenet of the relational view. Furthermore, we hypothesize that suppliers’ client‐specific knowledge, clients’ relational commitment to suppliers, and growth opportunities in clients’ markets (relative to the suppliers’ own markets) will magnify the client‐led diversification effect. We test our hypotheses using a longitudinal dataset on patent law firms and their diversification into new domains of patent prosecution work for their corporate clients. Managerial Summary: Explanations of why firms diversify into new lines of business have largely concerned the redeployment of underutilized resources, with little regard to opportunities or influences stemming from firms’ existing customers. In our article, we show how the changing scope of business needs from a knowledge‐based supplier firm's set of existing clients is a central driver of supplier‐firm diversification, and this is especially the case when the level of relational assets shared between a supplier and its clients is higher. In a competitive landscape where suppliers compete intensively for the business of clients, our results show how managers can increase the likelihood of capturing additional business from its existing exchange relationships rather than bearing the risks of seeking new exchange relationships.     

Pioneering Advantages and Entrepreneurs' First‐mover Decisions: An Empirical Investigation for the United States and China

New ventures are often launched for the purpose of pioneering an innovative new product or service in the marketplace. Entrepreneurs or founders of new ventures thus often have to make the decision whether to be the market pioneer or the first mover. While being a first mover potentially is advantageous, it also involves taking risks and facing uncertainties. Entrepreneurs must assess the benefits and risks of pioneering in the first‐mover decision‐making process to realize the potential competitive advantages associated with being a pioneer. Previous research has shown how entrepreneurs perceive potential gains and losses associated with exploring opportunities as the key defining element of entrepreneurial decision‐making. Past studies have also indicated that cultural and business environmental factors affect both perceptions and decision‐making. However, studies to date have insufficiently addressed the relationship between entrepreneurs' perceived pioneering advantages/disadvantages and their first‐mover decisions, with little attention to cross‐national differences. This study includes hypotheses postulating how entrepreneurs' perceived advantages and disadvantages of pioneering affect the number of first‐mover decisions made by entrepreneurs in two different cultural contexts, the United States and China. We collect data from 152 U.S. entrepreneurs and 140 Chinese entrepreneurs over a four‐year period and carry out empirical tests on the hypotheses using Poisson regression models. Our results provide insight on how culture affects perceptions of advantages and disadvantages of pioneering, and how these perceptions impact the likelihood of making a first‐mover decision. We find that a higher level of perceived advantages will drive first‐mover decisions, whereas perceived disadvantages will deter first‐mover decisions. The negative effect of perceived erosion disadvantages on the number of first‐mover decisions was higher for Chinese entrepreneurs, consistent with the high risk‐aversion culture in China. However, this effect was not found for perceived uncertainty disadvantages, suggesting that the risk‐averse characteristics of Chinese entrepreneurs is an oversimplification, and that the Chinese cultural, business, and legal environment helps offset uncertainty disadvantages. We also find an interesting positive moderating effect of perceived advantage on the relationship between perceived disadvantages and the number of first‐mover decisions in China only. That is, if perceived advantages are low, Chinese entrepreneurs are more risk averse than U.S. entrepreneurs; but if perceived advantages are high, Chinese entrepreneurs are more risk‐seeking than U.S. entrepreneurs. This finding again challenges the risk aversion conclusion found by previous studies of Chinese managers.     

The Setback in Political Entrepreneurship and Employment Dualization in Japan, 1998–2012

Scholars are mainly concerned about how policy makers in advanced countries have succeeded in dualizing labour market regulations in a way to realize their vision or to represent powerful industrial interests. However, Japan's recent experiences suggest the possibility that this dualization is not such a straightforward outcome. This study argues that as Japan's political entrepreneurs have undergone setbacks in their reform attempt to overcome the tradition of employment dualism, they have improvised to close the reform process by institutionalizing this tradition. This study corroborates the argument by investigating state‐industry conflicts over the revisions of the Worker Dispatch Law in 1999, 2003 and 2012.     

Workers of the Internet unite? Online freelancer organisation among remote gig economy workers in six Asian and African countries

This article presents findings regarding collective organisation among online freelancers in middle‐income countries. Drawing on research in Southeast Asia and Sub‐Saharan Africa, we find that the specific nature of the online freelancing labour process gives rise to a distinctive form of organisation, in which social media groups play a central role in structuring communication and unions are absent. Previous research is limited to either conventional freelancers or ‘microworkers’ who do relatively low‐skilled tasks via online labour platforms. This study uses 107 interviews and a survey of 658 freelancers who obtain work via a variety of online platforms to highlight that Internet‐based communities play a vital role in their work experiences. Internet‐based communities enable workers to support each other and share information. This, in turn, increases their security and protection. However, these communities are fragmented by nationality, occupation and platform.     

Boundary management in an ICT‐enabled project‐based organising context

This paper explores the boundaries that emerge and exist within an information and communication technology (ICT)‐enabled project‐based organising context and the ways knowledge workers manage these boundaries through the use of technology. This is done through an exploratory qualitative case study of an early instance of the phenomenon in a knowledge‐intensive professional services organisation. Through the experiences of a group of knowledge workers who started to work in project‐based ways that were highly mediated by ICT, this study aims to understand the boundaries that they faced and the practices they undertook to manage these boundaries. In so doing, this study contributes to the existing literature on new forms of work and organisation, particularly on the issue of boundaries where ICT‐enabled project teams are used. In particular, this study extends our current understanding of boundaries through expanding the lens of investigation beyond a predominant focus on work–home boundaries and considers boundaries within the work sphere.     

Time‐use and well‐being impacts of travel‐to‐work and travel‐for‐work

This article contributes to our understanding of the complex patterns of travel‐to‐work and travel‐for‐work which increasingly characterise highly skilled employment, using 2015 data from a UK Midlands study comprising an online survey and follow‐up interviews. Travel‐to‐work essentially lengthens the working day, and is difficult to use productively, especially when commuting by car. Travel‐for‐work, by contrast, results in intense schedules especially when requiring overnight stays. Ownership of travel‐for‐work is ambiguous: it is employer driven, and travel time is often spent productively using mobile technologies, but is rarely rewarded with TOIL. While general dissatisfaction is reported with the commute, negative effects of travel‐for‐work (family, health, reduced leisure time) are mediated by positive impacts including experience of new working cultures, and infrequency of travel. Four factors appear central to the differing well‐being impacts: (1) frequency of travel; (2) ability to plan travel; (3) productive use of travel time, and; (4) reciprocal benefits of travel.     

Entrepreneurship in International Business: An Institutional Perspective

International business activities have confronted entrepreneurs with host business environments that are fundamentally different from their home countries. Despite decades of entrepreneurship research, we know very little about these entrepreneurs and their strategic behaviour in establishing and managing transnational operations. This paper develops an institutional perspective on transnational entrepreneurship. This perspective argues that significant variations in institutional structures of home countries explain variations in the entrepreneurial endowments of prospective transnational entrepreneurs. Transnational entrepreneurship is embedded in transnational actor networks that facilitate successful cross-border business operations. This paper goes beyond the theoretical impasse in entrepreneurship and international business studies.     

The long‐term benefits of organizational resilience through sustainable business practices

Research summary : Prior work on the benefits of business sustainability often applies short‐term causal logic and data analysis. In this article, we argue that the social and the environmental practices (SEPs) associated with business sustainability not only contribute to short‐term outcomes, but also to organizational resilience, which we define as the firm's ability to sense and correct maladaptive tendencies and cope positively with unexpected situations. Because organizational resilience is a latent, path‐dependent construct, we assess it through the long‐term outcomes, including improved financial volatility, sales growth, and survival rates. We tested these hypotheses with data from 121 U.S.‐based matched‐pairs (242 individual firms) over a 15‐year period. We also tested, but did not find support for, the relationship between SEPs and short‐term financial performance. Managerial summary : Most managers look for short‐term financial benefits to justify socially responsible or sustainable practices. In this article, we argue that such practices also help firms become more resilient, which helps them avoid crises and bounce back from shocks. However, it is difficult to measure the avoidance of shocks, so we analyzed long‐term outcomes. We show that firms that adopt responsible social and environmental practices, relative to a carefully matched control group, have lower financial volatility, higher sales growth, and higher chances of survival over a 15‐year period; yet, we were unable to find any differences in short‐term profits. We hope this research provides good reasons for firms to practice sustainability beyond the pursuit of short‐term profits. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.