Does Familiarity Foster Innovation? The Impact of Alliance Partner Repeatedness on Breakthrough Innovations

Does familiarity with alliance partners promote breakthrough innovations? This study draws on the literature of interorganizational routines to examine the impact of repeated R&D collaborations within a firm's alliance portfolio on its breakthrough innovations. Specifically, we contend that the benefits and liabilities of interorganizational routines, arising from alliance partner repeatedness at a firm's alliance portfolio level, lead to an inverted U‐shaped relationship between alliance partner repeatedness and breakthrough innovations. Further, we build on the recent theoretical development of interorganizational routines to propose that technological dynamism will make the inverted U‐shaped relationship steeper. Analyses of approximately 230 firms in the US biopharmaceutical industry from 1983 to 2002 support our hypotheses. Our findings provide important implications for research on alliance portfolio and management of firm innovation.     

Do Individual Preferences Affect the Environmental Decision‐Making Process in Teams? The Role of Participation

Literature on organizations and the natural environment has focused on the importance of individual managers and leaders. However, this literature has scarcely ever focused on individuals in the team context, even when teams have been considered to be key for a firms’ environmental progress. Although teams’ environmental decisions can be enriched by the different contributions of team members, it is necessary that team members actually participate and contribute their preferences during the decision‐making process. We used an adaptation of the legislative dilemma task with 84 students to contribute to environmental management literature by analyzing members’ participation during the team decision‐making process. The results of this paper show how those members with environmentally proactive preferences have a higher participation during the decision‐making process, and as a consequence they have a greater influence on the team decision. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

The Economic Impact and Civic Pride Effects of Sports Teams and Mega‐Events: Do The Public and the Professionals Agree?

Often sports leagues, organising committees, and team owners justify the use of public funds to build sports stadiums by the perceived economic impacts and civic pride generated by the teams or mega‐events. Since the 1980s many economic studies have examined the economic impact and civic pride created by professional sports teams. Most of the economic literature finds sports teams or mega‐events have little or no economic impact, but there are mixed findings on the magnitude of civic pride. Overall, most of the economic literature suggests that the benefits created by sports teams or events do not outweigh the cost of public subsidies provided. We conduct a survey of public opinion on US residents’ perceptions of economic impacts and civic pride benefits from mega‐events such as the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics. Our study asks the question: Do residents believe that mega‐events and sports teams generate positive economic impacts and civic pride or not? We find that, like economists, the public doubts that public funding of mega‐events is a good idea.     

Differences in Opportunities? Wage,Employment and House‐Price Effects on Migration*

Most empirical studies of individual migration choice analyse factors associated with out‐migration from an origin location. In contrast, we model the migration decision within the context of potential destinations, combining British panel data over the period 1992–2008 with other data sources. Contrary to earlier micro studies, we show that differences in house prices levels (but not growth) are important determinants of household migration for homeowners. Unemployed individuals respond to regional differences in expected individual wages, whereas the employed are more sensitive to employment opportunities. Our evidence is consistent with partners of heads of households being tied migrants.     

Old Wine in Private Equity Bottles? The Resurgence of Contract‐for‐Deed Home Sales in US Urban Neighborhoods

This article describes the reemergence, in the wake of the mortgage crisis, of a predatory financial practice in predominantly black neighborhoods in the US: the contract for deed (CFD). The CFD has a notorious urban history; it was a focus of social justice organizing in 1960s Chicago, which helped lay the groundwork for advocacy that culminated in two important laws in the US: the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975 and the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. This article places the reemergence of the CFD in the post‐crisis cycle of housing investment and disinvestment, estimates the minimum scale of CFD ownership, and examines the geography of a well‐known CFD seller in the Atlanta area. As policymakers in the US took efforts to restrict predatory lending fueled by private‐label securitization following the subprime crisis, capital markets shifted toward private equity financiers who provided a new supply of lightly regulated capital for urban housing markets. Predominantly black neighborhoods became prey for high‐return schemes meant to extract as much cash flow out of vulnerable residents as possible, offering them the illusion of homeownership. The findings show that the CFD seller focused on black neighborhoods and suggests that its profits from this activity have been quite lucrative.     

How do Scientists Contribute to the Performance of Innovative Start‐ups? An Imprinting Perspective on Open Innovation

Our study illustrates how scientists contribute to the performance of innovative start‐ups through an analysis of 211 Italian start‐ups with and without scientist founders. Building upon imprinting theory, we hypothesize and find that scientists provide an advantage to innovative start‐ups to the extent that they stimulate open innovation (i.e., search breadth and depth). However, for this to effectively occur, the involvement of multiple scientist founders is needed, so that their career imprints internalized in the lab are successfully transferred to the start‐up. Moreover, if the start‐up embraces business practices (i.e., strategic planning) or departs from scientific logics (i.e., pursuing non‐commercial goals), scientists’ contribution is further increased. Therefore, our study illustrates how the scientist career imprint can provide an advantage to innovative start‐ups with multiple scientists, but also how it can act as a rigidity if the start‐up does not pursue strategic planning or emphasizes non‐commercial goals.     

Can central banks run out of ammunition? The role of the money‐equities‐interaction channel in monetary policy

Many authorities claim that central banks ‘have run out of ammunition’, either because the central bank rate has dropped close to the zero lower bound or because of Keynes's liquidity trap. I argue first, that indefinitely large increases in the quantity of money remain possible even with the central bank rate close to zero, and, second, that increases in the quantity of money raise all asset prices, including the prices of quoted equities, not just bond prices. Bonds are an unimportant asset class in modern capitalist economies, relative to corporate equity and real estate. Meanwhile increases in equity prices always boost aggregate demand and output.     

Friend or foe? The impact of high‐performance work practices on workplace bullying

The aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between high‐performance work practices (HPWPs) and workplace bullying and identify possible mediators. The study presents hypotheses based on two competing perspectives: a mutual gains perspective, arguing that HPWPs lead to higher perceptions of justice and less role conflict, thereby reducing the risk of bullying; and, a critical perspective, arguing that HPWPs lead to work intensification and competition among colleagues, and thereby to more bullying. A two‐wave survey (n = 209) was conducted among business professionals in Finland. The results show that HPWPs are associated with less bullying, and justice and role conflict mediated the relationship. Thus, the results provide support for the mutual gains perspective on HPWPs, challenging prevailing assumptions in the bullying literature that suggest performance‐enhancing HR practices are a risk factor. Instead, the results point to the significance of HPWPs as an important tool to prevent bullying.     

Towards a ‘Post‐Neoliberal’ Mode of Housing Regulation? The Israeli Social Protest of Summer 2011

In the summer of 2011, after decades of virtually uncontested neoliberalization, Israel was swept by unprecedented protests against the rising cost of living, social inequality and, most particularly, escalating housing prices. Within two weeks, a small protest camp established on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv had grown into a mass movement involving hundreds of thousands of people across the country. Given an ambivalent sense of the significance of urban movements in bringing about social change, the aim of this article is to analyze whether the Israeli social protest was able to push forward a post‐neoliberal mode of housing regulation. Building on a framework developed by Brenner, Peck and Theodore to grasp transformations in the landscape of regulatory restructuring, this article argues that the movement has indeed achieved a far‐reaching hegemonic shift in public discourse and also become an important driver in promoting regulatory experiments. Despite its achievements, however, the movement was unable to challenge the Israeli ‘rule regime' of neoliberalization, on account of two structural constraints that were shielded by the most powerful state apparatuses: the commodity character of housing; and a neoliberalized land regime, where state‐owned land is treated as a profit machine for public finance.     

The New Ruins of Ireland? Unfinished Estates in the Post‐Celtic Tiger Era

In the wake of the global financial crisis, and as Europe's financial and fiscal woes continue, Ireland's beleaguered economy has attracted a great deal of scrutiny, with much made of the country's status as one of the PIIGS and the fact that it was bailed out by the troika of the IMF, EU and ECB in November 2010. Whilst most attention has been directed at Ireland's banks and the strategy of the Irish government in managing the crisis, substantial interest (both nationally and internationally) has been focused on the property sector and in particular the phenomenon of so‐called ‘ghost estates’ (or, in official terms, unfinished estates). As of October 2011 there were 2,846 such estates in Ireland, and they have come to visibly symbolize the collapse of Ireland's ‘Celtic Tiger’ economy. In this essay, we examine the unfinished estates phenomenon, placing them within the context of Ireland's property boom during the Celtic Tiger years, and conceptualize them as ‘new ruins’ created through the search for a spatial fix by speculative capitalism in a time of neoliberalism. We detail the characteristics and geography of such estates, the various problems afflicting the estates and their residents, and the Irish government's response to those problems. In the final section we examine the estates as exemplars of new ruins, the remainder and reminder of Celtic Tiger excess.     

Balancing board? The effects of board independence and capital on firms offering work‐family benefits

While prior research demonstrates the strategic human resource (HR) advantages associated with offering work–family benefits (WFBs), firms continue to be reluctant in providing their employees with these benefits. Drawing on the corporate governance and stakeholder orientation literatures, this study examines the role of board independence and capital for WFBs being offered in publicly‐traded firms. Our results demonstrate that various director independence and capital attributes are related to the firm offering WFBs. Specifically, board directors who are outsiders, women, and holders of additional directorships, with their broad stakeholder orientation, increase the likelihood of WFBs being offered by the firm [Correction added on December 14, 2017, after first online publication: the preceding sentence has been updated to clarify the findings of the study.]. These findings are of importance to HR practitioners considering the influence that corporate boards can have on the firm's use of HR practices, such as WFBs, that affect all employees, not just the executives.     

Feminisation of the medical profession: a strategic HRM dilemma? The effects of family‐friendly HR practices on female doctors' contracted working hours

Health‐care institutions face a strategic HR dilemma. They need to attract female doctors from a tight, feminised labour market by offering family‐friendly HR practices (e.g. part‐time employment), often based on collective labour agreements, while trying to contain their labour costs by employing as many full‐timers as possible. In this study, we investigate which family‐friendly arrangements serve health‐care institutions' HR strategies best in terms of retaining female doctors' working hours. Data collected in 2008 from 1,070 Dutch female doctors indicate that offering family‐friendly HR practices such as flexible working hours (in contrast to part‐time working) minimise the strategic HR dilemma, since it offers scope for improving the work–life balance without encouraging female doctors to work less hours. However, the effect of family‐friendly arrangements on working hours is dependent on the family‐friendly workforce philosophy: only with proper support for career goals do women using family‐friendly arrangements work more hours.     

The impact of data revisions on the robustness of growth determinants—a note on ‘determinants of economic growth: Will data tell?’

Ciccone and Jarociński (American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 2010; 2 : 222–246) show that inference in Bayesian model averaging (BMA) can be highly sensitive to small data perturbations. In particular, they demonstrate that the importance attributed to potential growth determinants varies tremendously over different revisions of international income data. They conclude that ‘agnostic’ priors appear too sensitive for this strand of growth empirics. In response, we show that the found instability owes much to a specific BMA set‐up: first, comparing the same countries over data revisions improves robustness; second, much of the remaining variation can be reduced by applying an evenly ‘agnostic’ but flexible prior. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Can We Still be Friends? The Role of Exit Conversations in Facilitating Post‐Exit Relationships

Organizations might benefit from maintaining relationships with former employees, who could be rehired later or encouraged to refer job applicants and customers. We integrate the management literature on voluntary resignations and the communication literature on relationship dissolution to explore how conversations between an exiting employee and his or her manager facilitate (or constrain) post‐exit relationships. Employees who had recently resigned from full‐time jobs described their exit experiences in semistructured interviews with the research team. The results suggest two dominant patterns. When employees exited for external reasons (e.g., to pursue a program of study), they engaged in very direct communication strategies, elicited positive responses from their managers, and left with high interest in a post‐exit relationship. But when employees exited for internal reasons (problems within the employment relationship), they engaged in multiple exit cycles and moved from indirect communication strategies toward increasingly direct ones. Managerial responses to these strategies failed to capitalize on opportunities to nurture post‐exit relationships and sometimes generated a “vendetta effect” among exiting employees. The results suggest that managers might benefit from training in how to conduct effective exit conversations, particularly with employees who are leaving for internal reasons. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

How to refuse a vote on the EU? The case against the referendum in the House of Commons (1974–2010)

Under what conditions do politicians oppose referendums especially to decide questions of European integration? Existing literature has identified reasons why governments and political parties pledge to hold non-mandatory referendums to ratify EU treaties or determine a country’s participation in the EU project, and some studies have analysed the effect of voter demand and attitudes towards EU referendums. This study examines the positions politicians themselves take towards popular participation in decision-making on the EU. The paper presents a summative content analysis of parliamentary debates in the United Kingdom between 1974 and 2010, tracing MPs’ arguments against using referendums to determine the UK’s participation in EU integration. Our results indicate that the range of claims made by MPs in the House of Commons against referendums on European matters has narrowed over time, although opposing arguments have continued to fall into the same set of four argumentative strategies. We find that institutional arguments, reflecting a Burkean understanding of representative democracy, consistently predominate over arguments that cite practical, political and manipulation concerns.     

Do Country Specific Bankruptcy Codes Determine Long‐term Financial Performance? The Case of Metallgesellschaft AG and Columbia Gas System

In this paper, we examine the impact of financial distress, the bankruptcy code, and related procedures on the long-term performance of two companies engaged in similar businesses across two countries. Both the companies were driven into bankruptcy as a result of unanticipated changes in energy prices. Though the resolution of bankruptcy of the US firm took a longer time, the post-reorganization performance of the firm has been excellent. In contrast, the post-reorganization performance of the German firm, which emerged out of bankruptcy in 2 weeks, has been poor. These results are consistent with the view that one of the important determinants of post-bankruptcy performance of a firm is more likely to be the underlying economic fundamentals rather than the country specific bankruptcy code through which the firm reorganizes.     

Behavioural Orientations of Non‐Profit Boards as a Factor in Entrepreneurial Performance: Does Governance Matter?

Relatively little is understood about factors triggering entrepreneurial behaviour within organizations not driven by profit motives. Governance plays an important role in non‐profits, particularly boards of directors. Integrating resource‐based theory and entrepreneurial orientation research, we examine the influence of non‐profit boards as strategic resources shaping the organization's entrepreneurial orientation and performance. In particular, we focus on the non‐profit board's underlying behavioural orientations, or the extent to which the board is strategic, activist, conservative, and cohesive. Findings from a cross‐sectional survey on arts and culture organizations demonstrate that three of these behavioural orientations impact levels of entrepreneurship occurring within non‐profits. Higher levels of entrepreneurship affect social performance, but not financial performance.     

How Do Small Businesses Finance Their Growth Opportunities?—The Case of Recovery from the Lost Decade in Japan

Previous studies argue that bank loans are cheaper than trade credit, so less‐constrained firms largely depend on bank loans and use trade credit less, especially in financially developed economies. However, the Japanese evidence does not support this view. First, small businesses with higher credit demand increase trade credit more during the period of the recovery from a severe recession. Second, creditworthy firms also increase trade credit to finance their growth opportunities. Third, firms in unstable industries increase trade credit more. This suggests that suppliers are able to offer credit, unlike banks, as they have a relative advantage in day‐by‐day monitoring. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

City of Discontent? The Influence of Perceived Organizational Culture,LMX, and Newcomer Status on Reported Bullying in a Municipal Workplace

Workplace bullying is a counterproductive behavior that has captured the attention of researchers in recent years. The extent of reported bullying behavior in US organizations varies however; it is estimated to affect 15% to 50% of workers with projected annual costs of over $40 billion including direct and indirect costs. Workplace bullying poses a serious ethical challenge by sending messages about appropriate conduct within the organization’s culture. In this study, we focus on environmental factors as predictors of self-reported bullying in a public-sector organization. Specifically, the factors of interest are organizational culture, commitment to change, and leader-member exchange (LMX). We also investigate newcomer status and its relationship to reported bullying. Findings demonstrated perceived stability in the organization and higher levels of LMX showed lower levels of workplace bullying. Further, an organizational culture that emphasizes rewards lead to higher levels of bullying and newcomers are subjected to more bullying than longer service workers.