Gender and the commercialization of university science: academic founders of spinout companies

There is a great deal of interest in Europe and the USA on the commercialization of university science, particularly the creation of spinout companies from the science base. Despite considerable research on academic entrepreneurship, female entrepreneurship in general, and the causes of under-representation of female scientists in academic institutions, there has been little research on the influence of gender on academic entrepreneurship.

The study researches female founders of UK university spinout companies using information from the Internet on company founders of spinout companies from 20 leading universities. The proportion of female founders at 12% is very low. The paper explores reasons for this low representation through follow-up postal interviews of the 21 female founders identified, and a male control sample. Under-representation of female academic staff in science research is the dominant but not the only factor to explain low entrepreneurial rates amongst female scientists.

Owing to the low number of women in senior research positions in many leading science departments, few women had the chances to lead a spinout. This is a critical factor as much impetus for commercialization was initially inspired by external interest rather than internal evaluation of a commercial opportunity. External interest tended to target senior academics, which proportionally are mostly male. A majority of the women surveyed tended to be part of entrepreneurial teams involving senior male colleagues.

As a whole both male and female science entrepreneurs displayed similar motivations to entrepreneurship, but collectively as scientists differed appreciably from non academic entrepreneurs. Women science entrepreneurs also faced some additional problems in areas such as the conflict between work and home life and networks.     

When does shared leadership matter in entrepreneurial teams: the role of personality composition

Although prior research has investigated a number of conditions under which shared leadership in teams may improve team performance, team composition variables have been left unexplored. Using a sample of 144 teams in a technology incubator in China, this study explored the moderating effects of personality diversity on the relationship between shared leadership and entrepreneurial team performance. Results indicate that shared leadership improves entrepreneurial team performance; the strength of the relationship, however, depends on the level of team personality diversity. More specifically, when relationship-oriented personality diversity is high, the shared leadership—team performance relationship is stronger. These findings advance research in entrepreneurship, groups and teams, and shared leadership, and provide practical implications as well.     

Does the ideal entrepreneurial team exist?

Up until now, studies on entrepreneurs and their relationship to business performance have focused primarily on analyzing the entrepreneur as an individual. While studies have been conducted on the entrepreneurial team, their focus has centered on team size and degree of diversity - cultural, age, gender - leaving a gap in the analysis of the effect of a team’s competencies on the outcome of the ventures. This research aims to help fill this gap by using the psychometric instrument DISC. This research analyzes entrepreneurship by opportunity, evaluating the performance of 109 Colombian companies and the composition of their entrepreneurial teams. The results obtained provide the basis for better understanding of the make-up of entrepreneurial teams, considering the variances and interdependencies of the competency development level among their members. They reveal that identifying the similarity or heterogeneity in certain groups of competencies, as well as how developed they are, can have an impact on the ventures’ success. The cluster analysis carried out suggests that highly developed competencies associated with the ‘dominance’ dimension in the members of an entrepreneurial team are essential. These must be above-average in heterogeneous levels among the team members. They must also be accompanied by the ‘steadiness’ competency provided by the team-oriented partners, as well as an average, homogeneous level of competencies associated with ‘conscientiousness’ if the new business is to achieve good financial results in its early years. The ‘influence’ dimension did not play a significant role. The teams made up of more homogeneous partners obtained the poorest financial results. Furthermore, the study provides new perspectives for measuring business performance in a venture, as well as for evaluating the relationships between the entrepreneurial team's competencies and the company’s results in the first years of business. Accordingly, it offers inputs for future research.

     

基于PBGS的创业教育课程项目式教学的探索与实践

分析现有创业教育教学问题的基础上,结合创业教育自身的特点,提出基于项目的团队学习(PBGS)的教学模式。并以《创业管理》课程为例,通过设置高度实践性的课程教学项目,引导学生进行以团队协作为基础的自主学习,以期促进学生理论水平与创业素质的提高。     

关于创造高绩效工作团队系统的探索

什么是基于团队的系统?使用团队的成本和效用?在团队导向组织里的领导角色是什么?团队需要什么样的技能来有效运作?你怎样介绍一个基于团队的系统?学到的总体经验是什么?本文通过介绍探索如何建立高效的团队系统,希望能为各界需要构建高效团队提供一些参考意见。     

Founder nativity,founding team formation,and firm performance in the U.S. high-tech sector

This paper is motivated by the movement of foreign-born entrepreneurs out of ethnic enclaves and into the mainstream, globally-connected economies of the countries of immigration, and from necessity to opportunity entrepreneurship. The theoretical contribution of the paper is to integrate the emerging literature on foreign-born entrepreneurship with work on the composition and impact of founding teams. Empirically, we draw on original quantitative and qualitative data on the U.S. high-tech sector. We find that homophily drives team formation and that nationality diversity in founding teams has a modest impact on firm performance.     

Relative rewards within team-based compensation

How to design compensation schemes to motivate team members appears to be one of the most challenging problems in the economic analysis of labour provision. We shed light on this issue by experimentally investigating team-based compensations with and without bonuses awarded to the highest contributors in teams.A purely team-based compensation scheme induces agents to voluntarily cooperate while introducing an additional relative reward increases effort and efficiency only when the bonus is substantial. In this case, however, the data suggests that tournament competition crowds out voluntary cooperation within a team.     

Teams in Australia's automotive industry: Characteristics and future challenges

Australia's automotive industry has throughout the 1990s embarked on a sustained programme to improve product quality, productivity and quality of work life through the development of a more flexible and team-based work-force. This paper examines the results of these efforts through a study of Australia's four car makers and their largest component suppliers. The paper examines the role of union-management cooperation in implementing work teams, identifies the forms of work teams that have been developed as well as evidence for the alignment of organization capabilities to support team-based work. The effects of work teams on organizational performance and quality of work life are also examined. Implications are discussed.     

Stimulating teachers’ team performance through team-oriented HR practices: the roles of affective team commitment and information processing

Abstract

Teams of teachers are increasingly held accountable for the quality of education and educational reforms in vocational education and training institutions. However, historically teachers have not been required to engage in deep-level collaboration, thus team-oriented HR practices are being used to promote teamworking in the sector. This paper examines the relationship between team-oriented HR practices and team performance in terms of innovation and efficiency via teachers’ affective team commitment and engagement in information processing. To examine these associations, a team-oriented HRM research instrument was developed and validated based on the ability-motivation-opportunity model (N = 970, 130 teams) and hypothesised associations were examined using multilevel structural equation modelling (N = 704, 70 teams). The results show positive relationships between the team-oriented HR practices of recruitment, team development, team evaluation and teamwork facilitation, and team innovation. Additionally, all practices except team development were positively related to team efficiency. The relationships between team-oriented HR practices and these team performance indicators were often partially or fully mediated by affective team commitment and information processing. Because affective team commitment and information processing sometimes only partially mediated the links between team-oriented HR practices and team performance, other underlying mechanisms await identification.     

Heterogeneity and centrality of “dark personality” within teams,shared leadership,and team performance: A conceptual moderated-mediation model

Shifting from the much-studied five-factor model of personality, this paper focuses on dark personality (i.e. the “Dark Triad”: Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism) to advance understanding of team composition, processes, and performance. The research responds to a call to explore dark personality's manifestation within – and impact on – teams. Specifically, this paper will examine the impact of within-team heterogeneity in dark personality on team performance, with shared leadership as mediator of this relationship. Additionally, I propose two moderators of the relationship between within-team dark triad heterogeneity and shared leadership – team network centrality of the team member scoring highest on the Dark Triad, and team mean Dark Triad score. This research aims to make a uniquely valuable contribution to scholarship on leadership within teams through bridging literatures on social network analysis, teams, leadership, and the dark triad and should have implications for team selection and performance.     

An experimental test of behavior under team production

This study reports experiments that examine behavior under team production and a piece rate. In the experiments, participants complete a forecasting task and are rewarded based on the accuracy of their forecasts. In the piece‐rate condition, participants are paid based on their own performance, whereas the team‐production condition rewards participants based on the average performance of the team. Overall, there is no statistically significant difference in performance between the conditions. However, this result masks important differences in the behavior of men and women across the conditions. Men in the team‐production condition increase their performance relative to men in the piece‐rate condition. However, this gap in male performances across conditions diminishes over the course of the experiment. In contrast, women in the team‐production condition show significantly lower performance than the women in the piece rate. As a consequence of these differences, men in the team‐production condition show significantly better performance than women in the team‐production condition. We also find evidence that men show stronger performance when they are in teams with a larger variation in skill level. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Team trust over time: Modeling reciprocal and contextual influences in action teams

Team trust is increasingly being recognized as important for team performance, but little is currently understood about how it develops and evolves over the course of a team's lifespan. Because trust and related team constructs are inherently dynamic, this represents a critical gap in the literature that needs to be addressed before team trust can be fully understood and effectively facilitated in practice. Of particular relevance to these gaps are action teams – those that come together to perform under time-constrained, yet often high-stakes conditions. While scholars have begun to explore how trust develops in these contexts, little is understood about how it evolves over time. As such, we propose a theoretical model of team trust in action teams that incorporates its dynamic nature, models the reciprocal relationship between team trust and team performance, delineates unique mediating pathways based on the team's progression in the multiphasic performance cycle, and considers the role of moderating influences that may strengthen or attenuate the impact of performance feedback on subsequent team trust. Specific research implications are discussed, providing a rich foundation for future empirical studies, and ultimately, the generation of evidence-based interventions for facilitating trust as teams cycle through multiple performance episodes over time.     

Individual entrepreneurial orientation and performance: the mediating role of international entrepreneurship

This paper analyses the role that individual entrepreneurial orientation (IEO) plays in the success of international entrepreneurship moves. We focus on the mediation effect of international entrepreneurship in the relationship between IEO and firm performance. We argue that entrepreneurial experience constitutes an important source of IEO and propose an objective measure of IEO. The hypotheses are empirically analysed using a 22-year panel of family SMEs. Our results confirm the hypotheses and provide a better understanding of the role of IEO in the success of corporate strategies such as internationalisation. Specifically, IEO is found to improve firm performance indirectly by increasing the speed of internationalisation, and this effect is non-linear. Our study contributes to the literature by extending international entrepreneurship literature by offering a more complete view of the causes and consequences of IEO. Finally, our results also contribute to the literature on family firm heterogeneity.

     

Affective diversity and emotional intelligence in cross-functional sourcing teams

In cross-functional sourcing teams, differences in goals and personality traits can lead to tensions and reduced effectiveness. Diversity in teams can be conceptualized as surface-level diversity (e.g., gender, nationality) or as deep-level diversity (e.g., personality, attitudes). This study investigates the potentially negative effects of one category of deep-level diversity – namely, affective trait diversity – on sourcing team performance and how such negative effects might be mitigated through team members' emotional intelligence. The study analyzes a sample of 88 sourcing teams (234 team members) using moderated regression analyses. Sourcing team cohesion is found to fully mediate the relationship between affective diversity and team performance, while the collective emotional intelligence of the sourcing team positively moderates the diversity-cohesion relationship (moderated mediation). Thus, this study provides insights into both the mechanics of team diversity and the critical role of collective emotional intelligence in sourcing teams and thereby enables supply managers to better understand cross-functional team setups and effectiveness.     

Resources,Capabilities and Entrepreneurial Perceptions*

abstract We review and develop a subjectivist theory of entrepreneurship that focuses on individuals, their knowledge, resources and skills, and the processes of discovery and creativity, which constitute the heart of entrepreneurship. First, we establish the fundamental importance of subjectivity in entrepreneurial discovery and creativity. Second, we build on Penrose (1959 ) to elaborate how entrepreneurs' perceptions and personal knowledge shape a firm's subjective productive opportunity set. Third, we explain that entrepreneurial perceptions and knowledge partly originate from entrepreneurs' experiences in specific business settings such as the firm, the management team, and the industry. Fourth, we highlight the causal connections between subjectivity in entrepreneurship and observed heterogeneity in firm‐level economic performance. Lastly, we suggest directions for further advancing a subjectivist resource‐based approach to future entrepreneurship research.     

Token entrepreneurs: a review of gender,capital, and context in technology entrepreneurship

ABSTRACT

This article reviews the literature on gender and entrepreneurship in technology to explore individual and contextual factors maintaining the token status of women in this field. It examines how the intersection of gender and context influences participation rates in entrepreneurship, and suggests that the deeply embedded cultural and cognitive associations that frame both technology and entrepreneurship as masculine concepts create barriers for women when these contexts overlap. It offers a framework for research and practice that aids in the analysis of complex multi-level barriers that control access to the forms of capital necessary for initial and continued participation in technology entrepreneurship. Given calls for women to participate more fully in high-growth technology ventures, it highlights the need for research to incorporate broader analytical perspectives that simultaneously examine both the barriers faced by women in these contexts and the factors that systemically sustain them.     

The value of entrepreneurship by gender on regional behaviour

This paper examines how the value of entrepreneurship by gender is related to regional behaviour. Researchers have traditionally defined entrepreneurial organization as separate to gender and to economic growth. Using the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) we complete a dataset of 50 countries using variables such as total early-stage entrepreneurial activity (TEA) and opportunity-driven entrepreneurial activity (OPP). The methodology used proposes an analysis of regional convergence, comparing the evolution over time of both the rate of entrepreneurial activity and the ratios of opportunity-driven and need-driven entrepreneurial activity, distinguishing by gender. On the other hand, a regression model is proposed that explains the greater presence of female entrepreneurship. The results show that entrepreneurship by gender is an important factor to define different cluster of countries according to how men and women entrepreneurs create new economic opportunities.

     

Sink or Swim: Empowering Leadership and Overload in Teams' Ability to Deal with the Unexpected

The notion of improvisation has recently emerged in managerial studies as a viable solution to flexibly dealing with unexpected occurrences in work environments. However, past research on team improvisation has overlooked the contingencies that allow teams to effectively improvise. Drawing upon demand‐control theory, we investigate how empowering leadership and overload affect the improvisation‐performance relationship in the context of 48 work teams. Our results suggest that empowering leadership positively moderates the relationship between improvisation and performance, while overload attenuates the same relationship. Moreover, we found a joint effect of overload and empowering leadership influencing the improvisation‐performance link, such that improvisation is most positively related to performance when empowering leadership is high and overload is low. Conversely, we found that empowering leadership is particularly detrimental to the improvisation‐performance relationship when team members perceive high degrees of overload. Our findings make important contributions to the extant team literature as well as to the emerging literature on team improvisation. We outline several significant insights for HR managers and team leaders who are responsible for supporting teams that face unexpected events in the work environment. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

When does virtuality help or hinder teams? Core team characteristics as contingency factors

In this paper, we seek to encourage scholars to consider how reliance on technology-mediated communications can bring both promises and perils to team-based work structures. Specifically, we argue that a team's core characteristics (including skill differentiation, temporal stability, and authority differentiation) will differentially affect the challenges and opportunities presented by the team's reliance on virtual means of communication. First, we will discuss how varying degrees of each core characteristic can affect outcomes when teams rely on virtual communication. We then propose how configurations of the three characteristics and virtuality can enhance understanding in both research and practice. We advance propositions that we hope will serve as a starting point for scholarly discussion about how the literature on virtual teams can leverage the existing theories and knowledge on team structure and interdependencies.