The Introduction of Works Councils in German Establishments — Rent Seeking or Rent Protection?

Some recent empirical studies seem to suggest that German works councils engage in rent-seeking activities rather than in the creation of joint establishment surplus. However, those cross-sectional studies do not address the issue of causation. We address this issue by investigating the factors that influence the employees' decision to introduce a works council in their establishment. Councils are more likely to be adopted in establishments with a very poor sales situation and poor employment growth. They are also more likely to be adopted in establishments where management does not pursue an expansive market strategy. Altogether, our results support the hypothesis that employees introduce works councils to protect the quasi-rents they have created by their efforts and human capital investments.     

The determinants of academic spin‐off creation by Italian universities

The aim of this work is to investigate the university level determinants of academic spin‐off (ASO) firm creation in Italy. We are interested in particular in the relationship between university funding and the university propensity to create spin‐offs, and test the effect of public and third‐party funds on this tendency. We estimate the effect of several variables for the characteristics of the university and the context. In contrast to our expectations, results indicate that third‐party funding does not exert an effect on the propensity of the university to generate ASO firms. Similarly, and in contrast to what the literature suggests, scientific productivity, context innovativeness and patenting experience also do not have a positive and significant effect on the propensity to generate spin‐offs. We find that ASO creation is influenced by the amount of public income, by past experience in creating spin‐offs and by the presence of a technology transfer office. This work contributes to our understanding of the differences between Italy and the Anglo‐Saxon countries in relation to the phenomenon of ASO creation and has some important implications for policy.     

Creating University Spin‐Offs: A Science‐Based Design Perspective*

Academic entrepreneurship by means of university spin‐offs commercializes technological breakthroughs, which may otherwise remain unexploited. However, many universities face difficulties in creating spin‐offs. This article adopts a science‐based design approach to connect scholarly research with the pragmatics of effectively creating university spin‐offs. This approach serves to link the practice of university spin‐off creation, via design principles, to the scholarly knowledge in this area. As such, science‐based design promotes the interplay between emergent and deliberate design processes. This framework is used to develop a set of design principles that are practice based as well as grounded in the existing body of research on university spin‐offs. A case‐study of spin‐off creation at a Dutch university illustrates the interplay between initial processes characterized by emergent design and the subsequent process that was more deliberate in nature. This case study also suggests there are two fundamentally different phases in building capacity for university spin‐off creation. First, an infrastructure for spin‐off creation (including a collaborative network of investors, managers and advisors) is developed that then enables support activities to individual spin‐off ventures. This study concludes that to build and increase capacity for creating spin‐offs, universities should do the following: (1) create university‐wide awareness of entrepreneurship opportunities, stimulate the development of entrepreneurial ideas, and subsequently screen entrepreneurs and ideas by programs targeted at students and academic staff; (2) support start‐up teams in composing and learning the right mix of venturing skills and knowledge by providing access to advice, coaching, and training; (3) help starters in obtaining access to resources and developing their social capital by creating a collaborative network organization of investors, managers, and advisors; (4) set clear and supportive rules and procedures that regulate the university spin‐off process, enhance fair treatment of involved parties, and separate spin‐off processes from academic research and teaching; and (5) shape a university culture that reinforces academic entrepreneurship by creating norms and exemplars that motivate entrepreneurial behavior. These and other results of this study illustrate how science‐based design can connect scholarly research to the pragmatics of actually creating spin‐offs in academic institutions.     

Launch Decisions and the Early Market Survival of Innovations: An Empirical Analysis of the Italian Mobile Value‐Added Services (VAS) Industry

There is a surprisingly high number of new products and services that fail to produce enough return on the firm's investments in development and launch activities. Literature has shown that these failures can be due to a poorly planned and executed launch. Although a vast stream of research has studied how strategic and tactical launch decisions affect the performance of new products and services, some issues still need theoretical and empirical investigation. This paper aims to extend new product launch research in two ways. First, it studies how tactical launch decisions (i.e., investments in advertising and involvement of external organizations in the launch process) interact with an important strategic choice (i.e., the degree of radicalness of the new product or service) to affect new product performance. Second, it focuses on a particular dimension of performance, that is, early market survival, which has been overlooked in launch strategy and tactics research so far. Using a data set comprising more than 9300 new mobile value‐added services launched in Italy between 2003 and 2006, the paper finds that launch tactics interact with the radicalness of the innovation to affect early market survival. In particular, communicating the distinctive characteristics of the new product or service and partnering with external organizations during the launch process are tactics that work particularly well with radical innovations. This is possibly due to the fact that they help reduce customers’ uncertainty regarding expected benefits and transaction costs, and hence contribute to win their resistance to adopt the innovation soon after launch. Investments in corporate advertising lead instead to a tangible improvement of the probability of early market survival for both radical and incremental innovations. In other words, the positive impact on the probability of early survival of increasing investments in corporate advertising appears to be relevant for both radically and incrementally new services. One possible explanation is that this tactic helps increase the number of potential customers who come to know about the existence of the innovating firms and its offering soon after launch, but this is likely to be equally important to stimulate early diffusion of both incremental and radical innovations.     

A model of value assessment in collaborative R&D programs

This study examines the tasks, processes, and frameworks central to performance assessment in collaborative research organizations. The domain of the study is the partnered learning approach to research and development (R&D) management. The empirical results highlight relationships between context (center scale) and performance (value perceived by industry sponsors) in such R&D collaborations. Insights from this research are broadly applicable to the maintenance of alliances among firms involved in collaborative R&D and are generalizable to that context. Data gathered from a national population of 58 National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored centers over a 3-year period reveal significant evolutionary patterns in the development of collaborative relationships. Successful industry university consortia leverage four core process relationships: (1) the creation of research capacity yielding advances in process and product knowledge; (2) technology transfer behaviors within the participants' organizations; (3) participant satisfaction with the outcomes; and (4) the continuity of industry sponsor support, i.e., commitment to the collaboration.     

Can Perceived Support for Entrepreneurship Keep Great Faculty in the Face of Spinouts?

Despite the recent increase in academic entrepreneurship research, we still know relatively little about the degree of involvement of academic inventors in university spinouts. In this study, we distinguish between academic inventors who leave the university after the creation of a spinout (academic exodus) and those who maintain their university affiliation (academic stasis). Drawing from the literature on innovation‐supportive climates and from organizational support theory, we argue that perceptions of institutional support and departmental norms regarding entrepreneurship are associated with the exodus versus stasis decision. We find that inventors who have higher perceptions of institutional support for entrepreneurship are less likely to leave. This relationship is enhanced by perceptions of favorable departmental norms toward entrepreneurship. We discuss the implications of our work for the literature on academic entrepreneurship, innovation‐supportive climates, and perceived organizational support. Our study has clear policy implications for universities, policymakers, and funders who aim to stimulate academic entrepreneurship, but are concerned about losing entrepreneurial faculty. Specifically, we advise universities and policymakers to actively support academic inventors wishing to spin out and to monitor this support in a customer‐friendly manner, in order to ensure that the inventors' perceptions of support are favorable. It is also important for universities to look out for inconsistencies between a supportive environment for entrepreneurship at the institutional level and unfavorable norms toward entrepreneurship at the departmental level; such inconsistencies can lead good faculty members out of academia. More broadly, universities can pursue an aggregation strategy that aims to retain both a research and commercialization identity while building strong links between them.     

Human capital matters: Market valuation of firm investments in training and the role of complementary assets

Research summary: This article empirically examines the economic value to firms of investing in the training of their employees and firm‐level factors that influence how much the firms benefit. Event study methodology is used to obtain a measure of the economic impact of information regarding a firm's human capital management investments and policies. Subsequent regression analyses are then used to test hypotheses regarding possible complementary relationships between firm‐level factors and human capital investments. Results provide robust support for the proposition that effective investments in human capital and training matter, and that these human capital investments are more impactful when combined with complementary assets of R&D, physical capital, and advertising investments . Managerial summary: Do firm investments in training and the development of employee human capital matter with regard to financial performance? We find that, yes, these investments do matter. Our results show that managers who view employee human capital as an asset to be invested in and developed can expect to outperform those who view it as a cost to be minimized. In addition, we find that these human capital investments will be of even greater economic value to firms when they have made complementary investments in R&D, physical capital, and advertising . Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

组织支持感与组织承诺——基于职业成长与组织公平的研究

本文以25个省份400名员工为样本,从员工感知角度评价组织支持对组织承诺的影响,并引入职业成长和组织公平作为中介变量和调节变量构建研究模型。实证结果表明：组织支持感直接对组织承诺产生显著正向影响;职业成长在组织支持感与组织承诺之间起到部分中介作用。深入研究显示,组织公平在组织支持感与职业成长及组织支持感与组织承诺之间均发挥调节效应,且在组织支持感与职业成长之间的调节效应更显著。研究结论对提高组织支持有效性、促进员工职业成长、维持员工内心公平有重要意义。     

Firm‐specific human capital investments as a signal of general value: Revisiting assumptions about human capital and how it is managed

Research summary : Prior scholarship has assumed that firm‐specific and general human capital can be analyzed separately. This article argues that, in some settings, this is not the case because prior firm‐specific human capital investments can be a market signal of an individual's willingness and ability to make such investments in the future. As such, the willingness and ability to make firm‐specific investments is a type of general human capital that links firm‐specific and general human capital in important ways. The article develops theory about these investments, market signals, and value appropriation. Then, the article examines implications for human resource management and several important questions in the field of strategic management, including theories of the firm and microfoundations of competitive advantage. Managerial summary : While managers don't often use the terms firm‐specific and general skills, they certainly recognize that investments employees make in their skill sets are more or less relevant to a specific firm. For instance, investing in specific relationships within a firm or learning a firm's proprietary software would be considered firm‐specific investments. While such skills may seem relevant only to the particular firm in which they were invested, these investments may also send valuable signals to competing firms that such employees are willing and able to make similar investments elsewhere. Hence, managers should be interested in determining if a potential hire has made prior firm‐specific investments to help them know whether that person might be likely to make such investments in his or her future place of employment. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Expanding the conceptual domain of governance in franchising

We propose a model that expands the conceptualization of governance in franchising that acknowledges traditionally ignored stakeholders, including debt and equity holders. Though research has examined how equity holders benefit from the organizational form of franchising, it has not examined the specific role that equity or debt holders play in governing franchise organizations. Additionally, the unique ontology of franchising, which includes semi-internal members of the organization (i.e., franchisees) that invest their own assets and maintain their own balance sheets, provides a rich context for exploring such governance issues. Franchisees exist outside traditional firm boundaries and are not employees, but they are closely linked to the brand given their significant investments in firm-specific assets. Franchisee-based organizations also are growing their own corporate structures and investments in firm-specific assets, sometimes dwarfing those of their franchisor partners. By expanding the concept of governance in franchising, we open avenues for significant scholarship that can enrich both the governance and franchising literatures. We provide several preliminary propositions and constructs to help encourage new research in this emerging arena of franchising research.     

Moderating the impact of global sourcing on inventories through supply chain management

In recent years, companies have paid growing attention to supply chain management at a global level. With regard to the upstream part of the supply chain, the need for better suppliers, the research into specific competences and concerns related to international competition have forced companies to improve their ability to cope with suppliers located in different countries around the world. The literature suggests that the geographical distance of suppliers should create higher inventory levels primarily because of longer and more uncertain lead times. However, as this paper aims to demonstrate, companies can limit this effect by means of specific investments in the supply chain and in their relationships with suppliers. The empirical analysis is based on data from the last edition of the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey (IMSS). The results show that companies performing global sourcing have invested in supply chain management (SCM) and that this has been helpful in keeping their inventories under control.     

Empirical approaches to understanding technology transfer

Technology transfer has received considerable attention from both practitioners and academicians over the past few years, yet little progress has been made towards establishing a solid conceptual framework for the topic based on empirical evidence. This article reviews the limited amount of multivariate empirical literature on 'transfer processes in technological change' existing, discusses the major findings, and suggests directions for future research.     

Family Ownership and R&D Intensity in Small‐ and Medium‐Sized Firms

Research was largely consistent in predicting a negative relationship between family ownership and research and development (R&D) intensity until Chrisman and Patel, using a behavioral agency model (BAM), called this general assumption into question. They argued that publicly owned family firms typically invest less in R&D than nonfamily‐owned firms. This behavior may however be reversed if economic performance levels are below family aspirations or if family long‐term goals, such as pursuing strong transgenerational family control, are highly valued. While most researchers, like Chrisman and Patel, primarily focused on large listed firms, more research on the relationship between family ownership and R&D intensity in privately held small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) is required. This is because firm size can play an important role in understanding the innovation management behavior of firms. Building on the BAM perspective, in the present paper it is argued that Chrisman and Patel's results can be extended to the context of SMEs, albeit with one important specification: the relationship between family ownership and R&D intensity is likely to be contingent on the way the family has invested its wealth. Specifically, it is contended that in the context of SMEs, where goals are more fluid and mixed, when there is a high overlap between family wealth and firm equity (i.e., most of the family's wealth is invested in the firm) the relationship between family ownership and R&D intensity is negative because of the family owners' greater desire to protect their socioemotional wealth (SEW). However, if the overlap between the family's total wealth and single firm equity is low (i.e., firm equity is just a small part of the total family wealth), the relationship between family ownership and R&D intensity is positive as the low overlap between family wealth and firm equity reduces the family's loss aversion propensity. In such a situation, family ownership is likely to foster R&D intensity because of the long‐term orientation of family owners that increases the family firm's propensity to bear the risk of investing in R&D activities. The hypothesis is tested and confirmed in a study of 240 small‐ and medium‐sized firms based in Italy. The paper contributes to the literature in several ways. First, adding to the literature on innovation management and R&D intensity, it increases the understanding of what drives or inhibits R&D investments in SMEs when a family is involved in the ownership of the firm. This is particularly important because research on innovation management, as well as research on R&D intensity in family firms, is primarily focused on large firms and much less on SMEs. Second, the study complements arguments from prior research on the correlates of R&D intensity in large listed firms, showing that the BAM and SEW perspective offer a theoretical framework that is also able to illustrate the complex nature of innovation management in the context of SMEs. Third, the study contributes to research on the effects of family ownership on the general functioning of a firm. In particular, it provides new insights into how family ownership may affect R&D intensity.     

Communicative skills that support value creation: A study of B2B interactions between customers and customer service representatives

Although interaction has been acknowledged as central in value creation there is still a lack of empirical studies on how value creation is accomplished in practice, and in particular how communicative skills support customers' value creation. The purpose of this paper is therefore to generate a deeper understanding of how customer service representatives' communicative skills in conversations with customers support customers' value creation. We argue that value creating processes correspond to customers' roles as “feelers”, “thinkers” and “doers”. Accordingly, value creation involves three interdependent elements, an emotional, a cognitive and a behavioral. Based on a qualitative research design, drawing on an empirical study of 80 telephone conversations between customers and customer service representatives in a business-to-business context, the paper demonstrates three communicative skills that are essential in supporting customers' value creation: attentiveness, perceptiveness and responsiveness. The findings show how employees, by means of these communicative skills support customers' value creation. Attentiveness supports cognitive elements of the customers' value creating processes, whereas perceptiveness supports value creation in terms of cognitive, behavioral and emotional aspects. Finally, responsiveness supports the customer's cognitive as well as behavioral value creation.     

Supply chain environmental investments in dynamic industries: Comparing investment and performance differences with static industries

Research linking investments in environmental practices to firm performance has matured over the past years. However, empirical research is still ambiguous on how and whether investments in environmental practices improve a plant's performance. We believe that contingency factors, especially the industry in which plants act has a significant role in the success of environmental investments. Using empirical data collected across a wide range of industries our results indicate that plants competing in dynamic industries such as apparel do on average invest less in supply chain environmental practices compared to plants in static industries. In addition, these environmental investments do not significantly improve operational performance in dynamic industries in terms of cost, quality, delivery and flexibility. However, in static industries environmental investments do significantly improve a plant's operational performance in terms of cost, quality and flexibility.     

The determinants of university–industry collaboration in food science in Italy

Firms’ collaboration with academic institutions expands their range of expertise and can support the development of business innovations in several industries. For technological as well as structural reasons, university–industry collaborations are especially important in the case of the food industry. This paper aims at assessing the drivers of knowledge transfer from academic departments to industry. We analyse the dynamics of private funding of university research activities and investigate the drivers of university knowledge transfer from food science university departments, identifying how they differ from drivers in other areas of science. The empirical investigation is based on the econometric analysis of financial data on the whole population of university departments in Italy. We provide some implications for policy, highlighting whether and how university food science departments differ from university departments engaged in other areas of science, and how their interactions with industry can be increased.     

Commercial exploitation of new technologies arising from university research: start-ups and markets for technology

The creation of start-up firms is an important method of commercializing new technologies arising from R&D at universities and other research institutions. Most research into start-ups presumes that these firms develop products or services. However, start-ups may operate through markets for technology by selling or licensing rights to use their technology to other firms – typically established firms – who develop and sell new products or services based on the technology. In this study of 57 public start-up firms created to commercialize the results of university research, we find evidence that (1) operating through markets for technology is a common approach to commercialization, (2) start-ups that operate in markets for technology can be effectively distinguished in practice from start-ups operating through product markets, and (3) there are substantive differences in the business activities of firms depending on whether they operate through product markets or markets for technology.     

Time allocations across collaborations of academic scientists and their impact on efforts to commercialize novel technologies: is more always better?

We investigate how time spent in different collaborative research arrangements by academic scientists affect their propensity of involvement in the commercialization of novel, university-originated technologies. Three common collaborative strategies used by academic scientists: (1) internal (within the research group or within the home university) research collaboration; (2) cosmopolitan research collaboration (with scientists in other US or foreign universities); or (3) university–industry research collaboration are assessed. Drawing on the concepts of cognitive and spatial distance, the empirical findings suggest that only one internal research collaboration strategy has a significant impact on the propensity of academic scientists to engage in the commercialization of novel technologies with a private firm; however, this relationship is inverse U shaped. More importantly, academic scientists adopting a university–industry collaboration strategy and spending more research time in such an arrangement have a significantly stronger propensity for being involved in technology commercialization with a private firm; however, this relationship is inverse U shaped as well. We discuss the managerial and policy implications of the findings.     

Learning from foreign investment by rival firms: Theory and evidence

We offer an alternative explanation for follow-the-leader behavior in foreign investment decisions based on Bayesian learning by rival firms. We test the implications of the model through a panel count data sample of MNEs that have invested in Central and Eastern Europe over the period 1990–1997. Interacting the measure of rivals' investment in country-industry pairs with uncertainty, we are able to identify the channel of Bayesian learning about revenue postulated by the model as the only one consistently generating the detected follow-the-leader behavior of foreign investments. The empirical findings are robust with respect to different model specifications.     

The importance of internal alignment in smart city initiatives: An ecosystem approach

Within the growing literature on smart cities, much research has focused on issues related to the formation stage of these initiatives. After initial subsidies expire, however, a number of smart city initiatives face problems with respect to value creation and value capture. To analyse these processes, the paper links value creation (i.e. activities focusing on innovation challenges) to value capture (i.e. activities referring to actual individual firm-level profit generation) in smart city initiatives. Based on an in-depth survey of the literature, the purpose of the paper is to better understand how processes of internal alignment foster value creation and value capture during the growth of smart city initiatives. By focusing on the determinants of internal alignment facilitating value creation and value capture, the paper examines these determinants in the context of four smart city initiatives in the Netherlands in 2016. The paper shows that internal alignment of actors aimed at integrating joint and business objectives is critical for the growth of smart city initiatives. From the theoretical view point, the paper points at challenges concerning internal alignment of different actors in the smart city initiative after the formation stage. From the managerial point of view, it becomes increasingly important to manage expectations of different partners and their learning efforts to account for internal alignment during the growth of the smart city initiative.