A Model of Social Entrepreneurial Discovery

Social entrepreneurship activity continues to surge tremendously in market and economic systems around the world. Yet, social entrepreneurship theory and understanding lag far behind its practice. For instance, the nature of the entrepreneurial discovery phenomenon, a critical area of inquiry in general entrepreneurship theory, receives no attention in the specific context of social entrepreneurship. To address the gap, we conceptualize social entrepreneurial discovery based on an extension of corporate social responsibility into social entrepreneurship contexts. We develop a model that emphasizes mobilization and timing as underpinnings of social entrepreneurial discovery and offer distinct conceptual aspects and theoretic propositions instrumental to future social entrepreneurship research.     

创业团队企业家精神及其测量

创业团队企业家精神的本质特征概括为集体创新、分享认知、共担风险和协作进取.在相关文献回顾基础上,借鉴个体企业家精神和公司企业家精神的测度量表,开发设计了创业团队企业家精神的测度量表,并通过调查数据分析,对量表的信度和效度进行实证检验,为今后拓宽并深化企业家精神的研究奠定了基础.     

创业动力及其机制分析

创业是一个发现和捕捉机会并由此创造出新颖的产品或服务以及实现其潜在价值的过程。推动创业的因素包括创新活动的推动,创业利益的驱动,政府政策的鼓励和支持,改善自身环境的愿望,对个人抱负的追求,成功创业者的示范效应等,这些因素共同作用于创业过程,通过创业驱动机制、创业机会搜寻机制、风险投资机制以及创业利益的收获机制等保证创业活动的顺利开展。     

Bargaining and Search: An Experimental Study

We study experimentally two versions of a model buyer and a seller bargain over the price of a good; however, the buyer can choose to leave the negotiation table to search for other alternatives. Under one version, if the buyer chooses to search for a better price, the opportunity to purchase the good at the stated price is gone. Under the second version, the seller guarantees the same price if the buyer chooses to return immediately after a search (presumably because a better price could not be found). In both cases, the buyer has a fairly good idea about what to expect from the search, but because the search is costly, he has to weigh the potential benefits of the search against its cost. It turns out (theoretically) that adding search to a simple bargaining mechanism eliminates some unsatisfactory features of bargaining theory.Our experiment reveals that the model can account for some (but not all) of the behavioral regularities. In line with recent developments in behavioral decision theory and game theory, which assume bounded rationality and preferences over the relative division of a surplus, we find that subjects follow simple rules of thumb and distributional norms in choosing strategies, which are reflected in the behavioral consistencies observed in this study.     

What is an Entrepreneurial Opportunity?

The nature and source of entrepreneurial opportunity are important issues for understanding how markets function and come into being. In addition to describing the forum held on the topic and summarizing the contributions of the articles that appear in the special issue, this article shares a number of lessons learned during the workshop and the editorial process. We explore three of the most important reasons for confusion about the opportunity construct: (1) the “objectivity” of opportunity, (2) the perceived importance of one particular individual in determining the direction of the social world and (3) what distinguishes the sub-class of “entrepreneurial” opportunity from the broader category of opportunity in general. Finally, we offer some directions for future research by illuminating important issues that emerged from the workshop but that remain largely unanswered by the papers of this special issue.      

Strategic Entrepreneurs at Work: The Nature,Discovery, and Exploitation of Entrepreneurial Opportunities

What do entrepreneurial opportunities look like? How do firms discover and exploit these opportunities to create value and sustain competitive advantage? This paper reviews the strategic management and entrepreneurship literatures to identify the nature and character of entrepreneurial opportunities and the entrepreneurial strategies that firms employ to seize and commercialize these opportunities. Three emerging schools are identified. The economic school argues that entrepreneurial opportunities exist as a result of the distribution of information about material resources in society. The cultural cognitive school argues that entrepreneurial opportunities exist as a result of environmental ambiguity and the cultural resources available to interpret and define these opportunities. Finally, the sociopolitical school stresses the role of network and political structures in defining entrepreneurial opportunities. We integrate these perspectives to offer a way to improve understanding of the opportunity creation and exploitation process.     

Entrepreneurial Orientation,Dynamic Capabilities and International Performance

In order to be able to seize the opportunities that a dynamic operating environment opens up, entrepreneurial firms have to reconfigure their existing asset base and processes. This study explores the effect of an entrepreneurial orientation and a firm's reconfiguring capabilities on international performance by using survey data from 217 manufacturing and service organizations. Our findings indicate that a firm's entrepreneurial orientation and reconfiguring capabilities have an effect on its international performance and provide empirical support for the dynamic capability view of the firm. Entrepreneurial behavior combined with organizational reconfiguring capabilities constitutes a potential source of competitive advantage.     

Financing, Regulatory Costs and Entrepreneurial Propensity

In this paper, we compared the availability of different types of financing sources to address the issue of capital availability to entrepreneurial propensity and we scrutinise the influence of business costs by utilising a new composite index using data from the World Bank’s Doing Business Database. The availability of three types of financing sources was analysed: traditional debt financing, venture capital financing, and informal investments. The study’s findings show that only informal investments have statistically significant influence on entrepreneurial propensity. Regulatory business costs were found to deter opportunity driven entrepreneurship, but had no impact on necessity entrepreneurship. Final version accepted on October 2006.     

Growth,Diversification, and Business Group Formation in Entrepreneurial Firms

Recent empirical research has demonstrated that the growth process of entrepreneurial firms is frequently achieved through the formation of business groups: i.e. a set of companies run by the same entrepreneur (or entrepreneurial team). This has been hypothesised as result of a growth process by diversification of the original activity. This entrepreneurial growth process offers an alternative explanation for the formation of business Groups, than that arising from managerial efficiency and expediency. The main aim of the article is to explore group formation through entrepreneurial diversification using a sample of high growth entrepreneurial firms. The analysis demonstrates that the running of a group of companies by the same entrepreneur is not only induced by the geographical extension of their operation and by diversification but also by the differentiation policy aimed at serving different market segments within the same sector. This seems to contrast with the diversification policy and organisational setting of large, managerial firms     

Scientific Paradigms,Entrepreneurial Opportunities and Cycles in Economic Growth

In this paper I present a model of economic growth that combines insights from endogenous growth theory, the field of entrepreneurship research and the philosophy and economics of science. The model is built on three relatively standard assumptions and a Kuhnian approach to scientific knowledge accumulation. I assume that innovation generates economic growth, that opportunity driven entrepreneurship is an important source of innovation, that entrepreneurial opportunities increasingly arise out of scientific knowledge creation and that science follows Kuhnian paradigm shifting dynamics. The model then generates opportunity driven cycles in entrepreneurial activity that in turn cause waves of innovation and cycles in economic growth. This result is highly relevant and fills a gap in all three literatures as ‚traditional’ endogenous growth models typically generate constant growth rates in the steady state, entrepreneurship research keeps the origin of entrepreneurial opportunity exogenous and the literatures on the philosophy and economics of science ignore the important downstream economic implications of the non-profit driven institutional framework that governs scientific knowledge accumulation. This paper contributes by identifying scientific institutions and entrepreneurial activity as prerequisites for economic growth and it offers a tentative explanation for the rise and fall in the levels of scientific, entrepreneurial and economic activity over the Kondratieff-cycle.      

Currency of Search: How Spending Time on Search is Not the Same as Spending Money

Search theories suggest that a decline in search costs increases search behavior. This relationship has been well supported by prior experimental research but not by studies conducted in retail settings. Our review of the literature suggests that this discrepancy might be driven by the fact that prior experiments typically involve money-based search whereas actual search in retail settings is usually time-based. We argue that the currency of search plays a moderating role. We find that when participants spend money on search, a decrease in search costs has a significant effect on search decisions but, when they spend time on search, a decrease in search costs either has a relatively weak effect (Experiment 1) or no effect at all (Experiment 2). Furthermore, this insensitivity in time also emerges for search payoffs (Experiment 3). We also offer evidence for the processes underlying these effects. Our results provide a new lens to examine inconsistencies in the search literature, and present a view of search that is more applicable to the retail context.     

搜索引擎营销的原理与模式分析

搜索引擎营销作为网络营销的主要手段之一,是网络天然的过滤器装置,用户通过搜索引擎可以搜索、过滤出所需的信息,企业则通过搜索引擎锁定准确有效的目标客户。本文首先对搜索引擎的基本结构和工作原理进行了介绍,然后对搜索引擎的三种基本模式进行了分析。     

正式与非正式知识搜索、知识属性与产品创新

基于正式、非正式搜索的视角,以217家浙江中小型制造企业为样本,研究外部知识搜索对产品创新绩效的影响机制。实证结果表明：正式和非正式搜索对产品创新绩效均具有显著的正向影响,而知识缄默性正向调节正式搜索和产品创新绩效之间的正向关系,负向调节非正式搜索与产品创新绩效之间的正向关系;技术复杂性负向调节非正式搜索与产品创新之间的关系。上述发现确认了外部知识搜索在中小企业创新活动中的重要作用,同时也从知识属性角度识别了影响外部知识搜索效能的重要情境条件。     

HEV Choice Models as a Search Engine for the Specification of Nested Logit Tree Structures

This paper illustrates how the heteroskedastic extreme value (HEV) model can serve as an effective search engine for identifying appropriate tree structures in hierarchical choice models, particularly the nested logit. This use of the HEV model exploits its ability to estimate unique variances, and hence unique scale parameters, for each alternative in a choice set. The analysis of variance can reveal tree structures that may not be obvious to analysts who tend to base their search strategy on intuitive tree structures. The reliance on behavioural intuition may miss out on the identification of the 'best' tree in an econometric sense. This note illustrates how the HEV model is used to search for the hierarchical domain in which a statistically preferred nested logit model is positioned.     

流动性约束对农户创业选择行为的影响——基于晋、甘、浙三省894户农民家庭的调查

流动性约束对中国农户创业行为有着切实的阻碍作用。通过分别利用"家庭土地出租收入"和"礼金收入"作为工具变量来克服流动性约束变量的内生性问题,基于晋、甘、浙三省农户的研究表明:流动性约束对中国农民是否选择创业以及选择何种创业类型具有显著的、一致的阻碍作用;此外,只有源于正规金融部门的流动性约束才对农户是否选择创业和创业类型产生抑制性作用,而非正规金融部门的流动性约束则不会对农户创业行为产生抑制作用。因此,旨在增加农民收入的创业扶持政策应该更加注重畅通农户通过正规金融渠道缓解流动性约束,而不应过分强调非正规金融渠道的作用。     

Economics, Psychology, and Social Dynamics of Consumer Bidding in Auctions

With increasing numbers of consumers in auction marketplaces, we highlight some recent approaches that bring additional economic, social, and psychological factors to bear on existing economic theory to better understand and explain consumers' behavior in auctions. We also highlight specific research streams that could contribute towards enriching existing economic models of bidding behavior in emerging market mechanisms. This paper is based on the special session at the 6th Triennial Invitational Choice Symposium, University of Colorado Boulder, June 2004 (co-chaired by the first two authors).     

The Impact of Technological Turbulence on Entrepreneurial Behavior, Social Norms and Ethics: Three Internet-based Cases

We investigate the entrepreneurial opportunities and ethical dilemmas presented by technological turbulence. More specifically we investigate the line between Baumol’s [J. Polit. Econ. 98 (1990) 893] productive (e.g. innovation), unproductive (e.g. rent seeking) and destructive (e.g. criminal) entrepreneurship through three examples of Internet innovation – spam (destructive), music file sharing (unproductive), and Internet pharmacies (potentially productive). The emergence of accessible Internet technologies, under present norms, has created the potential for all three entrepreneurial activities. Because of the propensity for self-serving biases and for bending the rules, the need for creativity in overcoming obstacles and overall liabilities of newness, entrepreneurs are likely to challenge established industrial morals and laws. Unlike new entrants, incumbents must abide by the currently accepted norms, and thus suffer from “liabilities of oldness”. The challenge for new entrants is to change sociopolitical legitimacy, whereas incumbents need to defend the established norms. We discuss competitive and other issues that result from technological turbulence and innovation.     

Consumer Policy in a Market Economy Considerations from the Perspective of the Economics of Information,the New Institutional Economics as well as Behavioural Economics

The question concerning when a governmental intervention in the market system is justified has occupied economists from the very beginning and has been a controversial discussion topic for just as long. Against this background, with respect to modern consumer policy, which still represents a relatively young field in the theory of economic policy, it is vital to find sound economic reasons for governmental regulations in order to protect consumers. Therefore, the article attempts to assess what the various economic literatures have added to our understanding of good consumer policy. For this reason, those policy implications that might flow from different theoretical approaches in order to broaden the foundation of an economic justification for consumer policy will be analysed. For this purpose, the consumer policy implications of the Economics of Information will be described, including a denomination of some certain problems all of which are not covered satisfactorily by this approach. Subsequently and in order to amend the informational economics framework, further economical approaches from New Institutional Economics, Behavioural Economics as well as Behavioural Consumer Research, which provide a complementary analysis of consumer behaviour in consideration of the respective decision-making situations and determining constraints (formal and informal rules, cognitive and emotional boundaries), will be discussed comparatively with respect to their consumer policy implications.     

Entrepreneurial Women as Catalysts for Socioeconomic Development in Transitioning Cambodia,Laos, and Vietnam

In this longitudinal study the authors examine the collective interplay of history, culture, policy and marketing, and their dynamic effects on entrepreneurial women in transitioning Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam (CLV). The authors introduce a systemic model to illustrate key factors and relationships, and then share results that indicate themes for entrepreneurial success and societal welfare. Important findings include insights into the evolving landscape in which women have opportunities to generate income, to provide employment, and to improve their own conditions, status and roles, as well as the well‐being of their families, communities and countries. The authors conclude with a discussion of policies and strategies to re‐orient various institutions and sectors to empower women as catalysts for greater economic growth and societal welfare. Opportunities for future research are suggested.