Technological Convergence in the IT Industry: The Role of Strategic Technology Alliances and Technological Competencies

For some time now, the convergence of the telecommunications and computer industries into a single 'information and entertainment' industry has been predicted. The acquisitions that appeared to be bringing such a convergence about have not, however, proved particularly successful. The paper suggests that one factor behind the relatively low degree of convergence may be inertia. Following evolutionary and ecological theory, the paper argues that both external and internal inertial forces reduce the ability of firms to deal with changes in their technological cores. The paper concludes that technological convergence, although apparent on the technological and product/market level, does not seem to have affected the 'core' competencies of major IT companies.     

The Spirit of Entrepreneurship and the Qualities of Moral Decision Making: Toward A Unifying Framework

At the heart of entrepreneurship are imagination, creativity, novelty, and sensitivity. It takes these qualities to develop a new product or service and bring it to market, to envision the possible impacts a new product may make and come up with novel and creative solutions to problems that may arise. These qualities go to make up what could be called the spirit of entrepreneurship, a spirit that involves the ability to handle the experimental nature of entrepreunerial activity. These same qualities are crucial for moral decision making, and an ethical approach which emphasizes imagination, creativity, and has an experimental thrust is much better adapted to the entrepreneurial activity and much more relevant to the unique situations that entrepreneurs face. In this sense, the process approach to ethics developed in this article is a unifying framework that brings together the activity of entrepreneurship and moral decision making.     

Overview of Collaborative Entrepreneurship: An Integrated Approach Between Business Decisions and Negotiations

In recent years, the complex, turbulent and changing environment in which firms operate has greatly intensified. A new era of continuous innovation has emerged in which knowledge is the key asset, and whose exploitation determines success for many firms. In this context, it is generally accepted that effective knowledge management depends heavily on a company’s ability to collaborate, both inside (Collective Entrepreneurship) and outside (Collaborative Entrepreneurship) the organization. Collaboration enables a firm to be entrepreneurial and continuously innovative by exploring new markets. Continuous innovation and market exploration are the building blocks of collaboration. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to develop the concept of Collaborative Entrepreneurship, linking the most relevant issues with the concept of Collective Entrepreneurship, from a preliminary integrative approach. From this approach, three elementary dimensions are emphasized: strategy, structure and management philosophy. Strategy refers to the shared common project among collaboration partners; Structure concerns the flexibility of structures and adaptation to environmental changes; and Management Philosophy is about trust. Also, networks within the firm and among firms could form the basis of Collaborative Entrepreneurship in the context of negotiation and decision processes. A brief overview of the content of each of the articles included in this special issue on Collaborative entrepreneurship is presented following this article.     

Governance and Performance of Strategic Alliances in Africa: The Role of Institutions

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to contribute to the institutional perspective of the governance of strategic intercompany alliances in Africa, through examination and analysis of a typology of informal African institutions. We support the view that interactions in African institutions determine the pertinent choice of governance mechanisms for intercompany alliances. In African institutional environments, the success of strategic alliances is subject to differentiated interactions among the contract, institutional confidence, interpersonal confidence and inter-organizational confidence. In the area of strategic management, this article provides theoretical and managerial contributions to our understanding of the institutional approach to the governance of strategic business alliances in Africa.     

公司创业的合法性悖论与合法性倾向选择

目前,公司创业面临着内外部合法性要求冲突构成的"合法性悖论",合法性倾向受到新业务与原有业务相关性、以及新进入行业的成熟度共同作用的影响。在文献研究的基础上,通过构建了一个公司创业的内外部合法性选择模型,提出公司创业开展的业务与原有业务相关性越高,服从内部合法性的倾向越明显;公司创业进入的行业成熟度越高,服从外部合法性的倾向就越明显。     

The Effect of Business Regulations on Nascent and Young Business Entrepreneurship

We examine the relationship, across 39 countries, between regulation and entrepreneurship using a new two-equation model. We find the minimum capital requirement required to start a business lowers entrepreneurship rates across countries, as do labour market regulations. However the administrative considerations of starting a business – such as the time, the cost, or the number of procedures required – are unrelated to the formation rate of either nascent or young businesses. Given the explicit link made by Djankov et al. [Djankov et al. 2002, ‹The Regulation of Entry’, Quarterly Journal of Economics 117(1), 1–37] between the speed and ease with which businesses may be established in a country and its economic performance – and the enthusiasm with which this link has been grasped by European Union policy makers – our findings imply this link needs reconsidering. Prepared for: Small Business Economics (2007), Special issue GEM conference 2005     

Entrepreneurship: The Role of Clusters Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Evidence from Germany

This paper is about the impact of clusters on entrepreneurship at the regional level. Defining entrepreneurship as the creation of new organisations and clusters as a geographically proximate group of interconnected firms and associated institutions in related industries, this paper aims to answer three research questions : first, do clusters matter to entrepreneurship at the regional level? Second, if clusters are associated with different levels of entrepreneurship, what explains those differences? Third, what do the answers to the previous questions imply for academics and policy makers? To answer these questions, this paper distinguishes between clusters and industrial agglomerations and advances a theoretical model and empirical research to explain the impact of clusters on entrepreneurship at the regional level. This paper uses the 97 German planning regions as units of analysis to test the hypotheses. Using hypotheses testing and OLS fixed-effects model, this paper finds that clusters do have an impact on entrepreneurship at the regional level, but industrial agglomerations do not. Implications for academics and policy makers and suggestions for future research are given in the concluding section.     

Modelling Entrepreneurship: Unifying The Equilibrium and Entry/Exit Approach

Two approaches can be distinguished with respect to modelling entrepreneurship: (i) the approach focusing on the net development of the number of entrepreneurs in an equilibrium framework and (ii) the approach focusing on the entries and exits of entrepreneurs. In this paper we unify these approaches to arrive at a model explaining the equilibrium and actual number of entrepreneurs and the entry and exit rate of entrepreneurs simultaneously and consistently. We apply our unified approach to the Netherlands using self-employment data for the 1960–1999 period. We find error-correction of about 20% per year and a very different situation in terms of disequilibrium before and after the early 1980s. Periods of high unemployment appear to be characterized by both high entry and high exit rates.     

Lifesizing Entrepreneurship: Lonergan, Bias and The Role of Business in Society

In an era of downsizing and disposable ethics, there is a need to redefine the role of business in society. Central to such a discussion is the frame of reference of the entrepreneur. A traditional business model defines entrepreneurship based on endowing resources with new wealth producing capabilities. This paper defines entrepreneurship as a calling to endow resources with new value. In support of the impact such a distinction would have on repositioning the role of business in society, the paper weaves together writings from the Pope, Drucker, and Lonergan, with emphasis on applying Lonergan’s discussion of bias to the discussion of ethics in business. Adapting the term, “lifesizing”, which was coined by the author in a previous article, to entrepreneurship, the paper takes the position that lifesized entrepreneurship can act as a catalyst similar to Lonergan’s cosmopolis and play a key role in countering bias and repositioning the role of business in society.     

Entrepreneurship as a solution to extreme poverty: A review and future research directions

Entrepreneurship is widely argued to be critical for alleviating extreme poverty. However, research on this topic is characterized by diverging perspectives regarding poverty alleviation and remains fragmented across various research domains. This review examines 77 leading academic journals over the period 1990 to 2017 and identifies over 200 articles on entrepreneurship and poverty alleviation. The analysis of these articles highlights three different underlying perspectives: poverty alleviation through entrepreneurship as remediation (actions that address immediate resource concerns), reform (actions leading to substantive institutional changes), and revolution (actions that change the underlying capitalist-based assumptions of business). The analysis of these articles leads to the development of extensive new insights and opportunities for future research.     

The Effect of Digital Transformation and Supply Chain Integration on Enterprise Performance: The Moderating Role of Entrepreneurship

Digital transformation provides companies with a productive approach to transforming and upgrading enterprise resources and capabilities and to exploiting external subject forces to unleash and magnify their potential, thus advancing high-quality enterprise development. Therefore, using regression analysis of the data of China's non-financial listed firms from 2007‒2019 obtained by Python, this paper finds that digital transformation has enormously improved enterprise performance. Furthermore, digital transformation has powerfully boosted supply chain integration, which has played a mediation role in the impact of digital transformation on enterprise performance. Finally, entrepreneurship plays a positive moderating effect on enterprise performance through supply chain integration during digital transformation. The further heterogeneity analysis finds that digital transformation performs better in large, public, state-owned, mature, and non-manufacturing (service industry) enterprises. However, the positive effect of digital transformation on enterprise performance and supply chain integration is not significant in small and medium-sized enterprises. Therefore, supply chain integration cannot play a mediating role in the impact of digital transformation of manufacturing enterprises upon their performance. This paper probes the realization mechanism and micro-foundation of digital transformation, and its conclusion contributes to high-quality digital transformation．     

基于创新创业能力培养的投资项目评估课程教学体系研究

在实施创新驱动发展战略的背景下,我国对创新创业人才的需求空前迫切。投资项目评估课程作为一门理论性与实践性并重的经济与管理专业课程,在创新创业教育教学实践中存在专业教育与创新创业教育缺乏融合、教师创新创业教育教学能力欠缺、学校缺乏创新创业实践平台供学生实践等问题。基于投资项目评估课程在教育教学实践中所存在的问题,研究该课程与创新创业教育有机融合的教学模式,为提高该课程的应用性,激发学生学习的积极与创造性,满足投资项目评估行业的创新创业人才需求,促进经济高质量发展提供参考意见。     

网络负面谣言与品牌崇拜：品牌口碑与沟通技巧的作用

文章对网络负面谣言与消费者品牌崇拜的关系,以及品牌口碑与沟通技巧在以上关系中所起的中介与调节作用进行了实证研究。研究以广州地区211家品牌服饰企业的品牌管理者为实证研究对象,通过对问卷调查数据进行层级回归分析发现：(1)网络负面谣言不但会直接负向影响消费者对企业的品牌崇拜,而且还会通过负向影响企业的品牌口碑,继而对消费者品牌崇拜产生负面影响,品牌口碑在网络负面谣言与消费者品牌崇拜关系中起部分中介作用;(2)沟通技巧程度强的企业品牌更能抵制网络负面谣言的影响,相对于低沟通技巧的企业,高沟通技巧企业的消费者较少因为网络负面谣言而降低其对原有消费品牌的崇拜。     

The Constant Gardener Revisited: The Effect ofSocial Blackmail on the Marketing Concept,Innovation, and Entrepreneurship

This paper discusses how adoption of the social dimensions of the marketing concept may unintentionally restrict innovation and corporate entrepreneurship, ultimately reducing social welfare. The impact of social marketing on innovation and entrepreneurship is discussed using the case of multinational pharmaceutical firms that are under pressure when marketing HIV treatments in poor countries.The argument this paper supports is that social welfare may eventually be diminished if forced social responsibility is imposed. The case of providing subsidized AIDS medication to less developed nations is used to illustrate how social blackmail may result in less innovation, entrepreneurship, and product development efforts by the pharmaceutical industry, ultimately reducing social welfare.     

The Role of the DS/AHP in Identifying Inter-Group Alliances and Majority Rule Within Group Decision Making

DS/AHP is a nascent method of multi-criteria decision-making, based on the Dempster-Shafer theory of evidence and indirectly the Analytic Hierarchy Process. It is concerned with the identification of the levels of preference that decision makers have towards certain decision alternatives (DAs), through preference judgements made over a number of different criteria. The working result from a DS/AHP analysis is the body of evidence (BOE), which includes a series of mass values that represent the exact beliefs in the best DA(s) existing within certain subsets of DAs. This paper considers the role of DS/AHP as an aid to group decision-making, through the utilisation of a distance measure (between BOEs). Here, the distance measure enables the identification of the members of the decision-making group who are in most agreement, with respect to the judgements they have individually made. The utilisation of a single linkage dendrite approach to clustering elucidates an appropriate order to the aggregation of the judgements of the group members. This develops the DS/AHP method as a tool to identify inter-group alliances, as well as introduce a ‘majority rule’ approach to decision-making through consensus building.     

Board Composition and Corporate Social Responsibility: The Role of Diversity,Gender, Strategy and Decision Making

This study integrates the resource dependence perspective and the stakeholder perspective to analyze local Chinese suppliers’ environment strategies in response to environmental requirements of different types of customers. With a sample of 1,215 local Chinese manufacturing suppliers, we examine the impact of export intensity and environmental requirements of multinational enterprises (MNEs) on local Chinese suppliers’ environment strategies. The results show that local Chinese suppliers with high levels of export intensity are more likely to adopt positive environment strategies to reduce environmental risks. In addition, local Chinese suppliers respond actively to environmental requirements of MNE customers but not to those of local customers. The linkage between MNE customers’ environmental requirements and local Chinese suppliers’ environment strategies remains significant, even after we control for the impact of export intensity. Implications of the findings conclude the article.     

Eating their cake and everyone else's cake, too: Resources as the main ingredient to workplace bullying

This article examines workplace bullying from a personal resources perspective. As workplace bullying emerges in unsupportive and stressful work environments, the threat of personal resource loss triggers the low cost, high reward resource-seeking behaviors that are typically reported as indicative of bullies in the workplace bullying research. Herein, we propose that these resource-seeking bullying behaviors allow bullies to create reinforcing resource gain cycles for them, but also create reinforcing resource loss cycles for targets and bystanders of bullying. As a potential remedy, we discuss recommendations for organizations to reduce the occurrence of workplace bullying.     

Investing for strategic resources and its rationale: The case of outward FDI from Chinese companies

As more Chinese companies become engaged in foreign direct investment (FDI), particularly in industrial countries, a crucially important issue must be addressed: what is the motivation of Chinese outward FDI, and what is its rationale? Based on a detailed analysis of both primary and secondary data sources, this article argues that when investing in advanced economies, Chinese multinational corporations (MNCs) are motivated primarily by the quest for strategic resources and capabilities, and that the underlying rationale for such asset-seeking FDI is strategic needs. The examination of this premise will hopefully prompt business practitioners to think about this important issue in new and innovative ways, thereby identifying an appropriate policy and strategic response.     

From Decision to Run: The Moderating Role of Green Skepticism

This paper examines the impact of corporate ability, environmental attitude, and environmental knowledge on consumers’ purchase intentions, information seeking, and actual green purchase behavior; additionally, green skepticism is examined as a moderator of these relationships. A sample of Gokarn’s organic products consumers, in Tehran, is used. The structural model is examined by the partial least squares approach by using Smart PLS 2.0 software. The findings suggest that environment attitude and corporate ability are the main factors in building green purchase intentions and information seeking, while environmental knowledge is not a significant predictor. The results show that green skepticism has a significant moderation impact on the relationship between corporate ability and environmental knowledge, and information seeking.