Passion for Work,Nonwork‐Related Excitement,and Innovation Managers’ Decision to Exploit New Product Opportunities

This article investigates the role of affect in innovation managers’ decision to exploit new product opportunities—a decision central to the innovation process. The model proposes that different types of passion can trigger managers’ exploitation decisions but that this effect is contingent on experiencing excitement from events outside their work environment. A field experiment with 90 owner–managers of young firms located in an innovation context (business incubators) shows that passion for work and nonwork‐related excitement levels interdependently impact innovation managers’ decision to exploit new product opportunities. Specifically, harmonious passion has a general positive effect on managers’ propensity to exploit. In contrast, the effect of obsessive passion is more complex and contingent on the additional excitement managers experience such that the positive relationship between obsessive passion and the decision to exploit is more positive with higher levels of excitement. These findings extend the product innovation management literature by acknowledging that decision‐makers’ affective experiences influence innovation decisions and provide a first step toward understanding the role of affect and passion in the product innovation context. Second, the finding that obsessive passion and nonwork‐related excitement interact in explaining opportunity exploitation decisions highlights the need to incorporate contingency relationships in models of innovation decision‐making. Third, in drawing on a field experiment and the experimental manipulation of managerial affect during the decision‐making task, this article answers a recent call in the project management literature to pursue less common methodological approaches and develop “broader theoretical schema” in order to enhance our understanding of innovation management. Finally, this study also has implications for practitioners because it can help innovation managers understand their own decision policies. To the extent that innovation managers are able to regulate their affective experiences, this improved understanding might prevent them from premature and faulty decision‐making.     

Effective Japanese leadership in China: co-operative goals and applying abilities for mutual benefit

In the global marketplace, managers and employees must work together even though they may have suspicions based on their different countries' historical rivalry. Social psychological research suggests that co-operative goals and applying abilities for mutual benefit can strengthen the leader relationship between Japanese managers and their Chinese employees. Working in Japanese enterprises in Shanghai, China, 100 employees in private Japanese companies in China indicated their goal interdependence with their Japanese and Chinese managers, their applying abilities for mutual benefit and their conclusions that their manager had valuable abilities and was an effective leader. Structural equation analysis suggested that applying abilities for mutual benefit mediates the relationship between goal interdependence and leader resourcefulness and effectiveness, especially when the manager is Chinese and less so when their manager is Japanese. These results, coupled with previous research, were interpreted as suggesting that co-operative goals and applying abilities for mutual benefit contribute to effective leadership even when managers and employees have different nationalities.     

Scale Economies In Cellular Telephony: Size Matters

Strategic positioning and potential cost savings are popular explanations for growing consolidation in the wireless telephone industry. This research estimates economies of scale for a large panel of GTE Wireless cellular market areas. Contrary to previous findings, our results indicate scale economies exist throughout the system and provide a rationale for the industry trend of consolidation.     

Perceptions of the media in three different cultures: the US,Australia & Taiwan

This paper examines business students' perceptions of the media in the United States, Australia, and Taiwan across four attributes—informative, entertaining, boring and irritating. Management implications of the findings are also discussed. Newspapers, radio, billboards, television, direct mail and magazines were selected for analysis. The findings revealed that 16 different paired comparisons out of a possible 72 tests show statistical significance. Media perception patterns describing respondents' ratings of different media classes for given attributes were examined. The perception patterns in Australia and the United States were similar with respect to the informative, entertaining and boring attributes, and significant differences in perception patterns were found between Taiwan and the other two countries.     

Confirmatory search as a useful heuristic? testing the veracity of entrepreneurial conjectures

Researchers have focused attention on the problematic effects of confirmatory search applied to opportunity evaluations, arguing that a confirmatory strategy almost always leads to poor decisions. The implicit assumption of this research is that confirmatory search cannot conclusively falsify an entrepreneurial conjecture. In this article we focus on circumstances where the search for confirming information (positive test strategy) is a superior strategy for testing the veracity of a conjecture.