Gender,risk and finance: why can't a woman be more like a man?

Whilst acknowledging that the influence of gender upon women's business ownership is now included as a legitimate addition to the contemporary entrepreneurship research agenda, we question the assumptions which frame this inclusion. We argue that whilst the masculinity of the entrepreneurial discourse has been recognized, this has promoted an almost exclusive focus upon women as the cipher for and personification of the gendered subject. Using explorations of risk and business finance in the context of entrepreneurship, we demonstrate how this presumption ascribes women a discrete but generic theoretical and empirical status associated with weakness and lack. Drawing upon a feminist stance, we suggest that the framing of this contemporary critique, rather than addressing the gender blindness endemic within entrepreneurship, actually generates ontological biases and associated epistemological limitations which perpetuate female disadvantage. These, in turn, constrain the theoretical and empirical reach of the broader field of entrepreneurship research.     

What drives delistings of foreign firms from U.S. Exchanges?

We examine time dependency in the factors motivating delistings of foreign firms from major U.S. Exchanges over the period 1962–2006. For firms listing before Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), we find that governance has no significant effect on delisting but after SOX, it becomes one of the main forces driving delisting. For firms whose delisting decision is most likely attributable to SOX, we find they realize low benefits from listing – they originate from countries with strong home market governance, and from listing onward realize low trading volume, analyst coverage, and make little use of capital raising. Our results suggest that SOX has had a large influence on the benefits seek from a U.S. listing, leading firms from well governed countries and low capital raising needs to delist.     

Parametric and Non‐Parametric Estimates of Willingness to Pay for Forest Recreation in Northern Ireland: A Discrete Choice Contingent Valuation Study with Follow‐Ups

In this study we show that forest areas contribute significantly to the estimated benefits from outdoor recreation in Northern Ireland. Secondly we provide empirical evidence of the gains in the statistical efficiency of both benefit and parameter estimates obtained by analysing follow‐up responses with Double Bounded interval data analysis. As these gains are considerable, it is clearly worth considering this method in CVM survey design even when moderately large sample sizes are used. Finally we demonstrate that estimates of means and medians of WTP distributions for access to forest recreation show plausible magnitude, are consistent with previous UK studies, and converge across parametric and non‐parametric methods of estimation.     

Wildlife tourism as a common pool resource issue: enabling conditions for sustainability governance

Wildlife tourism is potentially a common pool resource (CPR) issue when the following are applicable: it is difficult to exclude tourists; their experiences are affected by others’ activities; and adverse impacts on the wildlife occur. CPRs are typified by non-excludability and subtractability. Relatively few efforts have been made to consider tourism in this way or to use the concept of CPR in tourism management schemes. This paper (1) explores the possibility of wildlife tourism being a CPR issue, (2) derives a list of enabling conditions required for the sustainability of such resources and (3) determines the applicability of the conditions through a case study. Having described the potential for wildlife tourism to be a CPR issue, the enabling conditions explored in the rest of the paper follow: the characteristics of the tourism resource system and its user groups, the associated institutional arrangements and the external environment. The application of CPR thinking to the case study, whale shark tourism in Ningaloo Marine Park, Western Australia, revealed the contribution of institutional arrangements, particularly those associated with the State Government, to sustainable management. The use of the enabling conditions as a tool for managing wildlife tourism is discussed.     

Reshaping Community Mental Health Services in a Restructured State: New Zealand 1984-97

The concept of the hollow state has been proposed as a general framework for public sector restructuring, with New Zealand seen as a leader in reforming social and welfare services, including mental health. This article reports on documentary and interview research into the provision of community-based mental health services in terms of hollow state characteristics: privatization, decentralization and flexibilization. The evidence suggests that privatization occurred only at the margins, that decentralization led to significant regional differences in contractual arrangements and services and that flexibilization brought mixed blessings to the agencies involved. Consistent with findings from elsewhere related to hollow state mechanisms, performance assessment and accountability became more difficult. It is concluded that such frameworks are not appropriate for sectors such as mental health where there is high uncertainty and vulnerable service recipients. Recent policy changes suggest a retreat from privatization and flexibilization, and the emergence of a new balance between centralized and decentralized decision making.     

Serious Leisure as an Avenue for Nurturing Community

Using a communitarian framework to explore relationships between individuals and community, survey research was used to examine relationships among volunteers’ personal value orientations of individualism and collectivism, experiences of volunteering as serious leisure, and perceptions of sense of community and social cohesion. Based on survey responses from 300 current volunteers at ten voluntary organizations, findings linked collectivism and individualism to serious leisure, which in turn strongly associated with sense of community and social cohesion. In these empirical findings, serious leisure emerged as a pathway for nurturing community.     

Homeworking: negotiating the psychological contract

This article explores the psychological contract of female clerical homeworkers who work from home full‐time and are employed at a local authority. Qualitative interviews were carried out with homeworkers and their supervisors. Temporal flexibility was desired by all the homeworkers in order to achieve a better work–life balance, and was deemed important by women without children as well as those with childcare responsibilities. Our findings highlight that homeworkers were able to negotiate their own idiosyncratic deals with line managers in order to attain their desired levels of temporal flexibility. However, the issue of flexibility remains ambiguous with some supervisory staff being more comfortable with the concept than others, leading to some homeworkers enjoying different levels of temporal flexibility than their co‐workers. Our findings suggest that employees perceive flexibility idiosyncratic deals of co‐workers as fair as long as they achieve their own personal levels of temporal flexibility. The potential implications for organisations are discussed.     

The importance of being ‘wordy’: willingness to write and publication productivity among accounting academics

Recent attention to institutional variables that underlie the publication productivity levels of academic accountants threatens to obscure the fact that research is conducted by individuals who bring differing levels of ability, motivation and interest to scholarship. This study introduces willingness to write as a new correlate of productivity. Using the population of PhDs in accounting from US universities with conferred degrees between 1986 and 1996 as a sample, the results show that willingness to write is significant in the explanation of publication productivity when this is measured in a variety of ways. In turn, willingness to write is explained by institutional status. However, the direction of these relationships needs to differentiate the type of publishing that the individual undertakes.     

Dimensions of success in new product development: An exploratory investigation

As a key element in survival and sustaining growth, the constant development and re‐development of products has been the subject of many academic and consulting group studies. The specific focus of these studies has often been to identify and describe those factors which determine the outcome of new product developments; the critical success factors in NPD. In order to fulfill their objectives, the studies have focused on many aspects of the management of new product development programmes in companies, and attempted to relate them to a number of alternative outcomes. This has called for the measurement of “success” itself. Unfortunately, there is very little consensus amongst the studies regarding how best to operationalize “success”, and researchers have employed a variety of measures, focused on different levels of analysis, sought data from different sources and used different data collection methods. This paper examines the performance measures used in several major NPD studies and shows how success “measures” have been treated as financial and non‐financial. In addition, attention is drawn to the problems inherent in the different definitions of success. Finally, using data from an empirical survey, the relationship between financial and non‐financial outcomes is examined.