Post-Failure Success: Sensemaking in Problem Representation Reformulation

Failure is an inevitable feature of innovation, and management research promulgates the importance of learning from it. Key to excelling at an innovation-based strategy is understanding the processes that can turn failures into successes. However, post-failure success remains elusive. Although failure signals that the innovation journey is off course, shifting trajectory is difficult, because it may require revising assumptions and reformulating the project’s problem representation. Using comparative case studies, this study set out to understand how problem representations are reformulated. Employing case method and comparing data versus theory iteratively, the important role of sensemaking and of leadership behaviors in driving post-failure success became salient. Findings show that problem representations post-failure require a process of problem formulation characterized by sensemaking and that innovative solutions are enabled by the reformulation of problem representations that spring from prospective sensemaking. Furthermore, this article identifies leadership change behavior as the linchpin driving a problem formulation process characterized by prospective sensemaking that catalyzes innovative solutions and explains why some projects thrive post-failure and others do not. This article provides empirical support to the theoretical work of the literature on problem formulation, while extending the learning-from-failure literature by emphasizing and demonstrating the process driving post-failure success. The major implication of our study is that different leadership behaviors may foster different types of sensemaking (retrospective or prospective), and that, in turn, the type of sensemaking matters for how a problem is reformulated. Ultimately, this article concludes that in the context of project failure, problem reformulation that springs from prospective sensemaking enables innovative solutions post-failure.     

Institutional Pressures, Monopolistic Conditions and the Implementation of Early Cost Management Practices: The Case of the Royal Tobacco Factory of Seville (1820–1887)

In spite of our increasing understanding of the underpinnings of early cost management systems, little is still known about the reasons for the implementation of such systems in firms operating under monopolistic conditions. This article studies the enforcement by law of cost and budgeting systems in the Royal Tobacco Factory of Seville (Spain), a manufactory of the state-owned monopoly. By doing this, we seek both to enhance understanding of the state's motivation to enact institutional pressures aiming at the implementation of early cost management practices as well as to study different organizational responses to simultaneous pressures arising from a single institutional source. It is suggested that the state's motivation to legally enforce the implementation of early cost and budgeting systems may be attributed to (a) the seeking of legitimacy by the state regulatory body, (b) the active agency of senior employees of the state regulatory body to keep their jobs and compensation packages on the eve of the privatization of the industry, and (c) the interest of the regulatory agency to instil the basis of mimetic isomorphism within the monopoly. Different responses by the RTF to pressures for reporting cost and budgeting information were explained by (a) the expected diffusion of firm's non-conformity within the institutional area, (b) the expected impact of institutional rules and norms on organizational goals, and (c) the extent to which the institutional source is consistent in its demands.     

Entrepreneur: do social capital and culture matter?

This paper analyzes the effect of the individual perceptions of social capital and culture in entrepreneurial aspirations before and after the economic crisis in Western Europe. Following the approach of the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50, 179–211, 1991), we advance the analysis of the effect of the perception of subjective norms in the entrepreneurial intentions. We studied the Total Early-Stage Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA) of twelve countries in 2006 and 2010. The results reveal that the perception of having social networks is significant for the TEA, and it increases after the economic crisis. However, the cultural factors do not have a significant impact, except the one related with the perception of social equality. The results obtained through the double perspective of this analysis (individual’s social capital vs cultural factor of individualistic perspective) offers a certain dilemma when we try to understand the entrepreneurial intntion through the individual’s perception of subjective norms, following the Ajzen’s model. The more individualist is a person, the lower the weight of its social capital. However, the more a person has access to social networks, the greater his entrepreneurial intention will be. This result opens future lines of research focused on understanding the value of the individual’s social capital for different countries and groups of entrepreneurs.

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MAXIMUM LIKELIHOOD ESTIMATION OF FACTOR MODELS ON DATASETS WITH ARBITRARY PATTERN OF MISSING DATA

In this paper we modify the expectation maximization algorithm in order to estimate the parameters of the dynamic factor model on a dataset with an arbitrary pattern of missing data. We also extend the model to the case with a serially correlated idiosyncratic component. The framework allows us to handle efficiently and in an automatic manner sets of indicators characterized by different publication delays, frequencies and sample lengths. This can be relevant, for example, for young economies for which many indicators have been compiled only recently. We evaluate the methodology in a Monte Carlo experiment and we apply it to nowcasting of the euro area gross domestic product. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Determinants of website traffic: the case of European fashion apparel retailers

The globalization process together with the extraordinary growth in the use of Internet offer firms new growth opportunities. Retail firms are using a multichannel approach, involving the Internet, in their internationalization strategies. Website traffic as measured by unique users and online awareness is among the measures for assessing the success of the online channel. There is little evidence, however, linking website traffic and the characteristics of the retail multichannel internationalization process. In order to fill this gap, this paper analyses the factors explaining the retailer's international website traffic. Website traffic data for a sample of European fashion apparel retailers are modelled as dependent on characteristics of the organization and of its physical and virtual internationalization strategy. Following the results of several linear regression models, we infer the complementarity of online and offline channels in the international operation, as well as the contribution of social networks as traffic generators.     

Royalty licensing

Most patent licensing agreements observed empirically include either per-unit or ad valorem royalties. The theoretical literature generally focuses on per-unit royalties. We provide a simple justification for the presence of ad valorem royalties in licensing contracts.     

Economic Coordination across Divergent Institutional Frameworks: Dissolving a Theoretical Antinomy

Economic theory contains a significant theoretical antinomy. Markets are thought to secure coordination in self-organized fashion. In contrast, polities are portrayed as securing coordination through planning and administration. Doing this is to commit what Michael Resnick calls the ‘centralized mindset’, which is to attribute an observed order to some ordering agent. This article seeks to dissolve this theoretical antinomy by explaining how the same coordinative principles are at work throughout a society. All societies operate in generally coordinated fashion, due to the operation of transactional processes within societies. Markets and polities both operate through transactional relationships, though political transactions are constructed somewhat differently than market transactions. This article sets forth an approach to explaining coordination throughout a societal ecology where that coordination is achieved through different forms of transaction.     

An Empirical Assessment of Customer Satisfaction in Tourism

The goal of this project is to find out if Spain is undergoing a disinvestment process in foreign service companies which might be leading to offshoring. To achieve this – after tackling conceptual and methodological aspects – a company's total disinvestment has been estimated. Subsequently, its ratio to gross investment has been evaluated for the whole sector and for all the activities the company performed in the 1993–2004 period. The result does not show a worrying disinvestment process. Over the last year in the study, though, a significant change has been seen, which might suggest the beginning of a disinvestment process in some activities – as is happening worldwide.     

So heilen Narben nach Brust OP besser

Das kann die Plastische Chirurgie – Jedes Jahr erkranken in Deutschland etwa 55.000 Frauen neu an Brustkrebs. Vielen von ihnen bietet nur eine radikale Brustamputation die Chance auf Heilung – ein verstümmelnder Eingriff für die Betroffenen. Doch heute gibt es viele M?glichkeiten, diesen Frauen wieder zu einem positiven K?rperbild zu verhelfen.