Salespersons as Internal Knowledge Brokers and New Products Selling: Discovering the Link to Genetic Makeup

Managers increasingly realize the importance of involving the sales force in new product development. However, despite recent progress, research on the specific role of the sales force in product innovation‐related activities remains scarce. In particular, the importance of a salespersons' internal knowledge brokering has been neglected. This study develops and empirically validates the concept of internal knowledge brokering behavior and its effect on selling new products and developing new business, and explores whether a salesperson's internal brokering qualities are determined by biological traits. The findings reveal that salespeople with the DRD2 A1 gene variant engage at significant lower levels of internal knowledge‐brokering behavior than salespeople without this gene variant, and as a result are less likely to engage effectively in new product selling. The DRD4 gene variant had no effect on internal knowledge brokering. Management and future research implications are discussed.     

The perceived risks of local climate change in Queenstown,New Zealand

Place-embedded, resource-dependent industries are increasingly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The scientific framing of these risks can be understood through modelling; however, risks are perceived by non-scientific communities in more culturally relevant and localised frames. This empirical study utilised qualitative, semi-structured interviews with four stakeholder groups connected to the ski industry in Queenstown, New Zealand. The objectives of this research were to identify current scientific knowledge on climate change risks to Queenstown's ski industry and to critically address how the risk of climate change is perceived. This paper reports three main findings: (1) scientific reporting and expert interviews expect climate change to manifest as inter-annual variability up to the 2050s, (2) current climatic variability is perceived to be the greatest risk to the ski industry at present and (3) climate change is perceived to be distant and a greater threat to other people and other places giving rise to ‘optimistic bias’.     

Reasserting Institutionalist Insights on the Good Society: 30 Years After Petr’s Call for a Mixed Economy

In this research note, I revisit the issues raised by Jerry Petr (1987) in “The Nature and Necessity of the Mixed Economy.” The institutionalist mixed economy is still a sound model for the good society. However, Western industrialized countries have been losing ground on the goals of the mixed economy. The struggle to defend pragmatism over ideological attachment to neoliberalism, has evolved into a distributional struggle that cannot be resolved without institutional change.     

Relative Effects of IFRS Adoption and IFRS Convergence on Financial Statement Comparability

One of the primary objectives of both adoption of IFRS and convergence between IFRS and U.S. GAAP is to increase financial statement comparability. Using a unique setting in Germany, we compare the effectiveness of these two approaches in achieving this desired outcome. Our empirical tests show that both adoption and convergence lead to an increase in comparability after the new enforcement regulation in 2005. However, difference‐in‐differences tests show that adoption does not lead to a significant incremental increase in comparability beyond convergence. The findings of this study should be of interest to regulators and standard setters as they assess alternative methods of aligning domestic standards with IFRS.     

Nationality and differences in auditor risk assessment: A research note with experimental evidence

This study examines whether auditors from different countries come to different conclusions when they perform analytical procedures to assess the risk of misstatement in accounts. During a laboratory experiment, auditors who worked for the same firm in the United Kingdom, France, and the United States performed analytical procedures on identical case materials. Although auditors from all three countries came to similar conclusions about the overall risk of misstatement, they attributed risk differently across the individual financial statement accounts they evaluated.     

A Laddering Approach to the Use of Methods and Techniques to Reduce the Cycle Time of New-to-the-Firm Products

Millson, Raj, and Wilemon have developed the earliest extant knowledge on the implementation of methods and techniques to reduce new product development (NPD) cycle time by suggesting a hierarchy of generic NPD acceleration approaches. The purpose of this article is to extend Millson, Raj, and Wilemon's hierarchy by recasting and augmenting the conceptual basis of their hierarchy for new-to-the-firm products. Taking this hierarchy of generic NPD acceleration approaches as a starting point, the authors set out to form a number of generic NPD acceleration approaches by surveying the literature and conducting an experience survey with academics and managers. A logical and purposeful implementation sequence subsequently is established by using the laddering technique. The results indicate that managers make tradeoffs in NPD with regard to speed, development costs, and customer value, and that not all generic NPD acceleration approaches need to be implemented in order to obtain the greatest effectiveness. © 1999 Elsevier Science Inc.     

New Ventures and Small Business Innovation for Economic Growth

Over the last twenty years evidence has been accumulating in favour of targeting innovative early-stage entrepreneurs for new forms of assistance. Experimental programming has been underway to find new ways to effectively support technologically innovative entrepreneurs. Further experimentation is needed to overcome remaining uncertainties and continuing objections.     

Lessons from a low-budget innovation centre

In the two years from November 1983 to September 1985, an experimental innovation centre was set up at the University of Calgary to offer services to community ventures by using the existing resources to serve those people developing new ventures in the community. A conservative estimate of $250, 000 worth of resources was leveraged out of an initial operating grant of $20, 000. Outcomes from the first year's operations included $ 1.75 million value added to 50 of 65 community businesses receiving support.
This article places the strategy used at the University of Calgary's Low Budget Innovation Centre with the context of related strategies for supporting new innovative ventures. The history of the centre is reviewed, some lessons drawn, and an operational model formulated.