Mitigating theoretical and coverage biases in the design of theory-building research: an example from international entrepreneurship

In this paper, we advance a three-stage theory-building framework to assist scholars in addressing theoretical and coverage biases by means of the appropriate design of cross-domain theory-building research. In our discussion, we use an example from research in international entrepreneurship, which has been emerging as a cross-domain area for the entrepreneurship and international business research communities since the mid-1990s. Theoretical bias can stem from the situation where the conceptualisation of a phenomenon whose research is currently emerging and depends upon several of the established disciplines of social science and their sub-domains, is in fact dominated by the theoretical approaches of a single domain. As to the coverage bias, the somewhat novel research domain of international entrepreneurship provides us with a means to illustrate how research in an emerging domain tends to focus on positive growth only and rarely takes appropriately into account companies that fare less well; for instance, accounting for survivor bias would require that scholars carefully acknowledge firms that go out of business for one reason or another. Observations from a longitudinal, multiple-case study research on the de-internationalisation of small high-technology firms is used to exemplify the structure of our framework.     

Mobile coverage investment model linked to mobile network design

Investment planning for rural mobile networks is critically dependant on the local conditions. There are geographical limits beyond which network deployment is not economically justified. Methodology to assess these limits is presented in this paper. Two different network deployment scenarios are assessed for rural deployment. The scenarios differ technically – one uses well known radio technologies, while the other employs advanced radio link enhancement technologies. Radio link enhancement technologies have evolved to a point where the new technology should be used in early network planning scenarios to maximize investment efficiency. Investment efficiency is also subject to environmental and demographic conditions. A better understanding of the conditions will guide mobile network operators to successful investment planning. A simple cash flow model is created to estimate the success of the investment. Rural conditions in South Africa are used as a case study to assess the feasibility of the selected approach to investment planning.     

SME policy implementation as a relational challenge

The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between actors, who implement the small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) policy, and entrepreneurs, who are the targets of the policy, by focusing on the question who is serving whose interests. The paper presents a case study conducted in one of the sub-regions in Finland. The data include individual interviews with 10 policy implementers and 19 small business entrepreneurs and two group discussions. The data are approached from the perspectives of discourse analysis and positioning theory. The results are further interpreted in terms of agent–principal relations. The results indicate that one relational challenge faced in the implementation of the SME policy is the proxy agency, in which both policy implementers and entrepreneurs position themselves as the principal and the other party as their agent. The proxy agency can be viewed as an interactional pitfall caused by the incompatible discourses of entrepreneurs and policy actors and the actor positions constructed with these discourses. Besides addressing the relational problems enabled by certain individual discourses, the paper also demonstrates how there is also a need to address the potential conflict that stems from the collision between discourses.     

Persistence of product innovation: comparing breakthrough and incremental product innovation

In this paper we examine whether and to what extent breakthrough and incremental product innovation is persistent at the firm level. Drawing on a panel database created from the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) we find that lagged breakthrough product innovation ‘new to the market’, has a significant and positive influence on firms’ ability to develop current breakthrough innovation, while this is not the case for incremental-product innovation ‘only new to the firm’. Our findings show that the dynamics of innovation persistence differ across types of (product) innovations.     

A resource‐based view of manufacturing strategy and the relationship to manufacturing performance

This paper examines manufacturing strategy from the perspective of the resource‐based view of the firm. It explores the role of resources and capabilities in manufacturing plants that cannot be easily duplicated, and for which ready substitutes are not available. Such resources and capabilities are formed by employees' internal learning based on cross‐training and suggestion systems, external learning from customers and suppliers, and proprietary processes and equipment developed by the firm. Based on data from 164 manufacturing plants, the paper empirically demonstrates that competitive advantage in manufacturing (as measured by superior plant performance) results from proprietary processes and equipment which, in turn, is driven by external and internal learning. The implication is that resources such as standard equipment and employees with generic skills obtainable in factor markets are not as effective in achieving high levels of plant performance, since they are freely available to competitors. The paper also demonstrates the important role of internal and external learning in developing resources that are imperfectly imitable and difficult to duplicate. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Alternative targets and economic efficiency of selecting protected areas for biodiversity conservation in boreal forest

We examine the relative merits of alternative forest biodiversity targets, which give different weights to species according to their conservation status and abundance. A site selection framework is used for choosing the habitat-protection strategy that maximizes biodiversity subject to an upper bound on funding with six alternative conservation goals. By using Finnish data on old-growth forests, we found that alternative conservation goals yield different benefit-cost tradeoffs. Goals relying on complementarity between protected stands result in great marginal costs at a high conservation level. Therefore, under these conditions it may not be economically efficient to establish a large conservation network to protect all species in a given area. In contrast, a large conservation network is more likely to be justified when the habitat-protection strategy focuses on species abundance. The trade-offs between alternative objectives are explicitly measured by incrementally varying the weights given to the species. We found that the targets for all species representation and species abundance can largely be met simultaneously. Protecting red-listed species reduces overall species coverage and species abundance particularly at low budget levels.     

Non-R&D SMEs: external knowledge,absorptive capacity and product innovation

The relationship between external knowledge, absorptive capacity (AC) and innovative performance for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is investigated empirically. Using data from a survey on firms located in North Norway, we ask whether AC plays a mediating role between different external knowledge inflows and innovative performance. The results are consistent with AC as an important mediator for transforming external knowledge inflows into higher innovative performance if we include all SMEs in the sample. However, this result is not robust when considering the sub-sample of non-R&D SMEs only. External knowledge inflows have a much stronger direct effect on innovation performance for non-R&D firms and leave a weak mediating effect of AC. Our findings suggest that measures of AC should be developed further in order to make AC a more relevant concept for empirical studies of SMEs without in-house R&D.     

Closure in risk debates: Pre-assessment of Finnish forest biotechnology

The aim of this paper is to contribute to a more systematic and integrative pre-assessment of risk. The paper argues that although there are many insights into ‘pre-assessment’ within the field of risk studies, it suffers from a lack of robust methodological tools and approaches. A problem with the neglect of such approaches is that factors that set the stage for further steps in the risk-handling chain can remain in a state of implicit assumptions, impose biased interpretation of relevant risk issues and mislead the consideration of active intervention options. The suggestion of this article is that ‘social arena analysis,’ combined with the identification of ‘closure mechanisms,’ can provide a practical and theoretically anchored tool for the pre-assessment of risk. The value of this approach is demonstrated through the analysis of a debate on the future and risks of Finnish forest biotechnology, and in a final discussion on policy options emerging from the analysis.     

Review of studies on digital transaction platforms in marketing journals

ABSTRACT

Digital transaction platforms now intermediate a large number of transactions between end-customers and independent sellers and service providers in many parts of the economy. In retail, for example, Amazon.com now intermediates transactions between end-customers and hundreds of thousands of independent sellers worldwide, while Etsy.com connects artists, crafters, and collectors with buyers of a large range of niche and rare products. The growing popularity of digital transaction platforms, therefore, has significant implications for retail, marketing and distribution scholars as the existing interaction patterns in the value-chain are increasingly replaced by new digital intermediaries. The purpose of this review is, therefore, to examine, through an extensive and rigorous review of research on digital transaction platforms in marketing journals, what we know and what opportunities lie ahead to expand the theoretical and empirical understanding of digital transaction platforms. The review shows that despite increasing multi-disciplinary and managerial interest towards digital transaction platforms and the platform economy, they remain largely unexplored in marketing journals, and the existing research and theorizing attempts remain fragmented. Therefore, there are many opportunities for marketing, retail and distribution scholars to, for example, collaborate with industry and practitioners in order to gain new perspectives and access to novel data sources, and for example, meet the emerging funding requirements of many universities and governmental funding agencies for more rigorous multi-disciplinary research on digital markets and digital business models.