The antecedents of open business models: an exploratory study of incumbent firms

Firms engage increasingly in open business models. While most research has previously focused on typologies or challenges of open business models, their specific antecedents have not been studied so far. We use data from eight open business model cases to explore this question and identify five main antecedents of open business models: (1) business model inconsistency, (2) need to create and capture new value, (3) previous experience with collaboration, (4) open business model patterns, and (5) industry convergence. Based on openness characteristics from the existing literature, we differentiate four basic types of open business models and develop an initial understanding of the relevance of the identified antecedents for each of them. We thereby provide first guidelines for practitioners in choosing the right form of business model openness for their company.     

The impact of venture capital on the persistence of innovation activities of start-ups

In this study we investigate the impact of early stage venture capital on innovation activities of start-ups. This is done based on a cohort of start-ups that is representative of all firms founded in Switzerland in 1996/97, as recorded by a census of the Swiss Federal Statistical Office for this period. We analyze not only the impact of early stage venture capital on innovation performance 3 years after firm foundation, but also 6 and 9 years after firm start, respectively, for those firms that survived and reported continuously innovation activities (persistence of innovation). The results support neither the hypothesis of a positive impact on initial innovation activities nor the hypothesis of a positive time-persistent effect on innovation performance of start-ups.     

Risk Preferences and Gender Differences in Union Membership in Late Nineteenth-Century Swedish Manufacturing

Women are generally seen as less inclined to join trade unions. This study matches firm–worker data from the Swedish cigar and printing industries around 1900 and examines information on men and women holding the same jobs; such data are rare but important for understanding gender gaps. The results explain the gender gap in union membership among compositors, but not among cigar workers. Differences in union membership varied considerably across firms, with the largest differences found in low-union-density cigar firms where indirect costs (that is, uncertainty and risk) accrued in particular to women workers. The lack of gender differences in mutual aid membership indicates that women were not hard to organize but avoided organizations associated with greater risk for employer retaliation and uncertain returns according to a cost–benefit analysis.     

Competition versus cooperation: How technology-facilitated social interdependence initiates the self-improvement chain

Consumers are increasingly using technologies such as wearables or mobile apps to achieve their self-improvement goals. Such technologies often contain features that enable social interdependence (competition or cooperation) among users to support them in improving their engagement, performance, and well-being (life satisfaction and personal growth). However, the critical question remains: does competition or cooperation best serve users in attaining these self-improvement goals? Evidence from an online experiment and a field study reveals that competition is more effective in driving performance and personal growth, while cooperation is superior in terms of behavioral engagement and life satisfaction. Furthermore, the results indicate that the effects are mediated by strive for success and fear of failure, two counteracting psychological processes. While competition is the stronger trigger for both pathways, downstream effects vary depending on the self-improvement goal considered. This research thus provides insights into whether and how users can best realize their self-improvement goals using technologies that include social features.     

Do Customers Affect the Value Relevance of Sustainability Reporting? Empirical Evidence on Stakeholder Interdependence

In spite of the strategic importance of sustainability reporting in current business practice and the resulting increase in research on its value relevance, studies accounting for stakeholder interdependence are scarce. On the basis of the instrumental stakeholder theory, we investigate whether customers have an impact on the value relevance of sustainability reporting. Using a sample of US listed firms, we show that the value relevance of sustainability reporting is affected by customer profile differences, thereby confirming customer–shareholder interdependence. However, customer profile effects are only predominant if firms' profitability levels are low and disappear as profitability increases. Overall, our findings provide a more nuanced understanding of the value relevance of sustainability reporting. Therefore, we offer managers fine‐grained guidance for value relevant sustainability reporting. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Challenges for land system science

While considerable progress has been made in understanding land use change, land system science continues to face a number of grand challenges. This paper discusses these challenges with a focus on empirical land system studies, land system modelling and the analysis of future visions of land system change. Contemporary landscapes are contingent outcomes of past and present patterns, processes and decisions. Thus, empirical analysis of past and present land-use change has an important role in providing insights into the socio-economic and ecological processes that shape land use transitions. This is especially important with respect to gradual versus rapid land system dynamics and in understanding changes in land use intensity. Combining the strengths of empirical analysis with multi-scale modelling will lead to new insights into the processes driving land system change. New modelling methods that combine complex systems thinking at a local level with macro-level economic analysis of the land system would reconcile the multi-scale dynamics currently encapsulated in bottom-up and top-down modelling approaches. Developments in land use futures analysis could focus on integrating explorative scenarios that reflect possible outcomes with normative visions that identify desired outcomes. Such an approach would benefit from the broad and in-depth involvement of stakeholders in order to link scientific findings to political and societal decision-making culminating in a set of key choices and consequences. Land system models have an important role in supporting future land use policy, but model outputs require scientific interpretation rather than being presented as predictions. The future of land system science is strongly dependent on the research community's capacity to bring together the elements of research discussed in the paper, via empirical data collection and analysis of observed processes, computer simulation across scale levels and futures analysis of alternative, normative visions through stakeholder engagement.     

Managerial Political Behavior in Innovation Portfolio Management: A Sensegiving and Sensebreaking Process

By applying formalized innovation portfolio management systems, firms seek to ensure an alignment of their goals and strategy with their employees' different abilities, actions, and outcomes. However, research indicates that nonrational, political behavior also determines formalized innovation portfolio management decision‐making processes. Research on political behavior in respect of innovation portfolio management usually conceptualizes political behavior as a set of self‐serving activities, such as negotiation, bargaining, coalition building, and acquiring power, aimed at protecting, maintaining, or promoting an actor's self‐interest and power. Consequently, extant research tends to focus on political behavior's dysfunctional impacts on decision‐making processes and their subsequent outcomes. This paper challenges this negativity bias by exploring a novel, neutral specification of political behavior and its relation to innovation portfolio management decision‐making processes. By conducting an automotive industry case study focusing on the innovation portfolio management decision‐making processes, the paper analyzed the data from 43 interviewees. The conceptual model shows that managers' political capabilities determine their ability to behave politically. According to the results, political behavior comprises the activities that prepare the stage and orchestrate others in order to form a political coalition. Furthermore, results show that political behavior functions as a sensegiving and a sensebreaking process, with managers seeking to shape an innovation project's understanding according to their interests and to influence portfolio decisions. The resulting novel specification of political behavior extends the construct's scope and validity by investigating their functional and dysfunctional aspects, and by indicating that a political sensemaking process complements formalized innovation portfolio management decision‐making processes.     

What satisfies younger versus older employees,and why? An aging perspective on equity theory to explain interactive effects of employee age,monetary rewards,and task contributions on job satisfaction

In light of increasingly age-diverse workforces, organizations face the challenge of fostering job satisfaction among both younger and older employees. Combining equity theory with an aging perspective, we propose that due to age-related shifts in motives and goals, younger versus older employees’ job satisfaction will depend differently on monetary rewards (outcome side of equity theory), task contributions (input side of equity theory), as well as on imbalances (inequity) in the relationship between monetary rewards and task contributions. In a multisource study with 166 managers, we found that while younger employees were satisfied primarily by monetary rewards, older employees were satisfied primarily by their task contributions. Most importantly, a three-way interaction indicated that younger versus older employees react differently to two types of inequity: Being proportionally over-rewarded (i.e., receiving high monetary rewards for low task contributions) reduced older (but not of younger) employees’ job satisfaction. By contrast, under-reward inequity (i.e., receiving low monetary rewards for high task contributions) decreased younger (but not of older) employees’ job satisfaction. These age-dependent effects of job features on job satisfaction reveal important theoretical as well as practical implications.     

Optimal Social Insurance with Endogenous Health*

In this paper, I analyze optimal insurance against unemployment and disability in a private information economy with endogenous health and search effort. Individuals can reduce the probability of becoming disabled by exerting prevention effort. I show that the optimal sequence of consumption is increasing for a working individual and constant for a disabled individual. During unemployment, decreasing benefits are not necessarily optimal. The prevention constraint implies increasing benefits while the search constraint demands decreasing benefits while being unemployed. However, if individuals respond sufficiently to search incentives, the latter effect dominates the former and the optimal consumption sequence is decreasing during unemployment.     

Appetite for destruction: Counterintuitive effects of attractive faces on people's food choices

Faces in general and attractive faces, in particular, are frequently used in marketing, advertising, and packaging design. However, few studies have examined the effects of attractive faces on people's choice behavior. The present research examines whether attractive (vs. unattractive) faces increase individuals’ inclination to choose either healthy or unhealthy foods. In contrast to the beliefs held by most marketing professors, but consistent with visceral state theories, exposure to attractive (vs. unattractive) opposite-sex faces increased choice likelihood of unhealthy foods. This effect was moderated by self-view-relevant attributes and exerted a particularly powerful influence on individuals who were single (vs. in a relationship) and individuals rating themselves as unattractive (vs. attractive). Furthermore, the effect was mediated by arousal, was stronger for men than for women, but did not generalize after exposure to attractive (vs. unattractive) same-sex faces. As pictorial exposure is sufficient for the effect to occur, these findings have important implications for marketing, advertising, and public health.