Revolving doors: entrepreneurial survival and exit

The high turbulence of new entrepreneurial ventures that are rapidly selected out at the fringe of the firm population has been emphasized using the ??revolving doors?? metaphor. However, well-planned exit strategies can be the root of entrepreneurial success and a mechanism to transfer novelty to established firms. The aim of this Special Issue is to highlight the multiple aspects of exit as part of the entrepreneurial process.     

Employability and mental health in dismissed workers: the contribution of lay-off justice and participation in outplacement services

The current study’s explored if and how psychosocial resources of employability contribute to mental health of dismissed workers. Degree of outplacement services use, perceived employability and perceived organizational lay-off justice were examined as mediators of the relation between personal employability and mental health. The research involved dismissed workers in the pharmaceutical industry, who joined programs of re-employment sponsored by companies. Structural equation results showed that the lay off workers with higher personal employability were less likely to have mental health deterioration. Furthermore psychosocial resources of personal employability directly increased perceptions of having job available alternatives and was indirectly associated with a higher degree of use of outplacement programs, but these variables didn’t mediate the relation with mental health. Lay-off justice had a direct positive impact on mental health, but it was not relate with employability. Our study contributes to understand some psychological processes that can affect the decision to utilise outplacement programs and offers suggestions for employability profiling.     

The effect of the war risk: a comparison of the consequences of the two Iraq wars

This paper measures the effect of the two Iraq wars on some Italian and US financial variables using the heteroskedasticity-based estimation technique (Rigobon and Sack, NBER WP No. 9640, 2003). Our results show that it is not possible to trace a general pattern in the behaviour of the international markets following a period of political and economic instability such as a war. The risk of war caused significant effects on financial markets in 2003; no effect appeared in 1990. The results underline a similar response between the different countries we analyse. Both Italian and American markets reacted in a similar way to both wars.     

A Propaedeutic for a Framework: Fostering Ethical Awareness in Undergraduate Business Students

Using the field of accounting as a locus forinquiry within undergraduate businesseducation, this paper proposes that studentsbeing trained in fields of business wouldbenefit from sustained formal exposure to theepistemological and anthropologicalperspectives of ethical systems. Without suchexposure, the ethics case studies presented inbusiness textbooks will not be as effective inachieving their goal of training undergraduatestudents to be ethical professionals. Studentsneed a substantive introduction to ethicalreasoning before they can fully appreciate theethical ramifications in a case study. Students have to be able to articulate thecriteria by which they will approach thequestions of applied ethics posed by the ethicsexercises appearing as the conclusion tochapters teaching not ethics but technicalinformation.This paper explores the ethical frameworkprovided by an intermediate accountingtextbook. It then analyzes theepistemologically and anthropologicallyinformed ethics of Bernard Lonergan and EdwardSchillebeeckx as examples of the introductoryethical reasoning needed to support textbookframeworks. A two-fold thesis guides thepaper: students equipped with a broader ethicalvision can learn more effectively from theethics cases presented in the textbooks, thusenhancing the value of those cases;consequently, students need more exposure toethics in an undergraduate business course ofstudy.     

Contents of Volume 23

Volume Contents

Contents of Volume 23     

Business-to-Business Markets – Status Quo and Future Trends

As a phenomenon of modified value-chain structures the economic importance of business-to-business markets has been growing immensely during the past decades. This paper delivers a quantified overview of the market dimensions in terms of transactional volume. In addition, it explains the causes for this market development such as an increased service orientation in business transactions, higher degrees of customization, and influential factors on a macro level. In this context, future trends in this sector will be outlined as well.

International Factor Mobility,Wages and Prices

This paper analyzes the joint influence of migration inflows and outward foreign direct investment (FDI) on wage bargaining. Labor migration and offshoring supported by FDI affect wage deals by changing the outside options of workers and firms. Unemployed workers may find alternative jobs either in the legal or in the illegal labor markets. Wages in this latter case are highly affected by migrants crowding this segment more than any other market. Firms may have the option of moving production partly or entirely to foreign low‐cost countries. A wage curve is designed theoretically, reflecting cross‐border labor and capital mobility, and estimated on panel data for 13 European countries over the period 1995–2013. The theoretical predictions of a joint negative effect on wages of FDI outflows and labor migration inflows are confirmed with some novel results.