Patent‐backed securities in pharmaceuticals: what determines success or failure?

Recently, there has been growing interest in new financial tools that leverage on intellectual property assets, such as patent‐backed securitizations (PBSs). In this paper we study the potential determinants leading to the success or failure of securitization deals having patents as underlying assets. We develop a conceptual framework that we test on two well‐known US patent securitization deals in the pharmaceutical industry, by using a fuzzy set approach. Results highlight that factors related to the market size, level of competition and expected market life of the assets underlying a PBS can reasonably increase the probability that a deal will succeed. Moreover, a higher quality of the underlying invention and longer patent residual life are likely to reduce the risk of technical obsolescence and sales losses. Finally, the strength of the credit enhancement mechanisms, the flexibility of the deal architecture and the adoption of a diversification strategy are other key factors determining the success of the securitization.     

Sustainable Supply Chains: Governance Mechanisms to Greening Suppliers

One of the key challenges for firms is to manage sustainability along the supply chain. To extend sustainability to suppliers, organizations have developed different governance mechanisms. The aim of this paper is to analyze the effectiveness of two different mechanisms (i.e., supplier assessment and collaboration with suppliers) to improve one dimension of sustainability: environmental performance. Structural Equation Modeling and cluster analysis were used to analyze the relationships between supplier assessment, collaboration with suppliers, and environmental performance. The results suggest that (1) both mechanisms, supplier assessment and collaboration with suppliers, have a positive and synergistic effect on environmental performance, and (2) assessment acts as an enabler of collaboration. Finally, the paper also contributes to the literature by providing a framework of sustainability governance mechanisms.     

Retail Micro-Marketing Strategies and Competition

The goal of this paper is to open the debate about the effect of customer specific retail marketing on competition. Segmentation and targeting based on loyalty card information affects horizontal and vertical relationships. Few retailers can take advantage of the power connected to the ownership of customer information. Consumers benefit from a more targeted approach to value creation but the distribution of such value varies widely, as a consequence of micro-targeting. A second goal is to test a new way of conducting joint research with practitioners. An online community was set up for the discussion of micro-marketing related issues. Online, the authors have been able to test the hypothesis and deliver the survey questionnaire to participating retailers who, in turn, can access results through the community website: www.partnership4loyalty.com.     

A framework for measuring logistics performance in the wine industry

Nowadays, in order for wine companies to reach a world-class standard, it is necessary to implement the industry best practices and continuously adapt their logistics processes. Through benchmarking, these enterprises can find opportunities for improvement. So far, little research in benchmarking and performance measurement has been developed for the wine industry. In this paper a logistics benchmarking framework for the wine industry is proposed. A benchmarking study considering several wineries from Mendoza (Argentina) is presented as a case study, in order to demonstrate the validity of the developed framework.     

Space-related antecedents of social capital: some empirical inquiries about the creation of new firms

This paper analyzes the spatial aspects of social capital creation between co-localised start-ups and customers, aiming to explain the factors which may influence the diffusion of inter-organizational social networks inside industrial clusters. We suppose that local social capital is not a public good, but its creation depends both on proximity. between actors and on a sense of affiliation of an entrepreneur to the cluster. While the embeddedness of a start-up inside a cluster has a positive influence on the relational and cognitive dimensions of social capital, it negatively influences the structural dimension. Implications and future lines of research are discussed.     

Entrepreneurial intention: the role of gender

There is general agreement in previous research, drawing on the Theory of Planned Behaviour, that attitudes towards entrepreneurship are determining factors on entrepreneurial intention and gender also seems to play a key role. This study supports the core entrepreneurial intention model and focuses on the role of gender in this process, showing that men are more likely to think about creating a firm than being determined to do it. However, of those men, the ones who perceive higher congruence between masculine and entrepreneurial attributes are more likely to have a firm entrepreneurial intention. Also, both men and women with a firm entrepreneurial intention perceive successful entrepreneurs to have feminine attributes. This, together with the characteristics of the sample, may explain the lack of a gender difference in entrepreneurial intention.     

Trends in family business research

This study describes the structure and trends of the family business literature. We analyze the content of the papers focused on family firms published in any journal of the categories ‘business’, ‘business finance’, ‘economics’ and ‘management’ of the Social Science Citation Index during the 1961–2008 period. Bibliometric methods are used to describe the evolution of publication activity, the most representative contributors, the methodologies applied, and the content of the articles in order to explore the main themes researched. These analyses enable the identification of potential avenues for future research that could be meaningful to advance in the consolidation of the discipline.     

Examining the influence of servant and entrepreneurial leadership on the work outcomes of employees in social enterprises

Abstract

The present study examines the relative influence of two distinct leadership styles, servant leadership and entrepreneurial leadership, on the organizational commitment and innovative behavior of employees working in social enterprises. Analyzing data from 169 employees and 42 social entrepreneurs, we found that, although servant leadership was positively related to followers’ organizational commitment, the relationship between entrepreneurial leadership and organizational commitment was insignificant. In contrast, whilst we found evidence that entrepreneurial leadership was positively related to followers’ innovative behavior, the relationship between servant leadership and employees’ innovative behavior was insignificant. Our research contributes to the underdeveloped literature on leadership in social enterprises by exploring the relative effectiveness of different leadership styles (namely an entrepreneurial leadership style and a servant leadership style) in promoting follower work attitudes and behaviors in social enterprises. In addition, our research demonstrates the importance of leadership over and above followers’ individual differences such as pro-social motivation and creative self-efficacy.