Networks and Local Environmental Characteristics in the Survival of New Firms

This study seeks firstly to clarify which networks at start-up situation and early in life influence the survival of new firms. Secondly the study examines regional differences in the success of new firms. The subjects were firms which had closed down during their fourth to sixth year of operations, and they were compared with firms continuing in business. The results indicate, firstly, that it is networks internal to firm that create competitive advantage, innovation and efficiency. Secondly, management based on working in groups was emphasized in the firms that continued in business. In a typical family enterprise, ownership, management and family are united in a single entity. In other types of firms networks are seen as participating in the strategic management of the firm. Thirdly, close-downs were often caused by uncontrolled risks. A firm which fails after a successful start-up often tends to grow rapidly in the beginning, leaning on its product idea, but this rate of growth is too high from the viewpoint of the financing and the management of the firm. In firms which closed the growth objectives were too ambitions compared with the resources of the entrepreneur.     

The role of information technology in strategic buyer–supplier relationships

Information technology (IT) has long been acknowledged as an integral part of inter-organizational business exchange. The extant research, however, tends to emphasize the focal company perspective and focuses on operational issues, perceiving IT and business relationships as separable. Through a qualitative dyadic case study, our study defines how IT is positioned with regard to various elements of a strategic buyer–supplier relationship and the respective actors' operational and managerial behaviors. The study defines the role of IT regarding the structural, action, and management layers of a relationship and shows how IT can be a strong element around which relationship management activities are implemented to improve the consistency and performance of the relationship. The study prepares the ground for further qualitative and quantitative research to enhance a holistic understanding on IT in relation to the structures and processes in inter-organizational contexts of business relationships and networks.     

Information Content of Interim Earnings Components—Evidence from Finland

This study examines the information content of the interim earnings of listed Finnish firms. The degree of association between returns and interim earnings is studied. The assumption is that, compared to transitory changes, permanent changes in earnings have a greater association with returns. Unexpected returns are regressed over unexpected permanent earnings and unexpected transitory earnings. Three return measurement periods are used to examine any potential asynchrony between prices and earnings. To reduce the errors-in-variables problem expected in single-security-level studies, observations are grouped into portfolios. When the data are divided into portfolios, the results give evidence of the association as hypothesized.     

Beyond Organizational Innovation Adoption – a Conceptual and Empirical Analysis

The purpose of this study is to conduct a conceptual and empirical analysis of the research on the organizational adoption of innovations. The empirical part consists of three cases. On the basis of the results, we could question and criticize the dominant single-choice operationalization of organizational adoption and argue for a more process-like approach.     

Intangible Investment and Market Valuation

This study derives performance‐ and expenditure‐based estimates of intangible capital and measures the extent to which intangible capital is captured by the equity market measures of firm value. Intangible capital is evaluated using occupational information available in the Finnish linked employer–employee data for the 1997–2011 period. The performance‐based organizational investment in value added is approximately 3 percent; R&D and ICT investment shares are lower, at 1.5 percent, and all are clustered in intangible‐intensive sectors that represent 40 percent of the private sector. Expenditure‐based organizational capital also exists in clusters other than that intensively investing in managerial and marketing effort, and performance‐based R&D capital is concentrated in the cluster with intensive R&D activity; both increase the market value of firms beyond the level that can be explained by standard economic analysis.     

THE WELFARE STATE AND POVERTY IN FINLAND AND SWEDEN FROM THE MID-1960s TO THE MID-1980s

Using poverty lines representing the fixed basket of goods and services, the development over time of poverty in Finland and Sweden are compared. In both countries, poverty decreased rapidly between the mid-1960s and the mid-1970s, after which changes have been less dramatic. During the first part of the 1980s poverty continued to decrease in Finland, but increased in Sweden. Comparisons for age-groups showed large reductions in poverty rates among the aged in both countries. Poverty has shifted from the permanent old age poverty towards a more temporary poverty in young adulthood.
International comparisons show that in the early 1980s both Finland and Sweden had poverty rates below the average of the affluent Western nations. Furthermore, these comparisons suggest that cross-national variations in poverty rates are partly explained by the size of the welfare state. Also, time series analysis shows that income transfers have taken an increasing number of people out of poverty in both countries.     

The impact of disclosure on the market response to reported earnings

There is a wealth of evidence of a certain delay in the market's adjustment to published earnings information. However, there is a shortage of studies focusing on whether this behaviour can be explained at least partially by the level and quality of disclosures released together with earnings. This paper explores whether the degree of disclosure is related to the market reaction, and in particular whether the quantity and quality of disclosure affects the adjustment of security prices to interim earnings announcements. Evidence on the pricing of disclosures is also presented. The data comprises interim reports submitted to the Helsinki Exchanges in the period 1985–93. Interim reports are used because they relate to a specific event conveying new and previously unpublished material to the market, in contrast to annual reports which primarily document the history of the previous year. It is found that both disclosure and earnings are important in explaining drift, and our results indicate that the drift is associated with disclosure. These results augment the non-US market evidence of this drift.