Mental Models and Successful First‐mover Entry Decisions: Empirical Evidence from Chinese Entrepreneurs

Existing research has identified a variety of mechanisms through which early entrants may be able to develop competitive advantages that favorably influence performance relative to later entrants. At the same time, later entrants can sometimes enjoy cost advantages arising from free riding and the resolution of uncertainty. Despite the impressive array of possible explanations linking entry timing with performance, it is unclear how these explanations align with the cognitive representations that guide managerial decision making. The authors address this gap in the literature by arguing that the resource‐based view of the firm provides potential insight into the way that perceived pioneer advantages and disadvantages influence managerial behavior. The resource‐based view argues that the value of various pioneer advantages will depend on the degree to which those advantages enable pioneers to access and control resources that are costly to copy. Because legal and cultural variables also influence access to resources, the value of specific dimensions of pioneer advantage will vary depending on the macroenvironment within which a firm operates. To test this reasoning, the authors examine the impact of perceived pioneer advantages on the number of first‐mover entry decisions of Chinese service entrepreneurs, who operate in an environment characterized by underdeveloped legal institutions and inadequate legal protections, a fledgling capital market, the limited availability of information about products and industries, and an emphasis on personal connections. The authors hypothesize that these unique characteristics of Chinese markets will affect the perceived importance of sources of pioneer advantage identified in studies of Western (primarily United States) firms. Using data collected from 302 Chinese service entrepreneurs, the authors find strong evidence that the number of pioneer entry decisions made by Chinese entrepreneurs are strongly tied to entrepreneurs’ perceptions that pioneer firms tend to outperform later entrants and have the ability to preempt key assets. In addition, the number of entry decisions is negatively related to perceptions of pioneer cost disadvantages and the level of uncertainty faced by pioneers relative to later entrants. However, consistent with the research hypotheses, perceptions of pioneer leadership and cost advantages do not significantly influence the entry decisions of Chinese service entrepreneurs.     

An analysis of the use and success of online recruitment methods in the UK

The use of online recruitment methods is now widespread among UK organisations, but has not dominated the recruitment market in the way that was predicted by the popular media. This may be because organisations experience mixed success in using online methods of recruitment. This article reports on the use of a large‐scale, longitudinal survey of recruitment activity to investigate the usage and perceived success of both corporate and commercial web sites by employers. In addition, 20 interviews with users and providers of online recruitment were conducted in order to provide a deeper exploration of the factors that may affect the success of these methods. The results provide valuable insights into the use and success of online recruitment in the UK and have strong implications for practitioners.     

The Role of Central Units in the Scottish Executive

The Scottish Executive, building on the legacy of the Scottish Office, has sought to sustain powerful central units and resist monolithic departments serving its ministers. This has lessons for Whitehall's attempts at joined-up government. But in Scotland the political focus of the Executive has not yet matched its organizational potential, with renewed transitional instability as a new First Minister, Henry McLeish MSP, replaced the late Donald Dewar in October 2000.     

The Relationship of R&D/Sales to Firm Performance: An Investigation of Marketing Contingencies*

The relationship between a firm's performance and R&D spending is often imperfectly understood, despite the fact that R&D is often a cornerstone of an effective innovation strategy. Susan Holak, Mark Parry, and Michael Song extend the classic innovation-adoption paradigm developed by Rogers and propose a series of hypotheses describing variations in the relationship between the R&D/sales ratio and a firm's performance. Using data from the PIMS database and contrasting growth-stage and mature-stage firms, the authors report that firm and industry characteristics have an important bearing on the R&D-performance relationship. In addition, managers can influence the incremental effects of added R&D spending on the firm's performance by manipulating certain firm-contingent variables. Increased R&D spending can have either a positive or negative influence on gross margin under various circumstances.     

Internalisation as a general theory of foreign direct investment: A critique

Conclusions The theory of internalisation does provide an explanation of certain types of FDI activities by MNEs. In particular, there are three areas where internalisation appears to provide an explanation of FDI as a specific form of international involvement by the MNE: these entail vertical integration, transfer pricing and quality control [Buckley, Casson, 1976; Casson, 1983].     

Bilateral monopoly, identical distributors, and game-theoretic analyses of distribution channels

Game-theoretic analyses of distribution channels have generated six widely held beliefs (we call them Channel Hypotheses) whose universal soundness has not been examined. To assess the validity of these Hypotheses, we develop a general, linear-demand model in which distributors face heterogeneity in demand, heterogeneity in costs, and any degree of intensity of inter-distributor competition. For ease of comparison, we nest the bilateral-monopoly model and the identical-distributors model within our general model. Our analysis reveals that the Channel Hypotheses do not generalize beyond the specific game-theoretic models from which they were derived. This lack of generality is critical, because these beliefs have led to intuitively appealing (but inadvertently misleading) strategic advice for managers and modeling advice for game theorists. From our general, linear-demand model, we derive six Channel Propositions that correct these accumulated errors of conceptualization and that generate a richer, more broadly applicable set of managerial and modeling implications. We also present a Channel-Modeling Proposition that we believe will help modelers avoid the errors of conceptualization described in this paper. Electronic supplementary material  Supplementary material is available for this article at doi: and is accessible to authorized user.

When to lead or follow? It depends

Existing studies of entry strategy attribute sustained pioneer advantages to the pioneer's ability to erect barriers that impede the entry of potential competitors. Because effective entry barriers imply industry concentration, the entry-barrier explanation of sustained pioneer advantage suggests that pioneers in concentrated industries will experience superior mature-stage performance. This paper tests this hypothesis by controlling for industry concentration and analyzing the impact of entry strategy on the mature-stage firm's market share, perceived relative product quality, relative product-line breadth, relative price, and relative direct costs. The analysis suggests that the presence of effective barriers-to-entry significantly affects the performance poineers in both consumer- and industrial-goods industries. Moreover, the extent to which pioneers receive an incremental share advantage over early followers depends on both industry type and end-user purchase amounts.     

How do Professional Financial Services Firms Understand their Skill Needs and Organise their Recruitment Practices?

Abstract

The recruitment practices of professional financial service firms are informed by hegemonic cultural norms embedded in global and national institutions. There is a propensity, particularly in the financial services, to employ ‘people like us’ [Erel, U. (2010). Migrating cultural capital: Bourdieu in migration studies. Sociology, 44(4), 642–660. doi:10.1177/0038038510369363], which, it is argued, has constrained the employment outcomes of skilled migrants. Using the concept of cultural fit, this paper draws on interviews with representatives of accounting firms in Australia to understand the criteria for recruiting in a highly commercialised and globalised professional labour market. The results demonstrate that client-focused firms place an emphasis on cultural fit in the recruitment process. It is concluded that a lack of cultural capital by migrants means that their efforts to infiltrate the professional accounting labour market in Australia are limited. Furthermore, from an education perspective, the skill set taught in the accounting curriculum is increasingly geared to meet the recruitment strategies of professional service firms.