The effects of industry growth and strategic breadth on new venture performance and strategy content

A sample of 123 independent new ventures was classified into four industry growthlstrategic breadth categories. High growth industry environments were found to provide a favorable environment for new ventures to achieve sales growth; however, the highest sales growth rates were exhibited by new ventures pursuing broad breadth strategies in high growth industries. One-way ANOVA and contrast tests were also used to identify whether specific strategic variables varied across the four industry growth/strategic breadth combinations. New ventures in high growth industries chose to enter on a larger, more aggressive scale and placed more emphasis on new product development than those entering low growth industries. Broad breadth strategy ventures had higher levels of advertising and promotion expenses and placed greater emphasis on the dominance of marketing expertise in their top management team, developing new channels of distribution, and on brand name recognition. Ventures pursuing focus strategies emphasized specialty products and were less cost conscious.     

New technology introduction in a marginal coffee area of Colombia

Income stagnation in the downward cycle of primary product prices is a problem for small farmers in developing countries. The recent abrupt price decline in coffee poses a large adjustment problem in marginal production areas. One method of farm income stabilization for marginal export crop production areas is diversification into food crops with improved technology. The potential for a cushioning of this farm income decline via the introduction of improved food crop technology was examined. A substantial moderating effect was obtained even without uprooting the improved coffee technology. Moreover, an analysis of the constraints to the earlier introduction of the Caturra coffee variety helped identify some of the components of farmer decision making relevant to adoption of new technology.     

A simple proof of the latent root sensitivity formula

This note provides a simple proof of the formula for the partial derivatives of the latent roots of a matrix with respect to its coefficients.     

Recursions for the two-stage least-squares estimators

This paper presents recursion formulae for the two-stage least-squares estimators of the structural coefficients in a simultaneous equation model and for the residual sum of squares used in estimating the asymptotic covariance matrix. Included are formulae for updating estimates when a new set of observations is obtained and for revising estimates when a set of observations is discarded. The recursion formulae should prove to be of both practical and theoretical interest to econometricians.     

The difficulties of supplying new technologies into highly regulated markets: the case of tissue engineering

This study provides an insight into the difficulties companies encounter in transposing basic science into commercially viable healthcare technologies, focusing on the issue of establishing a dominant supply model within a highly regulated market. The core issue is how to scale-up customised scientific processes into products able to supply wider and possibly mass markets. In tracing the development of approaches to scaling-up, the paper highlights the influence regulatory regimes have on high technology regulated products and services. The paper details the implications of two contrasting supply initiatives towards operationalising tissue engineering, based on differences in regulatory regimes between Europe and the USA.     

Modeling Accounting Workplace Interactions with Text‐to‐Video Animation

This article describes a new pedagogical tool, text‐to‐video animation software, that accounting instructors can adopt to easily generate quality videos that address a variety of accounting learning objectives. Although this tool can be used to enhance traditional pedagogical methods, such as case analysis and discussion, it can also be used to address accounting learning objectives not currently addressed by traditional pedagogical methods. This article outlines the benefits of adopting and using this tool in financial and managerial accounting courses, and encourages further study of its effectiveness.     

Second order multiscale stochastic volatility asymptotics: stochastic terminal layer analysis and calibration

Multiscale stochastic volatility models have been developed as an efficient way to capture the principal effects on derivative pricing and portfolio optimization of randomly varying volatility. The recent book by Fouque et al. (Multiscale Stochastic Volatility for Equity, Interest-Rate and Credit Derivatives, 2011) analyzes models in which the volatility of the underlying is driven by two diffusions – one fast mean-reverting and one slowly varying – and provides a first order approximation for European option prices and for the implied volatility surface, which is calibrated to market data. Here, we present the full second order asymptotics, which are considerably more complicated due to a terminal layer near the option expiration time. We find that to second order, the implied volatility approximation depends quadratically on log-moneyness, capturing the convexity of the implied volatility curve seen in data. We introduce a new probabilistic approach to the terminal layer analysis needed for the derivation of the second order singular perturbation term, and calibrate to S&P 500 options data.     

Accounting Students’ Planning,Writing, and Performance on a Time‐Constrained Case Analysis: Effects of Self‐Talk and Prior Achievement

When writing a case analysis, most students first allocate time to plan the content and structure of their response, and then proceed to write with differing degrees of urgency, the outcomes of which are case responses of differing quality. This study examines the extent to which planning time influences writing urgency and, ultimately, the quality of case responses in a time‐constrained setting. It also investigates whether these behaviors and outcomes depend on students’ frame of mind, by experimentally inducing differing types of pre‐examination self‐talk. Analyses show that planning time was negatively associated with writing urgency; students who spent more time planning subsequently wrote with less urgency. Writing urgency was positively associated with case response quality and, after controlling for differences in writing urgency, planning time was positively associated with response quality. Results indicate that different planning and writing behaviors can be induced by different forms of self‐talk prior to the writing task. Relative to interrogative self‐talk (“Will I …?”), exclamatory self‐talk (“I will …!”) caused higher‐achieving students to spend more time planning, but then write with less urgency and subsequently produce lower‐quality case responses. Conversely, after engaging in exclamatory rather than interrogative self‐talk, lower‐achieving students spent less time planning but then wrote with greater urgency and produced higher‐quality responses. These results indicate that (i) planning significantly affects writing and performance, (ii) students can influence their own planning behavior through pre‐task self‐talk, but (iii) pre‐task self‐talk can be beneficial or detrimental depending on students’ prior achievement.