The association between venture capitalists’ selection and value adding behavior: evidence from early stage high tech venture capitalists

Building upon self-efficacy and collective effort theories, we study the association between the selection behavior of venture capitalists and their involvement in value adding activities. We argue that investors, who prioritize different characteristics of a business proposal during selection, will be more or less confident of their own abilities and the abilities of entrepreneurial teams to effectively add value to portfolio companies and hence will be more or less involved in providing value adding activities. In order to test this claim, we use a stratified sample comprising 68 European early stage high tech venture capitalists. Results show that venture capitalists, who focus on entrepreneurial team characteristics or financial criteria during selection, are less involved in value adding activities compared to their peers, who focus on technological criteria. We discuss these findings from a theoretical and practical perspective.     

Principles of Advertising & IMC, 2nd edn.

Community involvement is recognized as part of an organization's attempts to build good will in the local community and as such can be thought of as part of corporate social responsibility. The argument has been made that there is a need for more examination of the content of CSR activities, in particular for firms operating in diverse domestic and foreign contexts (Gardberg and Fombrun, 2004, Academy of Management Review, 31(2), pp. 329–346). This paper explores some of these issues by presenting an in‐depth look at McDonald's community involvement initiative in Norway, where the attempts to build a Ronald McDonald House met much resistance and many barriers, many of them from political parties, doctors and academics.     

Assessing the Efficacy of Armed-Forces Recruitment Advertising: A Reasoned-Action Approach

SUMMARY

In an all-volunteer military service system, advertising is expected to fulfill a vital role in lead generation, which ultimately influences enlistment. The present study employed the theory of reasoned action to assess the efficacy of U.S. Naval recruitment commercials on relevant behavioral beliefs, social norms, interest, and behavioral intention. As expected, exposure to the commercials significantly enhanced beliefs toward the Navy, but Structural Equation Modeling revealed that exposure failed to enhance the influence of beliefs on interest in the Navy, with only social norms exerting a strong influence. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

Memory Enhances the Mere Exposure Effect

The fact of having already encountered something encourages future preference, a phenomenon known as the mere exposure effect (MEE). There is a widely accepted view that recognition inhibits the MEE. Here this view is contested and the generality of the findings upon which it is based questioned. New evidence is presented from a systematic investigation of the moderating influence of recognition memory on the MEE, using brand logo stimuli and methods that make the results directly applicable to marketing practice. It is shown that recognition, whether correct or mistaken, enhances, rather than inhibits, the likelihood of preference.     

A test for randomness in behaviour

In biological analysis of behaviour, transition matrices occur of which the diagonal entries are essentially zero. For such transition matrices, a model of randomness is constructed, with a test for the hypothesis that this model holds.     

The dynamics of preference formation

A model is developed and estimated which explains the formation of individual preferences on consumption under the influence of contacts with others (preference interdependence) and own consumption over time habit formation). The model employs a cardinal utility function which can be measured independently of behavioral assumptions. Since preference interdependence has been analyzed earlier, the paper concentrates on habit formation, the preference interdependence component being imputed from an earlier study. Due to data restrictions and measurement error, special econometric provisions must be made. Preference interdependence appears to explain two thirds of individual preferences and habit formation one third.