The extent and nature of opportunity identification by experienced entrepreneurs

Guided by insights from cognitive theories, this article explores the links between entrepreneurs' prior business ownership experience and their opportunity identification behavior. Hypotheses were tested using data from 630 entrepreneurs. Experienced entrepreneurs identified more opportunities and exploited more innovative opportunities with greater wealth creation potential. Entrepreneurs that had owned more than 4.5 businesses, however, identified fewer opportunities. The nature of prior business ownership experience also shaped opportunity identification behavior. An inverse U-shaped relationship was detected between the proportion of failed businesses relative to the number of businesses owned and the number of opportunities identified in a given period. Business failure experience was not associated with the innovativeness of exploited opportunities.     

Corporate entrepreneurship: Current research and future directions

In this paper, we suggest future research on the processes and knowledge-based resources in corporate entrepreneurship (CE), argue for the need to appreciate the heterogeneity of CE in relation to new contexts, and suggest appropriate strategies for such contexts. First, we highlight the key contributions of the papers in this special issue, with a particular focus on how they provide insights into structural and process contingencies, the role of management at multiple levels, and organizational and managerial capabilities. We then discuss the limits to the applicability of theories developed in other contexts to CE. Finally, we suggest some future research, with particular emphasis on the corporate governance mechanisms that foster CE and the requisite managerial roles and skills in instigating and supporting entrepreneurial activities at different levels of the organization.     

Opportunity Identification and Pursuit: Does an Entrepreneur’s Human Capital Matter?

Extending human capital approaches to entrepreneurship, an entrepreneur’s “inputs” relating to their general (i.e. education and work experience) and entrepreneurship-specific human capital profile (i.e. business ownership experience, managerial capabilities, entrepreneurial capabilities and technical capabilities) are presumed to be related to entrepreneurial “outputs” in the form of business opportunity identification and pursuit. Valid and reliable independent variables were gathered from a stratified random sample of 588 owners of private firms. Ordered logit analysis was used to test several theoretically derived hypotheses. With regard to the number of business opportunities identified and pursued, entrepreneurship-specific rather than general human capital variables “explained” more of the variance. Entrepreneurs reporting higher information search intensity identified significantly more business opportunities, but they did not pursue markedly more or less opportunities. The use of publications as a source of information was positively associated with the probability of identifying more opportunities, while information emanating from personal, professional and business networks was not. Implications for practitioners and researchers are discussed.      

Time Variation of Ex-Dividend Day Stock Returns and Corporate Dividend Capture: A Reexamination

This paper documents some empirical facts about ex-day abnormal returns to high dividend yield stocks that are potentially subject to corporate dividend capture. We find that average abnormal ex-dividend day returns are uniformly negative in each year after the introduction of negotiated commission rates and that time variation in ex-day returns during the negotiated commission rates era is consistent with corporate tax-based dividend capture. Ex-day returns are more negative when the tax advantage to corporate dividend capture is greatest and more positive when increases in transaction costs and risk reduce incentives to engage in corporate tax-based dividend capture.     

Developing a process for the relative valuation of R&D programmes

This paper addresses the issue of R&D programme prioritisation within a manufacturing company in the aerospace industry, in the context of an overall framework for technology management. A review of approaches to R&D project selection leads into a recent case, which describes how the company developed a practical methodology. The benefits of the process and the relevance of the academic contribution are discussed, leading to a practical checklist for in-company development of a prioritisation process.     

A Non-parametric Estimation of Productivity with Idiosyncratic and Aggregate Shocks: The Role of Research and Development (R&D) and Corporate Tax

We develop a non-parametric technique framework for estimating firm-level Total Factor Productivity (TFP). Our paper has two major novelties: first, we propose a modelling of productivity with both firm-idiosyncratic factors and aggregate shocks. Second, we apply the Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) technique that offers a numerical integration of productivity outside the posterior overcoming the restrictive assumptions about the relationship between productivity and variable production inputs. We implement our methodology in a group of 4,286 manufacturing firms from France, Germany, Italy, and the UK (2001–14). The results show that: (i) aggregate shocks matter for firm TFP evolution. The global financial crisis of 2008 caused severe, albeit short, adverse effects on TFP; (ii) there is substantial heterogeneity across countries in the way firms react to changes in R&D and taxation. German and UK firms are more sensitive to fiscal changes than R&D, while the opposite is true for Italian firms. R&D and taxation effects are symmetrical for French firms; (iii) the UK productivity handicap continues for years after the financial crisis; and (iv) there are substantial knowledge spillovers among German and Italian firms.     

Problems of world food and agriculture: Projections,models and possible approaches

This article is concerned with the global implications of recent work in food and nutrition planning. It is based on the realisation that the world food situation is critical. Two distinct explanatory/ action paradigms that have been adopted by food/nutrition planners and other professional writers are identified and discussed. These approaches are then assessed in the light of forecasting techniques used to explore the future world food situation and more appropriate techniques are proposed.     

Entrepreneurial orientation in family firms: the case of the hospitality industry

Research increasingly shows interest in the motives and characteristics of entrepreneurs in the tourism and hospitality industry. Small and medium-sized family firms dominate this industry. Learning from the concept of entrepreneurial orientation and family business research, this explorative study aims at analysing entrepreneurial behaviours and their effect on performance as perceived by owner-managers of hospitality family businesses. The authors conduct narrative in-depth interviews to understand the managers' meaning of entrepreneurship and performance, and discuss the results in the light of existing entrepreneurship literature. Results indicate that family firms in hospitality and tourism are peculiar, and their embeddedness in the destinations and regions outlines their entrepreneurial behaviour against Schumpeter's definition of growth-oriented entrepreneurship.     

A Bayesian Signals Approach for the Detection of Crises

In this paper, we consider the signals approach as an early-warning-system to detect crises. Crisis detection from a signals approach involves Type I and II errors which are handled through a utility function. We provide a Bayesian model and we test the effectiveness of the signals approach in three data sets: (1) Currency and banking crises for 76 currency and 26 banking crises in 15 developing and 5 industrial countries between 1970 and 1995, (2) costly asset price booms using quarterly data ranging from 1970 to 2007, and (3) public debt crises in Europe in 11 countries in the European Monetary Union from the introduction of the Euro until November 2011. The Bayesian model relies on a vector autoregression for indicator variables, and incorporates dynamic factors, time-varying weights in the latent composite indicator and special priors to avoid the proliferation of parameters. The Bayesian vector autoregressions are extended to a semi-parametric context to capture non-linearities. Our evidence reveals that our approach is successful as an early-warning mechanism after allowing for breaks and nonlinearities and, perhaps more importantly, the composite indicator is better represented as a flexible nonlinear function of the underlying indicators.

     

Managing policy lapse risk in Sweden’s life insurance market between 1915 and 1947

Abstract

We examine the challenges that Swedish life insurers faced in managing the lapse risk of policies written on the lives of the industrial urban working class between 1915 and 1947. We observe that with the threat of State socialisation of insurance in the 1930s, industrial life insurers modified their business practices to better control policy lapses. Using firm-level data, we also analyse the effect of socio-economic changes, such as rising real wages, interest rate fluctuations and unemployment on life insurance policy lapses. Our results support contemporary tests of the emergency fund and interest rate explanations for the voluntary premature termination of life insurance policies.