Legitimacy and accelerated internationalisation: An Indian perspective

This paper extends the institutional theory perspective by examining the strategic behaviour of founders of smaller service firms in a key emerging economy—India. Building on accelerated internationalisation and legitimacy literature in the emerging market context, we provide a new perspective, emerging market aggressiveness, which explains why founders/managers are not always passive recipients of their environment. Their selections of locations are dependent on the vision and stretch goals of the founder and their ability to gain legitimacy quickly to move that vision to a reality. They do not appear to be limited by their potential liabilities of newness, foreignness, emergingness or outsidership. They adopt committed modes of entry from the outset to build their legitimacy and reduce their liability as an outsider. Using a qualitative multiple case study approach, we demonstrate that managers are able to use proactive, planned and unplanned strategies simultaneously, in order to quickly prepare themselves to take advantage of transient international opportunities, ahead of their competitors in advanced markets.     

Female-male earnings differentials in the founder countries of the european economic community: An econometric investigation

Summary In this study an attempt was made to find out whether the female-male earnings differentials in the six founder countries of the EEC were caused by the differences in the work characteristics of the two groups or by a systematic bias against women. In cases where discrimination against women appeared to exist an estimate was made of its degree. It was found that in all countries considered, with the exception of the Netherlands, women had lower average earnings even after standardizing for their different work characteristics. In these countries a substantial part of the female-male earnings differential could not be explained by the differences in the work characteristics of women and could be attributed to other factors, among which sexual prejudice seemed the most likely.     

Is small really beautiful? A review of the concept of niches in innovation

This article reviews the concept of innovation niches through three categories: strategic niche management (SNM), specialised markets and niches formed as a technology declines. In the literature, innovation niches generate interest from both innovation and marketing perspectives. This review focuses predominately on the former from which the niche types have been adopted and analysed. Mostly, contributions since 1980 have been included, representing the period of academic interest in innovative small firms, while both temporal and locational filters were applied to the study. It is noted that SNM has been proposed as a means to protect potentially useful innovations from full market competition, while specialist niches supply technologies to few customers in more stable environments. Incumbent technologies at the stage of decline may also retreat to niches where they can still remain competitive. Finally, it is suggested that further research on innovation niches would extend our understanding of technology dynamics.     

Selected Books Received

Selected Books Received

Selected Books Received     

New waves of growth in the developed world

Following the Great Recession, many commentators are already forecasting a bleak economic future for developed economies over the next decade. Our research suggests, however, that there are ample opportunities for new growth and jobs in mature economies. Policymakers and business leaders can mine rich seams of growth through imaginative responses to oft‐perceived challenges around aging populations, the transition to a low‐carbon future, rising demands for public services, new information‐based services, and growing demands in the emerging world for social and physical infrastructure. However, such growth will fail to materialize unless action is taken today to secure the necessary supply‐side foundations for longer‐term growth. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Value, valuation, and the long-run performance of merged firms

We propose an alternative measure of the long-term economic impact of mergers on firm value: post-acquisition changes in intrinsic value. Consistent with the literature on post-acquisition returns, the intrinsic value of merged firms decreases on average in the three years following deal completion, especially for firms with high initial intrinsic values. The loss of intrinsic value is driven primarily by decreases in expected earnings. Finally, using return decompositions, we find evidence that the poor post-acquisition stock returns documented in other studies can be attributed primarily to lost intrinsic value rather than changes in valuation levels.     

Is there life after P<0.05? Statistical significance and quantitative sociology

The overwhelming majority of quantitative work in sociology reports levels of statistical significance. Often, significance is reported with little or no discussion of what it actually entails philosophically, and this can be problematic when analyses are interpreted. Often, significance is understood to represent the probability of the null hypothesis (usually understood as a lack of relationship between two or more variables). This understanding is simply erroneous. The first section of this paper deals with this common misunderstanding. The second section gives a history of significance testing in the social sciences, with reference to the historical foundations of many common misinterpretations of significance testing. The third section is devoted to a discussion of the consequences of misinterpreting statistical significance for sociology. It is argued that reporting statistical significance provides sociology with very little value, and that the consequences of misinterpreting significance values outweighs the benefits of their use.     

Globalisation and food consumption in tourism

In this paper, the common perception of globalisation as a threat to local gastronomic identities is contrasted by its other facet, as an impetus that opens up new opportunities for reinvention of local gastronomic products and identities. Relevant perspectives and theories of globalisation are reviewed to provide a theoretical framework for the study. Key dimensions underlying food consumption in tourism are elucidated, and the impacts of globalisation on the culinary supply and tourist food consumption are discussed. A conceptual model is developed in an attempt to illustrate the influence of globalisation on food consumption in tourism. This study concludes that from the world culture theory perspective, globalisation can be an impetus to reconstruct or reinvent local gastronomic traditions and particularities.     

The economic effects of real estate investors

We show five new results about small- and medium-sized real estate investors (SMREI) who participate through legal entities in US housing markets. First, SMREI have the largest growth across all cities post Great Recession, in contrast to Wall Street Landlords who concentrate in superstar cities. Second, SMREI increase house price growth and price-to-income ratio, especially in the bottom price tier. Third, this effect is reversed as investors trigger a medium-run supply response. Fourth, in areas with a high supply elasticity, SMREI affect rents more than prices. Finally, SMREI change the composition of the housing stock in favor of multifamily units.