Sharing my way to success: A case study on developing entrepreneurial ventures using social capital in an OSS community

While Open Source Software (OSS) communities provide opportunities for knowledge creation, we have a limited understanding of how entrepreneurs leverage OSS communities for their entrepreneurial ventures. Using social capital theory in a mixed methods case study, we compare entrepreneur and non-entrepreneur behaviors to investigate how entrepreneurs build social capital within an OSS community. This study shows that entrepreneurs differentiate themselves from non-entrepreneurs by focusing on cognitive and relational capital building activities, which in return makes it possible for them to leverage their social capital to influence and shape the environment in which they are operating. Our findings suggest that entrepreneurs strategically select which activities within the community to expend their limited resources on (e.g., developing code over participating in email conversations) and build their social capital more through their actions than through their words (e.g., showing their commitment to the community through code commits, bug fixes, and documentation). Given the liabilities of newness and smallness as well as other challenges faced by entrepreneurs, applying an open innovation strategy in OSS communities could be one approach where entrepreneurs, by developing and freely revealing their intellectual property to the community, share their way to success via OSS-infused entrepreneurial business ventures.     

Are there major differences in the attitudes and service quality of standard and seasonal employees? An empirical examination and implications for practice

Despite the increased use of seasonal employees by organizations, few studies have been completed on the attitudes and service quality of seasonal office workers. Using Lautsch's classification model, we analyzed the organizational context in which the standard and seasonal workers in this study were employed. Hypotheses were developed based upon the organizational analysis and social exchange theory. Results from archival data obtained from a web‐based organizational survey of 205 clerical and professional workers indicated contrary to expectations, standard and seasonal employees did not significantly differ in terms of perceptions of overall job conditions, perceived organizational support (POS), or job engagement. However, seasonal employees did report significantly fewer opportunities to work on challenging tasks, less comfortable physical working conditions, and less job security than the standard workers. As predicted, standard employees reported significantly higher levels of service quality performance than seasonal employees. Additionally, job engagement mediated the relationship between POS and service quality for both the standard and seasonal employees. Implications for managing seasonal employees are discussed.     

Rookes v. Barnard and the trade union question in British politics

In the 1950s, given the scope of the Trade Disputes Act 1906 that had granted immunity against specific torts (civil wrongs) to organisers of industrial action, the courts had little role in industrial relations. Hence, the importance of the House of Lords decision in 1964 that, in threatening to strike to secure Douglas Rookes's removal from the Heathrow design office of the British Overseas Aircraft Corporation after his resignation from the union, Alfred Barnard and others had used unlawful means because a threat to break a contract of employment came within the tort of intimidation that was unprotected by the Trade Disputes Act's statutory immunities, and thus, they were liable to pay damages to Rookes. The legal arguments deployed are analysed within growing unease in the Conservative Party and among employers at the emergence of workplace union organisation and national strikes. Despite being partially neutralised by the Trade Disputes Act 1965, Rookes was a harbinger of a new judicial activism that outflanked trade unions' tort immunities by creating novel common law liabilities. This in turn laid the political basis for subsequent Conservative legislation to restrict and regulate trade unions and industrial action, a project that is ongoing.     

A Consumer-Based Approach to Designing Product Line Extensions

A high proportion of new product introductions entail line extensions (e.g., new flavors, sizes, convenience packs, features) rather than totally new products. An attendant problem with line extending involves the possibility of cannibalization of the firm's current products. Paul Green and Abba Krieger describe an approach for designing line extensions that employs consumer tradeoff data and a variety of search heuristics to find "optimal" extensions that explicitly consider the cannibalization of current offerings. The methodology is applied to a case in which an agricultural chemicals firm is introducing a new soybean herbicide.     

The importance of being first : The case of prescription drugs in Canada

There is a growing literature on the importance of being first, which suggests that where there is uncertainty about the product quality of late entrants' brands the pioneering brand will retain a competitive advantage. This is consistent with studies of the U.S. drug industry. Using Canadian data for the drug industry it is shown that eliminating quality differences is a necessary but not sufficient condition for late entrants to gain market share. In addition, price competition has to be stimulated. Under these conditions the late entrants have taken up to 100 percent of the pioneering brands market.     

Value innovation in business markets: Breaking the industry recipe

The industrial marketing as well as the strategic management literature stresses the importance of “value innovation” in order to create/sustain competitive advantage and to rejuvenate the organization.In the first part of this article the construct of value innovation is operationalized within the context of selected business-to-business markets. We report the results of an ongoing research project; starting from traditional ways of value creation, the study reveals different types of value innovation initiatives undertaken by industry participants. We observe, however, that networks, firms and managers are embedded in industry recipes. These recipes block the creation and realization of value innovation. Some firms are trying to break out of existing frames and their experiences pinpoint to specific ways of markets sensing, strategic marketing and different marketing-mix tools. As such, the research frames value innovation initiatives in the existing industry contexts and managerial frames, and identifies drivers, barriers and perceived success factors for the process of value innovation.The second part of the article then looks at the stages of value innovation and their impact on marketing, organizations and networks. Based on the data analysis, the paper posits propositions which stress the concept of “multilevel absorptive capacity”.     

Measuring perceived pre-purchase risk for a new industrial product

Risk is an important element in industrial adoption decisions. This paper proposes a method to investigate how different group of individuals influencing the adoption of a new industrial product differ in their assessment of the risks. Two dimensions of risk are distinguished: (1) the likelihood that adoption of the new product will have undesirable consequences, and (2) the perceived intensity of these consequences both at the organizational and at the individual level. Purchase consequences are measured in terms of product economics and product reliability. Multivariate analysis of variance is used to assess how decision participants differ in their assessment of risk components. An attempt is made to assess the relative importance of these various components in the formation of individual preferences. The implications of the analysis for the development of better industrial marketing strategies are discussed.     

Inter-threshold resource planning for public higher educational systems

Efforts to design comprehensive systems of long-range resource planning for public colleges and universities in the United States are frustrated in the sense that most states follow a social demand approach to educational planning. Literally thousands of decision makers—including students, parents, formal administrators and faculty members-affect the overall behavior of the system. Nevertheless, more and more states are creating centralized higher educational coordinating agencies to conduct long-range planning and to recommend policies for the future development of the higher educational system. This paper describes research which has attempted to link together three decision thresholds in the resource planning process. These are (a) academic departments or colleges which are combined into (b) a total college or university, which is one part of (c) a state system of higher education containing several colleges and universities.