The Who,Where, What,How and When of Market Entry

This introductory, along with the eight articles contained within this Special Issue, highlights and brings greater clarity to entrant‐incumbent interactions and to firm movement – when entrants traverse market territories for the creation and/or delivery of offerings, where ‘markets’ include service or product categories, technology or resource spaces, industries, sectors and/or geographies. Collectively, this Special Issues explains that firm movement across market boundaries is highly consequential, influencing resource‐capability mixes inside firms, interfirm relations, market logic and industry value chains, and of course, people, communities and even nations. Specifically, we develop a field‐wide perspective of market entry by expanding on the framework of market entry that Zachary and his colleagues developed (Zachary et al., 2015) – i.e., the who (players such as incumbents, entrants, suppliers, etc.), when (the timing and sequence of entry), how (the strategy, resources, capabilities, etc.), where (the space of entry) and what (product, service, business model, etc.) – to include two additional categories: complements (networks, platforms, ecosystems) and non‐market elements (government, political, social and cultural arrangements). We also summarize the eight highly diverse and insightful articles that make this Special Issue, and conclude with a discussion to highlight foundational questions that point to new directions in future research in this field. In sum, we hope to inspire scholars to go beyond counting outcomes (e.g., entry/exit rates, or profiling successful versus unsuccessful entrants), to consider contexts, processes and contingencies (e.g., cost, time, collaboration, competition, interfirm relations, etc.) and to discover boundary conditions that inform a theory of market entry.     

Enhancing female entrepreneurship by enabling access to skills

Literature reveals the need for entrepreneurship training programmes that focus on the skills required by female entrepreneurs. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the Women Entrepreneurship Programme (WEP) as an initiative to provide entrepreneurial and business skills to female entrepreneurs. An experimental group of 116 women attended this training intervention whereas 64 women formed the control group who did not attend the WEP. The findings highlight that through the WEP the experimental group gained new skills and knowledge relevant to running a business; increased their confidence in their entrepreneurial abilities; and used these skills to start new ventures.     

Regulatory changes and information competition: The case of Taiwan index futures

This article examines the cross‐border competition in price discovery between the Taiwan Futures Exchange (TAIFEX) and the Singapore Exchange Derivatives Trading (SGX). We focused on the impact of market reforms on the information leadership of similar contracts traded on the two exchanges. Utilizing synchronized transaction data, it was found that reducing the futures transferring tax was the only policy change that enhanced TAIFEX's information role. Evidence supported the trading‐cost hypothesis that a lower transaction cost is associated with better price discovery. A brief linkage between trading volume and price discovery was found when data were broken down into subperiods according to the relative volume of TAIFEX and SGX. Evidence suggested that the SGX's information advantage reported in previous research had diminished as the rival market progressed. It also indicated that exchanges seeking to improve information efficiency should adopt policies that will reduce transaction costs or increase trading volume. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 24:399–412, 2004     

Management of development projects: how to meet corporate business goals?

Two contradictory elements affect development projects in the modern era. New advanced development projects require huge resources and long schedules. On the other hand, the resources available for development projects are decreasing, and intensive competition between companies results in increased required performance and new products which must be developed with short schedules. Development projects have a significant effect on a company's business goals, and therefore attract the attention of corporate managers. A significant part of managers' time is devoted to the control of development projects. Support tools are therefore developed and used to assist managers in controlling their projects. This paper describes a control tool to help managers make decisions on development projects. The tool described is based on Microsoft's 'Project' software package, and was developed in-house. The package performs real-time calculations and simultaneously presents several control parameters. These parameters provide a comprehensive picture of project status. The major benefits of the control tools described are: (1) The 'Project' package provides the ability to work with small and combined work packages. It allows attention to be focused on small programs as well as on entire programs. (2) It complies fully with modern decentralised computer systems consisting of a central computer, local computerised networks, parallel PCs and work stations. It provides an interactive quick response ability to follow changes in project status, which result from design changes or progress updates. The control system was implemented by RAFAEL's Missiles Division two years ago, and impressive results in terms of project efficiency were achieved. These achievements play a major role in meeting the Division's business goals. The control tools described are general and can fit a large variety of projects and companies.     

Analysing the Poverty Impact of the HIPC Initiative in Cameroon

Abstract: The paper uses the Poverty Analysis Macroeconomic Simulator (PAMS), a World Bank framework and updates its interface with the Cameroon government macroeconomic framework to analyze the potential impact of the implementation of the HIPC initiative on poverty alleviation. According to the main findings, it is very likely that Cameroon would succeed in achieving the poverty Millennium Development Goal. However, this result would be feasible if and only if the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) is fully implemented. That is not very certain because of the failure already observed during the first year of PRSP implementation.     

Unemployment insurance benefits and the supply of labor of an employed worker

The unemployment insurance program is believed to adversely affect the supply of labor of the unemployed. Yet, it generates favorable incentives for the employed. Since unemployment benefits are aimed to compensate the unemployed for earnings loss, of which past earnings serve as a practical measure, a worker might choose to increase his efforts when employed, insuring himself partially against future unemployment. However, this possible impact on labor supply has escaped any attention until very recently. Incorporating an earnings-related benefits scheme into a multi-period decision model, the present paper investigates the labor supply behavior of an insured worker over time.     

Bonding and Bridging Associational Social Capital and the Financial Performance of Local Authorities in Israel

Abstract

This study explores whether bridging and bonding social capital differ in their impacts on government performance at the local level and the extent to which these impacts vary between localities exhibiting differing socioeconomic resources. The study is based on an analysis of 256 local authorities in Israel. The findings show that bridging and bonding social capital do differ in their respective effects on government performance and that the nature of the relationship of each type of capital with government performance varies by the community's socioeconomic profile. Poor communities with high densities of bridging social capital were characterized by lower deficits as a percentage of total municipal budgets, more accurate expenditure forecasts and greater spending on services per capita.     

Supply-Side Innovation and Technology Commercialization

The majority of research and practice tends to conceptualize innovation as a vertically coupled, intra-organizational process. We expand this perspective by conceptualizing innovation as a vertically decoupled, inter-organizational process and by studying the role of research universities as suppliers of discoveries to this market for innovation . We combined logic from agency and real options theories to explain why the outcomes of technology commercialization are a function of licensing strategies, the autonomy of technology licensing offices (TLOs), and the incentives bestowed on scientists, research departments, and TLO officers. We rely on data from licensing surveys, interviews with 128 TLO directors, and – for convergent validity – from web-based searches of the TLOs of American universities and the US Patent and Trademark Office. Results suggest that commercialization outcomes (in this case, revenue and start-up creation) are enhanced when TLOs employ diverse licensing strategies, TLOs enjoy greater autonomy, universities share revenues with scientists' departments, and universities compensate TLOs officers well. Results also show that late entrants – typically underperforming universities – inflate royalty shares to scientists as a means to rectify their commercialization record. We conclude with a discussion of this study's contribution to the literature on innovation and technology commercialization.     

Technical note:: Hybrid corn: Its adoption revisited

The analysis presented is for the adoption of hybrid corn. Among the three functional relationships that are tried the log logistic performs best in terms of explanation (R²) and serial correlation before adjusting for it. After adjusting for the serial correlation using the Cochrane Orcutt procedure the differences between the three functional forms practically vanish. The adoption parameter of the log logistic is best explained by economic variables among which the total area of corn in the state, which stands for both the importance in the economy and economies of scale of extension services, is outstanding.