Relating business model innovations and innovation cascades: the case of biotechnology

This article conceptualizes innovation as a process, where the scientific and industrial application of technological knowledge nurtures new routines and institutions, in order to relate changing business model innovations to innovation cascades. Innovation in science-based, high-tech sectors is changing its tempo, from the evolutionary pace of incremental novelties punctuated by occasional radical novelties, to innovation cascades. These cascades involve a long series of interlinked radical innovations, which can be traced through various scientific and technological indicators like patents and publications. Innovation cascades are relevant to industry, because they make the future less predictable. They are particularly interesting because these changes also enable the testing an abundance of new business models. Innovation cascades have a major impact on the number and sustainability of business models and on strategy. Business model innovations are visible not only in the existing organizations that undergo change, but also new organizational models appear. The case of biotechnology after the 1980s is used to illustrate our conceptualization.     

Practices and meaning of purposive family leisure among working- and middle-class families

This article explores the relationship between purposive family leisure and social class in Australian families. A brief review of family leisure literature is followed by a review of conceptual developments in family sociology and the new sociology of class in order to build a richer conceptual and theoretical base for exploring purposive family leisure. Qualitative data are reported from semi-structured interviews with parents in 28 working- and middle-class families in Brisbane, Australia. An analysis of family leisure practices show differences in what constitutes family leisure and its display. Moreover, parents’ stated intentions for engaging in family leisure practices suggest that there is a classed dimension to purposive leisure, in that working- and middle-class parents emphasise different values and imagined futures for their children.     

A review of Personalist Economics

The recent focus on sustainability as guiding principle for economic activity has generated many (often conflicting) definitions of sustainable economic development. Yet while the terminology may be new, the discussion is not. It parallels the discussion about biases of economic valuation concepts that have led to the neglect of the domestic and subsistence contributions relegated to the "informal" or household sector. This paper argues that the narrow definition of economic theory, methodology, and valuation concepts has led to the detrimental neglect of sustaining functions without which economic activity is impaired. To move toward sustainability it is imperative to regain a broader understanding of economics. Three principles are identified as essential for this conceptual expansion of economics. They are: concreteness rather than abstraction, connectedness rather than isolation, and diversity rather than homogeneity. All three are informed by feminist theory. Thus it is argued that the voices of women who have gone largely unheard in economics are essential to reconceptualizing economics as sustainable.     

Financial Integration and Economic Growth in the COMESA and SADC Regions

Abstract

This study used panel data methods to examine the relationship between financial integration and economic growth in the COMESA and SADC regions. Using Foreign direct investment (FDI) and portfolio flows as a share of GDP, Chinn-Ito index of financial openness and debt flows as measures of financial integration, the study found that the relationship between financial integration and growth is largely insignificant in the combined sample of COMESA and SADC regions. However, the relationship changes when the two regions are separated. Whereas two of the indicators of financial integration are significant in the COMESA region, only one indicator of financial integration is significant in the SADC region implying that financial integration is more important in the COMESA region than in the SADC region. The results support the growth retarding theories of financial globalization and the convergence hypothesis in the COMESA region while the neoclassical trade theories find strong support in the SADC region. These results imply, first, that financial integration has different growth effects for different regional groupings and thus integration policies should not be universally applied. Second, these results imply that further enhancement of trade integration policies offer more promising outcomes for economic growth in the SADC region than financial integration policies while the converse is true for the COMESA region.     

The impact of entry modes on the organisational design of international hotel chains

This paper reports on a study of organisation design within the international hotel chains that simultaneously employ multiple market entry modes. A multiple case study reveals the use of different divisional designs for different types of entry mode within individual chains. These are driven by the desire to maintain strong control over hotel brands. The study concludes that current designs may inhibit the international hotel chains from achieving their organisational potential and recommends that managers look to break down these ‘communities of design’ barriers.     

Implementing Market Segmentation Strategies in UK Personal Financial Services: Problems and Progress

Most academic research into segmentation in the financial services industry has focused on alternative analytical approaches and base variables; relatively little attention has been paid to implementation issues, despite managementS concerns about the practicality and usefulness of segmentation. Some significant barriers to effective implementation of segmentation have been encountered by major financial services firms. This paper reviews these barriers, and finds that weaknesses in customer data, and the importance of a good fit with the company'S distribution channels, can limit the range of segmentation approaches that a company can adopt, while the organisational context, structure and strategic positioning canfail to support effective segmentation. The paper also considers some of the newer entrants to the financial services industry, and finds that they are making progress in all of these areas.     

The evolving domain of entrepreneurship research

Research on entrepreneurship has flourished in recent years and is evolving rapidly. This article explores the history of entrepreneurship research, how the research domain has evolved, and its current status as an academic field. The need to concretize these issues stems partly from a general interest in defining the current research domain and partly from the more specific tasks confronting the prize committee of the Global Award for Entrepreneurship Research. Entrepreneurship has developed in many sub-fields within several disciplines—primarily economics, management/business administration, sociology, psychology, economic and cultural anthropology, business history, strategy, marketing, finance, and geography—representing a variety of research traditions, perspectives, and methods. We present an analytical framework that organizes our thinking about the domain of entrepreneurship research by specifying elements, levels of analysis, and the process/context. An overview is provided of where the field stands today and how it is positioned relative to the existing disciplines and new research fields upon which it draws. Areas needed for future progress are highlighted, particularly the need for a rigorous dynamic theory of entrepreneurship that relates entrepreneurial activity to economic growth and human welfare. Moreover, applied work based on more careful design as well as on theoretical models yielding more credible and robust estimates seems also highly warranted.     

Justice Climate and Workgroup Outcomes: The Role of Coworker Fair Behavior and Workgroup Structure

Journal of Business Ethics - Research on justice climate demonstrates a consistent effect on workgroup outcomes such as job satisfaction, commitment, and performance. However, little research...     

Knowledge-intensive innovative entrepreneurship integrating Schumpeter,evolutionary economics,and innovation systems

Small Business Economics - This article proposes a novel conceptualization of knowledge-intensive innovative entrepreneurship, which can capture the main characteristics of a vital phenomenon in...     

Economic tactics: Commercial policy and the socialization of African agriculture

Commercial policies in some African countries have come under considerable criticism in recent years and it has become necessary to resolve the problems of existing agricultural marketing forms. An alternative approach to the market liberalization commonly recommended is to intervene in the market so as to achieve its regulation and control and a pricing system which can and will support the socialization of agricultural production in collective farms, maintain incentives for individual producers and encourage state procurement of basic crops. Such market control cannot be achieved without an active commercial policy based on the transformation of marketing institutions, effective forms of market intervention and the devolution of considerable power over pricing and marketing from the national to the local levels.