Salespersons as Internal Knowledge Brokers and New Products Selling: Discovering the Link to Genetic Makeup

Managers increasingly realize the importance of involving the sales force in new product development. However, despite recent progress, research on the specific role of the sales force in product innovation‐related activities remains scarce. In particular, the importance of a salespersons' internal knowledge brokering has been neglected. This study develops and empirically validates the concept of internal knowledge brokering behavior and its effect on selling new products and developing new business, and explores whether a salesperson's internal brokering qualities are determined by biological traits. The findings reveal that salespeople with the DRD2 A1 gene variant engage at significant lower levels of internal knowledge‐brokering behavior than salespeople without this gene variant, and as a result are less likely to engage effectively in new product selling. The DRD4 gene variant had no effect on internal knowledge brokering. Management and future research implications are discussed.     

Design principles of hybrid approaches in new product development: a systematic literature review

Setting the right approach for new product development (NPD) in the presence of uncertainty remains an ongoing debate in innovation management. Stage-gate systems (SGS) and agile methodology (AM) are the dominant approaches. Recently, hybrid approaches (combining SGS and AM) have been proposed. Although these hybrid approaches represent a significant development in NPD, combining them without considering their design principles might lead to contradictory and competing conceptual formulations, thus increasing the difficulty of comparison among studies. Moreover, scholars and practitioners may struggle to understand when, why and how a certain configuration of the NPD process provides the right response to different manifestations of uncertainty. The current literature faces problems regarding the clarity of design principles (e.g. flexibility and adaptability), and this has led to research gaps concerning the uncertainty contingency and outcomes of hybrid approaches. This study combines bibliometric and content analyses to identify four design parameters and principles of NPD hybrid approaches: flexibility, adaptability, velocity and integration. Our findings might help advance the development and comparison of different hybrid approaches.     

Who's pulling the strings? The influence of network structure on standard dominance

Innovative systems and infrastructures require generally accepted common compatibility standards to enable components of such systems to interoperate. In some cases, various standards are developed by competing standards organizations, often resulting in standards battles. This paper focuses on factors that affect the outcome of these standards battles, and, specifically, on the effect of the structure of the industry-wide standards networks on standard dominance. The empirical context is the consumer electronics, telecommunications, and ICT arenas. We conduct a study of 103 standards organizations from 2000 to 2011. We find support for the hypothesis that standards that are supported by standards organizations that have a central position in the industry-wide standards network have a high chance of achieving dominance.     

Negotiations under the threat of an auction

Many takeovers occur after one-on-one negotiations, which suggests a troubling lack of competition. We seek to determine whether acquirers in such friendly deals are truly insulated from competitive pressures. We study two countervailing influences: (1) potential but unobserved latent competition, i.e., the likelihood that rival bidders could appear, and (2) anticipated auction costs when negotiations fail. Using various proxies, we find that latent competition increases the bid premium offered in negotiated deals and that auction costs reduce the premium.     

Portfolio performance gauging in discrete time using a Luenberger productivity indicator

This paper proposes a pragmatic, discrete time indicator to gauge the performance of portfolios over time. Integrating the shortage function (Luenberger, 1995) into a Luenberger portfolio productivity indicator (Chambers, 2002), this study estimates the changes in the relative positions of portfolios with respect to the traditional Markowitz mean-variance efficient frontier, as well as the eventual shifts of this frontier over time. Based on the analysis of local changes relative to these mean-variance and higher moment (in casu, mean-variance-skewness and mean-variance-skewness-kurtosis) frontiers, this methodology allows to neatly separate between on the one hand performance changes due to portfolio strategies and on the other hand performance changes due to the market evolution. This methodology is empirically illustrated using a mimicking portfolio approach (22 and 23) using US monthly data from January 1931 to August 2007.     

Monitoring the future. Building an early warning system for the Dutch Ministry of Justice

To determine the sustainability of the policy, an Early Warning System (EWS) has been developed for the Dutch Ministry of Justice. An EWS is used to monitor various developments and to place them within the perspective of future scenarios. Without actually predicting the future, this makes it possible to determine which scenario is the most relevant at any given moment, allowing the department to adapt its policies. Regular modifications to the EWS make it possible to monitor in the direction of which scenario society appears to be moving. This creates a path to the future with which the sustainability of (new) policies can be tested periodically.     

Nash-equilibria in a heterogeneous oligopoly with fuzzy information

We consider a model of an oligopolistic market with heterogeneous firms and products where neither the cost nor the demand functions are common knowledge. Instead, each firm only has some vague ideas about the price strategies adopted by its competitors which is modelled by a fuzzy set. In analogy to the notion of an "equilibrium of actions and beliefs" we define and characterize a generalized Nash-equilibrium and show its existence under general conditions. Furthermore, the impact of the fuzzy information on the equilibrium outcome is analyzed by means of a comparative static analysis within a particular model framework.Received: 28 May 2002, Accepted: 25 December 2002, JEL Classification: D43, D80, L13We wish to thank Bernhard F. Arnold, the editor Murat Sertel , and two anonymous referees for helpful comments. Of course, we are responsible for all remaining errors.     

Dynamic managerial capabilities: Scale development and validation

Studies on dynamic managerial capabilities still have a rather theoretical nature, and there is great difficulty in finding a valid, reliable instrument to measure this construct. The present study contributes to solving this problem: It aims to develop and validate a scale to measure dynamic managerial capabilities. In this investigation, we develop a scale for three factors related to dynamic managerial capabilities: human capital, managerial cognition (already described in the literature), and relationship networks. The prominent finding in this research is the factor that is referred to here as relationship networks.     

The effect of cash holdings on firm performance in large Italian companies

This paper examines the relationship between cash holdings and performance in Italy over 36 years. Specifically, in light of the presence of conflicting evidence concerning the worth of cash stock, which could lead to a positive effect rather than a negative one, the role of moderating factors that can shape the magnitude of this relationship is investigated. The results show that the value of cash holdings is affected by firm‐specific characteristics, as well as factors related to the institutional context. Although other studies have analyzed moderators one at a time, this is the first work to consider how they jointly work. When the moderators are considered together, some of them become no longer statistically significant while others become even more economically and statistically relevant.