Token entrepreneurs: a review of gender,capital, and context in technology entrepreneurship

ABSTRACT

This article reviews the literature on gender and entrepreneurship in technology to explore individual and contextual factors maintaining the token status of women in this field. It examines how the intersection of gender and context influences participation rates in entrepreneurship, and suggests that the deeply embedded cultural and cognitive associations that frame both technology and entrepreneurship as masculine concepts create barriers for women when these contexts overlap. It offers a framework for research and practice that aids in the analysis of complex multi-level barriers that control access to the forms of capital necessary for initial and continued participation in technology entrepreneurship. Given calls for women to participate more fully in high-growth technology ventures, it highlights the need for research to incorporate broader analytical perspectives that simultaneously examine both the barriers faced by women in these contexts and the factors that systemically sustain them.     

Explaining the Cross‐Section of Stock Returns in Japan: Factors or Characteristics?

Japanese stock returns are even more closely related to their book-to-market ratios than are their U.S. counterparts, and thus provide a good setting for testing whether the return premia associated with these characteristics arise because the characteristics are proxies for covariance with priced factors. Our tests, which replicate the Daniel and Titman (1997) tests on a Japanese sample, reject the Fama and French (1993) three-factor model, but fail to reject the characteristic model.     

Öffentliches und Geheimes

In the second half of 2009, the entire media agenda in Germany was dominated by the swine flu, next to the German Federal Parliament elections. Criticism was voiced in the media against the pharmaceutical industry for lobbying the nationwide swine flu vaccination, which was widely considered nothing but a product of the industry’s lobbying power. In order to avoid the usual interviews with lobbyists, we attempted to apply a new methodological framework approach in analysing lobbying processes and key stakeholders in the public sphere—and outside. Crucial to the diversified approach, which involves quantitative content analysis of media coverage and press releases, are interviews with journalists, lobbyists’ network analysis and internet research on biographies. Although a conspiracy could not be conclusively proven, the results do indicate associations that validate the criticism of the industry’s lobbying activities.     

The leverage of hedge funds

Long–short hedge funds are often very highly levered, despite the costs of leverage that became apparent during the LTCM crisis in 1998 and the more recent episode in 2008. This note explores potential market imperfections that may explain the use of leverage.     

Effect of perceived conflict among multiple performance goals and goal difficulty on task performance

Contemporary performance measurement systems, such as the balanced scorecard, often advocate the use of an array of financial and non‐financial measures. Despite many claimed advantages for these systems, recent research shows that the inclusion of multiple performance measures sometimes has undesirable effects. The present study examines one of the potential problems of implementing these systems; namely, the impact of perceived goal conflict on task performance. Using survey data from employees working in multiple call centres in a telecommunication company, we find that perceived goal difficulty increases perceived goal conflict. Additionally, perceived goal difficulty also has a negative, indirect effect of task performance, through the mediating role of perceived goal conflict. Our results have important implications for both the research literature and the designers of performance measurement systems.     

Modelling Heterogeneity and Uncertainty in Contingent Valuation: an Application to the Valuation of Informal Care

Both the lack of market data and the need to adopt a more holistic approach in the valuation of non‐market activities within health care have pointed towards the use of contingent valuation (CV) methods. However, to date, few studies have employed such techniques to value informal care, despite its provision being an important public policy question. We propose an analytical framework that through the use of random parameters models and respondents' certainty scales can incorporate both unobserved and observed heterogeneity in the CV modelling. This is the first CV study of informal care for Scotland (UK) and a £7.68 per hour value is estimated.     

Single vs. Multiple Discount Rates: How to Limit “Influence Costs” in the Capital Allocation Process*

Most finance textbooks suggest that companies evaluate investment projects using discount rates that reflect both the debt capacity and the unique risks of the project. In practice, however, companies often use their company‐wide WACC to evaluate such investments because of the difficulty of (and subjectivity involved in) estimating the risk of individual projects, and the potential for managerial bias and influence to distort the estimates. This article proposes a practicable method for calculating the cost of capital that produces different discount rates for investment projects with different risks while minimizing the “influence costs” that arise when managers have discretion in the choice of discount rates. The proposed approach makes use of market information (in the form of the firm‐wide costs of debt and equity), thereby limiting managerial discretion, while typically still providing a good approximation of theoretically correct, project‐specific discount rates. The key to the method's effectiveness is its use of a project's debt capacity to define the capital structure weights, where debt capacity is defined by the amount of debt financing the project will support without lowering the firm's credit rating.     

Feedback and the success of irrational investors

We provide a model in which irrational investors trade based upon considerations that have no inherent connection to fundamentals. However, trading activity affects market prices, and because of feedback from security prices to cash flows, the irrational trades influence underlying cash flows. As a result, irrational investors can, in some situations, earn abnormal (i.e., risk-adjusted) profits that can exceed the abnormal profits of rational informed investors. Although the trading of irrational investors cause prices to deviate from fundamental values, stock prices follow a random walk.     

Using urban woodlands and forests as places for improving the mental well-being of people with dementia

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the meaning and use of urban woodlands and forests, and how they can contribute to positive mental well-being of people with dementia, by adopting ethnographic, participatory action research and case study approaches. Qualitative research provided knowledge and understanding about how activities in an urban woodland environment can add value to and benefit the lives of people with dementia living independently. Data were collected from semi-structured, and walk-along interviews, as well as from piloting a programme of activities based in an urban woodland setting . Five male participants with dementia, aged between 52 and 83, and one family carer, took part in the pilot programme, based in Scotland (UK). The findings show how through active use of urban woodlands and forests, people with dementia find their experiences to be meaningful. People with dementia found meaning in the multi-sensory experience of the woodland, in their feeling of self-worth, and in their ability to retain a sense of autonomy and identity. The approach to active use of urban woodlands and forests offers a viable alternative to traditional residential and day care activities, as well as an opportunity to promote the quality of life of people with dementia living in their own homes.