Business Commons^™

Passion Isn't Always A Good Thing: Examining Entrepreneurs' Network Centrality And Financial Performance With A Dualistic Model Of Passion, Violet Ho, Jeffrey Pollack

Management Faculty Publications

We propose a conceptual model that links entrepreneurs' passion, network centrality, and financial performance, and test this model with small business managers in formal business networking groups. Drawing on the dualistic model of passion, we explore the relationships that harmonious and obsessive passion have with financial performance, mediated by network centrality. Results indicate that harmoniously passionate entrepreneurs had higher out‐degree centrality in their networking group (i.e., they were more inclined to seek out members to discuss work issues), which increased the income they received from peer referrals and, ultimately, business income. Obsessively passionate entrepreneurs had lower in‐degree centrality (i.e., they …

The Customer Insight Journey Of Amazing Grace, Pradeep Pant

Asian Management Insights

How do you put consumercentric marketing into action? Make it personal!

For-Profit Social Enterprise: Creating Value For Consumers & Society In The Face Of Competition, Sarah J. Quirk

Honors Scholar Theses

The goal of social enterprises is to attain social, cultural, community, economic, or environmental outcomes. They achieve this by generating revenue from the goods or services they sell. In recent years, social enterprises have grown notably in popularity, number, and profitability worldwide, as the model for social enterprise has been refined. This paper aims to answer the question, what makes for-profit social enterprises successful? Is it their product, price, place, promotion, social mission, the prior success and capital of the social entrepreneur, a cult-like following, or the aspirational nature of socially minded consumers? This thesis will examine real-life social enterprise …

The Affordable Care Act’S Effects On Small Businesses, Alyssa K. Mason

Celebrating Scholarship & Creativity Day (2011-2017)

No abstract provided.

Optimization Of A Small Business's Sustainability Using Life-Cycle Analysis Software And Benefit Corporation Assessment Tools, Zachary Paul Angelini

Student Research Projects

American Bench Craft produces hand-crafted American-made goods that include leather wallets, cardholders, belts, bracelets, etc. Their unique designs have a very specific focus on simplicity, which is the key to making their mission work.

Mission: Quality & Durability

Simple products are more durable. Less parts equals less susceptibility to failure. Simple designs and premium materials make their products truly built to last.

Mission: American Jobs

Their simple design concept allows them to manufacture right here in the USA, manufacture locally and utilize chronically underemployed populations. They are creating American jobs where they are needed the most.

Mission: Environmental Sustainability

The …

Massachusetts Small Business Development Center Network: Boston Regional Office And Minority Business Center, Massachusetts Small Business Development Center Network, Boston Regional Office & Minority Business Center

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

Hosted by the College of Management, we are part of a statewide business assistance program providing FREE one-on-one counsel to entrepreneurs, seeking help with business growth, financing, loan assistance, strategic marketing and operational analysis. Our services are available to the public and members of the University of Massachusetts Boston community, including students, faculty, and staff. We also offer workshops on a variety of topics targeted to the needs of small business.

The Accelerator, Volume 7 Issue 13, Spring 2014, Christa Santos

The Accelerator

No abstract provided.

The Value Of Creating An Innovation Talent Pipeline, Britta Mckenna

Publications & Research

Investing in the innovation pipeline today translates to Illinois business tomorrow. Somewhere between the rise of “STEM” and “staying globally competitive” in a time after Millennials is Generation Z. Gen Z digital natives are now making their way to and through primary and secondary education and we need to be ready to nurture the emerging talents of these and other future innovators. This is particularly important in Illinois where developing – and retaining – top talent will be a key driver of the state’s knowledge-based economy. There is hard work ahead reimagining what education should look like to support this …

Understanding The Characteristics Of The Growth Of Smes In B-To-B Markets In Emerging Economies: An Organizational Ecology Approach, Patricia R. Todd, Rajshekhar G. Javalgi, David Grossman

Business Faculty Publications

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to focus on the determinants that impact the growth of SMEs in B-to-B markets in emerging economies. The objective is to apply the classic model of organizational ecology to examine the characteristics of growth patterns in the B-to-B environment for SMEs in emerging markets, specifically India and China. Application of the model can guide SMEs owners/managers in their effort to successfully expand internationally in turbulent markets characterized by competitive and technological intensity. Design/methodology/approach – An overview of the basics of the organizational ecology model is presented, followed by the description of various …

Common Grounds Café, Michaela Bolotin, Kristina Campano, Samantha Wagner, Amjad Talib

Public & Community Service Student Scholarship

Students participating in an Alternative Spring Break trip to Nicaragua in 2012 focused their exploration on coffee growing and production; they visited a Fair Trade grower, and became interested in developing a longer-term project. Simultaneously, the College’s School of Business began sponsoring an Entrepreneurship Society, while the Feinstein Institute for Public Service and the Smith Hill Community Development Corporation began convening an economic development incubator group as a project of the newly opened Providence College/Smith Hill Annex. These multiple interests coalesced as students, faculty and community came together to open Common Grounds Café.

How Corporations Use Social Media: An Exploratory Study, Victor Khachatryan

Honors College Theses

This paper explores the role of social media in increasing a company’s brand equity and strengthening its customer relationships. The data collected consists of three case studies of major American companies, two interviews with Brazilian entrepreneurs, and a survey conducted to start-up companies in the New York City area. The paper then concludes that the use of social media by businesses, leads to a positive relationship with brand equity and improved customer relationships. Nevertheless, further research is required to see how other factors interact with brand equity and customer relationships to get a better understanding of social media and its …

Analyzing The Dynamics Of The Artisan Fishing Industry And Lapsset Port In Lamu, Kenya, Valerie Rodden

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The LAPSSET project has the potential to severely impact the artisan fishing industry in Lamu. Through the provision of a perception focused survey and a few one on one interviews with artisan fishermen and key stakeholders in the industry, this study creates a more comprehensive understanding of the relationship between the fishing industry and the LAPSSET project. The fishermen of Lamu are most concerned about the lack of communication concerning the port’s activities and the blocking of fishing areas during port construction and operation. In general, there is a great sense of fear surrounding the port and the future of …

High-Impact Women Entrepreneurs In Argentina: A Study Analysed Through The Endeavor Model, Stephanie Soussloff

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

In Latin America and the Caribbean women represent 41.6% of the population active in the economy. Among those women, 15% identify as entrepreneurs. Yet even a smaller percentage are able to become high impact entrepreneurs, whose businesses reach international levels, create jobs and stimulate the economy of their regions.

The organization Endeavor is founded around the principal idea that entrepreneurship is a catalyst for economic development. Endeavor is committed to boosting the impact of entrepreneurs in emerging markets through giving them a support network of experts in their field to help expand their business. In exchange the entrepreneurs are expected …

La Coexistencia De Dos Agriculturas En Argentina Una Mirada A La Vida De Una Granja Familiar: ¿Cómo Sobrevivir Al Lado De Las Grandes Empresas?, Camille Sanchez De La Vega

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Desde los primeros años del siglo XX, el desarrollo de Argentina como país estaba coincidió con el desarrollo de la industria agrícola. Hoy, Argentina es famosa por su papel en el mercado global como exportadora de bienes naturales. No solamente es un país con uno de los niveles más altos de alimentos transgénicos, sino que tiene el título del mayor exportador de producción orgánica en América Latina. Con los dos tipos de agricultura —exitosos pero contradictorios— con un enfoque hacia la exportación, quería entender como esta coexistencia está reflejada en el mercado interno para los bienes naturales.

A través de …

Accelerating Startups: The Seed Accelerator Phenomenon, Susan L. Cohen

Management Faculty Publications

We examine and discuss the seed accelerator phenomenon which has recently received much attention both in the US and across the globe. While accelerators appear to be proliferating quickly, little is known regarding the value of these programs; how to define accelerator programs; the differences between accelerators, incubators, angel investors and co-working environments; and the importance of the various aspects of these programs to the ultimate success of their graduates, the local entrepreneurship ecosystems and the broader U.S. economy.

An Indigenous Women Perspective Of Work And Organisation: The Maya Way, Jennifer Manning, J. Miguel Imas, Paul Donnelly

Conference papers

Western literature in management/organisation studies focuses primarily on gender issues that affect inequalities experienced by women at work. Adopting, in some cases, critical and feminist theoretical positions, the gender debate unfolds questions on the prevailing male discourse that is dominant in management and business organisations. Most of these theoretical assumptions tend to influence, subsequently, the way in which we understand the experiences of women in the developing or under-developed world. That is, these theoretical positions occupy a privileged voice upon which to write, describe and analyse the experiences of women in contexts where these Western discourses seem either alien or …

Coworker Mistreatment In A Singaporean Chinese Firm: The Roles Of Third-Party Embeddedness And Network Closure, Violet Ho

Management Faculty Publications

This study integrates research in social networks and interpersonal counterproductive behaviors to examine the role of third-party relationships in predicting an individual’s susceptibility to coworker mistreatment, and in moderating the relationship between coworker mistreatment and job performance. Third-party embeddedness and network closure are examined in the formal workflow network and the informal liking network. Results obtained from employees in a family-owned Chinese business in Singapore indicate that an individual is more likely to be mistreated by a coworker when both parties are strongly embedded in mutual third-party relationships in the workflow network, and that the individual is less likely to …

2014 Q1 Market Pulse Report, Craig R. Everett

Pepperdine Market Pulse Report

The quarterly IBBA and M&A Source Market Pulse Survey was created to gain an accurate understanding of the market conditions for businesses being sold in Main Street (values $0-$2MM) and the lower middle market (values $2MM -$50MM). The national survey was conducted with the intent of providing a valuable resource to business owners and their advisors. The IBBA and M&A Source present the Market Pulse Survey with the support of the Pepperdine Private Capital Markets Project and the Graziado School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University.

The Domestic Death Of A Global Icon? A Situational Analysis Of The Irish Public House, Gail Cotter Buckley, Angela Wright

Dept. of Organisation & Professional Development Publications

The public house has formed an intrinsic part of the Irish way of life for centuries, but it may soon be gone due to changes in demographics, alcohol consumption, and other variables including psychographic and geographic factors. Changes in Irish society during the rise in affluence characteristic of the Celtic Tiger era, and applicable Government policies have all played a role in altering the Irish pub culture. This research examines the current situation of the public house market in Ireland today with an aim of recommending some viable solutions to this declining industry. Government intervention in the future will be …

Sentimental Drivers Of Social Entrepreneurship: A Study Of China's Guangcai (Glorious) Program, Daphne W. Yiu, William P. Wan, Frank W. Ng, Xing Chen, Jun Su

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Social entrepreneurship plays an important role in local development in emerging economies, but scholars have paid little attention to this emerging phenomenon. Under the theory of moral sentiments, we posit that some entrepreneurs are altruistically motivated to promote a morally effective economic system by engaging in social entrepreneurial activities. Focusing on China's Guangcai (Glorious) Program, a social entrepreneurship program initiated by China's private entrepreneurs to combat poverty and contribute to regional development, we find that private entrepreneurs are motivated to participate in such programs if they have more past distressing experiences, including limited educational opportunities, unemployment experience, rural poverty experience, …

2014 Q1 Private Capital Access Index Report, Craig R. Everett

Pepperdine Private Capital Access Report

The Pepperdine Private Capital Access Index (PCA) is a quarterly indicator produced by the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University, and with the support of Dun & Bradstreet. The index is designed to measure the demand for, activity, and health of the private capital markets. The purpose of the PCA Index is to gauge the demand of small and medium sized businesses for financing needs, the level of accessibility of private capital, and the transparency and efficiency of private financing markets.

[Shane] Farritor, Student Group Help Propel Maker Space Concept, Troy Fedderson

Nebraska Innovation Studio

Shane Farritor, student group help propel Maker Space concept.

A quiet staging area for ongoing NIC construction, the space is reservedfor a proposed Maker Space and the private/public research campus’ new business accelerator. NIC planners and UNL administrators hope the mix bubbles forth into a cauldron of hands-on creativity and innovation.

“That is an area of Nebraska Innovation Campus that is generating a lot of excitement,” said Dan Duncan, NIC’s executive director. “The general idea is to create the Maker Space where individuals can come to work on projects and interact with others, including people who are in a business …

A Parsimonious Instrument For Predicting Students’ Intent To Pursue A Sales Career: Scale Development And Validation, James W. Peltier, Shannon Cummins, Nadia Pomirleanu, James Cross, Rob Simon

Marketing & Entrepreneurship Faculty Publications

Students’ desire and intention to pursue a career in sales continue to lag behind industry demand for sales professionals. This article develops and validates a reliable and parsimonious scale for measuring and predicting student intention to pursue a selling career. The instrument advances previous scales in three ways. The instrument is generalizable across academic settings and is shown to be sensitive to differences across varied course coverage and learning activities. The instrument is parsimonious and offers a high reliability coefficient. Finally, the instrument is validated both before and after exposure to a sales module, thus capturing perceptual and attitudinal changes …

Investigating The Portrayal And Influence Of Sustainability Claims In An Environmental Advertising Context, Shannon Cummins, Timothy M. Reilly, Les Carlson, Stephen J. Grove, Michael J. Dorsch

Marketing & Entrepreneurship Faculty Publications

The ability of consumer judges to identify sustainable messages in environmental advertising and the effect of these messages is explored. A content analysis provides insight into these judges’ perceptions of the depth of environmental advertising messages. An experiment investigates the influence of sustainable messages and includes collection of cognitive response data to evaluate the cognitive dimension of sustainability messages. Content analysis results suggest that sustainability messages may influence how environmental advertisements are perceived. These findings are supported by the cognitive response data, which shows cognitive differences across advertisements, and the experimental manipulation that suggests sustainable ads may be more involving …

Organizational Ingenuity And The Paradox Of Embedded Agency: The Case Of The Embryonic Ontario Solar Energy Industry, Kent Walker Dr., Francine Schlosser Dr., David Deephouse Dr.

Odette School of Business Publications

We examine organizational ingenuity within the paradox of embedded agency where organizational stakeholders are constrained in their behaviors by institutions, yet also influence and change these institutions. In this study organizational ingenuity represents the agency component and institutional constraints the embedded component. We build theory about ingenuity from a four-year case study of the embryonic Ontario solar industry. There were two major institutional constraints, limited grid access and political uncertainty. These led to four ingenuity strategies that emerged at different times and levels of analysis that challenged, complied with, or escaped the constraints. We combine these findings to develop a …

The Accelerator, Volume 7 Issue 14, Winter 2014, Christa Santos

The Accelerator

No abstract provided.

When Does The Devil Make Work? An Empirical Study Of The Impact Of Workload On Worker Productivity, Tom Tan, Serguei Netessine

IT & Operations Management Research

We analyze a large, detailed operational data set from a restaurant chain to shed new light on how workload (defined as the number of tables or diners that a server simultaneously handles) affects servers’ performance (measured as sales and meal duration). We use an exogenous shock - the implementation of labor scheduling software - and time-lagged instrumental variables to disentangle the endogeneity between demand and supply in this setting. We show that servers strive to maximize sales and speed efforts simultaneously, depending on the relative values of sales and speed. As a result, we find that, when the overall workload …

When Do Domestic Alliances Help Ventures Abroad? Direct And Moderating Effects From A Learning Perspective, Hana Milanov, Stephanie A. Fernhaber

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

While the importance of strategic alliances for new venture internationalization is well acknowledged, the effect of domestic partners remains less understood. Building on organizational learning theory's vicarious learning arguments, we suggest that internationally experienced domestic partners positively influence new ventures' international intensity. Moreover, acknowledging that ventures may have multiple learning sources, we argue that the effect is more pronounced when substituting for the lack of new ventures' top management teams' international experience, or when complementing the insights about foreign markets received from foreign alliance partners. The analysis of 194 publicly held new ventures largely supports our hypotheses.

Entrepreneurial Orientation And International Scope: The Differential Roles Of Innovativeness, Proactiveness, And Risk-Taking, Li Dai, Vladislav Maksimov, Brett Anitra Gilbert, Stephanie A. Fernhaber

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

This research integrates the international business and entrepreneurship literatures by examining the independent influences of innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk-taking on the ability of a firm to broaden its scope across international markets. For each dimension of entrepreneurial orientation, a cost–benefit framework is applied to highlight the trade-offs associated with different levels in the internationalization context. Based on a unique dataset of 500 SMEs spanning 10 industries, the results reflect the consequences of being “stuck in the middle” with respect to their strategic posture on innovativeness and proactiveness, but reveal a nuanced role for risk-taking behavior. The non-uniform and non-linear relationships …

Is More Always Better? Risk Trade-Offs Among Internationalizing New Ventures, Stephanie A. Fernhaber, Patricia P. Mcdougall-Covin

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

Purpose

Design/methodology/approach