Business Commons^™

Incorporating Network Theory And Visulatisation Into Cluster Analysis: A Hybrid Methodology Applied To European Ict Clusters, Eoin M. Byrne

Theses

Industry clusters (Porter, 1990; 1998a) have been the focus of numerous studies, economic strategies and policy globally (Ketels et al., 2013). Cluster analysis has focused on identifying and mapping clusters yet there is a need to develop a deeper understanding of how clusters operate and to visualise cluster ecosystems. Linkages and networks are a key component of clusters and thus, network theory has the potential to enrich the literature and analysis of clusters. This research addresses three objectives: 1. Review cluster theory and analysis techniques to investigate the potential to apply network theory and visualisation to cluster analysis; 2. Develop …

Pipes, Pools And Filters: How Collaboration Networks Affect Innovative Performance, Harpeet Singh, David Kryscynski, Xinxin Li, Ram Gopal

Faculty Publications

Innovation requires inventors to have both "new knowledge" and the ability to combine and configure knowledge (i.e. "combinatory knowledge") and such knowledge may flow through networks. We argue that both combinatory knowledge and new knowledge are accessed through collaboration networks, but that inventors' abilities to access such knowledge depends on its location in the network. Combinatory knowledge transfers from direct contacts, but not easily from indirect contacts. In contrast, new knowledge transfers from both direct and indirect contacts, but is far more likely to be new and useful when it comes from indirect contacts. Exploring knowledge flows in 69,476 patents …

Network Evaluation In Practice: Approaches And Applications, Madeleine Taylor, Anne Whatley, Julia Coffman

The Foundation Review

As more funders support networks as a mechanism for social change, new and practical knowledge is emerging about how to build and support effective networks. Based on extensive review of different types of networks and their evaluations, and on interviews with funders, network practitioners, and evaluation experts, the authors have developed an accessible framework for evaluating networks.

This article describes the evaluation framework and its three pillars of network assessment: network connectivity, network health, and network results.

Also presented are case examples of foundationfunded network evaluations focused on each pillar, which include practical information on evaluation designs, methods, and results, …

An Academic Assessment Of The National Performance Network And Visual Artists Network: An Internship Academic Report, Rachel Swan

Arts Administration Master's Reports

This academic report was composed at the conclusion of a 480 hour internship with the National Performance Network/Visual Artists Network (NPN/VAN), summarized in Chapter Two. This report includes NPN/VAN’s mission, history, and organizational structure within Chapter One. Chapter Three is a SWOT analysis, and Chapter Four includes a summary of best practices, highlighting NPN/VAN’s intermediary and network structure. In conclusion, a series of suggestions are offered for further consideration.

The Influence Of Affect On Product Evaluations And Enduring Consumption Enjoyment, James A. Mead

Theses and Dissertations--Marketing and Supply Chain

This dissertation consists of two essays on the influence of affect on consumer intentions and behavioral responses. In the first essay, the influence of negative affect on consumer satiation is investigated. In the second essay, the influence of conceptual fluency, a positive affective response of “feeling right” during advertising evaluations, evoked by the structural properties of memory networks, is identified.

In the first essay, how anticipated consumption variety influences consumers’ affective responses to slow satiation in the present is investigated. Prior research has focused on how cognitive appraisals of present variety influence consumers’ satiation rates. However, in addition to cognitively …

Network Connections In Reit Markets, George D. Cashman, Stuart L. Gillan, David M. Harrison, Ryan J. Whitby

Finance Faculty Research and Publications

Relationships play a central role across the spectrum of real estate transactions. Whether negotiating prices, securing funding, or acquiring permits, knowing the right people provides multiple channels to facilitate deal making. To better understand the role of relationships in real estate markets, we examine how the connectedness of REIT directors is associated with deal making, growth, and profitability. We find strong evidence that REIT connections are positively associated with both deal making and accounting based measures of profitability, however, those relations do not translate into better market returns or higher valuations. One explanation of these somewhat contradictory results is that …

A Network Bidder Behavior Model In Online Auctions: A Case Of Fine Art Auctions, Mayukh Dass, Srinivas K. Reddy, Dawn Iacobucci

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The marketing literature provides a solid understanding of auctions regarding final sales prices and many aspects of the processes that unfold to result in those outcomes. This research complements those perspectives by first presenting a new bidder behavior model that shows the role of emergent network ties among bidders on the auction outcome. Dyadic ties are identified as the bid and counter-bid patterns of interactions between bidders that unfold throughout the duration of an auction. These structures are modeled using network analyses, which enables: (1) a richer understanding of detailed auction processes, both within auctions and across auctions of multiple …

Stability And Endogenous Formation Of Inventory Transshipment Networks, Xin Fang, Soo-Haeng Cho

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper studies a cooperative game of inventory transshipment among multiple firms. In this game, firms first make their inventory decisions independently and then decide collectively how to transship excess inventories to satisfy unmet demands. In modeling transshipment, we use networks of firms as the primitive, which offer a richer representation of relationships among firms by taking the coalitions used in all previous studies as special cases. For any given cooperative network, we construct a dual price allocation under which the network is stable for any residual demands and supplies in the sense that no firms find it more profitable …

Ecosystem Advantage: How To Successfully Harness The Power Of Partners, Peter James Williamson, Arnoud De Meyer

Arnoud DE MEYER

Changes in the global environment are generating opportunities for companies to build advantage by creating loosely coupled networks or ecosystems. Ecosystems are larger, more diverse, and more fluid than a traditional set of bilateral partnerships or complementors. By leveraging ecosystems, companies can deliver complex solutions while maintaining corporate focus. This article describes six keys to unlock ecosystem advantage: pinpointing where value is created, defining an architecture of differentiated partner roles, stimulating complementary partner investments, reducing the transaction costs, facilitating joint learning across the network, and engineering effective ways to capture profit.

Embeddedness And New Idea Discussion In Professional Networks: The Mediating Role Of Affect-Based Trust, Roy Y. J. Chua, Michael W. Morris, Paul Ingram

Roy CHUA

This article examines how managers' tendency to discuss new ideas with others in their professional networks depends on the density of shared ties surrounding a given relationship. Consistent with prior research which found that embeddedness enhances information flow, an egocentric network survey of mid-level executives shows that managers tend to discuss new ideas with those who are densely embedded in their professional networks. More specifically, embeddedness increases the likelihood to discuss new ideas by engendering affect-based trust, as opposed to cognition-based trust. Implications for network and creativity research are discussed.

Essays On Mergers And Acquisitions, Marcin Krolikowski

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation includes two essays that examine mergers and acquisitions. In the first essay we examine how pay-for-performance influences the quality of merger decisions before and after Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX). Pay-for performance has a significant positive effect on acquirer returns of 0.9% pre-SOX and 1.1% post-SOX around the three day event window. Bidders with high pay-for-performance pay a 23.3% lower merger premium in listed target acquisitions. The positive effect of pay-for-performance is more important for public target acquisitions overall, for small acquirers pre-SOX, and for large acquirers post-SOX. In the long-run, bidders with high pre-merger pay-for-performance experience 27.6% higher returns after …

Friends And Foes: The Dynamics Of Dual Social Structures, Maxim Sytch, Adam Tatarynowicz

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper investigates the evolutionary dynamics of a dual social structure encompassing collaboration and conflict among corporate actors. We apply and advance structural balance theory to examine the formation of balanced and unbalanced dyadic and triadic structures, and to explore how these dynamics aggregate to shape the emergence of a global network. Our findings are threefold. First, we find that existing collaborative or conflictual relationships between two companies engender future relationships of the same type, but crowd out relationships of the different type. This results in (a) an increased likelihood of the formation of balanced (uniplex) relationships that combine multiple …

Via Francigena Mountain Itineraries: The Case Of Piacenza Valleys, Stefania Cerutti, Ilaria Dioli

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

Religious tourism has experienced a strong growth in recent years. It represents a complex and articulate phenomenon, in which the reasons and proposals related to the devotional and personal sphere are combined with a series of innovative opportunities that help reach a depth knowledge of a territory. The religious motive often means that pilgrims travel along specific routes to visit a number of shrines or even to complete lengthy itineraries. Increasingly, purely religious motives are becoming mixed with more secular forms of religious tourism, which often centre around specific religious sites. In this perspective, faith itineraries can be interpreted as …

The Power Of The Weak, Martin Gargiulo, Gokhan Ertug

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Weak organizational actors can overcome the consequences of their dependence by securing the control of valuable resources or by embedding dependence relationships into social networks. While these strategies may not eliminate the underlying dependence, they can curtail the ability or the willingness of the stronger party to use power. Embedding strategies, however, can also have unintended consequences. Because the network structures that confer power to the weak are inherently more stable, they can persist beyond the point of being beneficial, trapping weak actors into unsuitable network structures. The power of the weak can thus become the weakness of the strong.

Exploring The Locus Of Invention: The Dynamics Of Network Communities And Firms' Invention Productivity, Maxim Sytch, Adam Tatarynowicz

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Departing from prior research analyzing the implications of social structure for actors' outcomes by applying either an ego network or a global network perspective, this study examines the implications of network communities for the invention productivity of firms. Network communities represent dense and nonoverlapping structural groups of actors in a social system. A network community lens helps identify new ways to study firms' access to diverse knowledge inputs in a dynamic system of interorganizational relationships. Specifically, we examine how the membership dynamics of a network community affect the invention productivity of member firms by either enabling or constraining access to …

Local Government Service Systems Improvement: Exposing The Social Networks, Matthew Pepper, Andrew Sense

Faculty of Business - Papers (Archive)

Using a local government (LG) case study, this paper describes and qualitatively explores the value and use of social network analysis (SNA) in creating a rich environment for service network innovation and development. The case study analysed manages regional planning development applications and involves a complex social network. The study underpins the view that in LG service environments, mechanistic models for systems improvement are on their own inadequate. SNA constitutes an essential complementary development framework underpinning continuous innovation through human and social capital development. Findings presented are profound for local government and multiple service contexts and argue for a greater …

A Distributed Consensus Algorithm For Decision Making In Service-Oriented Internet Of Things, Shancang Li, George Oikonomou, Theo Tryfonas, Thomas M. Chen, Li Da Xu

Information Technology & Decision Sciences Faculty Publications

In a service-oriented Internet of things (IoT) deployment, it is difficult to make consensus decisions for services at different IoT edge nodes where available information might be insufficient or overloaded. Existing statistical methods attempt to resolve the inconsistency, which requires adequate information to make decisions. Distributed consensus decision making (CDM) methods can provide an efficient and reliable means of synthesizing information by using a wider range of information than existing statistical methods. In this paper, we first discuss service composition for the IoT by minimizing the multi-parameter dependent matching value. Subsequently, a cluster-based distributed algorithm is proposed, whereby consensuses are …

Social Networks Among Auction Bidders: The Role Of Key Bidders And Structural Properties On Auction Prices, Mayukh Dass, Srinivas K. Reddy, Dawn Iacobucci

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Auctions have been studied extensively as an economic marketplace. The economist’s focus is on modeling final sales prices, but the processes that give rise to those outcomes are rarely studied in great detail. This research is intended to provide that complementary perspective. We show how the interactions between bidders in an auction unfold in a dynamic pattern of bids and counter-bids, and thereby over the duration of an auction, create a network structure. The auction network contributes significantly to models of price dynamics and the network predicts final sales prices better than economic (non-network) indicators alone. In addition, network analyses …

Corporate Or Network Governance? The Case Of The Italian Productive Chains And Their Scaffolding Finance Approach., Guido Max Mantovani, Teresa Guidone

The Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance

We investigate and find out the inner differences between stand-alone firms and those participating to Productive Chain Networks (PCNs) as far as ownership and corporate governance characteristics are concerned. PCNs are typical Italian economic realities made of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) which behave like a unique meta-firm. Different clusters are found from an empirical analysis: firms outside PCNs, leaders in PCNs and suppliers participating to PCNs. The clusters differentiate on corporate governance practices and the consequent capability to attract funding from financial institutions. The inner differences in governance structure relate to the underpinnings of the competitive advantage of the …

Private Debt Syndicates: Governance, Networks, And Syndicate Structure, William R. Mccumber

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

I examine the primary market for syndicated private credit agreements to U.S. firms within the context of contract theory with information asymmetries between contracting parties in a repeated game. Specific governance mechanisms determine a firm's cost of borrowing in syndicated credit agreements. Firms with governance mitigating agency risk between stakeholders, i.e. independent boards, strong shareholder monitoring, and greater CEO pay-performance sensitivity, enjoy lower borrowing costs. The interests of creditors and shareholders diverge with regard to external governance. Lenders charge higher spreads to firms at greater risk of acquisition and reward stronger firms with price concessions when they possess staunch anti-takeover …

Banking Records, Business And Networks In Colonial Sydney, 1817-24, Leanne Johns, Simon Ville

Simon Ville

Examining accounting transactions between depositors in the first accounts ledger of the Bank of New South Wales contributes to our knowledge of early Australian colonial businesspeople and their business activities. A social network analysis framework is applied to the transactions to disclose business networks and prominent individuals in the networks. The analysis seeks to ascertain the importance of these people to commerce and the significance of their networks in facilitating commercial relationships in a business environment fraught with uncertainty. The results illustrate the importance of networks to colonial trade and mercantile activity, especially for smaller scale businesspeople.aehr_348

Cultural Contradictions Of The Anytime, Anywhere Economy: Reframing Communication Technology, Nikhilesh Dholakia, Detlev Zwick

Nikhilesh Dholakia

Technology-aided ubiquity and instantaneity have emerged as major goals of most information technology providers and of certain classes of users such as “road warriors”. New mobile technologies promise genie-in-a-bottle type near-magical qualities with anytime, anywhere access to information and services. While the complex science, systems, and economics of such technologies receive considerable attention from industry executives and researchers, the social and cultural aspects of these technologies attract less attention. This paper explores the oft-contradictory promises and pitfalls of anytime, anywhere technologies from a cultural standpoint. It makes suggestions for reinterpreting these technologies for greater human good.

An Exploration Of The Motivations Behind Committee Membership In Food Networks, Denise O'Leary, Mary Rose Stafford

Conference papers

Food Tourism has been recognised as a fast growing niche area where Ireland can gain competitive advantage. In recognition of the importance of collaboration among diverse stakeholders in the development of food tourism, networks have been identified as essential. This article presents findings from research conducted with three networks and reveals the motivations for committee membership. Data was gathered in 2012 through participant observation and interviews with steering committee members on three food networks using an action research approach.

A framework for examining motivations for collaboration is offered in this article which will contribute to effective network management. Motivations are …

Measuring Dimensions Of Network Functioning: The Knowhow2go Network Survey, Tania Jarosewich, Nushina Mir, Linda Simkin

The Foundation Review

· As foundations more often encourage networks and other interorganizational strategies, they need tools to measure network effectiveness and outcomes. Gathering network members’ perspectives on their engagement with the network can provide insights and avenues for improvement.

· This article describes a network survey that was created for Lumina Foundation’s KnowHow2GO initiative, which focused on strengthening college access networks.

· The network survey measures five dimensions of effective networks: network management; sustainable service systems; data-driven decision making; policy and advocacy; and knowledge development and dissemination.

· The network survey provided useful information for the foundation, initiative partners, technicalassistance providers, network …

A Matter Of Leadership: Connecting A Grantmaker's Investments In Collaborative Leadership Development To Community Results, Julia D. O’Brien, Jennifer N. Littlefield, Victoria Goddard-Truitt

The Foundation Review

· Foundations are increasingly supporting cross-sector collaboratives that focus on developing collaborative leadership skills, in addition to strengthening collaborative accountability. This article tests the Theory of Aligned Contributions change model, as implemented by the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Leadership in Action Program.

· Path analysis results show that grantmakers can support cross-sector collaboratives by providing skilled implementation teams that promote public and individual accountability and build strong collaborative leadership skills. Through this support, collaboratives develop effective strategies that affect important social issues.

· This research sheds light on how grantmakers can fund and encourage a process for cross-sector community members …

Getting To Collective Impact: How Funders Can Contribute Over The Life Course Of The Work, Douglas Easterling

The Foundation Review

· Foundations have a long tradition of convening and funding collaborative groups with the hope that this will lead to large-scale impact.

· Although funder-driven collaboration sometimes leads to breakthrough solutions, foundations have also pushed the participating organizations into artificial, awkward, and unsustainable efforts.

· This article argues that funders should support naturally emerging networks and should tailor their support to match the network’s stage of development.

· A five-stage developmental model is introduced and illustrated through a case study of the Central Appalachian Network (CAN).

· Over CAN’s 20-year history, a succession of regional and national foundations have played …

Developing Food Tourism Networks: A Practical Manual, Mary Rose Stafford, Denise O'Leary

Reports / Surveys

There is no one‘right’way to collaborate to develop food tourism but the aim of this manual is to provide you with advice on good practice illustrated by case studies from home and abroad. The advice provided is based on research with three committees based in Ireland who were directly or peripherally involved in developing food tourism, as well as decades of research on collaboration, networks, tourism and food tourism. Throughout the manual are exercises which will help apply this advice to your region and circumstances, key facts which provide evidenced based research information and insights from members of the three …

Only Connect: How An Investment In Relationships Among Social Change Leaders Is Changing Them, Their Organizations, And Their City, Stefan Lanfer, Patricia Brandes, Claire Reinelt

The Foundation Review

· After years of leading social-sector organizations in an environment where competition is more the norm than collaboration, many gifted leaders are near burnout, unable to maximize their gifts. Since 2005, the Barr Fellowship has been changing that in Boston.

· This network of leaders, created by the Barr Foundation, is based on the hypothesis that recognizing talented leaders and investing in their personal growth and connections with one another will result in individual, collective, and city transformation.

· A longtime funder of networks, Barr designed the fellowship as a “connectivity” network, where collective actions and shared agendas might emerge …

Inventory Valuation, Company Value, And The Uncertainty Principle, Catherine Whelan, Simone Kelly, Ray Mcnamara, Jasper Verkleij

Ray McNamara

Extract:One of the key elements to the operation of capital markets is information efficiency (Ball and Brown 1968). Both the IASB and the FASB frameworks emphasize decision usefulness, particularly to investors in capital markets, as the primary focus of general purpose financial statements. While theoretically, market values are determined by estimating discounted cash flows (Copeland, Weston et al. 2005; Brealey 2007), practical observations suggest a role for accounting information in the valuation process. Market information suggests that practitioners use the accounting performance measure “earnings” for firm valuation and determination of share prices.

Inventory Valuation, Company Value, And The Uncertainty Principle, Catherine Whelan, Simone Kelly, Ray Mcnamara, Jasper Verkleij

Simone Kelly

Extract:One of the key elements to the operation of capital markets is information efficiency (Ball and Brown 1968). Both the IASB and the FASB frameworks emphasize decision usefulness, particularly to investors in capital markets, as the primary focus of general purpose financial statements. While theoretically, market values are determined by estimating discounted cash flows (Copeland, Weston et al. 2005; Brealey 2007), practical observations suggest a role for accounting information in the valuation process. Market information suggests that practitioners use the accounting performance measure “earnings” for firm valuation and determination of share prices.