Entrepreneurial and Small Business Operations Commons^™

Research On Extreme Poverty Governance Based On Social Network Analysis, Wenyong Lei

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

In this dissertation, the author goes inside some of China's most remote and poorest villages and tries to reveal the determinants, correlates and strategies to address the gap of existing poverty governance system and the complexity and diversity of poor population. He offers in-depth insights into what the poor people think about poverty with two major indicators, identifies evidence on the feasibility of duel-network embedding strategy to reduce poverty, and explains how diverse groups hit by extreme poverty could develop entrepreneurship relationship with diversified market and available social economic resources. Drawing on examples that take place in Xide County, a …

Taking Leaps Of Faith: Evaluation Criteria And Resource Commitments For Early-Stage Inventions, Phillip H. Kim, Reddi Kotha, Sebastian P. L. Fourné, Kristof Coussement

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Successfully developed academic inventions have the potential to spawn new technological domains, form the basis of thriving business ventures, and improve the well-being of society. However, evaluating whether an early-stage scientific invention truly has such potential is extremely difficult, and financially backing such inventions is highly risky. And yet, organizations and their evaluators still back some of these inventions with resources for further development. We investigate this puzzle to pinpoint how and why evaluators decide to offer resource commitments at early stages, despite the red flags raised using standard evaluation criteria. Many academic inventions need these initial resources to dispel …

The Business Of Accelerating The Acceleration Of Startups, David Wai Lun Ng

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The cross-domain and cross-border aspects of the Business Accelerator sector has resulted in an ecosystem that has seen actors in the space jostle for clear and competitive positioning. The evolution of Business Accelerators as a business entity, seeking to supply positive interventions to the journey of start-ups, is common to all growth and innovation orientated ecosystems. The ability for Business Accelerator managers to demonstrably impact their subject acceleratees positively has been an under-researched area. Against this background is the rising volume of capital being channeled into funding startups due to the widespread drive for innovation led growth which is increasingly …

A Model For Better Social Project Management, Brenda Massetti

Journal of Vincentian Social Action

With environmental degradation and other social ills on the rise, demand for businesses to perform social action is growing (Robertson, 2014). Yet, most Commercial enterprises take a diminutive view of social projects, and many Social enterprises flounder in the harsh realities of commerce (Austin, Stevenson, and Wei-Killern, 2012). To improve all enterprises’ social performance, the paper introduces the Social Project Grid, a dual-factor assessment tool which prioritizes social projects for better managerial oversight. In specific, it compares social projects on their Resource Use and Outcome Clarity to highlight which projects are successful and which are in trouble. Not only is …

Reflective Practice Series: Selected Instructional Models Using Synchronous Video Conferencing Software, Martin W. Sivula

MBA Faculty Conference Papers & Journal Articles

With the vast array of resources available to instructors, one would think that instruction and teaching would yield success for all learners. Now, well into the 21^st century has much changed in the classroom? Certainly, movable desks and chairs, advanced audio and visual equipment, and a plethora of all types of technologies which might be able to enhance training and education. Over the last several decades research on individualized instruction, cognitive science, educational psychology, and multimedia instruction (to name a few) have permeated the literature on instruction. With all the research and the vast array of studies on improving …

Information Seeking Behavior Of Research Scholars At Muet Library & Online Information Center, Jamshoro: A Study, Liaquat Ali Rahoo Mr, Muhammad Ali Khan Nagar, Maryam Kalhoro, Qurat-Ul-Ain Abro, Shadab Kalhoro

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The aim of this paper was to study the behavior of the information seeking by the researcher scholars of the at Mehran University of Engineering & Technology, Jamshoro, Sindh Pakistan. The overall purpose of the research study was to find out the awareness and information requirements by the researcher for the research purposes which were provided by the Higher education commission digital library. The data was collected from 230 researchers with the help of questionnaire through the Google online form. Data was analyzed in SPSS software. Research findings were majority of researchers were use electronics resources, text books and reference …

Book Review: Zero To One, By Peter Thiel, Ammon Kou

Marriott Student Review

This is a book review of Zero to One by Peter Thiel.

Reward-Based Crowdfunding Success: Decomposition Of The Project, Product Category, Entrepreneur, And Location Effects, C. S. Richard Chan, Haemin Dennis Park, Pamkaj Patel, David Gomulya

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We assess the relative importance of project, product category, entrepreneur, and location effects on reward-based crowdfunding success. Applying variance decomposition analysis to a sample of 98,336 crowdfunding projects launched between May 2009 and May 2014 on the Kickstarter platform, we find that agency factors, specifically the project and entrepreneur effects, explain the highest relative variance (over 80% of total variance) across three crowdfunding success outcomes – pledge amount, number of backers, and funding success. Structural factors, specifically product category and location effects, have lower but still significant effects. Our study extends prior variance decomposition studies in strategy and entrepreneurship research …

A Cross-Cultural Examination Of The Effect Of Employer Support On Employee Productivity, Shawn Tuman, Haley Lipton

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

The purpose of this creative, collaborative, capstone project is to conduct a cross-cultural examination of the effect of employer support on employee productivity by compiling, examining, and synthesizing conclusions from existing research. In a world of growing globalization and technological innovation, the speed of productivity is often the cornerstone that differentiates successful businesses from unsuccessful businesses, providing a competitive advantage to the quick while the others fall behind. Often this increased level of efficiency comes at a cost beyond the price of the product and the salary of employees, a deeper, psychological cost. By reviewing research focused in the United …

Firm Structure And Environment As Contingencies To The Corporate Venture Capital–Parent Firm Value Relationship, Varkey K. Titus Jr., Brian Anderson

Department of Management: Faculty Publications

Corporate venture capital (CVC) is a valuable strategic tool associated with numerous innovative outcomes. However, less is known about whether CVC investing creates value for the investing (or parent) firm. Drawing from the attention-based view and contingency theory, we suggest that an increase in firm value from CVC investing is contingent on attentional mechanisms that discipline the selection of new investment opportunities. We posit that increases in firm value associated with CVC investing accrues to firms adopting specific operational structures and operating in particular environmental contexts. We find support for our research model in a sample of 95 companies between …

Good Taste: Expanding Profits And Geographic Horizons Through Social Responsibility, Carly Cassidy

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

Ilusión+, otherwise known as Ilusión Más, is a socially-responsible wine enterprise founded by Pau and Gina Torres, a couple from Tarragona, Spain. In 2013, Pau was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), a motor neuron disease which causes muscles to weaken over time and eventually atrophy (National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke). In Spanish, Ilusión signifies hope and wishful thinking, serving as an optimistic name which embodies the resilient attitude of its owners (Word Reference). Ilusión+ selects wine from Spanish vineyards and distributes them in restaurants throughout the country under their brand and story. The company donates a portion …

Glossary Of Business Evidence, Paul C. Boyd

MBA Faculty Conference Papers & Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Lean Startups And Strategic Management, Joshua Binus, Horatiu Corban, Stephanie Miller, Hans Vanderschaaf

Engineering and Technology Management Student Projects

Slides from a group presentation that offers a lean startup methodology overview, examines challenges and solutions, reviews case studies and discusses lean and strategic management.

The Ambivalent Effect Of Complexity On Firm Performance: A Study In The Global Service Provider Industry, Marcus M. Larsen, Stephan Manning, Torben Pedersen

Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series

Prior literature is ambivalent about whether organizational complexity has positive or negative effects on firm performance. Using rich data on global service providers, we explore this ambivalence by disentangling performance consequences of different types of organizational complexity. We show that complexity arising from the coordination of different services and operations negatively influences profit margins through increased coordination costs, whereas complexity coming from the sophistication of particular services may positively influence margins through informational advantages. We also investigate the moderating effects of process commoditization and client-specific investments. Our findings point to critical performance dilemmas facing global service providers in a highly …

3d Printing – An Insider’S Perspective, Siddharth Sah

The Transdisciplinary STEAM+ Journal

The 3D printing market globally is still at its infancy, - or some might argue that there isn’t really a market yet. The knowledge of 3D printing design is still largely limited to engineering design – not product design. At MakeWhale, we are constantly pushing the boundaries of the application of 3D printing technology to consumer products resulting in a beautiful mix of technology and art.

Factors Driving Financial Inclusion And Financial Performance In Fintech New Ventures: An Empirical Study, Miguel Angel Soriano

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Financial inclusion, or providing access to and active use of affordable financial products to the 2 billion unbanked adults globally, can facilitate individual prosperity, reduce poverty and increase economic development. Digital technologies such as mobile phones, cloud computing, data analytics and blockchain are one of the biggest enablers of financial inclusion by making it economically possible to serve these individuals. This dissertation examined the role of digital technologies in financial inclusion from the perspective of new financial technology (Fintech) ventures serving the unbanked and underbanked. Supported by strategy management theories, I identified key factors that impact the success of these …

Market Analysis, Management Consulting, And Miscommunication, Brian W. Stout

Marriott Student Review

This article attempts to inform the audience of the importance of market analysis in management consulting. The article states that consulting firms can utilize the power of market analysis as they commit to understand technology, collaborate with researchers to conduct action research, and align market strategies within the consulting firm. This article concludes that by doing these steps consulting firms will lead in their market.

Convincing The Crowd: Entrepreneurial Storytelling In Crowdfunding Campaigns, Stephan Manning, Thomas A. Bejarano

Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series

This study examines the structure of entrepreneurial stories in pursuit of mobilizing resources from crowds. Based on a comparative analysis of Kickstarter crowdfunding campaigns, we examine in particular how, across different project types, project histories and potential futures are framed and interlinked in narratives to appeal to funders. We find that projects are narrated in different styles – as ‘ongoing journeys’ or ‘results-in-progress’ – to convey project value. The former style narrates projects as longer-term endeavors powered by creative initial ideas and a bold vision, inviting audiences to ‘join the journey’; the latter narrates projects more narrowly as a progression …

How Hybrids Manage Growth And Social-Business Tensions In Global Supply Chains: The Case Of Impact Sourcing, Chacko G. Kannothra, Stephan Manning, Nardia Haigh

Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series

This study contributes to the growing interest in how hybrid organizations manage paradoxical social—business tensions. Our empirical case is ‘impact sourcing’ – hybrids in global supply chains that hire staff from disadvantaged communities to provide services to business clients. We identify two major growth orientations - ‘community-focused’ and ‘client-focused’ growth - their inherent tensions and ways that hybrids manage them. The former favors slow growth and manages tensions through highly-integrated client and community relations; the latter promotes faster growth and manages client and community relations separately. Both growth orientations address social-business tensions in particular ways, but also create latent constraints …

Knowledge Development Approaches And Breakthrough Innovations In Technology-Based New Firms, Dzidziso Samuel Kamuriwo, Charles Baden-Fuller, Jing Zhang

Management Faculty Publications

Compared to large established firms, technology-based new firms (TBNF) seem well placed to produce breakthrough innovations although questions remain as to their adeptness at subsequent exploitation. Building on the innovation and strategy literatures, the study identifies two different knowledge-development approaches or modes (business models) in TBNFs—internal versus external—and examines their relation to breakthrough innovation and subsequent progression of the product to market. The internal mode assembles knowledge inside the firm to generate its innovations, whereas the external mode relies heavily on alliances to develop and assemble knowledge among firms embedded in a creative network. The study uses a unique panel …

Three Essays On Dynamic Capabilities In The Context Of Innovation, Networks And Entrepreneurship, Ken (Yongjian) Chen

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

A recent study by McKinsey & Company (Benson-Armer, Otto and Webster 2015) found that half the executives they survey rate capability building as one of their firms’ top three priorities. This research also concludes that building capabilities in the domains of strategic marketing and entrepreneurship represents an urgent task in capability management. The importance of capability development and management is also recognized by leading strategic marketing and entrepreneurship scholars (e.g. Moorman and Day 2016; Day and Schoemaker 2016; Teece 2012). These authors suggest that managers demand new ways to help firms compete in today’s fast-changing environment. Dynamic capabilities are considered …

The Mediating Effect Of Absorptive Capacity And Relational Capital In Alliance Learning Of Smes, So-Jin Yoo, Olukemi Sawyerr, Wee Liang Tan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

No business can create all the resources needed to prosper and grow. Collaboration among businesses that possess complementary resources is often necessary for survival and growth. Despite their importance and implications for alliance learning, no empirical study has to date attempted to investigate how the determinants of learning interact with each other, and are linked to the outcomes of alliance learning. This study contributes to the role of learning intent, absorptive capacity, and relational capital in enhancing learning activities and outcomes by empirically examining the relationships among these learning determinants and how they affect innovative SMEs’ technological and nontechnological learning …

Inter-Generational Transitions Of Family Businesses Using Private Equity: Lessons For China And Australia From Chinese Family-Owned Enterprises In Singapore, Pi Shen Seet, Christopher Graves, Wee Liang Tan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This chapter aims to address some of these research gaps by looking at family-owned SMEs (SMFEs). In particular, it examines the considerations of Chinese SMFES in Singapore when they engage with the private equity (PE) sector as part of the overall capital-raising and harvest strategy.

Supply Chain Organizational Infrastructure For Promoting Entrepreneurial Emphasis And Innovativeness: The Role Of Trust And Learning., Divesh Ojha, Jeff Shockley, Chandan Acharya

Publications and Research

Research has argued that inter-organizational trust and learning are critical factors associated with successful supply chain innovation and long-term competitiveness. In this paper, we develop and test a proposed model of supply chain organizational design using survey data collected from 128 decision-makers across diverse sample of supply chain decision-makers across many industries. Our analysis provides evidence that both trust and supply chain learning play important, but distinctive roles in developing an entrepreneurial and innovative supply chains. Moreover, our research findings add critical insight into existing resource-based perspectives of supply chain innovation by illuminating the roles and progression of the different …

Legitimacy Of Local Food In The U.S. Market: Comparative Consumer Perspectives, Ali Asgari

Theses and Dissertations--Agricultural Economics

Measures of legitimacy have been described in terms of four legitimacy types, regulatory, normative, cognitive, and industry. This study provides one of the first and only empirical examinations of legitimacy, particularly with an application to local foods and sheds light on how consumers view various types of legitimacy related to local food. To apply the concept of legitimacy to local foods marketing, we take an empirical survey asking about consumer perspectives of local food, along with different shopping behavior questions.

Using cumulative logit models, results of the legitimacy models suggest that core consumers are more likely to place a high …

Women's Professional Sports: A Case Study On Practices That Could Increase Their Profitability, Danielle H. Mcardle

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Women’s professional sports leagues have often been considered a risky business endeavor. Critics cite low attendance, lack of sponsorships, lack of media rights deals, and numerous other reasons for why women’s professional sports leagues are not profitable. In analyzing the current landscape of women’s professional sport leagues, this paper uses a case study approach to develop a strategy that will highlight lessons learned from past women’s professional sports leagues, current professional sports leagues, sponsorship agreements, fans, social, digital, and mobile marketing strategies, and management practices to show how the business of women’s sports could be made into a more profitable …

Strategy/Enterprise Discourse Bounds In Business Talk., Brendan O'Rourke

Articles

Corporate strategy emerged as large non-owner managed firms became economically important (Knights and Morgan, 1991). Strategy became the substitute for the earlier enterprise discourse, which depended on the dominance, in entrepreneurial capitalism, of owner-managed firms. The discourses of strategy and enterprise developed as separate academic areas and as logics of two very different economic domains. From the late 1970s however, large organizations (Kanter, 1983:27) and governments have been urged to be more entrepreneurial (Klein et al., 2010; Osborne and Gaebler, 1993). Meanwhile, small firms were encouraged to be more strategic (Carr, 2000). This article looks at evidence from small …

Using Sequential Mixed Methods In Enterprise Policy Evaluation: A Pragmatic Design Choice?, Anthony Paul Buckley

Articles

How might policy instruments contribute to indigenous firm growth and how can the effects of these instruments be evaluated at both firm and policy level? This paper illustrates how a mixed methods research design and data analysis strategy can pragmatically address the research questions outlined above. The advantages and challenges of employing quantitative research methods (what happened?) followed by confirmatory qualitative research methods (how and why did it happen?) in a multiphase sequential explanatory design is explored. The data analysis strategy is firstly to analyse the data generated from a ‘before and after’ quasi-experiment (with statistical controls), then data from …

Strategy Formulation For Performance Improvement Of Indian Corrugated Industry: An Application Of Swot Analysis And Qspm Matrix, Mahima Gupta, Charu Shri Dr., Anshu Agrawal Dr.

Journal of Applied Packaging Research

Strategy formulation and implementation is one of the most important tasks that managers in every organization need to perform. This process has emerged with a range of approaches that enjoyed different levels of support and recognition over time. But, somehow in Indian unorganized SMEs, it has not been applied effectively. The aim of the present study is to develop an appropriate strategy for Indian corrugated firms. To reach this object, the study suggests SWOT analysis along with QSPM and SPACE matrix. Vast literature survey was done to explore different factors for SWOT Analysis and then the weight and importance of …

A Mixed-Methods (Quantitative-Qualitative) Study To Identify The Perceived Level Of, Zeky Zardo

Dissertations

Different approaches to developing leaders have been established through various forms of self-assessment, action learning, and education and training activities (Smither et al., 2005). The existing body of research on the impact and success of college and university leadership development programs focuses heavily on undergraduate leadership programs and not graduate-level programs such as the Master of Business Administration (MBA) or the doctorate. The purpose of this mixed-methods (quantitative–qualitative) study was to identify the perceived level of transformational leadership skill development by students enrolled in a doctoral program in organizational leadership. In addition, it was the purpose of this study to …