Economic and Business Review (EBR)
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An Entrepreneur’s Perspective on Entrepreneurial Recycling
No full textWe propose new insights into entrepreneurial recycling, focusing on the entrepreneur’s perspective on the role of recycling. We define entrepreneurial recycling as the process by which entrepreneurs share, receive, and transform human, social, organizational, and financial capital throughout the entire entrepreneurial lifecycle: entry, growth and exit. However, research on this topic remains fragmented and underdeveloped. We applied a qualitative, interpretive, and inductive lens to explore the lived experience of six entrepreneurs in order to conceptualize entrepreneurial recycling and understand the implications for entrepreneurial theory and practice. We argue that when entrepreneurs recycle, they trigger a reciprocal trust loop with benefits for receivers and givers involved in recycling and the entrepreneurial ecosystem, the region and the national economy
Triggers of Different Types of Firm Growth
No full textAuthors define and explain firm growth as its transition from current position to short-term or long-term equilibrium motivated by profit maximisation. They allocate growing firms into six groups according to their growth type based on different dimensions of firm growth, i.e. growth of labour, growth of capital, growth of the volume of business, and growth of profit. Given that the typology of growing firms employed for the purpose of this paper is based on microeconomic theory, the triggers and their hypothesised relevance in explaining short-term and long-term growth patterns are also grounded in microeconomic theory. Accordingly, the authors study growth triggers in the form of the firm’s technical and allocative (in)efficiency, its disequilibrium market position within a respective industry and the industry’s market position relative to other industries. They thus assume that firm growth is either based on the utilization of firm’s internal resources or is a result of favourable market conditions and hypothesize that the probability of a firm belonging to a particular type of growth is explained (i) with firm’s internal efficiency, (ii) those market conditions that can be altered by the decisions adopted by management and (iii) those market conditions that are independent from the actions of management. The authors explore these triggers of three types of short-term growth, long-term growth, unsuccessful growth and downsizing, using data for 41,529 Slovenian firms in the 2007–2012 period. Results show that firm growth in Slovenia exhibits theoretically expected links between growth types and their triggers and also have relevant managerial implications
The Characteristics and Role of Intangible Capital in Central-Eastern Europe, the Balkans and in the Mediterranean
No full textEthically Minded Consumer Behavior of Apparel: An Examination of Antecedents and Consequences
No full textThis research examines the ethically minded consumer behavior (EMCB) and its antecedents and consequences in the context of ethical clothes. Its objective is to test the relationships among the reasons for and against buying, subjective knowledge, EMCB and intention to purchase ethical clothes. The authors use survey data from 280 consumers to test the conceptual model. Support is provided for the majority of the hypothesized relationships: reasons for buying and subjective knowledge positively and reasons against buying negatively affect EMCB, and EMCB in turn positively influences the intention to purchase. Additionally, reasons against buying decrease the intention. The study also discusses implications for companies
Innovation and Productivity: Is Learning by Doing Over?
No full textLabour productivity is one of the key measures of economic performance. It represents the total volume of output produced per unit of labour. This paper examines the influence of business investments in research and development and education on labour productivity using system dynamics modelling. The results reveal that investments in education and training activities generate higher labour productivity growth. The impact of innovations largely depends on their diffusion and adoption that require educated and trained users. The new industrial era makes learning by doing quietly disappear and demand a great flexibility of workers and their ability to rapidly acquire new and master the existing knowledge
Will Blockchain Really Impact Your Business Model? Empirical Evidence from Slovenian SMEs
No full textIn this paper, we use the widely popular business model canvas, which was previously adapted for the blockchain environment, to assess the experiences and perceptions of Slovenian small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) pertaining to blockchain technologies. The results reveal that SMEs expect applications built on blockchain technologies to have a highly positive effect on numerous aspects of their business model. This positive evaluation is even stronger among companies that already have experience with blockchain technologies
Intangible Assets and Their Impact on Economic Performance
No full textThe paper introduces the topic of intangible assets. It describes the evolution of the concept of intangible assets and the role of these assets in today’s economy. The importance of intangible assets is highlighted through many quantitative estimates of the impact that intangible assets have on economic performance. After reviewing research carried out mainly in the Western economies, the paper concentrates on the research covering the size and impact of intangible investment in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) and Balkan countries. Moreover, the focus shifts to the firm level where the management of intangible assets faces several challenges that range from identification and valuation of intangible assets to leadership of knowledge-intensive firms. Progress at all levels is to some extent hampered by the lack of adequate data, which should be addressed by establishing a standard definition and ensuring more data on intangibles within financial reporting. Bold steps should therefore be made towards better measurement of intangible investment and better use of this source of productivity growth
Exploring the Strategic Elements of Backers’ Persuasion in Reward-Based Crowdfunding
No full textIn this paper we investigate the strategic elements that project founders\u27 use in reward-based crowdfunding campaigns to achieve a higher level of persuasion. Exploration of these elements not only provides insights into an entrepreneur\u27s experience with crowdfunding but also provides material for comparing results reported by other (quantitative) studies. We conducted an empirical study with 13 Kickstarter project founders through in-depth, semi-structured interviews which were analysed through a reflexive thematic analysis approach. Drawing from our findings, we propose four strategic elements that founders use to persuade backers and achieve success drawing from individual-level experiences and observations
Determinants of Country-Level Employee Overqualification: A Configurational Approach
No full textWe build on the configurational approach to identify patterns of macro contextual factors leading to high country-level employee overqualification. We differentiate between subjective and objective employee overqualification and establish that each is caused by different configurations of macro factors. We also identify country-level overqualification archetypes and link specific countries with respective archetypes. We find that a country’s non-vocational education system is a necessary condition for high objective overqualification, while objective overqualification itself is not a necessary condition for perceived overqualification. We discuss theoretical implications and offer policy implications
Bibliographic Measures of Top-Tier Finance, Information Systems, and Management Science Journals
No full textoai:www.ebrjournal.net:home-1001Purpose: Faculty research is frequently the basis of pay, tenure, and promotion decisions in the university arena. Meanwhile, perceptions regarding the quantity and quality of the research produced by a faculty is often the basis of departmental, college, and university reputation. The journal in which research findings are published is often used to assess the overall research quality. In order to better benchmark journal quality, this report provides findings of a meticulous investigation of leading journals in the finance, information systems and management science disciplines. It examines four different citation-based measures of quality and four journal characteristics that are exogenous to the quality of any individual piece of research. In unison, these investigative paths provide a clearer understanding of journal quality across the business realm, and hence of the quality of research appearing in business journals. Design: This study assists in the development of an accurate perception regarding business research through a careful analysis of the popular Journal Citation Reports (JCR) impact factor across leading journals in three diverse business disciplines. By considering three newer journal quality metrics, a.) SCImago Journal Rank (SJR), b.) Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP), and c.) Percentage of articles cited, this research builds on past research. Top-tier journals in finance, information systems, and operations research and management science (referred to here as “management science ”) are compared to evaluate the consistency of these measures across disciplines. The differences in journal characteristics and their impact on the citation-rate based measures of quality are also analyzed. Further, the potential impact of a discipline-based variation in the acceptance rate, issue frequency, the time since journal inception, and total reviewers are put forth as additional potential exogenous factors that may influence the perception of the overall journal quality. T-tests are applied for discipline comparisons, while correlation and multiple regression are employed in the analysis of journal characteristics.
Findings: There is a significant difference in the JCR impact measures of high-quality finance and management science journals versus high-quality information systems journals. However, only the JCR measures for finance journals correlate with a variety of journal-specific factors, including the journal\u27s acceptance rate and frequency of issue. The SJR measures for finance and management science journals are, on the other hand, consistently higher than information systems journals, though the SJR value of any individual journal can be quite volatile. Most importantly, finance and management journals also report significant relations between the SJR measures and the journal\u27s acceptance rate and year of initial issue. By comparison, the SNIP metric rates suggest that information systems and management science journals have higher quality. Moreover, underscoring the SNIP metrics for both the base years of the current study, articles in leading information systems and management journals are cited over twelve percentage points more than those in finance journals. Overall, results show that given the metric, the measured variance in the quality of finance, information systems, and management science journals is correlated with the identified journal-specific factors. Research limitations: The present research is limited to three business disciplines, making the examination of journals in other business disciplines a logical extension of it. Whereas this research takes journal quality as fixed, one could also evaluate a quality measures reaction to a variation in journal characteristics (i.e. changes in acceptance rates). Furthermore, one could include other measures of journal quality, comprising the h-index or the more recently-released CiteScore metric. Such research would not only build on the present research, but also improve the accuracy of scholarly outlets and consequently the research quality. Practical implications: Discipline-specific traits should be considered, and adjusted for, when making inferences about the long-term value of recently-published research. Our investigation demonstrates that citation-based research measures and journal-specific factors vary systematically across disciplines, which is why discipline-specific differences in journal characteristics, leading to the differences in citation-based quality measures, need to be considered, when making inferences about the long-term value of recently-published research. As a result, this research has significant implications for the basis upon which recommendations regarding salary adjustments, retention, and promotion are made. Social implications: Research quantity and quality are two hallmarks of leading research institutions. Assessing research quality is very problematic, because its definition has changed from being based on the review process (i.e. “blind refereed”) to currently standing on acceptance rates and impact factors. Furthermore, the impact factor construct has been a lightning rod of controversy among researchers and administrators. Even journals themselves argue over which metric to employ, in the end supporting those putting them in the best light. This research assesses how impact factors and journal characteristics, which may influence the impact factors, vary by business discipline. The research is especially important and relevant to the authors who separately chair faculty departments that include finance, information systems, and management science, and are therefore in roles requiring an assessment of faculty research productivity, including quality.
Originality/value: This study is a detailed analysis of bibliographic aspects of the top-tier journals in three quantitative business areas. In addition to the popular JCR, SJR, and SNIP measures of performance, our analysis studies the seldomexamined percentage of articles cited metric. articles-citation metrics. A deeper understanding of citation-based measures is obtained through an evaluation of changes in how journals have been rated on these metrics over time. Our research shows firstly, that there are discipline-related systematic differences in both citation-based research measures and journal-specific factors, and secondly, that these discipline-specific traits should be considered when making inferences about the long-term value of recently published research. Furthermore, discipline-specific differences in journal characteristics, leading to the differences in citation-based quality measures, should in any case be considered when making personnel and remuneration decisions