1,721,048 research outputs found
Venture capital and the delegation of decision authority in startups: an exploratory study
Get PDFWe study the delegation of authority over strategic decisions in startups and how it relates to venture capital (VC) investment through a mixed-methods study. We first show that startups typically centralize decision authority. The extent of delegation is higher if startups are VC-backed. In startups backed by corporate VC investors the aim is to leverage the unique knowledge possessed by entrepreneurial team members in a context characterized by low principal-principal agency costs. In those backed by independent VC investors, the increase in delegation is paired with the emergence of a polyarchy and decoupling between the formal and real organizations. In this situation delegation may serve as a control mechanism aligning the actions of startups with the interests of the VC investors
Internal organization and absorptive capacity in open innovation contexts: the roles of gatekeeping, task specialization, and delegation
Get PDFFirms increasingly face strategic choices in the innovation process concerning how and to what extent they should source knowledge from external parties. We offer new insight into the organizational design aspect of this process. Specifically, we build a model informed by organization theory and organizational economics to examine how firms' returns from absorbing knowledge vary as a function of their choices concerning the specialization of gatekeepers and the delegation of decision-making authority. We compare returns under different organizational configurations and contingencies and derive propositions about how firms should optimally organize to absorb external knowledge. We provide qualitative evidence of how firms organize their external knowledge absorption activities from four "real-life" cases that illustrate the propositions of our model
Signaling in science-based IPOs: The combined effect of affiliation with prestigious universities, underwriters, and venture capitalists
Get PDFThis paper studies the combined effect of affiliation with prestigious universities, underwriters, and venture capitalists on the valuation of biotech ventures at IPO and their post-IPO performance. We argue that affiliation to a prestigious university provides the affiliated firm with a quality signal in the scientific domain. The pure quality signaling effect of the affiliation is isolated from the substantive benefits it provides by performing a difference-in-difference approach based on the scientific reputation of scientists in firms' upper echelons. The signal is stronger the weaker is the scientific reputation of scientists of the focal IPO-firm and is additive to those provided by prestigious venture capitalists and underwriters. Results for a sample of 254 European biotech ventures that went through an IPO between 1990 and 2009 confirm our predictions
The long-term effects of loan guarantees on SME performance
Get PDFWe estimate the treatment effect of guaranteed loans on the growth of a large sample of French small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The nature of our sample allows us to estimate the treatment effect up to 10 years after the treatment and to consider several performance measures and moderating factors. Our findings indicate that beneficiaries of guaranteed loans experience significantly higher growth in sales, employment, and total assets than otherwise similar companies. The effects are long lasting, do not entail a slowdown in productivity growth, are mostly driven by organic growth rather than by external acquisitions, and are larger in firms that are typically more financially constrained (young or small). Guaranteed-loan beneficiaries are also more likely to survive than non-beneficiaries. Our results are consistent across different identification strategies (matching, difference-in-differences, instrumental variable estimation) and control group choices
The governance of entrepreneurial ecosystems
Get PDFThe âentrepreneurial ecosystemâ metaphor is capturing attention in academia, industry, and government. The entrepreneurial ecosystem approach is used in corporate, national, or local contexts, and has grown in prominence given the vital need to transform economies around the creation of innovative ideas, products, services, and technologies. Entrepreneurial ecosystems involve a network, a system, of interactions of individuals and organizations, like financial intermediaries, universities and research institutions, suppliers and customers, multinational companies, or the government. The entrepreneurial ecosystem literature has thus mainly focused on identifying the relevant stakeholders like entrepreneurial firms and entrepreneurs and how they interact with other stakeholders within a more or less defined system. Despite the popularity of the entrepreneurial ecosystem approach, the literature has almost overlooked and largely ignored the governance of entrepreneurial ecosystems. This special Issue of Small Business Economics critically examines issues concerning the governance of entrepreneurial ecosystems
Emergence of new firms: A test of the resource-based view, signaling and behavioral perspectives
Get PDFThe resource-based view, signaling, and behavioral perspectives focus on different theoretical mechanisms through which human capital and the behavioral characteristics of nascent entrepreneurs, in combination with insider and outsider financing, may influence the emergence of new ventures. This work tests the relative explanatory power of these different theoretical perspectives. We estimate a mediation model to disentangle the direct effect of nascent entrepreneur personal characteristics on new firm creation from their indirect effects, mediated by the amount of insider financing committed to new ventures and access to greater outsider financing. Our empirical results are based on data from the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics (PSED II) and improve our understanding of the drivers of new firm creation and their underlying mechanisms. Our findings support the resource-based view and the behavioral perspective in our sample of nascent entrepreneurs, but do not provide evidence of the signaling perspective
The participation of new technology-based firms in EU-funded R&D partnerships: The role of venture capital
No full textGoing Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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