1,720,973 research outputs found
Identity and Resource Mobilization in New Ventures: A Model of Venture Identification
No full textThesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2012This research adopts an identity perspective in examining the mobilization of resources for new ventures. The proposed conceptual model integrates organizational identity theory and individual identity theory to outline how the identity of an individual resource provider interacts with the identity of a new venture in the process of mobilizing resources for the venture. The concept of venture identification, which stems from the alignment of the entrepreneurial identity of a new venture and the individual identity of a resource provider, is offered as a key predictor of the allocation of resources to a new venture. I outline the cognitive and affective mechanisms underlying the process of venture identification, and describe how these mechanisms foster perceptions of venture attractiveness. I develop an instrument to measure entrepreneurial identity and apply it to examine whether identity alignment between a venture and resource provider is related to resource mobilization. The findings suggest that resource providers are more inclined to support new ventures that reflect an entrepreneurial identity similar to their individual identity. Under conditions of high uncertainty, the relationship between venture-resource provider identity matching and resource provider support for a new venture increases. This research contributes to the literature on organizational identity by providing a framework for classifying and analyzing entrepreneurial identity. By modeling resource mobilization as a two-sided matching process with identity as a connecting construct, it provides a more complete and nuanced view of the mechanisms that facilitate resource acquisition in entrepreneurship
Three Essays on A Dynamic View of Strategic Positioning and Audience Evaluations
No full textThesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2021A firm’s current strategic position in relation to its past and its peers is a major determinant of how audiences evaluate it. Using three distinctive but related studies, I explore how audience evaluations are influenced by a firm’s positioning: (1) vis-Ã -vis its past (change in firm identity), (2) in relation to multiple categorical benchmarks, and (3) relative to audiences’ heterogeneous predispositions and idiosyncratic evaluation schemas. I conduct my empirical analysis in the context of security analysts’ coverage decisions and investment recommendations of publicly listed U.S. firms from 1997 to 2018. I apply various text analysis and topic modeling techniques on firms’ 10-K filings to measure a firm’s positioning over time and in relation to other firms.In the first study I examine how change to a firm’s identity claims may affect its legitimacy. I posit that change in identity claims could render a firm ambiguous and uncertain for its audiences and thus result in a loss of legitimacy. I further hypothesize that the negative effects of change in identity claims are moderated by the direction of change and environmental heterogeneity, such that the effect on legitimacy is stronger when, as a result of change, firms become less similar to their peers, and in environments with low degree of heterogeneity. I found empirical support for my hypotheses.
In the second study, I explore the effects of similarity to category exemplars for typical and atypical firms. I argue that similarity to a category exemplar enhances a firm’s legitimacy and recognizability by signaling association with a well-known category member. Exemplar similarity, however, also increases the chances of being compared against a high performing firm. Drawing upon the mechanisms of association and comparison, I hypothesize an inverted U-shaped relationship between exemplar similarity and firm market value for typical firms, and a U-shaped relationship for atypical firms. This hypothesis was supported by my empirical analysis.
In the third study, I explore optimal positioning strategies in contexts where audiences have heterogeneous predispositions and evaluation schemas. I show that, given the premise of audience heterogeneity, firms can gain an audience composition premium by positioning themselves such that they are evaluated by audiences with a favorable predisposition toward them. I show how a family of machine learning algorithms—i.e., recommender systems—could be utilized for predicting audiences’ individualized predispositions toward different firms and gaining higher audience evaluations through more optimal positioning strategies. My empirical analysis provides support for my hypotheses.
This dissertation provides a more dynamic understanding of strategic positioning and its effects on audience evaluations. The first study contributes to research on the intersection of organizational identity and firm legitimacy by incorporating the effects of change in a firm’s identity claims on audiences’ judgments regarding firm legitimacy. The second study contributes to optimal distinctiveness research by introducing the notion of dual benchmark settings and investigating some intricate relationships between firm positioning relative to category prototypes and exemplars and firm performance. The third study contributes to management research on audience evaluations by incorporating the premise of audience heterogeneity and introducing the notion of an audience composition premium as a parsimonious construct referring to the gain that accrues to a firm based on the composition of the audience evaluating it
Essays on High-Growth Entrepreneurial Firms: Evidence from Unicorn Ventures
No full textThesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2022Previous management, finance, and entrepreneurship theories have paid less attention to unicorn ventures. The recent studies only provide an incomplete understanding of unicorn ventures as they do not systematically explain how they are different from the existing established firms or smaller nascent ventures. This dissertation explores the unicorn ventures’ unique distinctiveness in terms of media legitimization, resource acquisition, and venture growth and scaling. To do so, I summarize the previous literature on the phenomenon of unicorn ventures. I suggest exploratory research on unicorn ventures to understand the factors influencing scaling speed to unicorn venture status. Also, I examine unicorn ventures’ financial resource acquisition at Initial Public Offering, comparing unicorn ventures with non-unicorn ventures going public in the North American stock exchanges between 2011 and 2018. I suggest that unicorn ventures experience a greater underpricing than other firms because of media uncertainty stemming from the high expectations surrounding the venture’s future performance
Community-Based Financing: Entrepreneurial Resource Acquisition in the Age of Disintermediation
No full textThesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2018Theories of resource acquisition generated by observing how early-stage ventures attain financial capital from professional investors may not apply to increasingly prevalent online financing settings such as crowdfunding, presale platforms, and initial coin offerings. This dissertation explores how entrepreneurs attain financial capital from distributed backers with diverse motivations and incentives in exchange for future offerings in the crowdfunding setting. Through a longitudinal analysis of eight crowdfunding campaigns, I induct a process framework of community-based resource acquisition to contribute to existing theories of nascent venture legitimacy. I then empirically analyze why entrepreneurs choose not to reveal signals of accomplishment relating to education, professional background, and entrepreneurial experience in their efforts to persuade crowds to contribute financial capital to uncertain entrepreneurial endeavors. This analysis contributes to the existing literature on signaling in entrepreneurship
From mass production to mass customization: The case of the National Industrial Bicycle Company of Japan
No full textBy means of a detailed study of the National Industrial Bicycle Company of Japan (NIBC), Suresh Kotha examines the dynamics of implementing mass customization in a firm that pursues both mass production and mass customization in two different factories. NIBC reaps superior returns by employing a 'system' which increases interaction between the mass production and mass custom factories and encourages knowledge creation. The author then considers the most important external (industry level) and internal (firm level) conditions which are necessary to successfully pursue mass customization, and points out that the interactions and interrelationships between them are important to a successful outcome too.
Going 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
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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