Toward a process theory of entrepreneurship: revisiting opportunity identification and entrepreneurial actions

This dissertation studies the early development of new ventures and small business and the entrepreneurship process from initial ideas to viable ventures. I unpack the micro-foundations of entrepreneurial actions and new ventures’ investor communications through quality signals to finance their growth path. This dissertation includes two qualitative papers and one quantitative study. The qualitative papers employ an inductive multiple-case approach and include seven medical equipment manufacturers (new ventures) in a nascent market context (the mobile health industry) across six U.S. states and a secondary data analysis to understand the emergence of opportunities and the early development of new ventures. The quantitative research chapter includes 770 IPOs in the manufacturing industries in the U.S. and investigates the legitimation strategies of young ventures to gain resources from targeted resource-holders.Open Acces

Mapping and Developing Service Design Research in the UK.

This report is the outcome of the Service Design Research UK (SDR UK) Network with Lancaster University as primary investigator and London College of Communication, UAL as co-investigator. This project was funded as part of an Arts and Humanities Research Council Network grant. Service Design Research UK (SDR UK), funded by an AHRC Network Grant, aims to create a UK research network in an emerging field in Design that is Service Design. This field has a recent history and a growing, but still small and dispersed, research community that strongly needs support and visibility to consolidate its knowledge base and enhance its potential impact. Services represent a significant part of the UK economy and can have a transformational role in our society as they affect the way we organize, move, work, study or take care of our health and family. Design introduces a more human centred and creative approach to service innovation; this is critical to delivering more effective and novel solutions that have the potential to tackle contemporary challenges. Service Design Research UK reviewed and consolidated the emergence of Service Design within the estalished field of Design

Business schools inside the academy: What are the prospects for interdepartmental research collaboration?

Established literature about the role of business schools tends towards more parochial concerns, such as their need for a more pluralist and socially reflexive mode of knowledge production (Starkey and Tiratsoo 2007; Starkey et al 2009) or the failure of management’s professionalism project expressed through the business school movement (Khurana 2007). When casting their gaze otherwise, academic commentators examine business schools’ weakening links with management practice (Bennis and O’Toole 2005). Our theme makes a novel contribution to the business school literature through exploring prospects for research collaborations with other university departments. We draw upon the case of UK business schools, which are typically university-based (unlike some of their European counterparts), and provide illustrations relating to collaboration with medical schools to make our analytical points. We might expect that business schools and medical schools effectively collaborate given their similar vocational underpinnings, but at the same time, there are significant differences, such as differing paradigms of research and the extent to which the practice fields are professionalised. This means collaboration may prove challenging. In short, the case of collaboration between business schools and medical schools is likely to illuminate the challenges for business schools ‘reaching out’ to other university departments

Access to Medicines and the Right to (Cultural) Life

Published version available from: http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9780754677611This groundbreaking book is the first collection to investigate together the law, political science and ethical perspectives on the right and value of life

Assessing Communities of Practice in health policy : A conceptual framework as a first step towards empirical research

Peer reviewe

Evolution of the Governmental Accounting Reform implementation in Greek Public Hospitals: Testing the institutional framework

Purpose – In an attempt to promote efficiency, effectiveness and economy in health service production, the Greek government imposed in 2003 an accrual basis financial and cost accounting system in all public hospitals of the National Health System (NHS). The purpose of this study is not to investigate thoroughly the accounting reform implementation and adoption in specific organizations, but rather to obtain an overall idea of the reform adoption process in Greek public hospitals by identifying major areas of non-compliance with the mandatory legislative accounting framework and various organisational contingencies that influence the level of reform adoption within a broad institutional framework. Design/methodology/approach – Our analysis is based on the results of an empirical survey that took place during 2009. For the purposes of this survey, a compliance index is constructed and applied on a sample of 94 Greek public hospitals using a structured questionnaire and semi-structured interviews with six public hospital Financial and Accounting executives. Findings – The empirical evidence reveals that the level of accrual basis financial and especially cost accounting adoption in Greek public hospitals is realized only to a limited extent. In particular, results show that the relationship between the institutional isomorphic pressures and accounting reform implementation process is restricted by organizational capability factors (i.e., the quality of existing Information Technology systems, the education level of finance and accounting staff, the extent of reform related training, and the professional support of consultants). Research limitations/implications – Although this study takes into consideration the work of previous researchers in the health care area, it acknowledges that empirical research on the subject in the Greek environment is limited. Therefore this study should be viewed as an initial step to address this limitation. Originality/value – This study draws on the information systems change, management accounting innovation, and public sector reform literatures to contribute to the current knowledge in public sector accounting by examining a number of factors that are expected to influence the implementation and adoption process of accrual and cost accounting practises in the Greek public healthcare sector within a broad institutional framework. Contribution - This study contributes to the international literature of New Public Management (NPM) initiatives in public health sector by providing, to our knowledge, the first large cross-sectional assessment of accrual accounting reform adoption and implementation in Greek public hospitals. Additionally, the empirical evidence of this study can enhance researchers’ and managers’ understanding of major implementation processes and challenges and thus help them refine models of effective implementation process and improve systems and processes on similar future projects.Accrual Accounting, Public Sector Accounting, Compliance Index, Public Hospitals, Isomorphism.

State Capacity and Non-state Service Provision in Fragile and Conflict-affected States

How can governments effectively engage with non-state providers (NSPs) of basic services where capacity is weak? This paper examines whether and how fragile and conflict affected states can co-ordinate, finance, and set and apply standards for the provision of basic services by NSPs. It explores ways of incrementally engaging the state, beginning with activities that are least likely to do harm to non-state provision. Through the ‘indirect’ roles of setting the policy environment and engaging in policy dialogue, regulating and facilitating, contracting, and entering into mutual and informal agreements with NSPs, the state can in principle assume responsibility for the provision of basic services without necessarily being involved in direct provision. But government capacity to perform these roles is constrained by the state’s weak legitimacy, coverage and competence, lack of basic information about the non-state sector, and lack of basic organisational capacity to form and maintain relationships with NSPs. The experience of the exercise of the indirect roles in fragile settings suggests: * Governments may be more willing to engage with NSPs where there is recognition that government cannot alone deliver all services, where public and private services are not in competition, and where there is evidence that successful collaboration is possible (demonstrated through small-scale pilots). * The extent to which engagements are ‘pro-service’may be influenced by government motives for engagement and the extent to which the providers that are most important to poor people are engaged. * Formal policy dialogue between government and NSPs may be imperfect, unrepresentative and at times unhelpful in fragile settings. Informal dialogue - at the operational level - could more likely be where synergies can be found. * Regulation is more likely to be ‘pro-service’ where it offers incentives for compliance, and where it focuses on standards in terms of outputs and outcomes rather than inputs and entry controls. * Wide scale, performance-based contracting has been successful in delivering services in some cases, but the sustainability of this approach is often questioned. Some successful contractual agreements have a strong informal, relational element and grow out of earlier informal connections. * Informal and mutual agreements can avoid the capacity problems and tensions implicit in formal contracting but may present problems of non-transparency and exclusion of competition. Paradoxically, the need for large-scale approaches and quick co-ordination of services in fragile and conflict-affected settings may require ‘prematurely high’ levels of state-NSP engagement, before the development of the underlying institutional structures that would support them. When considering strategies to support the capacity of government to engagement with NSPs, donors should: * Recognise non-state service provision and adopt the ‘do no harm’ principle: It would be wrong to set the ambition of 'managing ‘ non-state provision in its entirety, and it can be very harmful for low-capacity states to seek to regulate all NSP or to draw it into clumsy contracts. * Beware of generalisation: Non-state provision takes many forms in response to different histories and to political and economic change. The possibilities and case for state engagement have to be assessed not assumed. The particular identities of NGOs and enterprises should be considered. * Recognise that state building can occur through any of the types of engagement with NSPs: Types of engagement should therefore be selected on the basis of their likely effectiveness in improving service delivery. * Begin with less risky/small scale forms of engagement where possible: State interventions that imply a direct controlling role for the state and which impose obligations on NSPs (i.e. contracting and regulation) require greater capacity (on both sides) and present greater risk of harm if performed badly than the roles of policy dialogue and entering into mutual agreements. * Adopt mixed approaches: The choice between forms of engagement does not have to be absolute. Rather than adopting a uniform plan of engagement in a particular country, it may be better to try different approaches in different regions or sectors

An institutional sociology perspective of the implementation of activity based costing by Spanish health care institutions

According to institutional sociology, hospitals will respond to external environmental pressures and adopt Activity-Based-Costing (ABC). This theory overemphasizes conformity and fails to consider the advantages of organizational non-conformance. A conflict of interests between physicians and management leads to physician resistance to accepting ABC. This paper investigates the Spanish government's response to this resistance by creating new public foundation hospitals, and involves a case study of the Alcorcón foundation hospital. Population ecology is offered as an explanation for the emergence of new entities as a result of inert existing entities' resistance to reform.Activity based costing; ABC implementation; Health care; Institutional sociology; Spanish health care sector;