153 research outputs found
Business experience and start-up size: buying more lottery tickets next time around?
This paper explores the determinants of start-up size by focusing on a cohort of 6247 businesses that started trading in 2004, using a unique dataset on customer records at Barclays Bank. Quantile regressions show that prior business experience is significantly related with start-up size, as are a number of other variables such as age, education and bank account activity. Quantile treatment effects (QTE) estimates show similar results, with the effect of business experience on (log) start-up size being roughly constant across the quantiles. Prior personal business experience leads to an increase in expected start-up size of about 50%. Instrumental variable QTE estimates are even higher, although there are concerns about the validity of the instrument
How managers can build trust in strategic alliances: a meta-analysis on the central trust-building mechanisms
Trust is an important driver of superior alliance performance. Alliance managers are influential in this regard because trust requires active involvement, commitment and the dedicated support of the key actors involved in the strategic alliance. Despite the importance of trust for explaining alliance performance, little effort has been made to systematically investigate the mechanisms that managers can use to purposefully create trust in strategic alliances. We use Parkhe’s (1998b) theoretical framework to derive nine hypotheses that distinguish between process-based, characteristic-based and institutional-based trust-building mechanisms. Our meta-analysis of 64 empirical studies shows that trust is strongly related to alliance performance. Process-based mechanisms are more important for building trust than characteristic- and institutional-based mechanisms. The effects of prior ties and asset specificity are not as strong as expected and the impact of safeguards on trust is not well understood. Overall, theoretical trust research has outpaced empirical research by far and promising opportunities for future empirical research exist
Predicting new venture survival and growth: does the fog lift?
This paper investigates whether new venture performance becomes easier to predict as the venture ages: does the fog lift? To address this question we primarily draw upon a theoretical framework, initially formulated in a managerial context by Levinthal (Adm Sci Q 36(3):397–420, 1991) that sees new venture sales as a random walk but survival being determined by the stock of available resources (proxied by size). We derive theoretical predictions that are tested with a 10-year cohort of 6579 UK new ventures in the UK. We observe that our ability to predict firm growth deteriorates in the years after entry—in terms of the selection environment, the ‘fog’ seems to thicken. However, our survival predictions improve with time—implying that the ‘fog’ does lift
Atomic-accuracy prediction of protein loop structures through an RNA-inspired ansatz
Consistently predicting biopolymer structure at atomic resolution from
sequence alone remains a difficult problem, even for small sub-segments of
large proteins. Such loop prediction challenges, which arise frequently in
comparative modeling and protein design, can become intractable as loop lengths
exceed 10 residues and if surrounding side-chain conformations are erased. This
article introduces a modeling strategy based on a 'stepwise ansatz', recently
developed for RNA modeling, which posits that any realistic all-atom molecular
conformation can be built up by residue-by-residue stepwise enumeration. When
harnessed to a dynamic-programming-like recursion in the Rosetta framework, the
resulting stepwise assembly (SWA) protocol enables enumerative sampling of a 12
residue loop at a significant but achievable cost of thousands of CPU-hours. In
a previously established benchmark, SWA recovers crystallographic conformations
with sub-Angstrom accuracy for 19 of 20 loops, compared to 14 of 20 by KIC
modeling with a comparable expenditure of computational power. Furthermore, SWA
gives high accuracy results on an additional set of 15 loops highlighted in the
biological literature for their irregularity or unusual length. Successes
include cis-Pro touch turns, loops that pass through tunnels of other
side-chains, and loops of lengths up to 24 residues. Remaining problem cases
are traced to inaccuracies in the Rosetta all-atom energy function. In five
additional blind tests, SWA achieves sub-Angstrom accuracy models, including
the first such success in a protein/RNA binding interface, the YbxF/kink-turn
interaction in the fourth RNA-puzzle competition. These results establish
all-atom enumeration as a systematic approach to protein structure that can
leverage high performance computing and physically realistic energy functions
to more consistently achieve atomic resolution.Comment: Identity of four-loop blind test protein and parts of figures 5 have
been omitted in this preprint to ensure confidentiality of the protein
structure prior to its public releas
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Darwinism, organizational evolution and survival: key challenges for future research
How do social organizations evolve? How do they adapt to environmental pressures? What resources and capabilities determine their survival within dynamic competition? Charles Darwin’s seminal work The Origin of Species (1859) has provided a significant impact on the development of the management and organization theory literatures on organizational evolution. This article introduces the JMG Special Issue focused on Darwinism, organizational evolution and survival. We discuss key themes in the organizational evolution research that have emerged in recent years. These include the increasing adoption of the co-evolutionary approach, with a particular focus on the definition of appropriate units of analysis, such as routines, and related challenges associated with exploring the relationship between co-evolution, re-use of knowledge, adaptation, and exaptation processes. We then introduce the three articles that we have finally accepted in this Special Issue after an extensive, multi-round, triple blind-review process. We briefly outline how each of these articles contributes to understanding among scholars, practitioners and policy makers of the continuous evolutionary processes within and among social organizations and systems
A Project Portfolio Management Approach to Tacklingthe Exploration/Exploitation Trade-off
Organizational ambidexterity (OA) is an essen-tial capability for surviving in dynamic business environ-ments that advocates the simultaneous engagement inexploration and exploitation. Over the last decades,knowledge on OA has substantially matured, coveringinsights into antecedents, outcomes, and moderators of OA.However, there is little prescriptive knowledge that offersguidance on how to put OA into practice and to tackle thetrade-off between exploration and exploitation. To addressthis gap, the authors adopt the design science researchparadigm and propose an economic decision model asartifact. The decision model assists organizations inselecting and scheduling exploration and exploitation pro-jects to become ambidextrous in an economically reason-able manner. As for justificatory knowledge, the decisionmodel draws from prescriptive knowledge on projectportfolio management and value-based management, andfrom descriptive knowledge related to OA to structure thefield of action. To evaluate the decision model, its designspecification is discussed against theory-backed designobjectives and with industry experts. The paper alsoinstantiates the decision model as a software prototype andapplies the prototype to a case based on real-world data
Catching-up in the global factory: analysis and policy implications
MNEs shape the location of activities in the world economy, linking diverse regions in what has been called the global factory. This study portrays the evolution of incomes and employment in the global factory using a quantitative input–output approach. We find emerging economies forging ahead relative to advanced economies in income derived from fabrication activities, handling the physical transformation process of goods. In contrast, convergence in income derived from knowledge-intensive activities carried out in pre- and post-fabrication stages is much slower. We discuss possible barriers to catching-up and policy implications for emerging economies in developing innovation capabilities, stressing the pivotal role of MNEs
Sustainability in the face of institutional adversity : market turbulence, network embeddedness, and innovative orientation
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