Do “one-size” employment policies fit all young workers? Heterogeneity in work attribute preferences among the Millennial generation

There has been a stream of research that explores how the present generation of workers (i.e., Millennials) may be different from previous generations (e.g., Baby Boomers and Gen Xers). This line of research often considers Millennials as homogeneous and concludes any differences to be “generational effects.” However, it is unlikely for a generation, which spans almost 20 years, to be uniformly homogeneous with respect to their work values and attitudes. Findings on generational differences conducted in the United States are also often generalized to other countries, ignoring the potential for national influences. In this regard, we apply a multi-method approach using three samples to demonstrate that there are differences within the Millennial generation that affect work values, preferences for work/life balance, and attraction to employer attributes. Specifically, we focus on the heterogeneity resulting from differences in age, gender, relationship status, and nationality. Our results suggest that Millennials are not as homogeneous as we assumed, and this can limit the effectiveness of managerial policies designed to improve individual and work outcomes for an entire generation of workers. Our study demonstrates that it is important for us to understand how individual, relational, and contextual factors may contribute to the heterogeneity within a generation

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Innovations in Small and Medium-Sized Family Firms

Small and medium-sized firms are a prevalent organizational form in Germany. Their importance for the German economy is indisputable. Most of them are global market leaders in their niches and are considered to be a force for innovation in the German economy. The ability to be innovative in niche markets has been identified as the antecedent of their strong, or even dominant, competitive positions in their industries. The driver of this innovation success may well be the family, which distinguishes family firms from non-family firms. Nils Kraiczy analyzes if a family influences innovation in a family firm and if this influence has only positive effects. The dissertation focuses on the impact of top management teams on innovations interacting with family firm-specific characteristics. The author shows the complexity of family influence by presenting different effects of each investigated family firm-specific characteristic on the relationship between top management team behavior and innovation

Innovations in Small and Medium-Sized Family Firms

Small and medium-sized firms are a prevalent organizational form in Germany. Their importance for the German economy is indisputable. Most of them are global market leaders in their niches and are considered to be a force for innovation in the German economy. The ability to be innovative in niche markets has been identified as the antecedent of their strong, or even dominant, competitive positions in their industries. The driver of this innovation success may well be the family, which distinguishes family firms from non-family firms. Nils Kraiczy analyzes if a family influences innovation in a family firm and if this influence has only positive effects. The dissertation focuses on the impact of top management teams on innovations interacting with family firm-specific characteristics. The author shows the complexity of family influence by presenting different effects of each investigated family firm-specific characteristic on the relationship between top management team behavior and innovation

CEO innovation orientation and R&D intensity in small and medium-sized firms: the moderating role of firm growth

Although upper echelon literature has found evidence for the effect of executives' characteristics on firm strategy such as the level of research and development (R&D) intensity, research on how different behaviors, values, personalities, motivations, and experiences of executivesinfluence the R&D intensity of small and medium-sized firms is scarce. Applying upper echelon theory, this study uses firm growth (sales and employee growth) as a contingency factor to analyze variations in the effect of chief executive officer (CEO) innovation orientation on R&D intensity in small and medium-sized firms. As research on the direct effect of firm growth on R&D intensity is inconclusive, this study applies firm growth as an indirect effect to show whether the impact of CEO innovation orientation on R&D intensity differs in times of low growth compared to times of high growth in small and medium-sized firms. Using a sample of 77 German CEOs of small and medium-sized firms operating in manufacturing industries, results show that CEO innovation orientation has a positive effect on R&D intensity, and firm growth affects this relationship. Specifically, high CEO innovation orientation has a positive effect on R&D intensity in firms with low growth, while its impact disappears in firms that experience strong growth. Implications and future research are discussed

Applying Person-Environment Fit Theory to Identify Personality Differences between Prospective Social and Commercial Entrepreneurs: An Explorative Study.

Research has started to investigate personality traits of social entrepreneurs because such traits in commercial entrepreneurs have been found to affect new venture creation/success. In this exploratory study, we apply the person‐environment fit theory and analyze specific social entrepreneurial personality dimensions (i.e., altruism, empathic concern, personal distress, compassion), and classical entrepreneurial personality dimensions (i.e., need for achievement (nAch), entrepreneurial self‐efficacy (ESE), general self‐efficacy, risk‐taking propensity) to identify differences between prospective social and commercial entrepreneurs. Using a sample of 85 prospective entrepreneurs, results show that prospective social entrepreneurs differ from prospective commercial entrepreneurs in the personality dimensions of personal distress, nAch, ESE, and risk‐taking propensity

Ready for a crisis? How supervisory boards affect the formalized crisis procedures of small and medium-sized family firms in Germany

Overcoming a crisis situation in which the socioemotional wealth (SEW) of a family is at risk can be threatened by a lack of formal crisis procedures, which can increase the probability of organizational decline. Thus, not being prepared for a crisis situation may be a critical factor in the long-term survival of family firms. From a corporate governance perspective, supervisory boards may achieve higher levels of crisis readiness. Applying the resourced-based view and SEW theory, we analyze the relationship between family ownership and formalized crisis procedures in 150 small and medium-sized German firms. Our results show that formalized crisis procedures decrease as family ownership increases. Including supervisory boards in our analysis, we find a significant moderating effect of supervisory boards on the relationship between family ownership and formalized crisis procedures. Specifically, our results suggest that family firms with supervisory boards show similar levels of formalized crisis procedures as non-family firms with supervisory boards. In contrast, family firms without supervisory boards exhibit lower levels of formalized crisis procedures compared with non-family firms without supervisory boards. We also discuss managerial implications, limitations, and future research

New Product Portfolio Performance in Family Firms

This study investigates the relationship between top management team (TMT) innovation orientation and new product portfolio performance in small and medium-sized family firms by exploring two family firm-specific sources of TMT diversity as moderators: the number of generations involved in the TMT and the ratio of family members in the TMT. Results indicate that family-induced diversity in the TMT has opposing moderating effects. Although a positive relationship exists between TMT innovation orientation and new product portfolio performance when multiple generations are involved in the TMT, TMT innovation orientation and new product portfolio performance experience a negative relationship when the ratio of family members in the TMT is high. The study discusses theoretical and managerial implications of the findings and develops avenues for future research