The Impact of Organizational Efficacy and Flexibility on Small Business Performance

The current study examines the role of organizational efficacy and supplier flexibility in regards to the business performance of small and medium-sized firms. It was anticipated that both organizational efficacy and supplier flexibility would have positive relationships with performance for small and medium-sized businesses. Results supported these hypotheses and indicate the importance of firms developing the ability to respond to changing demands of the buyer in the areas of delivery, volume, and modification as well as developing the belief that the organization has the capabilities, judgment, and confidence necessary to perform successfully

Reducing bias and quantifying uncertainty in watershed flux estimates: the R package loadflex

Many ecological insights into the function of rivers and watersheds emerge from quantifying the flux of solutes or suspended materials in rivers. Numerous methods for flux estimation have been described, and each has its strengths and weaknesses. Currently, the largest practical challenges in flux estimation are to select among these methods and to implement or apply whichever method is chosen. To ease this process of method selection and application, we have written an R software package called loadflex that implements several of the most popular methods for flux estimation, including regressions, interpolations, and the special case of interpolation known as the period-weighted approach. Our package also implements a lesser-known and empirically promising approach called the “composite method,” to which we have added an algorithm for estimating prediction uncertainty. Here we describe the structure and key features of loadflex, with a special emphasis on the rationale and details of our composite method implementation. We then demonstrate the use of loadflex by fitting four different models to nitrate data from the Lamprey River in southeastern New Hampshire, where two large floods in 2006–2007 are hypothesized to have driven a long-term shift in nitrate concentrations and fluxes from the watershed. The models each give believable estimates, and yet they yield different answers for whether and how the floods altered nitrate loads. In general, the best modeling approach for each new dataset will depend on the specific site and solute of interest, and researchers need to make an informed choice among the many possible models. Our package addresses this need by making it simple to apply and compare multiple load estimation models, ultimately allowing researchers to estimate riverine concentrations and fluxes with greater ease and accuracy

Performance of Historically Underrepresented Firms in the Public-Private Sector

This study examines the performance of historically underrepresented firms, which includes women-owned businesses and socially disadvantaged businesses. We examine performance in the context of securing public contracts and compare the performance of these historically underrepresented firms to those of non-minority small and large businesses. Utilizing a sample of all contracts awarded by the Johnson Space Center, a NASA directorate located in Houston, Texas, which identified 5,676 contracts totaling approximately $157 billion, we found that small businesses received around 63% of all contracts. The results indicate that more diverse firms received higher awards than specialists and that disadvantaged firms received higher dollar awards than general small businesses. In addition, women-owned businesses neither outperformed nor performed more poorly than general small business in the dollar amounts of contracts received, and they are neither more or less specialized than general small and large businesses. A discussion, practical implications, and future research ideas are also presented

Long-term trends of changes in pine and oak foliar nitrogen metabolism in response to chronic nitrogen amendments at Harvard Forest, MA

We evaluated the long-term (1995–2008) trends in foliar and sapwood metabolism, soil solution chemistry and tree mortality rates in response to chronic nitrogen (N) additions to pine and hardwood stands at the Harvard Forest Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) site. Common stress-related metabolites like polyamines (PAs), free amino acids (AAs) and inorganic elements were analyzed for control, low N (LN, 50 kg NH4NO3 ha−1 year−1) and high N (HN, 150 kg NH4NO3 ha−1 year−1) treatments. In the pine stands, partitioning of excess N into foliar PAs and AAs increased with both N treatments until 2002. By 2005, several of these effects on N metabolites disappeared for HN, and by 2008 they were mostly observed for LN plot. A significant decline in foliar Ca and P was observed mostly with HN for a few years until 2005. However, sapwood data actually showed an increase in Ca, Mg and Mn and no change in PAs in the HN plot for 2008, while AAs data revealed trends that were generally similar to foliage for 2008. Concomitant with these changes, mortality data revealed a large number of dead trees in HN pine plots by 2002; the mortality rate started to decline by 2005. Oak trees in the hardwood plot did not exhibit any major changes in PAs, AAs, nutrients and mortality rate with LN treatment, indicating that oak trees were able to tolerate the yearly doses of 50 kg NH4NO3 ha−1 year−1. However, HN trees suffered from physiological and nutritional stress along with increased mortality in 2008. In this case also, foliar data were supported by the sapwood data. Overall, both low and high N applications resulted in greater physiological stress to the pine trees than the oaks. In general, the time course of changes in metabolic data are in agreement with the published reports on changes in soil chemistry and microbial community structure, rates of soil carbon sequestration and production of woody biomass for this chronic N study. This correspondence of selected metabolites with other measures of forest functions suggests that the metabolite analyses are useful for long-term monitoring of the health of forest trees

Media Selection and the Imposter Phenomenon: A Multinational Investigation

Imposterism, where individuals seek to create a false impression that they are more qualified than they actually are, is an emerging area of study, while media selection has been a subject of interest to IS researchers for over 25 years. This study seeks to determine if individuals who score highly on imposterism dif er in their media preference, and if there is a cultural dimension to this relationship. Using a scenario-based experiment administered to 439 subjects in the U.S. and China, we demonstrate relationships between media choice and both imposterism and two dimensions of espoused national culture

Strategic Relationships in a Small Business Context: The Impact of Information Quality and Continuous Quality Improvement

This study examines the performance between operational variables for small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) within the context of interorganizational relationships. Specifically, it investigates the role of information quality and continuous quality improvement and the varying importance that SMEs place on each of these constructs. The sample consists of 134 vendors of a large university in the southwestern region of the United States.The results indicate that there is a positive relationship between information quality and continuous quality improvement with performance in SMEs. Implications for both research and practice, as well as ideas for future research, are discussed

The Impact of Strategic Focus and Previous Business Experience on Small Business Performance

This study examines whether or not having an internal or external strategic focus interacts with prior experience in small business to impact perceived organizational performance. Utilizing a sample of 237 small business owners from the southeast U.S., a factorial ANOVA and Regression Analysis were used to test hypotheses related to these constructs. Results indicated that utilizing an internal focus was associated with higher performance among both experienced and inexperienced small business owners; however, an external focus was only positively related to performance for inexperienced business owners. No overall difference in performance was found for experience itself

Collaborative Preference: The Role of Homophily, Multiplexity, and Advantageous Network Position across Small and Medium-sized Organizations

The purpose of this paper is to examine collaboration between individuals across organizations. While both for profit and not-for-profit organizations utilize collaborative efforts, the factors that are important for bringing individuals and businesses together for collaboration still remain somewhat unresolved. In this paper, colleague similarity, the quality of pre-existing relationships, and the relative power of the other colleague are all examined for their correlation with the desirability of collaboration with that individual. In a study of pastors of small and medium sized churches in a southwestern protestant conference, we examined these areas through the lenses of homophily theory, multiplicity theories, and network positioning theories and found support for each of our hypotheses. Implications for management as well as future research directions are also presented

Why Didnt I Get The Job? White Nonbeneficiaries Reactions To Affirmative Action And Diversity Programs

The purpose of this study was to investigate how justifications for hiring procedures and hiring decisions impact white nonbeneficiaries perceptions of fairness. The results for the procedural and distributive justice hypotheses were strikingly similar. Both the diversity justification and no justification were perceived to be fairer than the affirmative action justification for both procedural and distributive justice. Interestingly, however, the respondents perceived no justification to be fairer than the diversity justification. Of the three different scenarios, no justification was perceived to be the most fair and affirmative action was perceived to be the least fair justification

The role of innovation and knowledge for entrepreneurship and regional development

The impact of entrepreneurial activity on regional economic growth continues to be a focus of research and policy-makers throughout our global environment (Carree and Thurik 2000; Agarwal, Audretsc..