Organizational Mortality of Small Firms: The Effects of Entrepreneurial Age and Human Capital

This paper addresses the issue of internal determination of organizational outcomes. It is argued that in small and simply structured organizations a considerable proportion of the variance in organizational activities and outcomes is associated with individuals. In particular, the paper uses human capital theory to derive hypotheses about individual determinants of organizational mortality. These hypotheses are tested with event-history data of firm registrations and de-registrations in a West German region. The hypotheses are corroborated by the data, but the effects may nonetheless be due to processes linking individual characteristics with organizational performance other than those suggested by the human capital approach

Re-Focusing - Building a Future for Entrepreneurial Education & Learning

The field of entrepreneurship has struggled with fundamental questions concerning the subject’s nature and purpose. To whom and to what means are educational and training agendas ultimately directed? Such questions have become of central importance to policy makers, practitioners and academics alike. There are suggestions that university business schools should engage more critically with the lived experiences of practising entrepreneurs through alternative pedagogical approaches and methods, seeking to account for and highlighting the social, political and moral aspects of entrepreneurial practice. In the UK, where funding in higher education has become increasingly dependent on student fees, there are renewed pressures to educate students for entrepreneurial practice as opposed to educating them about the nature and effects of entrepreneurship. Government and EU policies are calling on business schools to develop and enhance entrepreneurial growth and skill sets, to make their education and training programmes more proactive in providing innovative educational practices which help and facilitate life experiences and experiential learning. This paper makes the case for critical frameworks to be applied so that complex social processes become a source of learning for educators and entrepreneurs and so that innovative pedagogical approaches can be developed in terms both of context (curriculum design) and process (delivery methods)

Coordination and Output Attainment in Work Units Performing Non-routine Tasks: A Cross- National Study

Based on an information-processing perspective (Galbraith 1972), a theoretical pro position is advanced which predicts that for work units performing non-routine tasks, the effect of unit coordination on output attainment is contingent on the sources from which the unit acquires information for task performance. This proposition is tested using a cross-national research design. Data from four national samples — Austria, Belgium, Hungary, and Poland — of academic research units support the proposition. The results reinforce the need for a contingency approach to the study of coordination and performance in organizations. They also provide some insight into the interplay between society and organization.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68600/2/10.1177_017084068500600102.pd

A Chemistry of Organization: Combinatory Structural Analysis and Design

This paper is a response to the call for models of organization design as a science revealing the inner composition of organization and specifying the laws to be respected when crafting it. It maintains that the needed science is a chemistry of organization, addressing the combination of 'organizational elements' playing a role analogous to that of chemical elements in composing a variety of substances. Drawing both on classic organization design theory and on configurational and complementarity-based approaches, the paper specifies a set of basic organizational elements and a set of combinatory laws regulating their effective combinations. Testable propositions are derived on the necessary and sufficient conditions that the composition of organizations should have respect for achieving high levels of efficiency and innovation. These propositions are tested empirically on a sample of firms, using an innovative application of Boolean algebra

Representational predicaments at three Hong Kong sites

Representational predicaments arise when a job incumbent believes that attributions and images assumed by dominant authorities unfavourably ignore, or disproportionately and unfavourably emphasize, aspects of the incumbent\u27s own work and social identity. This is likely to happen when the incumbent does not have a close relationship with a dominant authority, and when power asymmetries give the former relatively little control over which aspects of their work and social identity are made visible or invisible to the latter. We draw on critical incident interviews from three organizations to illustrate a typology of six types of representational predicament: invasive spotlighting, idiosyncratic spotlighting, embedded background work, paradoxical social visibility, standardization of work processes, and standardization of work outputs. We analyse responses to representational predicaments according to whether they entailed exit, voice, loyalty, or neglect. Incumbents tended to respond with loyalty if they felt able and willing to accommodate their work behaviour and/or social identity to the dominant representations, and if there were sufficient compensatory factors, such as intrinsic rewards from the work or solidarity with colleagues. Exit or neglect appeared to reflect the belief that it was impossible to accommodate. Power asymmetries appeared to deter voice. Individual employees with a close and cordial working relationship with a member of a dominant authority group, or who were relationally networked to one, appeared not to experience representational predicaments