The global field of multi-family offices: An institutionalist perspective

We apply the notion of the organisational field to internationally operating multi-family offices. These organisations specialise on the preservation of enterprising and geographically dispersed families’ fortunes. They provide their services across generations and countries. Based on secondary data of Bloomberg’s Top 50 Family Offices, we show that they constitute a global organisational field that comprises two clusters of homogeneity. Clients may decide between two different configurations of activities, depending on their preferences regarding asset management, resource management, family management, and service architecture. The findings also reveal that multi-family offices make relatively similar value propositions all over the world. The distinctiveness of the clusters within the field is not driven by the embeddedness of the multi-family offices in different national environments or their various degrees of international experience. Rather, it is weakly affected by two out of four possible value propositions, namely the exclusiveness and the transparency of services

Entrepreneurial Value Creation in the Cloud: Exploring the Value Dimensions of the Business Model

Part 5: Research in ProgressInternational audienceCloud computing’s potential in creating and capturing business value is being increasingly acknowledged. Existing empirical studies of business value in cloud computing have focused on user organizations and large enterprises with legacy systems. Acknowledging the innovation opportunities created by cloud, we study entrepreneurial cloud service providers. In this paper we conduct an exploratory study of six cloud-based start-up firms in India. We examine the value dimensions of the business model concept to study entrepreneurial value creation in the cloud. We find that cloud is a key resource in the structural configuration of their business model and enables the value proposition

The Business Model: Recent Developments and Future Research

This article provides a broad and multifaceted review of the received literature on business models in which the authors examine the business model concept through multiple subject-matter lenses. The review reveals that scholars do not agree on what a business model is and that the literature is developing largely in silos, according to the phenomena of interest of the respective researchers. However, the authors also found emerging common themes among scholars of business models. Specifically, (1) the business model is emerging as a new unit of analysis; (2) business models emphasize a system-level, holistic approach to explaining how firms “do business”; (3) firm activities play an important role in the various conceptualizations of business models that have been proposed; and (4) business models seek to explain how value is created, not just how it is captured. These emerging themes could serve as catalysts for a more unified study of business models

Going it alone won’t work! The relational imperative for social innovation in social enterprises

Shifts in the philosophy of the “state” and a growing emphasis on the “Big Society” have placed an increasing onus on a newly emerging organizational form, social enterprises, to deliver innovative solutions to ease societal issues. However, the question of how social enterprises manage the process of social innovation remains largely unexplored. Based on insights from both in-depth interviews and a quantitative empirical study of social enterprises, this research examines the role of stakeholder relationships in supporting the process of social innovation within social enterprises. We find that social enterprises are adept at working with their stakeholders in the ideation stage of social innovation. In contrast, they often fail to harness knowledge and expertise from their partners during the social innovation implementation phase. Consequently, we propose a social innovation–stakeholder relationship matrix that provides social enterprises in particular with insight for developing stakeholder relationships to achieve their social innovation missions

Microbiological and chemical monitoring of Marsala base wine obtained by spontaneous fermentation during large-scale production

The present work was undertaken to evaluate the effect of the natural winemaking on the microbial and chemical composition of Marsala base wine. To this purpose, a large-scale vinification process of Grillo grape cultivar was monitored from harvesting to the final product. Total yeasts (TY) showed a rapid increase after must pressing and reached values almost superimposable to those registered during the conventional winemakings. Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) were registered at the highest levels simultaneously to yeast growth at the beginning of the process. Saccharomyces cerevisiae was the species found at the highest concentrations in all samples analysed. Several strains (n= 16) was registered at high levels during the alcoholic fermentation and/or aging of wine; only two of them were detected on the grape surface. Lactobacillus plantarum was the LAB species most frequently isolated during the entire vinification process. Ethanol content was approximately 14% (v/v) at the end of vinification. The value of pH did not greatly vary during the process and the volatile acidity (VA) was detected at low concentrations during the entire transformation. The concentration of malic acid rapidly decreased during the AF; on the other hand, lactic acid showed an irregular trend during the entire process. trans-caffeil tartaric acid was the most abundant hydroxycinnamoyl tartaric acid and volatile organic compounds (VOC) were mainly represented by isoamylic alcohol and isobutanol

Anchors aweigh: the sources, variety, and challenges of mission drift

The growing number of studies which reference the concept of mission drift imply that such drift is an undesirable strategic outcome related to inconsistent organizational action, yet beyond such references little is known about how mission drift occurs, how it impacts organizations, and how organizations should respond. Existing management theory more broadly offers initial albeit equivocal insight for understanding mission drift. On the one hand, prior studies have argued that inconsistent or divergent action can lead to weakened stakeholder commitment and reputational damage. On the other hand, scholars have suggested that because environments are complex and dynamic, such action is necessary for ensuring organizational adaptation and thus survival. In this study, we offer a theory of mission drift that unpacks its origin, clarifies its variety, and specifies how organizations might respond to external perceptions of mission drift. The resulting conceptual model addresses the aforementioned theoretical tension and offers novel insight into the relationship between organizational actions and identity

An ontology for strongly sustainable business models: Defining an enterprise framework compatible with natural and social science

Business is increasingly employing sustainability practices, aiming to improve environmental and social responsibility while maintaining and improving profitability. For many organizations, profit-oriented business models are a major constraint impeding progress in sustainability. A formally defined ontology, a model definition, for profit-oriented business models has been employed globally for several years. However, no equivalent ontology is available in research or practice that enables the description of strongly sustainable business models, as validated by ecological economics and derived from natural, social, and system sciences. We present a framework of strongly sustainable business model propositions and principles as findings from a transdisciplinary review of the literature. A comparative analysis was performed between the framework and the Osterwalder profit-oriented ontology for business models. We introduce an ontology that enables the description of successful strongly sustainable business models that resolves weaknesses and includes functionally necessary relationships

Modélisation de paroi et injection de turbulence pariétale pour la Simulation des Grandes Echelles des écoulements aérothermiques

Lors du développement d un nouvel avion, l estimation des échanges d énergie entre l air ambiant et les parois est une donnée cruciale pour la conception aérothermique. Cette conception repose de plus en plus sur des simulations numériques mais certains phénomènes d aérothermique externe, comme le jet débouchant du système de dégivrage des nacelles moteur, montrent les limites des modèles RANS classiques. La simulation des grandes échelles (LES) se révèle bien adaptée à ce type de phénomène mais se heurte à un coût de calcul extrêmement élevé pour ces écoulements pariétaux à très grand nombre de Reynolds. Pour lever cette limitation, cette thèse propose l étude de deux briques fondamentales : la LES avec loi de paroi (WMLES) conjuguée à l injection d une couche limite turbulente à l entrée du domaine. Pour une meilleure compréhension et une utilisation fiable de l approche loi de paroi, on se concentre tout d abord sur les sources d erreur qui lui sont associées. Après les avoir identifiées, on propose une correction de l erreur de sous-maille ainsi qu une loi de paroi adaptée aux écoulements compressibles. Grâce à ces deux éléments, on obtient une estimation correcte du flux de chaleur pariétal sur des simulations WMLES de canal plan supersonique sur parois froides. Puis, pour préparer la transition vers des applications plus industrielles, on introduit un schéma numérique plus dissipatif ce qui nous permet d étudier l influence de la méthode numérique sur l approche loi de paroi. Dans une seconde partie dédiée à l injection de couche limite pour la WMLES, on sélectionne une méthode basée sur l injection de perturbations combinée à un terme de contrôle volumique. On montre que des simulations WMLES utilisant cette méthode d injection permettent d établir une couche limite turbulente réaliste à une courte distance en aval du plan d entrée, à la fois sur une plaque plane mais également sur un écoulement de jet débouchant à la géométrie plus complexe, représentative d un cas avion.During the design of a new aircraft, the prediction of energy exchanged between the ambient air and the aircraft walls is crucial regarding aerothermal design. Numerical simulations plays a role of increasing importance in this design. However classical RANS models reach their limits on some external aerothermal flows, like the jet-in-cross-flow from the anti-icing system oh the engine nacelles. The large eddy simulation (LES) is well suited to this kind of flow but faces an extremely large computational cost for such high Reynolds number wall-bounded flows. To remove this limitation, we propose two building blocks: the Wall Modeled LES (WMLES) combined with a turbulent inflow generation. For a better understanding and a reliable use of the WMLES, we first focus on the sources of error related to this approach. We propose a correction to the subgrid-scale error as well as a wall model suitable for compressible and anisothermal flows. Thanks to these two elements, we correctly predict the wall heat flux in WMLES computations of a supersonic isothermal-wall channel flow. Then, to allow the computation of more industrial flows, we introduce some numerical dissipation and study its effect on the wall modeling approach. The last part is dedicated to turbulent inflow generation for WMLES. We select a method based on synthetic perturbation combined with a dynamic control term. We validate this method on WMLES computations of a flat plate turbulent boundary layer and a hot jet-in-cross-flow representative of an industrial configuration. In both cases, we show that a realistic turbulent boundary layer is generated at a small distance downstream from the inlet plane.TOULOUSE-INP (315552154) / SudocSudocFranceF

The Impact of Symbolic and Substantive Actions on Environmental Legitimacy

Drawing on institutional theory and insights from stakeholder theory and impression management, we empirically analyze the impact of both environmental symbolic polices (participation in voluntary environmental programs, green trademarks, environmental-dedicated board committees, environmental pay policies and community communication) and substantive actions (environmental patents and pollution prevention practices) on environmental legitimacy. We show that (1) symbolic actions have a weaker positive effect on legitimacy than substantive actions, (2) that the impact of symbolic actions is greater when they are combined with substantive actions, (3) that this impact is only short-term while substantive actions have both short- and long-term effects