Industrial Clustering and the Returns to Inventive Activity Canadian Biotechnology Firms, 1991-2000

We examine how industrial clustering affects biotechnology firms’ innovativeness, contrasting similar firms not located in clusters or located in clusters that are or are not focused on the firm’s technological specialization. Using detailed firm level data, we find clustered firms are eight times more innovative than geographically remote firms, with largest effects for firms located in clusters strong in their own specialization. For firms located in a cluster strong in their specialization we also find that R&D productivity is enhanced by a firm’s own R&D alliances and also by the R&D alliances of other colocated firms.Biotechnology, industrial clustering, knowledge spillovers, R&D productivity, strategic alliances

Introduction: Economics Meets Sociology in Strategic Management

Sociolog

Making the next move : how experiential and vicarious learning shape the locations of Chains' acquisitions

Permission obtained via SHERPA/RoMEO. Letter from publisher grants permission to retain article in OPUS.We examine acquisitions by multiunit chain organizations to determine why they acquire a particular target rather than others that are available to them and thus better understand chain growth.Ye

Sophistication of interfirm network strategies in the Canadian investment banking industry

Using data on all underwriting syndicates in Canada over nearly 40 years, we examine whether, and if so to what extent, managers are aware of and strategic about their network positions by comparing the effects of partner selection on network position at two levels of complexity. Our findings show that when investment banks' managers formed and joined underwriting syndicates, they improved their network positions by spanning more structural holes. They did not, however, distinguish between constrained and unconstrained structural holes, which would require a more complex understanding of the network. Our study suggests that models of network-based competitive advantages and network change need to consider more fully firms' network strategies and the cognitive limits of the managers enacting them.

Inventive and uninventive clusters: The case of Canadian biotechnology

We examine factors influencing the relative productivity of different geographic locations. Our analysis of the Canadian biotechnology industry during the 1990s reveals that inventive and uninventive locations are distinguishable within small geographic areas corresponding to roughly 7000 postal addresses. Inventive locations exhibit greater resource scale and technological focus, as well as greater emphasis on R&D investment and public and private collaboration. Comparison of inventive locations across three major metropolitan areas - Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal - indicates, however, that inventive locations vary in their emphasis on technological scale and focus relative to collaboration, and thus that location advantages can develop in distinctive ways.

REFLECTIONS ON SCIENTIFIC MISCONDUCT IN MANAGEMENT: UNFORTUNATE INCIDENTS OR A NORMATIVE CRISIS?

Taking as our starting point Merton’s (1942/1973) defense of science facing pressures from totalitarian regimes, we argue that today’s challenge to the integrity of management scholarship does not come primarily from external demands for ideological conformity, but from escalating competition for publication space in leading journals that is changing the internal dynamics of our community. We invited nine scholars from different countries and with different backgrounds and career trajectories to provide their brief views of this argument. Following an introduction that summarizes the argument, we present their different reactions by dividing and introducing the work into those who took a broad field-level perspective, those with a more macro view, and those who suggested possible remedies to our dilemmas. In conclusion, we note that questionable research practices, retractions, and highly publicized cases of academic misconduct may irreparably damage the legitimacy of our scholarship unless the management research community airs these issues and takes steps to address this challenge

Many are Called, but Few are Chosen: An Evolutionary Perspective for the Study of Entrepreneurship

More than a decade ago, Low and MacMillan identified three elements indispensable to an understanding of entrepreneurial success: process, context, and outcomes. Since their critique, three important advances include (a) a shift in theoretical emphasis from the characteristics of entrepreneurs as individuals to the consequences of their actions, (b) a deeper understanding of how entrepreneurs use knowledge, networks, and resources to construct firms, and (c) a more sophisticated taxonomy of environmental forces at different levels of analysis (population, community, and society) that affect entrepreneurship. Although our knowledge of entrepreneurial activities has increased dramatically, we still have much to learn about how process and context interact to shape the outcome of entrepreneurial efforts. From an evolutionary approach, process and context (strategy and environment) interact in a recursive continuous process, driving the fate of entrepreneurial efforts. Thus, integrating co..