Browsing by Subject "Business & Economics"

Now showing 1 - 20 of 37

Open Access
At the Interstices of Organizations: The Expansion of the Management Consulting Profession, 1933-97
(2002) Ruef, M
This book describes and analyzes this worldwide flow of management ideas and the key carriers of these ideas.
Open Access
Boom and Bust: The Effect of Entrepreneurial Inertia on Organizational Populations
(Advances in Strategic Management, 2006) Ruef, M
Although recent public attention has focused on boom-and-bust cycles in industries and financial markets, organizational theorists have made only limited contributions to our understanding of this issue. In this chapter, I argue that a distinctive strategic insight into the mechanisms generating boom-and-bust cycles arises from a focus on entrepreneurial inertia - the lag time exhibited by organizational founders or investors entering a market niche. While popular perceptions of boom-and-bust cycles emphasize the deleterious effect of hasty entrants or overvaluation, I suggest instead that slow, methodical entries into an organizational population or market may pose far greater threats to niche stability. This proposition is explored analytically, considering the development of U.S. medical schools since the mid-18th century. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Open Access
Business Owner Demography, Human Capital, and Social Networks
(2009-01-01) Ruef, M; Bonikowski, B; Aldrich, HE
While early work on the topic of entrepreneurship tended to portray entrepreneurs as heroic individuals (e.g., see Raines & Leathers, 2000, on Schumpeter’s description), more recent perspectives have come to recognize that new business activity is often initiated by groups of startup owners. Starting in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a new generation of scholars in the entrepreneurship field called for a systematic program of research that would document the prevalence of startup teams, describe their properties, and assess their impact on business performance (e.g., Gartner, Shaver, Gatewood, & Katz, 1994; Kamm, Shuman, Seeger, & Nurick, 1990). In a review of developments in entrepreneur research and theory, Gartner et al. (1994) noted that “the ‘entrepreneur’ in entrepreneurship is more likely to be plural, rather than singular” (p. 6). They offered an expansive definition of startup teams, which included owners, investors, organizational decision-makers, family members, advisors, critical suppliers, and buyers as possible candidates for the role of “entrepreneur.”
Open Access
China’s Evolving Role in Global Value Chains: Upgrading Strategies in an Era of Disruptions and Resilience
(2022-09-17) Gereffi, Gary; Bamber, Penny; Fernandez-Stark, Karina
China’s role in global value chains (GVCs) has changed fundamentally in recent decades. The country has moved from being the world factory for a diverse range of low-tech, mid-tech, and high-tech consumer goods to the goal of becoming a technological leader in sectors linked to advanced manufacturing, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, electric vehicles, and new e-commerce and internet-related production networks while lessening its dependence on the United States and other traditional export markets by focusing on its domestic market and emerging regional markets. China has achieved this transformation in its development trajectory by combining two drivers of change: upgrading from above and upgrading from below. While upgrading from above refers to the relatively familiar set of programs introduced by China’s central government that chart strategic shifts and new goals for the economy as a whole, upgrading from below is equally important but less well understood. It refers to the diverse set of local policies and firm-level activities at the provincial, regional, and city government levels that are required to implement and institutionalize China’s national programs and policy directives. The chapters of this book illustrate how upgrading from below works in practice in China and they suggest new research insights on how to analyze GVCs in China and other developing economies.
Open Access
China’s New Development Strategies Upgrading from Above and from Below in Global Value Chains
(2022-11-07) Gereffi, G; Bamber, P; Fernandez-Stark, K
This book examines China’s new development policies, which seek to reposition China from export platform for a diverse array of low-cost consumer goods to technological leader in sectors linked to advanced manufacturing, artificial ...
Open Access
Commodity chains and footwear exports in the semiperiphery
(Semiperipheral States in the World-Economy, 1990) GEREFFI, G; KORZENIEWICZ, M
Open Access
Competing for global capital or local voters? The politics of business location incentives
(Public Choice, 2015-09) Jensen, NM; Malesky, EJ; Walsh, M
© 2015, Springer Science+Business Media New York. The competition for global capital has led to interjurisdictional competition between countries, states and cities as to who can offer the most attractive incentives to firms. In this study, we examine the domestic politics of this competition by focusing on incentive use in the United States from 1999 to 2012. We define incentives as the targeted tax deductions or exemptions that are used to lure businesses into a locality. Drawing on data from municipal incentive programs, we examine how electoral competition shapes the use and oversight of targeted incentives. We find evidence that cities with elected mayors provide larger incentives than non-elected city managers by taking advantage of exogeneity in the assignment of city government institutions and a database of over 2000 investment incentives from 2010 to 2012. We also find that elected mayors enjoy more lax oversight of incentive projects than their appointed counterparts. Our results have important implications for the study of interjurisdictional competition and the role of electoral institutions in shaping economic policy.
Open Access
Competition between Generic and Branded Drugs
(Pharmaceutical innovation: incentives, competition, and cost-benefit analysis in international perspective, 2007-04-30) Grabowski, HG
The pharmaceutical industry worldwide is a rapidly burgeoning industry contributing to growth of gross domestic product and employment. Technological change in this field has been very rapid, with many new products being introduced. For this reason in part, health care budgets throughout the world have increased dramatically, eliciting growing pressures for cost containment. This book explores four important issues in pharmaceutical innovations: (1) the industry structure of pharmaceutical innovation; (2) incentives for correcting market failures in allocating resources for research and development; (3) competition and marketing; and (4) public evaluation of the benefits and costs of innovation. The lessons are applicable to countries all over the world, at all levels of economic development. By discussing existing evidence this book proposes incentive arrangements to accomplish social objectives.
Open Access
Creating linked datasets for SME energy-assessment evidence-building: Results from the U.S. Industrial Assessment Center Program
(Energy Policy, 2017-12-01) Dalzell, NM; Boyd, GA; Reiter, JP
© 2017 Elsevier Ltd Lack of information is commonly cited as a market failure resulting in an energy-efficiency gap. Government information policies to fill this gap may enable improvements in energy efficiency and social welfare because of the externalities of energy use. The U.S. Department of Energy Industrial Assessment Center (IAC) program is one such policy intervention, providing no-cost assessments to small and medium enterprises (SME). The IAC program has assembled a wealth of data on these assessments, but the database does not include information about participants after the assessment or on non-participants. This study addresses that lack by creating a new linked dataset using the public IAC and non-public data at the Census Bureau. The IAC database excludes detail needed for an exact match, so the study developed a linking methodology to account for uncertainty in the matching process. Based on the linking approach, a difference in difference analysis for SME that received an assessment was done; plants that received an assessment improve their performance over time, relative to industry peers that did not. This new linked dataset is likely to shed even more light on the impact of the IAC and similar programs in advancing energy efficiency.
Open Access
Credit and Classification: The Impact of Industry Boundaries in 19th Century America
(Administrative Science Quarterly, 2009) Ruef, M; Patterson, K
In this article, we examine how issues of multi-category membership (hybridity) were handled during the evolution of one of the first general systems of industrial classification in the United States, the credit rating schema of R. G. Dun and Company. Drawing on a repeated cross-sectional study of credit evaluations during the post bellum period (1870-1900), our empirical analyses suggest that organizational membership in multiple categories need not be problematic when classification systems themselves are emergent or in flux and when organizations avoid rare combinations or identities involving ambiguous components. As Dun's schema became institutionalized, boundaries between industries were more clearly defined and boundary violations became subject to increased attention and penalty by credit reporters. Our perspective highlights the utility of an evolutionary perspective and tests its implications for the salience of distinct mechanisms of hybridity. © 2009 by Johnson Graduate School, Cornell University.
Open Access
Economic and environmental implications of different approaches to hedge against wind production uncertainty in two-settlement electricity markets: A PJM case study
(ENERGY ECONOMICS, 2019-05-01) Daraeepour, A; Patino-Echeverri, D; Conejo, AJ
Open Access
Estimating willingness to pay: Do health and environmental researchers have different methodological standards?
(Applied Economics, 2013-06-01) Özdemir, S; Johnson, FR
Health and environmental economists have been employing Stated-Preference (SP) methods such as conjoint analysis or contingent valuation to estimate the monetary value of public health interventions and environmental goods and services. However, the quality of data and the validity of results are sensitive to a number of decisions researchers make. The aim of this study is to compare the degree of the current consensus among active researchers in the rapidly evolving area of SP methods in health and environmental valuation. We surveyed researchers who have published manuscripts on SP methods in the last 10 years. Researchers were presented with hypothetical SP studies with different attributes. They were first asked which study they would recommend to use to inform policy decisions, and then asked which study has better-quality. Our results show that good-practice SP methods vary among study features and among researchers with different amounts and kinds of research experience. Although health researchers had specific preferences on which study features were better, their quality judgements were not very consistent with their judgements about the acceptability of studies for policy analysis. On the other hand, environmental researchers had similar preferences over the study attributes for the two types of questions. © 2012 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.
Open Access
Firm Growth and Corruption: Empirical Evidence from Vietnam
(The Economic Journal, 2019-02-01) Bai, J; Jayachandran, S; Malesky, EJ; Olken, BA
Open Access
From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: The Social Transformation of American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a Profession
(Administrative Science Quarterly, 2008) Ruef, M
Open Access
Horizontal Equity Effects in Energy Regulation
(Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, 2019-03) Fischer, C; Pizer, WA
Open Access
Improved reasoning in undergraduate writing through structured workshops
(Journal of Economic Education, 2015-01-01) Dowd, JE; Connolly, MP; Thompson, RJ; Reynolds, JA
© 2015 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. The Department of Economics at Duke University has endeavored to increase participation in undergraduate honors thesis research while ensuring a high-quality learning experience. Given the faculty-to-student ratio in the department (approximately 1:16), increasing research participation required the creation of a stable, replicable framework for mentoring students through research. The department aimed to make the research experience more consistent and interactive so that students also learned from each other in a group setting. Here, the authors assess the relationship between changes in mentoring support of honors research and students scientific reasoning and writing skills reflected in their undergraduate theses. They find that students who participated in structured courses designed to support and enhance their research exhibited the strongest learning outcomes, as measured by systematic writing assessment.
Open Access
Introduction and Summary
(Accelerating Energy Innovation: Insights from Multiple Sectors, 2011-05-30) Henderson, Rebecca M.; Newell, R
Open Access
“Lies build trust”: Social capital, masculinity, and community-based resource management in a Mexican fishery
(World Development, 2019-11-01) Siegelman, B; Haenn, N; Basurto, X
© 2019 Elsevier Ltd This paper relates how fishermen in San Evaristo on Mexico's Baja peninsula employ fabrications to strengthen bonds of trust and navigate the complexities of common pool resource extraction. We argue this trickery complicates notions of social capital in community-based natural resource management, which emphasize communitarianism in the form of trust. Trust, defined as a mutual dependability often rooted in honesty, reliable information, or shared expectations, has long been recognized as essential to common pool resource management. Despite this, research that takes a critical approach to social capital places attention on the activities that foster social networks and their norms by arguing that social capital is a process. A critical approach illuminates San Evaristeño practices of lying and joking across social settings and contextualizes these practices within cultural values of harmony. As San Evaristeños assert somewhat paradoxically, for them “lies build trust.” Importantly, a critical approach to this case study forces consideration of gender, an overlooked topic in social capital research. San Evaristeña women are excluded from the verbal jousting through which men maintain ties supporting their primacy in fishery management. Both men's joke-telling and San Evaristeños’ aversion to conflict have implications for conservation outcomes. As a result, we use these findings to help explain local resistance to outsiders and external management strategies including land trusts, fishing cooperatives, and marine protected areas.
Open Access
Local Institutional Responses to Global Market Pressures: The Sea Cucumber Trade in Yucatán, Mexico
(World Development, 2018-02-01) Bennett, A; Basurto, X
© 2017 Elsevier Ltd The expansion of global seafood trade creates opportunities as well as risks for small-scale fisheries (SSFs) livelihoods. Markets provide economic opportunity, but without effective governance, high demand can drive resource degradation. In the context of small-scale sea cucumber fisheries in Yucatán, Mexico, this study documents local governance responses to new markets and identifies factors driving those responses. We conducted a comparative case study of two SSF communities, collecting participant observation and interview data during 16 months of fieldwork. Our study found that local rules-in-use did not match government regulations and that the emergence of local rules was shaped by relations of production in each study site. Specifically, patron–client relationships promoted an open access regime that expanded local fishing fleets while fishing cooperatives attempted to restrict access to local fishing grounds through collective action and multi-level linkages with government. We propose that the different material incentives arising from the way that patron–client relationships and cooperatives organize labor, capital, and profits help explain these divergent governance responses. We hypothesize that this finding is generalizable beyond the study context, especially given that patron–client relationships and cooperatives are common throughout the world's SSFs. This finding builds on previous research that indicates local institutions can mediate the effects of market pressures, showing that the emergence of local rules depends on how resource users are organized not just in relation to resource governance but vis-à-vis the markets themselves. Therefore, effective policies for SSFs facing market pressures require a greater emphasis on regulating local-level trade and governing the commercial aspects of fishing livelihoods. These lessons are relevant to the estimated 540 million individuals whose livelihoods SSFs support who may increasingly engage in the global seafood trade.
Open Access
Mapping the Dynamic Complexity of Chronic Disease Care in Singapore: Using Group Model Building in Knowledge Elicitation
(Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 2018-11-01) Ansah, JP; Matchar, DB; Koh, V; Schoenenberger, L
This study describes a group model building exercise that aims to develop a deeper understanding of the dynamic complexity of chronic disease care delivery within a primary care setting in Singapore, leveraging on the insights of stakeholders with personal and institutional knowledge of the health care system. A group model building exercise, which included 50 stakeholders, was used to develop the qualitative model. The qualitative model helped to bring a feedback perspective to understanding the dynamic complexity of chronic disease care delivery. The feedback perspective helped in identifying the systemic issues within chronic disease care delivery, which has the potential to inform system-wide interventions and policies to improve health. Enhancing chronic care in Singapore will require an enhancement of both the capacity and capability of the primary care sector. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.