Intellectual Capital (IC) is essential to the success of new technology-based firms. A key component of IC is human capital. Human capital is shown to affect firm innovation…
Abstract
Purpose
Intellectual Capital (IC) is essential to the success of new technology-based firms. A key component of IC is human capital. Human capital is shown to affect firm innovation, growth, and survival positively. This paper investigates the signaling effect of technology-based start-ups’ initial stock of IC on obtaining skilled human capital.
Design/methodology/approach
The researcher employs signaling theory to analyze primary data concerning the firm’s initial stock of IC and subsequently hired human capital from founders of 236 technology-based new ventures in the USA Hypotheses are tested through a set of hierarchical linear regressions.
Findings
This study demonstrates that the firms’ IC, in the form of quantity of founders with doctorates and intellectual property, correlates with the quality (average education level) of subsequently hired technical and business human capital. In addition, the quantity of founders with doctorates is correlated with the quantity of subsequently hired technical human capital.
Originality/value
The paper collects retrospective data from founders of technology-based new ventures. While human capital is important for technology-based firms’ innovation and growth, little research has investigated potential connections between firms’ initial IC and subsequent hiring of top-level human capital. This paper investigates these connections explicitly.
Details
Keywords
Lee J. Zane and Mark A. Tribbitt
Intellectual capital (IC) is essential to the success of new technology-based firms. However, young firms only possess some of the resources and capabilities needed to develop…
Abstract
Purpose
Intellectual capital (IC) is essential to the success of new technology-based firms. However, young firms only possess some of the resources and capabilities needed to develop, produce and market their innovative products and services. Hence, many form alliances to access complementary resources. This paper investigates the signaling effect of technology-based start-ups’ stock of IC on alliance formation.
Design/methodology/approach
This study analyzes primary data concerning specific classes of IC and the alliances formed. Data were collected from founders of 233 technology-based new ventures in the USA. Hypotheses were tested via hierarchical linear regression.
Findings
This study demonstrates that firms' IC, in the form of founders with doctorates and patents, is positively related to the classes of alliances formed. These stocks of IC send signals about credibility to the market for alliance partners, enabling the firms to form alliances and gain access to complementary resources. The number of founders with doctorates was positively related to R&D alliances and alliance partners in a similar place in the value chain as the focal firm. In contrast, the number of patents was positively related to total alliances, production-oriented alliances and alliances considered upstream from the focal firm.
Originality/value
This paper collects retrospective data from founders of technology-based new ventures. The research contributes to the literature with its results that founder human capital and patent portfolios are essential for technology-based firms' innovation and growth. However, little research has investigated how firms' possession of IC facilitates alliance formation. This paper investigates this connection explicitly.
Details
Keywords
Sustainability is increasingly becoming an essential aspect of technological innovations. In addition, the diffusion of sustainable new technology-based products appears to be…
Abstract
Purpose
Sustainability is increasingly becoming an essential aspect of technological innovations. In addition, the diffusion of sustainable new technology-based products appears to be uneven across the globe. The authors examine the effect of three country-level Hofstede measures of culture and two national-level innovation characteristics on the diffusion of Sustainable New Technology-based Products (SNTP).
Design/methodology/approach
Regression and Necessary Conditions Analysis were used to analyze a panel dataset of electric and hybrid vehicles sales from 2008 to 2017 across 89 countries.
Findings
Results suggest Long-Term Orientation (LTO) was correlated with SNTP diffusion, Indulgence (IVR) was partially correlated with SNTP diffusion and was also a necessary condition. Surprisingly, Uncertainty Avoidance (UAI) was not correlated with SNTP diffusion. In addition, a national proclivity for developing innovations and a history of utilizing prior generic innovations were both correlated and necessary for SNTP diffusion.
Originality/value
This paper measures the impact of several macro-level variables (culture and other innovation related characteristics of countries) on SNTP diffusion. In addition to regression analyses to measure the average effect size, the authors conduct Necessary Conditions Analysis, which assesses the necessity of a variable for the outcome. These insights may help multinational companies better strategize entry decisions for international markets and aid governments in formulating more effective policies by recognizing and accommodating the influences of national culture and innovation attitudes.
Details
Keywords
Eric W. Liguori, Christoph Winkler, Lee J. Zane, Jeff Muldoon and Doan Winkel
This paper explores community college entrepreneurship education's near-instantaneous transition to online course delivery following the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper explores community college entrepreneurship education's near-instantaneous transition to online course delivery following the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.
Design/methodology/approach
Primary data were obtained from 92 community college entrepreneurship faculty via online survey in late March of 2020, right at the time faculty were required to transition their courses to an online mode of delivery due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were collected in partnership with the National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship and the Entrepreneurship Education Project.
Findings
While the majority of community college entrepreneurship educators have taught online previously, many were not familiar with exemplar education technology tools and applications, demonstrating an opportunity for continued professional development. To deliver courses online, educators primarily relied on pre-recorded lectures and using Zoom as the technology platform of choice. Last, there were significant faculty concerns about their ability to effectively create an “experiential” classroom virtually for students to learn and practice entrepreneurship.
Originality/value
This is the first paper investigating how community college entrepreneurship educators responded to one of the most disruptive events to ever impact entrepreneurship education (viz. the COVID-19 pandemic). More broadly, this is also one of very few studies exploring both (1) community college entrepreneurship education and (2) how unexpected crises (e.g. natural disasters, pandemics) impact educational environments.
Details
Keywords
V.K. Narayanan and Lee J. Zane
The purpose of this paper is to offer an epistemological vantage point for theory development in the case of strategic leadership, an emerging focus of scholarly attention in…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to offer an epistemological vantage point for theory development in the case of strategic leadership, an emerging focus of scholarly attention in strategic management.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors invoke Rescher's epistemological platform for making the case, Rescher being one of the most influential philosophers in the USA.
Findings
The analysis suggests that since strategic leadership differs from supervisory leadership, both on organizational reach and incorporation of external elements, defining the strategic leadership problem exclusively as a difference in context – what Weick referred to as a strategy of knowledge growth by extension – is likely to prove unproductive. Rescher's platform can be put to use for specifying the two critical though inter‐related epistemological challenges in the beginning of the theory development project: the choice of concepts, and the type of relations among the concepts. These epistemological challenges may be reframed as opportunities to capture the phenomenal variety embedded in these concepts, and to deploy a diversity of approaches to examine their correspondence.
Research limitations/implications
Contending and complementary views on strategic leadership, and hence concepts representing alternate views should be allowed. Bridges should be built between islands of scholarship, but these bridges are likely to be found in special issues of journals (devoted deliberately to nurture multiple perspectives), edited books and invited conferences.
Practical implications
Engagement with “strategic” leaders is an epistemological necessity for both theoretical and pragmatic reasons.
Originality/value
This paper demonstrates how epistemology can strengthen theory building in the case of strategic leadership. Given the signal importance of this phenomenon, good theories and, therefore, epistemological challenges should occupy a central stage of discussions in this early stage.
Details
Keywords
Allison Nederveld and Zane L. Berge
The purpose of this paper is to serve as a summary of resources on flipped learning for workplace learning professionals. A recent buzzword in the training world is “flipped”…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to serve as a summary of resources on flipped learning for workplace learning professionals. A recent buzzword in the training world is “flipped”. Flipped learning and the flipped classroom are hot topics that have emerged in K-12 education, made their way to the university and are now being noticed by the corporate world. Unfortunately many learning professionals have misconceptions about what it really means to flip a learning experience, and little literature exists to support implementation of flipped learning in the workplace.
Design/methodology/approach
The methodology adopted in this article is a literature review.
Findings
The paper presents several tools for moving lecture outside of the classroom and for making class time more student-centered through active learning techniques.
Practical implications
This paper discusses the benefits and challenges of a flipped learning approach, both in general and specifically in the workplace. Additionally, the paper explores several case studies of flipped learning use in the workplace.
Originality/value
The paper is a literature review that explores the definition of flipped learning as a learner-centered approach to education and looks at two models of flipped learning with applicability to workplace settings.
Details
Keywords
With expanded technologic and communication resources there is growing awareness worldwide of the public health problems caused by alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use, misuse…
Abstract
With expanded technologic and communication resources there is growing awareness worldwide of the public health problems caused by alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use, misuse, abuse and addiction. Trends vary by culture and region but use of tobacco and alcohol is almost universal and is associated with high rates of mortality and morbidity. While nurses have not universally embraced the prevention and treatment of substance‐related disorders as their province, this is changing as a function of organisations, World Health Organization (WHO) and national initiatives, and the strengthening of nurse education. Actions to promote consensus, identify and review competencies for nurses must consider national and cultural variations, traditions of social change and the need for evidence‐based practice. Collective action by nurses in newly formed and existing organisations, which focus on addictions prevention and treatment, have resulted in initial professional steps. Such progress can be facilitated if achieved in the context of larger international policies and initiatives and in collaboration with members of other professional disciplines.
Details
Keywords
Jun Li, Irem Demirkan, Younggeun Lee and Andres Felipe Cortes
Jan Hendrik Havenga and Zane Paul Simpson
The purpose of this paper is to present the results of South Africa’s national freight demand model and related logistics cost models, and to illustrate the application of the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present the results of South Africa’s national freight demand model and related logistics cost models, and to illustrate the application of the modelling outputs to inform macrologistics policy.
Design/methodology/approach
Spatially and sectorally disaggregated supply and demand data are developed using the input-output (I-O) model of the economy as a platform, augmented by actual data. Supply and demand interaction is translated into freight flows via a gravity model. The logistics costs model is a bottom-up aggregation of logistics-related costs for these freight flows.
Findings
South Africa’s logistics costs are higher than in developed countries. Road freight volumes constitute 80 per cent of long-distance corridor freight, while road transport contributes more than 80 per cent to the country’s transport costs. These challenges raise concerns regarding the competitiveness of international trade, as well as the impact of transport externalities. The case studies highlight that domestic logistics costs are the biggest cost contributor to international trade logistics costs and can be reduced through inter alia modal shift. Modal shift can be induced through the internalisation of freight externality costs. Results show that externality cost internalisation can eradicate the societal cost of freight transport in South Africa without increasing macroeconomic freight costs.
Research limitations/implications
Systematic spatially disaggregated commodity-level data are limited. There is however a wealth of supply, demand and freight flow information collected by the public and private sector. Initiatives to create an appreciation of the intrinsic value of such information and to leverage data sources will improve freight demand modelling in emerging economies.
Originality/value
A spatially and sectorally disaggregated national freight demand model, and related logistics costs models, utilising actual and modelled data, balanced via the national I-O model, provides opportunities for increased accuracy of outputs and diverse application possibilities.