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Wetting wood plastic composites (WPCs) prior to testing can be challenging because of the inherent water repellency of the plastic. The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of heating and wetting to accelerate moisture uptake on two WPCs.

Full size samples of the two WPCs were immersed in water at various temperatures or heated in an autoclave. Samples were removed periodically and dissected to determine the moisture profile by oven drying and weighing.

Moisture uptake is accelerated by heating, but the effect is mainly confined to the outer 5 mm of the samples. Moisture levels deeper in the samples are largely unaffected.

Moisture uptake can be enhanced by heating, but the inability to increase moisture levels deeper in the wood suggests that tests assessing the role of moisture on WPC properties should use thinner specimens to ensure that moisture is well distributed in the materials.

The results suggest the need for a re‐evaluation of test methodologies for WPCs where moisture uptake is an integral part of the procedures to more closely align the methods to the WPC/moisture behaviour.

This paper will help researchers develop better methods for assessing the role of moisture in WPC behaviour.

Industry platforms can alter relations among exchange partners in such a way that the industry structure is changed. The focus of much industry platform research has been on how platform creation and leadership offers advantages to the most central firms, but platforms can also be advantageous for small specialist firms that compete with the most central firms. We examine book publishing as an example of an industry in which the central players – large publishing firms – are losing power to self-publishing authors because the distributor Amazon has a powerful platform for customers to communicate independently, and the non-publishing platform Twitter also serves as a medium for readers to discuss and review books. Our empirical analysis is based on downloaded sales statistics for Amazon Ebooks, matched with Amazon reviews of the same books and tweets that refer to the book or the author. We analyze how Ebook sales are a function of publisher, Amazon reviews, and tweets, and we are able to assess the importance of each factor in the sale of book titles. The main finding is that Amazon reviews are powerful drivers of book sales, and have greater effect on the sales of books that are not backed by publishers. Twitter also affects book sales, but less strongly than Amazon reviews.

The purpose of this paper is to establish the main causes of early failure of small recently established fundraising charities.

Heads and ex-heads of small recently established British charities that had either shut down within two years of registration with the Charity Commission or had survived for two years following registration were surveyed to determine the sorts of issue they believed were particularly problematic at the time their charities were formed or shortly thereafter. The research combined ideas from human capital theory, organisational ecology, and the survivor principle to investigate the mortality of new charity start-ups. Information was obtained from the ex-heads of 182 charities that had been removed from the Charity Commission’s register and from 356 heads of charities that were still in operation.

Participants in both groups reported that they had experienced major difficulties relating to funding, the development of plans, lack of marketing and management skills, and personal workload. Differences between the groups emerged with respect to their perceptions of problems involving competition from other charities (both for donations and for clients), internal conflict within their organisations, networking, and the need for background research. Start-ups run by people with prior experience of working in charities had a significantly better chance of survival than start-ups managed by individuals lacking such experience.

The data used in the investigation were self-reported and less than a majority of the sampling frame participated in the study.

Prospective founders of small new charities need to recognise competitive realities and the competencies required for success before commencing operations. Government and nonprofit support organisations should arrange short work experience placements and shadowing activities for individuals contemplating starting a new charity.

This was the first research ever to examine reasons for small enterprise collapse within the nonprofit domain.

We investigate how firms’ responses to misconduct change when the institutional environment becomes more stringent. Organizational theory offers conflicting perspectives on whether new legislation will increase or decrease pressure on firms to take remedial action following misconduct. The dominant perspective posits that new legislation increases expectations of firm behavior, amplifying pressure on them to take remedial action after misconduct. A more recent perspective, however, suggests that the mere necessity to meet more stringent regulatory requirements certifies firms as legitimate to relevant audiences. This certification effect buffers firms, reducing the pressure for them to take remedial action after misconduct. Using a temporary, largely arbitrary exemption from a key provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, we show that firms that were not required to meet all the regulatory standards of good governance it required became 45% more likely to replace their CEOs following the announcement of an earnings restatement after Sarbanes-Oxley. On the other hand, those that were required to meet all of Sarbanes-Oxley’s provisions became 26% less likely to replace their CEOs following a restatement announcement. Ironically, CEOs at firms with a legislative mandate intended to increase accountability for corporate misconduct shoulder less blame than do CEOs at firms without such legislative demands.

This paper examines how cultural holes that exist at the intersection of institutional fields influence the exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities. Through an exploration of physician-founded ambulatory surgery centers in the United States, we examine how the presence of cultural holes presented doctors with alternative beliefs, values, and practices to overcome the cultural constraints around entrepreneurship within the medical profession. In doing so, this study extends cultural entrepreneurship research by bringing cultural holes to the forefront, empirically showing how they facilitate entrepreneurial action and proposing other contexts where cultural holes may affect entrepreneurial actions and outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to present a theoretical analysis that examines joint bids that unite multiple cities or nations in a bid for hosting international large-scale sport events from the perspective of strategic alliances.

Using previous strategic alliance research and examples of joint sport event bids, this study discusses how joint event bids can be understood as strategic alliances.

Motivations of bidders and driving forces behind the formation of joint bids are identified and analyzed. By integrating theories used in the area of strategic alliances, this study provides an agenda for moving research on joint bids forward as the practice continues to expand.

As a conceptual paper, the findings of this study can be a starting point for future research not only on joint bids but also on inter-organizational relationships in the context of sport event bidding.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of political risk on firms' likelihood of foreign market entry and performance by adopting a strategic view of political risk and drawing upon the arguments of multimarket contact theory.

This study estimates the location choice and performance of Japanese auto parts‐makers using panel regression models.

The study finds that firms with low multimarket contact in the home country and high multimarket contact in the host country are less likely to avoid politically risky host countries and that firms which entered politically risky host countries exhibit greater performance when the degree of multimarket contact with prior entrants is high.

Although the research design raises a concern about the generalizability of the findings, this study highlights the strategic importance of politically risky markets and suggests the importance of considering competitive interactions with rivals in examining interdependent behavior in foreign direct investments.

Instead of consistently avoiding politically risky markets, managers should actively consider the potential strategic importance of these markets. A post‐entry strategy suggested by the findings is taking positive steps to leverage the benefits of multimarket contacts for managing subsidiaries in politically risky host countries.

Unlike previous studies, this study emphasizes the strategic potential of politically risky markets and takes a view that firms have variable political risk tolerance. Furthermore, the authors' adoption of multimarket contact theory allows a novel approach to benchmarking against rivals for foreign entry decisions.

How do institutions affect entrepreneurship? Conversely, how do entrepreneurs impact institutions? Institutional theory has long struggled to explain the action and agency inherent in entrepreneurship (DiMaggio, 1988; Barley & Tolbert, 1997). Contemporary institutionalist research in organization studies began with the question of how the institutional environment shapes the structures and behaviors of existing organizations. This research largely focused on how normative, regulative, and cognitive dimensions of the environment (Scott, 2008) constrain large, mature organizations and the circumstances that increase the adoption of new structures by such organizations (Meyer & Rowan, 1977; DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; Tolbert & Zucker, 1983). A subsequent wave of research in the institutional tradition focused on institutional change within mature organizational fields (see Dacin, Goodstein, & Scott, 2002). Some recent research has studied the actors – “institutional entrepreneurs” – that create new or transform existing institutions (e.g., Greenwood, Suddaby, & Hinings, 2002; Maguire, Hardy, & Lawrence, 2004). Much less attention, however, has been paid within the institutional-theory literature to entrepreneurship: the processes of founding and managing new organizations.

The focus of this paper is to understand the initial formation of inter-firm relationship with the ultimate aim to form a long-term relationship in offshore-wind sector. The research question is “How and why new inter-firm relationships are built in nascent industries with highly uncertain business environments?”

Longitudinal case studies of three pairs of new inter-firm relationships based on interviews and other archival data are analysed.

Not all new inter-firm relationships progressed to expansion stage, largely owing to incompatibility and uncertainty. In some cases incompatibility could be rectified by trust and sharing of information. High trust is required to move the relationship from awareness to exploration stage. Investment in R&D is required to move the relationship from exploration to expansion. Innovation complementarity is the key in OSW sector.

Provide insights into how new inter-firm relationships in OSW sector could fail or be built up. High trust at the beginning helps to lower risk and encourages further investment.

Inform inter-firm relationship theories under high market risk and political uncertainty, especially for OSW sector.