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In this article, we develop, and empirically test, a moderated mediation model of the effects of flexible leave on employees' organizational attachment. Drawing on a social exchange framework and signaling theory, we explore how the material and non‐material nature of exchange between the employer and employee shapes their relationship. First, we show that the relationship between the availability of flexible leave and organizational attachment is shaped by two competing mediators, perceived organizational support (POS) and perceived flexibility stigma. Second, we delineate between availability and use of the policy, to show how the effect of POS is enhanced and perceived flexibility stigma reduced, with use. Our findings demonstrate that the relationship between the availability of flexible leave and organizational attachment is complex, but is enhanced through use of flexible leave. We contribute toward HRM scholarship about the relationship between employees' experience of HR practices and their corresponding impact on employees' subsequent behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we strive to reconcile equivocal findings about the effects of top leader succession and prior leadership experience on postsuccession organizational performance. In doing so, we draw on insights from theories of human capital, learning, and asymmetric information to better understand the conditions under which leaders increase or decrease postsuccession performance. Employing a sample of 119 newly appointed leaders in the English Premier League (1996-2010), we find the following results. First, relating to the succession event, outside leaders that directly move between leadership positions are associated with higher postsuccession performance while the departure of a prior leader to a leadership position in another organization has a negative effect on postsuccession performance. Second, relating to prior leadership experience, leaders with domestic top leader experience are associated with lower postsuccession performance, while leaders with foreign top leader experience are associated with higher postsuccession performance. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, scholars have examined the influence of actors’ sensemaking on context; in this paper, we explore the reverse. Employing Bourdieu’s theory of practice we explore how actors’ unique contexts, as encapsulated by their social positions, provide the important “raw materials” for their sensemaking about organizational change. Drawing on a case study of three focal actors, located in different social positions in the National Health Service in England, but tasked with enacting a common organizational change, we explore how actors’ capital endowments and dispositions shape their sensemaking about organizational change. We conclude by developing a theoretical model of the influence of social position on sensemaking about organizational change and discuss the practical implications of paying closer attention to the social positions of actors engaged as change agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite growing interest in rhetorical analysis by management scholars, the study of enthymemes or arguments‐in‐use, arguably the mainstay of rhetoric, has been scarce. We argue that enthymeme analysis holds promise in enabling researchers to access agents' shared beliefs, in turn shedding light on organizational processes. We draw from two key studies of enthymeme analysis; one interpretivist and one objectivist, to propose a mixed methods approach that combines the situationally‐specific, grounded insights of the former, with the confirmation, population validity aspects of the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does a social actor in a disadvantaged position achieve field level change? Using a longitudinal case of 'Capability' Brown, an individual rising from humble origins to shape and refine the British landscape, we examine how an actor's unfolding efforts to move from a social position at the periphery of a field, to a social position at the centre of a field, may present them with opportunities to influence field level change. In doing so, we employ Bourdieu's Theory of Practice, and unexplored notion of 'position taking'. We argue that an actor's tactics to shape change, and position taking to enhance social position, should be considered in conjunction with one-another, and that position taking strategies may be viewed as a core component of the work undertaken by social actors in trying to influence field level change. Further, we suggest that tensions between an agent's accumulated capital and the social position typically afforded to their role in the field, may lead to efforts to 'take' or 'create' new positions, providing opportunities to influence the developing institution, with symbolic capital playing a pivotal role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the influence of formal technology transfer from a public research organization (PRO) on the amount of capital that a spin-off raises at start-up and the increase in capital post start-up. Examination of the relationships is provided using a sample of 135 spin-offs from PROs across five European countries. Findings suggest that spin-offs with formal technology transfer begin with a larger amount of capital, but ultimately do not raise more capital than spin-offs without formal technology transfer.

This article discusses how universities have emphasized the creation of new business enterprises as a mechanism for commercialization of intellectual property. This article assesses the rise in entrepreneurial activity at universities and the societal and organizational ramifications. The author describes the rise of entrepreneurial activity in the form of patenting, licensing, research joint ventures and the creation of spin-off companies. The fact that U.S. legislation has transferred ownership of intellectual property from federal research grants to universities from the agencies that sponsor research is mentioned.

We critically examine the potential that neuroscience holds for the future of entrepreneurship research and provide a framework for entrepreneurship researchers interested in pursuing this line of inquiry. Specifically, we propose four complementary mechanisms through which neuroscience can inform entrepreneurship theory and research. We conclude with a discussion of the limitations and ethical implications of a neuroscientific approach to entrepreneurship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We draw on the conservation of resources theory to examine whether self‐efficacy and resilience mediate the relationship between entrepreneurs' business network utilization and their subjective well‐being. Using socioemotional selectivity theory, we then examine the extent to which the mediating effects become stronger as entrepreneurs age. An analysis of data collected from 335 entrepreneurs in India reveals that business networks help entrepreneurs build resilience and self‐efficacy, which contribute to subjective well‐being. Furthermore, we find that the relationship between business network utilization and subjective well‐being strengthens as entrepreneurs age. Our findings attest to the importance of understanding how contextual resources in entrepreneurs' work environments influence their subjective well‐being by enhancing their personal psychological resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Why are some new leaders dismissed more quickly than others? Adopting agency theory logic, the authors examine how different succession contexts shape boards’ information asymmetries about a potential candidate's competencies in the hiring process, which influences the propensity of making poor hiring decisions and hence the risk of new leader dismissal. Employing duration analysis on a sample of 164 newly appointed leaders in the English premier league (1996–2014), the authors find that the risk of new leader dismissal is: (i) greater when the predecessor leader's exit was initiated by them rather than by the board; (ii) greater when following a longer‐tenured predecessor; and (iii) lower for outside successions compared with inside successions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper we explore the effects of team‐specific human capital (TSHC) on performance. We do so by delineating between two dimensions of TSHC, relating to team members and the team manager, and then exploring how the two dimensions may interact in shaping performance. Employing a 10‐year panel of football teams from the English Premier League we find that team members’ TSHC has a positive and significant effect on team performance, which is positively moderated by managers’ TSHC. Our results attest to the importance of considering both the team member and team manager dimensions of TSHC, and how the performance effects of team members’ TSHC are shaped by managers’ TSHC. Our results stand in stark contrast to the dramatic reduction in managerial tenure that has characterized the English Premier League in recent years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research employing the resource-based view (RBV) has overwhelming focused on the upside of resources, namely those that provide benefit to the firm. However, an emerging research stream suggests that the downside of resources, namely resource weaknesses, may be crucial in gaining a greater understanding of the key factors that contribute to firm performance and the ability to turnaround failing companies. We examine the infamous case of Jarvis, a firm that achieved a turnaround, but then experienced catastrophic failure. In so doing we explore the emergence of resource weaknesses, their nature and ability to combine to create a fatal organisational outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professional hybrids are situated between managerial and professional groups, potentially enabling them to move between different organizational groups. Extant research assumes that professional hybrids undergo identity transition to overcome the conflicts associated with influencing two distinct organizational realms. However, how these identity conflicts are managed remains unclear. To explore how professional hybrids manage such identity conflicts we consider the experience of nurse hybrids. Drawing on the concept of liminality we argue that influence across multiple groups relies on the construction of a positive liminal space. In contrast, we demonstrate how nurse hybrids occupy a perverse liminal space, perpetuating identity conflict, preventing identity transition, and undermining their effectiveness as hybrids. Our work calls into question the reliance on professional hybrids as an organizational panacea for reform and develops our understanding of individual hybrids. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intuition is a way of processing information that is largely unconscious, associative, fast and contextually dependent. As part of the growing cognition-oriented research agenda in the entrepreneurship field, the specific cognitive construct of intuition has attracted relatively little attention. The authors find this position surprising, particularly since some entrepreneurship scholars have described intuition as the seed of entrepreneurial activity. This review examines the small but rapidly growing literature at the intersection of intuition and entrepreneurship. In critically analysing this body of work, the authors reveal a number of areas that warrant further attention if scholars wish to enhance academic understanding of the role of intuition in the entrepreneurial process. From this review, the authors develop an agenda to help guide scholars of entrepreneurial cognition with a specific interest in intuition in their future research. In doing so, they address a gap in the entrepreneurial cognition literature, which currently lacks a clear view of the value of entrepreneurship research on intuition and of how it should be conducted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we review and synthesize extant research on entrepreneurial leadership, capabilities and their influence on the growth of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). First, we begin by examining the processes, routines and resources underlying substantive growth capabilities; these are capabilities that enable a firm to grow by competing in its market(s) on a day-to-day basis. Second, we explore leadership in terms of the cognitions motivations and decisions to invest in growth. Third, we examine the dynamic capabilities, which extend, modify or create new substantive (growth) capabilities, to support the sustained pursuit of new opportunities. In so doing, we explore the interrelationships between substantial capabilities, leadership and dynamic capabilities. We conclude the review by highlighting areas of consensus and contention in the literature, from which we propose fruitful areas for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper we examine the institutionalization of a new organizational practice around third stream activities in UK higher education from 1994 to 2008. Employing a longitudinal research design, involving archival, survey and contemporary interview data, we show how a new organizational practice diffused through the use of discourse and metrics around commercialization but over time was threatened on pure economic criteria. In response to the threat we explore how actors worked to institutionalize the new practice, reshaping both discourse and metrics to ensure that they were robust so that they could align with the interests and values of major stakeholders. In addition, actors worked to align discourse and metrics, as any misalignment between the two would have undermined the institutionalization of the new organizational practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ability of individuals to accommodate the emotional transition into roles requiring the construction of a leader identity is an under-researched phenomenon. To address this research gap we consider the experience of 32 nurse managers undergoing a leadership development programme, exploring how an emotional attachment to their professional group identity may cause identity conflict during the construction of a managerial leader identity. We consider how competing desired identities can result in negative emotional experiences, calling into question existing work, which assumes that desired group identities are congruent with leader identities. Our work suggests that identity work can mitigate identity conflict at the individual level, enabling nurse managers to function in their role, but emotional distress will continue due to a perceived loss of professional identity and group influence. We contend it is only by eschewing an emotional attachment to a professional group identity that nurse managers will be able to overcome this negative emotional experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we reflect on two related questions. First, how have we arrived at a position where null hypothesis significance testing is the dominant criterion employed by quantitative researchers when deciding on whether or not a result is 'significant'? Second, how might we change the practice of quantitative management research by promoting a greater plurality of methods, and in doing so better enable scholars to put phenomena before design? We conclude by arguing that quantitative management researchers need to focus on the epistemological issues surrounding the role of scholarly reasoning in justifying knowledge claims. By embracing a plurality of approaches to reasoning quantitative researchers will be better able to escape the straitjacket of null hypothesis significance testing and, in doing so, reorder their priorities by putting phenomena before design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the role of historical analysis in the development of the RBV, focusing on the work of Edith Penrose. Drawing on Penrose's own work, and her correspondence with her teacher and colleague Professor Fritz Machlup, the article argues that historical analysis was central to the development of her ideas on firm growth, which provided the intellectual underpinnings of the RBV. It concludes by arguing that history matters to the RBV, despite the fact that it is now largely marginalised in RBV and wider strategy research. It is now time to bring history (back) into the RBV. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Objectives: There exists a translation gap between academic research and clinical practice in health care systems. One policy-driven initiative to address the translation gap in England are the Collaborations for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (CLAHRCs), funded by the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR). These aim to bring together NHS organizations and universities to accelerate the translation of evidence-based innovation into clinical practice. Our aim was to draw out lessons for policy-makers regarding the mobilization of such initiatives. Methods: Qualitative semi-structured interviews with 174 participants across nine CLAHRCs plus in-depth case studies across four CLAHRCs. Those interviewed were staff who were central to the CLAHRCs including senior managers and directors, junior and senior academics, and health care practitioners. Results: Social positions of the CLAHRC leaders, conceived as institutional entrepreneurs, together with the antecedent conditions for CLAHRC bids, had an impact on the vision for a CLAHRC. The process of envisioning encompassed diagnostic and prognostic framing. Within the envisioning process, the utilization of existing activities and established relationships in the CLAHRC bid influenced early mobilization. However, in some cases, it led to a translational 'lock in' towards established models regarding applied research. Conclusions: The CLAHRC experiment in England holds important lessons for policy-makers regarding how to address the translation gap. First, policy makers need to consider whether they set out a defined template for translational initiatives or whether variation is encouraged. We might expect a degree of learning from pilot activities within a CLAHRC that allows for greater clarity in the design of subsequent translational initiatives. Second, policy makers and practitioners need to understand the importance of both antecedent conditions and the social position of senior members of a CLAHRC (institutional entrepreneurs) leading the development of a bid. Whilst established and well- known clinical academics are likely to be trusted to lead CLAHRCs, and the presence of pre-existing organizational relationships are important for mobilization, privileging these aspects may constrain more radical change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Penrose's book The Theory of the Growth of the Firm presents a growth theory that overwhelmingly relates to organic growth, with little explicit focus on acquisitive growth. This article addresses the gap in her growth theory by drawing on the historical case of Enodis, and insights from the resource-based view of the firm, to develop a Penrosean theory of acquisitive growth. It concludes that acquisitive growth not only enables a firm to grow more quickly, but that under specific conditions, through its increase in the diversity of resources at the disposal of managers, it may act as a spur to future organic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the co-evolution of third stream activities in UK higher education from 1970 to 2008. Drawing on interviews and archival analysis it identifies four distinct periods through which third stream activities have co-evolved. The research suggests that the co-evolution of the third stream mission in universities is inextricably linked to the emerging requirement for universities to demonstrate they have a purpose in society. It concludes that the rise of third stream activities has presented both universities and government with a means of doing this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Where there is uncertainty, there is bound to be failure. It is not surprising, therefore, that many new ventures fail. What happens to entrepreneurs when their business fails? People hear of highly successful entrepreneurs extolling the virtues of failure as a valuable teacher Yet the aftermath of failure is often fraught with psychological, social, and financial turmoil. The purpose of this article is to review research on life after business failure for entrepreneurs, from the immediate aftermath through to recovery and re-emergence. First, the authors examine the financial, social, and psychological costs of failure, highlighting factors that may influence the magnitude of these costs (including individual responses to managing these costs). Second, they review research that explains how entrepreneurs make sense of and learn from failure. Finally, the authors present research on the outcomes of business failure, including recovery as well as cognitive and behavioral outcomes. They develop a schema to organize extant work and use this as a platform for developing an agenda for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The creation of new roles commonly threatens the power and status of elite professionals through the substitution of their labour. In this paper we examine the institutional work carried out by elite professionals to maintain their professional dominance when threatened. Drawing on 11 case sites from the English National Health Service (NHS) where new nursing or medical roles have been introduced, threatening the power and status of specialist doctors, we observed the following. First, the professional elite respond through institutional work to supplant threat of substitution with the opportunity for them to delegate routine tasks to other actors and maintain existing resource and control arrangements over the delivery of services in a way that enhances elite professionals’ status. Second, other professionals outside the professional elite, but relatively powerful within their own professional group, are co-opted by the professional elite to engage in institutional work to maintain existing arrangements. Our work extends Lawrence and Suddaby’s typology of institutional work in three ways. First, we reveal how different types of institutional work interact, and how different types of institutional work cross categories of creating or maintaining institutions. Second, we show how an actor’s social position or status, both intra-professionally as well as inter-professionally, in the institutional field frame the institutional work they engage in. Third, the institutional work of ‘theorizing’ by professional elites appears particularly significant, specifically the focus of the institutional work to invoke the concept of ‘risk’ associated with any change in service delivery, which maintains the model of medical professionalism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Our ambition in this essay is to challenge received wisdoms about the importance of 'useful' management scholarship. Suggesting that usefulness and uselessness are contingent on issues of temporality and power, we advocate caution in assigning terms such as useful and relevant - they are inherently problematic, we argue, and should be viewed more as ideology than as empirical statements. We conclude by a call for reflexivity about what it is we are doing when we do 'useful' research, along with a greater concern for the values for which business schools stand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: There have been calls for greater exchange between research and practice in health care policy and management, but little empirical research on what commissioners of research and researchers themselves consider appropriate, good quality research knowledge. This paper addresses this gap, considering the views of commissioners and producers of policy and management research in health care and other fields. Methods: Qualitative semi-structured interviews with 18 commissioners and producers of research, in central government, the NHS and other commissioning organizations, and in universities and independent sector providers. Results: Commissioners and producers agreed that research often fails to fulfil policy-makers' and managers' needs, and that greater interaction is required to improve this relationship. However, they offered differing accounts of the nature of research knowledge (as a 'product' or a 'mindset'), and of what constitutes value, validity and originality in research, reflecting the differing priorities and pressures faced by the two groups. Conclusions: Efforts to promote greater interaction between research, policy and practice, and more critical, reflexive engagement between policy-makers, managers and researchers, are likely to face significant obstacles given these competing constructions of research knowledge and their reinforcement by divergent priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines leadership in practice, specifically the interaction of leaders and followers, taking account of context (. Distributed Leadership. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass). Employing Gronn's dimensions of concertive action and conjoint agency (. Distributed leadership as a unit of analysis. Leadership Quarterly, 13, pp. 423-451), different conceptualizations of distributed leadership (DL) are examined, and the influence of a health and social care context on attempts to enact DL is analysed. In so doing, boundary conditions or the limits to distributing leadership in health and social care are identified. The analysis suggests that the collective leadership DL model presented by Denis et al. (. The dynamics of collective leadership and strategic change in pluralistic organizations. Academy of Management Journal, 44, pp. 809-837) is most likely to be enacted in the face of policy and professional pressures towards more concentrated leadership. However, where DL does not encompass conjoint agency, it will tend towards more towards 'nobody in charge' (. Nobody in charge: distributed change agency in healthcare. Human Relations, 60, pp. 1065-1090) or collaborative leadership (. Leadership in the shaping and implementation of collaboration agendas: how things happen in a (not quite) joined-up world. Academy of Management Journal, 43, pp. 1159-1175). Following the analysis, the authors argue that researchers need to move beyond a reified concept of DL, and ask a more straightforward question of how power is distributed. As Gosling et al. suggest (. Distributed leadership in higher education: what does it accomplish? Leadership, 5, pp. 299-310), DL evokes an aspiration for the way leadership is configured, and draws attention to iterative relations between leadership, followership and context, but it is a conception of leadership that requires unpacking. This conceptual analysis, applied to health and social care, is offered in pursuit of this aim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our research seeks to develop understanding of the factors explaining venture capital investment managers' attitudes towards investment in the unique context of academic spin-outs. We provide a novel integration of both VC fund characteristics and investment managers' human capital characteristics with a unique hand-collected dataset of 68 early stage VC investment managers in Europe. Attitudes toward academic spin-out investing are positively affected by the presence of public sector capital and by investment managers who are more intensively involved with the entrepreneur. Specific human capital in investment managers who had worked in an academic environment is more likely associated with investment in academic spin-outs. In terms of general human capital, financial experience is positively related while entrepreneurial experience is negatively associated with investment attitude towards academic spin-outs. There may be a need to facilitate the attraction of people from industry and investment banking into public VC funds in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We address the question: do technology investors differ from traditional investors? Employing a conjoint methodology, we identified 28 technology investors from a sample of 68 European early stage investors. Comparing the two groups of investors we found that: (1) technology investors were not more likely to receive public funding than traditional investors; (2) technology investors had more investment management experience than traditional investors; and (3) technology investors had more consulting experience than traditional investors. Our research has implications for public policy, aimed at resolving the market failure for high-tech investments, high-tech entrepreneurs looking for venture capital (VC) funding, and VC funds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay we explore the curious symmetry between contestability theory (CT) and the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm. CT assumes away all distinctions between incumbent firms and potential competitors. By contrast, the RBV stresses the fundamental heterogeneity of firms and why such differences may be sustainable. The juxtaposition of the two theories highlights the potential trade-off between rigor and relevance in theory development and provides the opportunity to further our understanding of the RBV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from the resource-based view and transaction costs economics, we develop a theoretical framework to explain why small and large firms face different levels of resource access needs and resource access capabilities, which mediate the relationship between firm size and hybrid governance. Employing a sample of 317 venture capital firms, drawn across six European countries, we empirically assess our framework in the context of venture capital syndication. We estimate a path model using structural equation modeling and find, consistent with our theoretical framework, mediating effects of different types of resource access needs and resource access capabilities between VC firm size and syndication frequency. These findings advance the small business literature by highlighting the trade-offs that size imposes on firms that seek to manage their access to external resources through hybrid governance strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we employ resource-based and institutional theories to examine the current role of business schools in academic entrepreneurship. In particular, we seek to identify and understand the challenges to business schools contributing to the transfer of knowledge to enable academic entrepreneurship. Employing a case-based method, we present evidence from 42 interviews with technology transfer officers (TTOs), business school deans, business school entrepreneurship faculty and scientists in eight UK universities. Our empirical analysis is focused on analyzing the challenges arising from the links between business schools and three other principal stakeholders of academic entrepreneurship (i.e., the university management, TTOs and academics in science departments). The findings suggest that in addition to concerns about the nature of their human capital, the ability of business schools to fill knowledge gaps in the development of academic entrepreneurship is constrained by the institutional structures of universities which influence: the strategies of the university and the business school; links between business schools, TTOs and scientists; and process issues relating to differences in language and codes, goal differences, incentives and rewards, expertise differences and the content of interactions. We conclude that if business schools are to play a more prominent role in academic entrepreneurship there is a need to develop internal university processes and policies that promote rather than hinder internal knowledge flows between business schools, TTOs and science departments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distributed leadership is promoted as being well suited to public service organizations because of their multiple goals, less pronounced managerial authority and presence of powerful professional groups. Drawing on qualitative evidence we analyse the complex process of the institutionalization of distributed leadership in English schools. Our analysis suggests that competing institutional forces simultaneously foster and stymie the adoption of distributed leadership. Consequently, the school principals find themselves in a classic Catch-22 situation, which they resolve by enacting a weak form of distributed leadership. Ironically, the implementation of distributed leadership is the most difficult in the schools located in socially deprived areas, that is, the very context where policy-makers expect distributed leadership to make the most impact. Moving beyond our specific case, we argue that distributed leadership, and leadership more generally, cannot be divorced from its institutional context and that the relative influence of divergent institutional forces depends upon the immediate organizational environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Syndicates are a form of inter-firm alliance in which two or more private equity firms invest together in an investee firm and share a joint pay-off, and are an enduring feature of the leveraged buyout (LBO) and private equity industry. This study examines the relationship between syndication and agency costs at the investor-investee level, and the extent to which the reputation and the network position of the lead investor mediate this relationship. We examine this relationship using a sample of 1,122 buyout investments by 80 private equity companies in the UK between 1993 and 2006. Our findings show that where agency costs are highest, and hence ex-post monitoring by the lead investor is more important, syndication is less likely to occur. The negative relationship between agency costs and syndication, however, is alleviated by the reputation and network position of the lead investor firm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 20 years, the resource-based view (RBV) has reached a pre-eminent position among theories in the field of strategy, but debate continues as to its precise nature. This paper contributes to the debate by critically reviewing the development of the RBV to date. The critical appraisal examines the development of the RBV in terms of theory, method, empirical evidence and practical insights. It is contended that the permeable and eclectic nature of the RBV stems from its being a theory about what firms are and how they function, and that its popularity is due to an absence of limiting behavioural assumptions. Finally, the authors provide their own subjective views on where they think RBV scholars should focus their efforts in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

University technology transfer offices (henceforth, TTOs) play a critical role in the diffusion of innovation and the development of new technology infrastructure. Studies of the relative efficiency of TTOs have been based on licensing output measures and data from a single country. In contrast, we present the first cross-country comparison of the relative performance of TTOs, based on stochastic multiple output distance functions. The additional dimension of output considered is the university's propensity to generate start-up companies, based on technologies developed at these institutions. We find that US universities are more efficient than UK universities and that the production process is characterized by either decreasing or constant returns to scale. Universities with a medical school and an incubator are closer to the frontier. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the publication of Birger Wernerfelt's seminal article on the 'Resource-based view of the firm' in 1984, the strategic management field has embraced the notion that firms are fundamentally heterogeneous in terms of their resources and internal capabilities. This paper assesses the development of the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm from Wernerfelt's own perspective. Given his limited engagement in the strategic management field over the previous decades, we asked Wernerfelt to revisit his work and to comment on the critical issues which have subsequently arisen as the RBV has developed into a dominant paradigm in strategic management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study we examine how venture capital (VC) firms influence the export behavior of their investee companies. VC firms perform an important governance function for investee companies by providing monitoring and value-added activities. Drawing on agency theory, the resource-based view of the firm and governance life-cycle theory we hypothesize that the relationship between VC governance resources and investee exporting behavior is moderated by investment stage. Employing a sample of 340 VC-backed firms, our results confirm this hypothesis. Monitoring resources are most effective in promoting export behavior for late-stage ventures and value-added resources in promoting export behavior in early-stage ventures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Board composition in large organizations has been subject to much empirical research, however, little attention has been focused on board composition in start-ups, and more specifically high tech start-ups. This lack of research is surprising given that many high tech start-ups have multiple equity stakeholders such as venture capitalists or public research organizations, such as universities. Given that high tech start-ups are commonly resource-poor these external stakeholders may play an important role in accessing critical external resources. Drawing on agency theory, resource dependence theory and social network theory we examine the tensions that exist between the founding team and external equity stakeholders in determining the presence of outside board members. In particular we focus on whether or not the outside board members have either complementary or substitute human capital to the founding team. We test our model on a sample of 140 high tech start-ups in Flanders. Our results indicate that high tech start-ups with a public research organization as an external equity stakeholder are more likely to develop boards with outside board members with complementary skills to the founding team. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the neglected area of internationalisation by VCs. Using a representative sample of 195 VCs, we show that the decision of a European VC firm to invest internationally is driven by its human resources. Having more VC executives in general and more VC executives with previous international experience in specific, results in a higher probability of investing internationally. In contrast, more VC executives with experience in the VC industry or with an engineering background lead to a higher probability of remaining domestic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our study of secondary schools in England illustrates the ineffective implementation of transformational leadership within public service organizations by policy-makers. First, a rather narrow, managerialist variant of transformational leadership is promoted, which is resisted by school teachers and principals. Second, associated with this, policy does not take account of the institutional context within which public services organizations operate. Third, policy-makers, rather than leaders transform the context within which leadership takes place and any leadership discretion is constrained by central government audit. Instead, moral, professional and contingent approaches to leadership are enacted at the local level with individualized, rather than dispersed leadership, as a consequence of regulatory and normative pressures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the investor/investee relationship in entrepreneurship and equity syndicates, and mentions research on syndication, teams, and the networks of venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. In this special theme issue, researchers Manigart and colleagues, Cumming, Jääskeläinen, Maula, & Seppä, Dimov & De Clercq and others examine various aspects of venture capital syndication practices. Other topics include the investment strategies of venture capital firms and investor commitment in cross-border syndicates, as well as Forbes and colleagues' study on the dynamics of adding new members to the entrepreneurial team.

Financial theory, access to deal flow, selection, and monitoring skills are used to explain syndication in venture capital firms in six European countries. In contrast with U.S. findings, portfolio management motives are more important for syndication than individual deal management motives. Risk sharing, portfolio diversification, and access to larger deals are more important than selection and monitoring of deals. This holds for later stage and for early stage investors. Value adding is a stronger motive for syndication for early stage investors than for later stage investors, however. Nonlead investors join syndicates for the selection and value-adding skills of the syndicate partners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]