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How can organizations spanning institutionalized categories mitigate against the possibility of reduced attention by audiences? While there has been a good deal of research on the illegitimacy discount of category spanning, scant attention has been paid to how organizations might strategically address this potential problem. In this paper, we explore how the strategic naming of products might enhance audience attention despite the liabilities associated with category spanning. Drawing on a sample of films released in the United States market between 1982 and 2007, we analyze different naming strategies and show that names that simply signal familiarity are not potent enough to offset the illegitimacy discount, while names imbued with known reputations serve as a symbolic device that enhances audience attention to genre-spanning films. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Using a large, longitudinal panel of US start-ups collected between 2004 and 2011, this article shows the extent to which intellectual property (IP) types, for example trademarks, patents, copyrights and outward licensing, enhance multidimensional performance. An ordered probit analysis corrected for sample selection bias, estimates performance to derive the following conclusions. First, trademarks and out-licensing IP types increase a firm's chances of being a high performer, confirming the importance of certain forms of IP protection for start-ups. Second, patenting significantly reduces the chances of being a high performer, suggesting patenting has limited performance benefits for start-ups. Third, few performance synergies exist in the joint use of IP types, suggesting that strong complementarities among IP types are limited. While out-licensing patents and out-licensing copyrights increase performance, out-licensing patents and out-licensing trademarks diminish it. Furthermore, registering more trademarks and out-licensing more trademarks also diminishes performance, suggesting start-up firms should keep trademarks in-house. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entrepreneurship could level the playing field between racial groups and decrease poverty through job creation. Growth in the U.S. professional services (PS) sector over the last several decades has increased high-wage employment and entrepreneurship opportunities. Although the number of Black-owned PS businesses has grown, their performance lags behind their counterparts of other races. Black entrepreneurs in highly skilled sectors, such as PS, tend to be more educated, better financed, and have more diverse customer bases than their counterparts in other sectors. Yet, these advancements have not translated into firm performance. This study examines factors influencing outcomes of Black PS entrepreneurs in Chicago using interview and focus group data. Results indicate that racialized barriers, current entrepreneurship culture, and the nature of the PS sector combine to contour a contentious business environment. Updating models of inclusion to address the contemporary entrepreneurial environment and incorporating accountability measures are necessary steps to realize the potential of this group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrary to received wisdom, could turnover actually be good for an organization? Traditional research on turnover in the public management field treats turnover as a dependent variable, emphasizing its negative role on organizational performance without sufficient theoretical or empirical support. With an emphasis on the type of employee turnover as a situational factor, this research establishes the hypothesized relationships between different employee turnovers--employee transfers, quits, and involuntary turnover--and organizational performance, and tests them using panel data from 2010 to 2014 in agencies of the U.S. federal government. Empirical results challenge the accepted belief about the harmful effects of turnover on organizational performance: Turnover can be beneficial for an organization. The results confirm the relationship differs across the type of turnover involved: Employee transfers have an inverted U-shaped relationship with organizational performance, and involuntary turnovers have a linear and positive relationship with organizational performance. Given the use of a perceptual measure of organizational performance by remaining employees, these results imply that a low-to-moderate level of employee transfers is likely to increase organizational performance and that involuntary turnovers--an elimination of employees who presented poor performance or were involved in misconducts--contribute to improving organizational performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many public administration studies have argued that agency network activity brings about important policy benefits such as informational advantages and stakeholder support. Given the proposition, agency network activity would positively affect congressional delegation because policymaking authority tends to be delegated to the agencies that can achieve appropriate policy outcomes. This hypothesis is examined by several regression tests using data from U.S. federal agencies. Statistical results indicate that the agencies with significant network ties are likely to yield more appropriate public policies and have greater statutory discretion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of managerial fit—the congruence between a manager and his or her environment—has become widely debated by policymakers, practitioners, and scholars from a number of fields as the occurrence of non-internal management hires has increased across many types of organizations. Although many assume that higher levels of fit in an organization will generate better performance, others argue that misfits are better suited at leading organizations as motivated change agents. In this study, a measure of person–organization fit is created using original cross-sectional time-series data on U.S. university presidents from 1993 to 2009. Findings indicate that maximizing fit is not always ideal and that fit has a nonlinear relationship with organizational performance such that some fit is healthy but high fit can be detrimental for student performance measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public management literature has previously examined privatization in which government contracts with private firms or other organizations to provide goods or services to the public. However, privatization of organizational structure through the creation of special purpose organizations remains relatively underexplored. This study examines the policy consequences of privatizing state lottery organizations by comparing the revenue returned to state governments from lotteries managed by independent state agencies to lotteries managed by privatized special purpose organizations. Using data on the organizational structure and revenue returns of the state lottery administrations in the United States from 1985-2008, fixed effects analyses demonstrate that independent state lottery agencies are more effective than privatized special purpose administrations. The revenue costs of lottery administrative privatization are robust to multiple measurements and specifications, and suggest that choosing a privatized organizational structure can cost states tens of millions of dollars in lost lottery revenue annually. Special purpose lottery administrations maximize returns to state governments in average-sized states with low African American populations. State-agency lottery administrations maximize returns to state governments in small- or large-sized states with high per capita income and high population density. Implications of state special purpose administrations and future research opportunities are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on data drawn from the Office of Personnel Management’s Federal Human Capital Survey, as well as from data provided in written interviews, this study offers empirical evidence that followership mediates the relationship that exists between participative leadership and public organization performance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study applied affective events theory (AET) as a framework for understanding the relationship between the shared authentic leadership of new venture top management teams (TMTs) and the performance of their firms. Results, based on a national (United States) random sample of new ventures, demonstrated a positive indirect effect of shared authentic leadership behavior on firm performance, an effect that operated through TMTs’ positive affective tone. These findings contribute to entrepreneurship and strategic management literatures by illustrating that AET (a micro-level theory) is a conceptually relevant framework for understanding the impact of TMTs on firm performance (i.e., upper echelons theory and research). With respect to the leadership and organizational behavior literatures, the authors’ results indicate that authentic leadership may be particularly beneficial when shared among team members. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Problem.The current state of employee engagement literature highlights the need for theoretical models and comprehensive constructs that can be practically applied. Without such models and constructs, it is difficult for scholar practitioners to determine how to use the concept of engagement to diagnose and monitor organizational issues.The Solution.This article describes a process of assessing employee engagement using an operational definition supported by a social-cognitive model and instrumentation that considers both the job and the organizational factors that influence employee engagement. As such, the process reported addresses key limitations typically found in employee engagement literature.The Stakeholders.The intended audience for this article includes scholar practitioners interested in the assessment of and interventions associated with employee engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]