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Disasters are unexpected external factors that create major shifts in organizational landscapes that create industry- and community-wide threats; however, the recovery period offers opportunities for entrepreneurial firms as well. In this paper, we investigate impacts of disasters, stakeholders' roles, and entrepreneur's strategic decisions as they identify opportunities and try to survive during difficult times. We theorize that disasters, although negative in many regards, disrupt markets and may spur entrepreneurial activity. Moreover, we suggest that strategic decision-making processes become faster, more centralized, and more flexible and that geographical-cluster membership has important advantages based on increased cooperation between stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entrepreneurship is a topic of interest for both researchers and practitioners alike due to its potential impact and economic significance. Although a growing body of research exists on this topic, we argue that a collective understanding of the meaning of entrepreneurship is still in question. Consequently, our purpose is to understand how the social collective makes sense of and assigns meaning to the concept of entrepreneurship. Through a qualitative approach, we address differences between non-entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs and their interpretations of entrepreneurship. Through this comparison, more robust explanations valuable for theory, practice, and entrepreneurial education are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the importance of entrepreneurship-friendly policy and entrepreneurial role models in business enterprises. It says that a level of respect and credibility can be brought by role models in business and their availability in one's life can readily affect one desire to become an entrepreneur. It adds that the perceptions of business creation feasibility to potential entrepreneurs can be improved by the availability of resources.

Knowledge-seeking acquisitions (KSAs) provide significant advantages to firms with insufficiently developed knowledge bases. Yet such firms' lack absorptive capacity (ACAP), which impedes absorption of external knowledge sourced through KSAs. We take advantage of variance in acquisition motivations (e.g., KSAs, market-seeking acquisitions) to examine the propensity of such firms for KSAs. Drawing on ACAP research, we theorize that such firms direct their internal investments to develop potential ACAP (PACAP), that is, to develop knowledge identification and assimilation capabilities. Thus, such firms' greater internal research and development (R&D), increasing PACAP, increases their propensity for KSAs. Low knowledge identification costs and high knowledge assimilation capabilities reduce internal investments for PACAP and thus reduce the positive effect of internal R&D on KSA propensity. Analyses of foreign acquisitions by Taiwanese high-technology follower firms over 2001-2008 supports our theory. We contribute to research on how firms upgrade their knowledge bases through external knowledge sourcing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Williamson's theory of opportunism within his transaction cost economics framework is one of the most controversial concepts within management. Considered bad for practice, a self-fulfilling prophecy, scholars over the years have challenged this notion citing that the managers who focus on opportunism ignore other concepts such as effectiveness and innovation. We argue that opportunism is something very central to management thought. We trace the writings of Taylor, Mayo, Fayol, Barnard, Follett, and Simon and demonstrate that early attention to opportunism have in fact considered work effectiveness and innovation as other implications of opportunism. We also argue that the critics' attempts to replace opportunism have their elements in some of the previous work namely the use of incentives to encourage individuals to work collectively in pursuit of the organizational objectives. By tracing the roots of opportunism in early management thought, this work helps answer some of the criticisms of opportunism in recent studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the legitimacy transfer given by external affiliations and find that it significantly improves crowdfunding success. The paper uses a mixed method approach to determine the impact of an entrepreneur's external affiliations on crowdfunding success. Specifically, it examines the role that reputation, type and number of external affiliations has in determining crowdfunding success. Drawing from a large sample of Kickstarter campaigns (1,179), computer-aided text analysis is employed, and proprietary data dictionaries are used to pull data from the campaign text. The manuscript finds that both common and differing types of prestigious affiliations significantly impact crowdfunding success. Furthermore, a small amount of differing types of prestigious affiliations or a federal government association or a prestigious school association can substitute for a large number of common affiliations. The data is analyzed and the implications of affiliations on crowdfunding success are examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our study explores differences in enhancing innovation based on firm size. We theorize and test multiple antecedents of innovation including dynamic capabilities, strategic planning and organizational structure. To test our hypotheses, we have two samples based on firm size. Through the use of a hierarchical regression analyses, our findings reveal that dynamical capabilities partially support innovation in both small and large firms, that strategic planning is significantly valuable for small firm innovation but not for large firm innovation, and that organizational structure has a positive and significant impact on large firm innovation but not on small firm innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In line with the resource based view (RBV) of the firm and with strategic human capital research, we provide and test theory demonstrating how star performers affect important organizational outcomes. Using a sample from Major League Baseball (MLB) we first weigh in on the affects that star performers at the employee and managerial levels have on organizational performance. As predicted, our results show that star performers positively affect organizational performance at both employee and managerial levels. We also seek to determine how star performers and employee turnover interact; finding that star performance among managers mitigates the negative effect of employee turnover on organizational performance. Interestingly, our results demonstrate that, even in the face of employee turnover, star employee performance is still a positive and significant predictor of organizational performance. Our hypotheses and results suggest that human capital scholars and practitioners put forth the most effort towards retaining star employees because they can help organizations thrive even during negative events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]