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In this chapter, the author adopts a temporal lens to examine the 'human capital-venture type-profitable venture creation' relationships, within the entrepreneurial process. This time-conscious study sheds light on nascent ventures dynamics of hi-tech versus other and present theoretical implications in terms of validating the predictive power of human capital theory. Consequently, this empirical study can help reducing associated societal costs and can elucidate how individual costs are associated with the start-up efforts and outcomes. The chapter concludes that there is scope for integrating duration perspective into how human capital impacts a profitable outcome for hi-tech start-ups, and proposes a theoretical framework for effecting this integration. Post-print / Final draft

We study the effects of the United Nations Principles of Responsible Investment (UN-PRI) on sinful firms, in which we examine whether monthly returns and the Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) performance have changed due to an increase in socially concerned investors. We find evidence suggesting that increased commitment to Socially Responsible Investments (SRI) has a negative effect on sinful firms, estimated to reduce monthly returns by 0.040 percent. This corresponds to a 4.4 percent decrease in the average monthly return. Our findings for ESG performance indicate that the ESG score is unaffected by the additional commitment to the UN-PRI. We conduct the analysis on geographical location and industrial affiliation to determine if these effects are uniform across all samples. Our results suggest that regions and industries have differentiating results. nhhmas

The concept of self-performing products can be traced back to the world’s earliest civilizations and has long been a staple of science fiction. Fiction has now become reality as we experience the rise of autonomous products in every conceivable domain of life. Autonomous products are transforming the way we perform many consumption tasks, including everyday activities such as driving, cooking, and recreational activities such as biking and skiing. However, very little marketing research has examined the consumer preferences for autonomous products. This dissertation seeks to provide deeper insights into whether consumers differ in how they perceive the usefulness and risk associated with autonomous products when adopting such products. The significance of autonomous products is that they can either assist the user by performing a given set of subtasks or replace the user by performing the entire consumption task without user interaction. In this dissertation, I propose that consumers will diverge in their perceptions of usefulness and risk and subsequent intentions to adopt assistive vs. replacement technology, depending on their degree of task expertise. Across three experimental studies using three consumption tasks (i.e., driving, cooking, and skiing), the findings converge. The results from empirical investigation confirmed that the consumers’ task expertise is a crucial driver in the evaluation of usefulness and risks, and subsequent intentions to adopt autonomous products. More importantly, I demonstrated that consumers with higher levels of task expertise perceive assistive technology to be more useful and less risky compared to replacement technology. In contrast, consumers with low task expertise perceive replacement technology to be more useful and less risky compared to assistive technology. Finally, perceptions of usefulness and performance risk will further affect adoption intentions. The findings have substantial theoretical implications for research on expertise and technology, and managerial implications for targeting autonomous products.

Masteroppgave i økonomi og administrasjon - Universitetet i Agder 2012 This study examines the relationship between size and financial efficiency, existence of economies of scale in the context of Norwegian saving banking sector in the span of nine years from 2002 to 2010. The study has used longitudinal data which is secondary data in its nature and is obtained from the Norwegian saving banks association. Multiple regressions have been applied in order to find the nature and significance of relationship, and polynomial regression is used to demonstrate the curvilinear relationship. Total assets and deposits are used as a dimension of size; operating expense ratio is used as efficiency measurement. Our results reveal that there is a complex association between size and efficiency. We observed that operating costs decrease as the size increases, but this phenomenon does not hold continuously and larger banks experience diseconomies of scale. Our findings suggest that with the increase in size the banks enjoy economies of scale, but the larger banks start experiencing diseconomies of scale, and then very large banks start experiencing economies of scale again.