The role of the entrepreneur in identifying international expansion as a strategic opportunity

This research explores business internationalisation as a process of recognising and exploiting business opportunities in an international context and uses Spain's natural stone industry as a case study. We differentiate internationalisation into two stages: opportunity identification and subsequent opportunity exploitation. We focus on the initial identification stage to determine the impact of entrepreneurs’ cognitive variables when gathering relevant information for internationalisation of the firm, highlighting the role of entrepreneurs’ alertness, the centre of interest, causal logic, and prior experience. We also examine the importance of the entrepreneur's environment, social networks, and institutional setting. In our empirical analysis, we find that although interested in internationalisation, entrepreneurs in the natural stone industry devote very little time and effort to gathering information. As a result, decisions related to internationalisation are restricted by uncertainty and a poor understanding of the appeal, barriers, and available support services.     

Experienced entrepreneurial founders, organizational capital, and venture capital funding

This paper empirically investigates the sourcing and valuation of venture capital (VC) funding among entrepreneurs with varied levels of prior start-up founding experience, academic training, and social capital. Social ties with VCs have been identified as an important precursor to organizational resource attainment and performance, and so this study analyzes the correlates of heterogeneous social links with VCs. I also examine venture valuation, as it reflects enterprise quality and entrepreneurs’ cost of financial capital. Using data from a survey of 149 early stage technology-based start-up firms, I find several notable results. First, prior founding experience (especially financially successful experience) increases both the likelihood of VC funding via a direct tie and venture valuation. Second, founders’ ability to recruit executives via their own social network (as opposed to the VC's network) is positively associated with venture valuation. Finally, in the emerging (at the time) Internet industry, founding teams with a doctoral degree holder are more likely to be funded via a direct VC tie and receive higher valuations, suggesting a signaling effect. The paper therefore underscores some important dimensions of heterogeneity among VC-backed entrepreneurs.     

Edwin Mansfield’s contributions to the economics of technology

Edwin Mansfield’s contributions to the economics of technology are summarized from the early 1960s through his death in 1997. Mansfield’s methodology is discussed, as are his contributions on: the diffusion of technical innovation, the effect of firm size on innovation, the role of academic and basic research in increasing innovation and productivity, international technology transfer and the inaccuracy of technological forecasts. The economics profession’s evaluation of the relative importance of Mansfield’s work is presented, using as evidence citation counts of his works collected from the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI). Identified as among Mansfield’s most important contributions are his work on the importance of academic research for industrial innovations, his empirical estimation of the rates of diffusion of different innovations, and his estimation of the private and social returns from investments in industrial innovations. Finally, we present Mansfield’s advice on the future of the economics of technology.     

Examining influence of national culture on individuals’ attitude and use of information and communication technology: Assessment of moderating effect of culture through cross countries study

Few studies have examined the influence of national culture on individuals’ perceptions of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Moreover the few existing studies have contradictory findings. While some researchers have suggested a relationship between culture and individuals’ interactions with and perceptions of ICT innovations, other research found no such link. The purpose of this article is to better understand the influence of culture on individuals’ attitudes by comparing the use of cellular phones in Quebec and Guinea. The findings suggest that Ease of Use and Usefulness are sensitive to cultural influence. However, the hypotheses relative to the moderating effects of culture on the Social Pressure, Image, average calls made and average turnaround time spent on the call are not supported.     

Evaluation of a personalized digital library based on cognitive styles: Adaptivity vs. adaptability

Personalization can be addressed by adaptability and adaptivity, which have different advantages and disadvantages. This study investigates how digital library (DL) users react to these two techniques. More specifically, we develop a personalized DL to suit the needs of different cognitive styles based on the findings of our previous work [Frias-Martinez, E., Chen, S. Y., & Liu, X. (2008) Investigation of behavior and perception of digital library users: A cognitive style perspective. International Journal of Information Management]. The personalized DL includes two versions: adaptive version and adaptable version. The results showed that users not only performed better in the adaptive version, but also they perceived more positively to the adaptive version. In addition, cognitive styles have great effects on users’ responses to adaptability and adaptivity. These results provide guidance for designers to select suitable techniques to develop personalized DLs.     

A syntactically-based query reformulation technique for information retrieval

Whereas in language words of high frequency are generally associated with low content [Bookstein, A., & Swanson, D. (1974). Probabilistic models for automatic indexing. Journal of the American Society of Information Science, 25(5), 312–318; Damerau, F. J. (1965). An experiment in automatic indexing. American Documentation, 16, 283–289; Harter, S. P. (1974). A probabilistic approach to automatic keyword indexing. PhD thesis, University of Chicago; Sparck-Jones, K. (1972). A statistical interpretation of term specificity and its application in retrieval. Journal of Documentation, 28, 11–21; Yu, C., & Salton, G. (1976). Precision weighting – an effective automatic indexing method. Journal of the Association for Computer Machinery (ACM), 23(1), 76–88], shallow syntactic fragments of high frequency generally correspond to lexical fragments of high content [Lioma, C., & Ounis, I. (2006). Examining the content load of part of speech blocks for information retrieval. In Proceedings of the international committee on computational linguistics and the association for computational linguistics (COLING/ACL 2006), Sydney, Australia]. We implement this finding to Information Retrieval, as follows. We present a novel automatic query reformulation technique, which is based on shallow syntactic evidence induced from various language samples, and used to enhance the performance of an Information Retrieval system. Firstly, we draw shallow syntactic evidence from language samples of varying size, and compare the effect of language sample size upon retrieval performance, when using our syntactically-based query reformulation (SQR) technique. Secondly, we compare SQR to a state-of-the-art probabilistic pseudo-relevance feedback technique. Additionally, we combine both techniques and evaluate their compatibility. We evaluate our proposed technique across two standard Text REtrieval Conference (TREC) English test collections, and three statistically different weighting models. Experimental results suggest that SQR markedly enhances retrieval performance, and is at least comparable to pseudo-relevance feedback. Notably, the combination of SQR and pseudo-relevance feedback further enhances retrieval performance considerably. These collective experimental results confirm the tenet that high frequency shallow syntactic fragments correspond to content-bearing lexical fragments.     

企业家视角下外部取向管理创新决策——基于探索性多案例识别的实证研究

旨在探讨企业外部取向管理创新的决策机理。通过宝钢、首钢和太钢的战略创新,三洋、海尔和美国哈斯曼的服务创新,以及淘宝、易趣和网盛的商业模式创新三组探索性多案例研究析出了企业家在进行外部取向管理创新决策时重点考量的因素;并据此构建了外部取向管理创新决策机理框架,通过对北京、天津和东三省地区300家企业的问卷调查对框架进行了实证检验。研究表明,企业家在进行外部取向管理创新决策时并非对企业内外部因素进行系统性考量,而是重点分析客户需求、资源约束、技术能力等关键因素;企业家对因素的不同认知决定了外部取向管理创新决策的异质性;得出了企业规模、而非性质决定创新决策的结果。     

Improving the learning of Boolean queries by means of a multiobjective IQBE evolutionary algorithm

The Inductive Query By Example (IQBE) paradigm allows a system to automatically derive queries for a specific Information Retrieval System (IRS). Classic IRSs based on this paradigm [Smith, M., & Smith, M. (1997). The use of genetic programming to build Boolean queries for text retrieval through relevance feedback. Journal of Information Science, 23(6), 423–431] generate a single solution (Boolean query) in each run, that with the best fitness value, which is usually based on a weighted combination of the basic performance criteria, precision and recall.     

Information management as an enabler of knowledge management maturity: A South African perspective

This paper explores the much ignored but critically important subject of the perceived relationship between information and communications technology (ICT), information management (IM) and knowledge management (KM). Defining the border between ICT, IM and KM, and especially the maturity remains a highly debatable topic. These issues could be concisely summarized as being diverse and problematic and located across the spectrum of views. Prior studies suggest that even though KM is strongly entrenched and rests on the foundation of ICT and IM, very little is reported in the literature on ICT and IM as enablers to KM. From a large urban South African University engaged in numerous collaboration programs with industry, the authors gained insight into growth of KM maturity in industry groupings over a 5-year period. The authors applied an inventory developed by Kruger and Snyman [Kruger, C. J., & Snyman, M. M. M. (2007). A guideline for assessing the knowledge management maturity of organizations. South African Journal of Information Management,9(3). Electronic Journal [Online]. Available www.sajim.co.za. Accessed 15 October 2007] to a set of 86 organizations distributed over nine economic sectors in South Africa. In total 434 employees were interviewed over three group levels (operational, middle and senior management). This was achieved by having 178 senior practitioners to each interview three subjects (one in each group level).     

The relationship between race and library anxiety among graduate students: A replication study

Despite the large volume of literature on racial differences in academic performance between African Americans and Caucasian Americans at various educational levels, there has been a dearth of research examining whether the academic library experience is an important variable that helps explain the racial differences observed in educational outcomes. To date, only one empirical study has examined the racial differences in library anxiety among college students. Specifically, Jiao et al. [Jiao, Q. G., Onwuegbuzie, A. J., & Bostick, S. L. (2004). Racial differences in library anxiety among graduate students. Library Review, 53(4), 228–235] found that African-American graduate students reported statistically significantly lower levels of library anxiety associated with three library anxiety dimensions than did their Caucasian-American counterparts. However, because the two racial groups selected for the study differed in the types of institution they attended, the researchers were unable to conclude whether the differences found in the library anxiety levels were the result of race or the groups’ educational experience/aptitude. Therefore, the present study replicated Jiao et al.’s earlier research while addressing this concern. Findings revealed that the African-American graduate students (n = 25) reported consistently lower levels across all five dimensions of library anxiety than did the Caucasian-American graduate students (n = 155). These two studies suggest that racial differences in library anxiety exist in the college student population.     

On the innovativeness of foreign affiliates: Evidence from companies in The Netherlands

In examining the distinctive contributions of foreign subsidiaries and domestic firms to innovative performance in Dutch manufacturing, the paper shows that foreign ownership is an important factor in explaining inter-firm differences affecting innovativeness. It characterizes innovativeness by distinguishing between products that are new to the firm (‘imitative’ innovations), and those products that are new to the market (‘real’ innovations). It uses firm-level data for 4780 firms which took part in the Community Innovation Survey (CIS-2) for 1996 in The Netherlands. It concludes that foreign subsidiaries are more innovative, they are more likely to introduce ‘imitative’ as well as ‘real’ innovations compared to domestic firms. In comparison with the population of innovative companies, however, there is greater heterogeneity among foreign subsidiaries, i.e. they are not more likely to introduce ‘real’ innovations if they cannot utilize knowledge transfer from an associated company.     

Measuring the success of the Greek Taxation Information System

The transformation of many governments all around the world into new forms, namely, electronic government (e-Government), could not leave the Greek government unaffected. Therefore, it initiated an e-Government project related to national information systems and finance services, the Greek Taxation Information System (TAXIS). The purpose of this paper is to investigate the success of TAXIS from the perspective of expert employees, who work in public taxation agencies. This topic is interesting, because TAXIS is applied in a tax-driven country, under a mandatory setting. Also, it is the first time that the success of this project is examined, from the perspective of employees, using IS success models. The study adapts DeLone and McLean [DeLone, W. H., & McLean, E. R. (2003). The DeLone and McLean model of information systems success: A ten year update. Journal of Management Information Systems, 19(4), 9–30] and Seddon's [Seddon, P. B. (1997). A respecification and extension of the DeLone and McLean model of IS success. Information Systems Research, 8(3) 240–253] information systems success models. The model developed includes the constructs of information, system and service quality, perceived usefulness and user satisfaction. The results provide evidence that there are strong connections between the five success constructs. All hypothesized relationships are supported, except for the relationship between system quality and user satisfaction. The empirical evidence and discussion presented can help the Greek Government improve and fully exploit the potential of TAXIS as an innovative tool for taxation purposes.     

Modeling the adoption rates of manufacturing technology innovations by small US manufacturers: a longitudinal investigation

This study provides conclusive evidence to support the view that small plants are slower than larger plants to adopt manufacturing innovations. This empirical study based on over 1000 US manufacturing plants engaged in producing discrete products, studies the adoption of manufacturing technologies in small plants relative to large plants between 1993 and 1997.Under the assumption that small manufacturers are disadvantaged, several federal and state programs have been created to assist small manufacturers in acquiring and adopting manufacturing innovations. Through quantification of technology adoption in small manufacturing firms, this study’s findings reveal which manufacturing innovations are in greater need of governmental assistance programs. While small plants are making progress over time in catching up with larger plants in computerized technology use, they are not making similar progress in adopting manufacturing technology innovations in soft technologies. Several propositions for future research and recommendations for public policy are offered.     

民营企业家创业压力源的结构及验证性因素分析

首先对19家来自不同地区、行业的民营企业进行了半结构化访谈,其次对访谈记录进行了内容分析,在文献研究和访谈研究的基础上设计了民营企业家创业压力源问卷,对获取的143份预测数据和289份正式测量数据进行了统计分析。研究结果提出了创业压力源五因素(创业卷入、竞争强度、资源需求、知识储备和管理责任)结构模型。     

Characterization of two-dimensional cellular automata over ternary fields

The set of papers [3], [4], [6] and [7] (Chattopadhyay et al., 1999; Dihidar and Choudhury, 2004; Khan et al., 1997, 1999) deals with the behavior of the uniform two-dimensional cellular automata over binary fields (Z₂). Some structural properties and precise mathematical models using matrix algebra over the field Z₂ are reported for characterizing the behavior of two-dimensional nearest neighborhood linear cellular automata with null and periodic boundary conditions [3], [4], [6] and [7] (Chattopadhyay et al., 1999; Dihidar and Choudhury, 2004; Khan et al., 1997, 1999). In this paper, we characterize two-dimensional linear cellular automata transformations by using matrix algebra built on Z₃. We analyze some results for two-dimensional CA with rule numbers 2460N and 2460P. Finally, we investigate the dimension of the kernel of two-dimensional cellular automata defined by the rule number 2460N.     

The commercialization of federally sponsored technological innovations

In a study of 40 federally sponsored innovation projects from five government agencies (UMTA, MARAD, DOE, NSF, and EPA), 35 of these cases had complete data on all variables for path analysis. Significantly, it was found that the probability of commercial succes of these innovations is predicted by the degree to which the innovations incorporate incremental as opposed to radically new technology (p<0.01), the pricing potential of the product or process (p<0.05) and the ease of introduction and implementation of the innovation (p<0.05). These three variables were found to account for 59% of the valid variance in potential commercial success. The project market potential, surprisingly, did not predict the probability of commercial success. It seems likely that the high percentage of projects in the sample that fell between certain commercial success and failure or were unresolved commercially could account for this result. No significant differences were found across the five agencies or the dependent variables of the study.     

How do business model and health technology design influence each other? Insights from a longitudinal case study of three academic spin-offs

Academic spin-offs often lack business expertise, face uncertainties regarding their innovation and their markets, and do not have a clear idea of how their product will create value. In spite of this vagueness, academic entrepreneurs must articulate a business model and rapidly establish trustworthy relationships with potential users, purchasers and capital investors. One may thus wonder how their technology development process is influenced by the long-term expectations of their putative customers as well as the short-term requirements of capital investors? This longitudinal case study examines how the business models of three Canadian health technology spin-offs sought to address the value expectations of clinical users and capital investors, how tensions were resolved, and the impact this had on technology design. We describe the synergistic readjustments, drastic reconfiguration and mismatch between business model and technology design we observed. Our discussion highlights the mediating mechanisms by which business models and technology design influence each other, clarifying why the initial value proposition of the spin-offs was either refined or reframed. Beyond confirming the importance of differentiating business models in the health technology industry, our study suggests that it is not only who makes decision that matters, but also how stakeholders’ value expectations get embedded in a spin-off's value proposition.     

A clarification of confirmatory composite analysis (CCA)

Confirmatory composite analysis (CCA) is a structural equation modeling (SEM) technique that specifies and assesses composite models. In a composite model, the construct emerges as a linear combination of observed variables. CCA was invented by Jörg Henseler and Theo K. Dijkstra in 2014, was subsequently fully elaborated by Schuberth et al. (2018), and was then introduced into business research by Henseler and Schuberth (2020b). Inspired by Hair et al. (2020), a recent article in the International Journal of Information Management (Motamarri et al., 2020) used the same term ‘confirmatory composite analysis’ as a technique for confirming measurement quality in partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) specifically. However, the original CCA (Henseler et al., 2014; Schuberth et al., 2018) and the Hair et al. (2020) technique are very different methods, used for entirely different purposes and objectives. So as to not confuse researchers, we advocate that the later-published Hair et al. (2020) method of confirming measurement quality in PLS-SEM be termed ‘method of confirming measurement quality’ (MCMQ) or ‘partial least squares confirmatory composite analysis’ (PLS-CCA). We write this research note to clarify the differences between CCA and PLS-CCA.     

Egocentric analysis of co-authorship network structure,position and performance

In this study, we propose and validate social networks based theoretical model for exploring scholars’ collaboration (co-authorship) network properties associated with their citation-based research performance (i.e., g-index). Using structural holes theory, we focus on how a scholar’s egocentric network properties of density, efficiency and constraint within the network associate with their scholarly performance. For our analysis, we use publication data of high impact factor journals in the field of “Information Science & Library Science” between 2000 and 2009, extracted from Scopus. The resulting database contained 4837 publications reflecting the contributions of 8069 authors. Results from our data analysis suggest that research performance of scholars’ is significantly correlated with scholars’ ego-network measures. In particular, scholars with more co-authors and those who exhibit higher levels of betweenness centrality (i.e., the extent to which a co-author is between another pair of co-authors) perform better in terms of research (i.e., higher g-index). Furthermore, scholars with efficient collaboration networks who maintain a strong co-authorship relationship with one primary co-author within a group of linked co-authors (i.e., co-authors that have joint publications) perform better than those researchers with many relationships to the same group of linked co-authors.