http://repub.eur.nl/res/concept/jel-M13/ Recent publications classified by JEL Code M13 en http://repub.eur.nl/static-eur/img/logo.png http://repub.eur.nl http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/37266/ 2013-03-26T00:00:00Z The growing interest of the business world in the virtues of individ- uals with specific cognitive behavioral characteristics, such as lack of attention and hyperactivity, is not matched by scholarly work. Indi- viduals who experience the challenges associated with such character- istics are thought to thrive in work environments that embrace their talents. Given that entrepreneurship requires a distinctive mindset, we test the hypothesis that individuals who, more than others, expe- rience symptoms of attention deficit and hyperactivity (ADHD) favor entrepreneurship over wage-employment. Using data of nearly 13,000 university students, we show that symptoms of attention deficit and hyperactivity increase the likelihood of intending to startup a busi- ness directly after study. We find evidence for partial mediation of two work attributes; independence and risk tolerance. Students who experience ADHD symptoms prefer to work independently and do not shy away from working on high-risk projects, which partly explains their preference for an entrepreneurial career. Verheul, I. Block, J.H. Burmeister-Lamp, K. Thurik, A.R. Tiemeier, H. Turturea, R. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/26036/ 2012-06-01T00:00:00Z Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are informationally opaque and bank dependent. In SME lending, banks largely rely on soft information, because the scale and scope of hard information are limited. We analyze whether and how hard and soft information affects the borrower's bargaining power vis-à-vis its bank. We use the fact that, for a given credit rating, certain borrowers obtain better loan terms than others to define measures of relative bargaining power. Using SME loan data from the USA and Germany, we find that more favorable soft information (management skills and character) increases borrower bargaining power. We also show that more favorable soft than hard information improves borrower bargaining power. The results are not driven by manipulation or statistical limitations of the credit ratings. Our study suggests that soft information represents an important and direct determinant of borrower bargaining power, affecting the outcomes of the loan contracting process. Grunert, J. Norden, L. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/23503/ 2012-04-01T00:00:00Z In the media role models are increasingly being acknowledged as an influential factor in explaining the reasons for the choice of occupation and career. Various conceptual studies have proposed links between role models and entrepreneurial intentions. However, empirical research aimed at establishing the importance of role models for (nascent) entrepreneurs is scarce. Knowledge of the presence of entrepreneurial role models, their specific functions and characteristics is therefore limited. Our explorative empirical study is a first step towards filling this gap. Our study is based on the outcomes of a questionnaire completed by a representative sample of 292 entrepreneurs in three major Dutch cities – entrepreneurs who have recently started up a business in the retail, hotel and restaurant sectors, business services and other services. We provide indications of the presence and importance of entrepreneurial role models, the function of these role models, the similarity between the entrepreneur and the role model, and the strength of their relationship. Highlights ► Role models emerge as influential factors in individual decision making. ► However, empirical knowledge of entrepreneurial role models is limited. ► We explore impacts, functions and characteristics of entrepreneurial role models. ► We find that role models often influence others in their decision to start a firm. ► Role models tend to be next-door examples and fulfill several functions. Bosma, N. Hessels, S.J.A. Schutjens, V. Praag, M. van Verheul, I. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/38205/ 2012-02-21T00:00:00Z The knowledge spillover theory of entrepreneurship seeks to explain the fundamentals and consequences of entrepreneurship with respect to economic performance. This paper uses the knowledge spillover theory to explain different innovation outcomes. We hypothesize that a high rate of entrepreneurship facilitates the process of turning knowledge into new-to-the-market innovation but has no effect on the relationship between knowledge and new-to-the-firm innovation. Our results using European country-level and pooled OLS, fixed- and random-effects regressions show that a high rate of entrepreneurship increases the chances that knowledge will become new-to-the-market innovation. The findings highlight the importance of Schumpeterian entrepreneurship in the process of the commercialization of knowledge. We discuss the implications for entrepreneurship and innovation policy. Block, J.H. Thurik, A.R. Zhou, H. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/32154/ 2011-09-01T00:00:00Z Dual distribution in franchising is addressed from an incomplete contracting perspective. We explicitly model cooperative (dual distribution) franchising as an organizational form, next to wholly-owned, wholly-franchised, and dual distribution franchise systems. Key conclusions of the model are: (1) dual distribution as an efficient governance mechanism does not depend on heterogeneous downstream outlets, and (2) whether dual distribution or some other organizational form is efficient depends on the size of the benefits to dual distribution relative to the parties' costs of investing. Hendrikse, G.W.J. Jiang, T. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/25538/ 2011-06-06T00:00:00Z This study investigates if and in what way social entrepreneurs are hampered in turning their efforts into sustainable organizations. Using binary logit regressions and unique data containing approximately 26,000 individual-level data points for 36 countries, this study assesses the influences of perceived environmental barriers, risk variables, and socio-demographic variables on the probability of being a social entrepreneur versus a commercial entrepreneur. Our findings confirm that socially motivated entrepreneurs are less likely to survive the earliest levels of entrepreneurial engagement. Several factors have been identified to explain this underperformance. Compared to commercial entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs perceive more financial and informational start-up barriers, are more afraid of personal failure and bankruptcy, and can be found in the lower and higher age categories. In addition, this study found that social entrepreneurs are more likely to be female and highly educated than are their commercial counterparts. Hoogendoorn, B. Zwan, P.W. van der Thurik, A.R. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/23422/ 2011-05-26T00:00:00Z This thesis deals with the entrepreneurial process from an international perspective. The first part explores which people decide to enter entrepreneurship. A distinction is made between two modes of entrepreneurial entry: taking over an existing firm and starting a new firm. The second part focuses on the exit side and examines the determinants of exit before and exit after business start-up. In addition, the decision to re-enter entrepreneurship after having experienced an entrepreneurial exit is analyzed in this second part. This thesis is of particular interest to policymakers, partly due to its dynamic approach. That is, this thesis distinguishes between several stages that make up the decision to become an entrepreneur. The stages range from no entrepreneurial activity to intentional, nascent, young, and established entrepreneurship (the “entrepreneurial ladder”). The conclusions of this thesis may help governments to intervene at positions on the entrepreneurial ladder where certain characteristics, such as perceptions about the entrepreneurial environment, hinder entrepreneurial progress or where regions lag behind. We find that people with pessimistic views about the administrative start-up environment are discouraged in having intentions or undertaking attempts to set up their own businesses (particularly in Europe). Policies should be aimed at tackling inflated perceptions of administrative barriers (in case of misperceptions of the environment) or directly lowering these barriers. Exit before start-up and exit after business start-up have different determinants. For example, urbanization is negatively related to exit before start-up and positively related to exit after start-up. This finding points at the presence of overoptimistic entrepreneurs and strong selection mechanisms in these areas. Furthermore, individuals are inclined to enter the entrepreneurial process again after having experienced an exit. This finding holds true for positive as well as negative exit experiences. Zwan, P.W. van der http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/22907/ 2011-04-01T00:00:00Z In the media role models are increasingly being acknowledged as an influential factor in explaining the reasons for the choice of occupation and career. Various conceptual studies have proposed links between role models and entrepreneurial intentions. However, empirical research aimed at establishing the importance of role models for (nascent) entrepreneurs is scarce. Knowledge of the presence of entrepreneurial role models, their specific functions and characteristics is therefore limited. Our explorative empirical study is a first step towards filling this gap. Our study is based on the outcomes of a questionnaire completed by a representative sample of 292 entrepreneurs in three major Dutch cities - entrepreneurs who have recently started up a business in the retail, hotel and restaurant sectors, business services and other services. We provide indications of the presence and importance of entrepreneurial role models, the function of these role models, the similarity between the entrepreneur and the role model, and the strength of their relationship. Bosma, N. Hessels, S.J.A. Schutjens, V. Praag, M. van Verheul, I. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/22815/ 2011-03-24T00:00:00Z Fruit and vegetable marketing organization The Greenery has experienced various governance structure changes, like horizontal merger, forward integration, and the emergence of grower associations. A multilateral incomplete contracting model is presented to account for these changes by analysing the interactions between pooling, access, and countervailing power. This model does not only explain the changes at The Greenery, but it contributes also to the design of efficient channel governance. Hendrikse, G.W.J. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/22723/ 2011-03-02T00:00:00Z In this paper we present and analyze a model for clustering in networks that offer Software as a Service (SaaS). In this problem, organizations requesting a set of applications have to be assigned to clusters such that the costs of opening clusters and installing the necessary applications in clusters are minimized. We prove that this problem is NP-hard, and model it as an Integer Program with symmetry breaking constraints. We then propose a Tabu search heuristic for situations where good solutions are desired in a short computation time. Extensive computational experiments are conducted for evaluating the quality of the solutions obtained by the IP model and the Tabu Search heuristic. Experimental results indicate that the proposed Tabu Search is promising. Gaast, J.P. van der Rietveld, C.A. Gabor, A.F. Zhang, Y. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/22280/ 2011-01-27T00:00:00Z This study addresses the organization and strategy of firms in emerging markets with an explicit application to financial services. Given the relevance of a well-functioning financial system for economic growth, understanding the organization and strategy of firms contributing to the development of sound financial services appears of utmost importance for emerging markets. Throughout the study, two main providers of financial services are distinguished, namely banks and stock markets, which are examined in the emerging market context of Central and Eastern Europe and China, respectively. For banking, the general focus is on the adopted strategies of multinational banks to expand across the Central and Eastern European region. The main findings indicate that, based on the degree of host market uncertainty and competition, multinational banks adopt different expansion strategies. Furthermore, it appears that multinational banks expand most effectively by establishing new subsidiaries in countries adjacent to a country where the bank already has a presence. For stock markets, the central theme is how the decision of mainland Chinese firms on where to list their shares reflects the attractiveness of the stock markets within the financial centers of Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hong Kong. The findings suggest an increasing segregation in the strategic listing decisions that mainland Chinese firms make, which indicates that the financial centers of mainland China and Hong Kong have become more specialized and complementary over time. Karreman, B. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/22720/ 2011-01-17T00:00:00Z We determine the circumstances when the absence of public listing, often believed to be a disadvantage, makes a cooperative the unique efficient governance structure. This is established in a multi-task principal-agent model, capturing that cooperatives are not publicly listed and their CEOs have to bring the downstream enterprise to value as well as to serve upstream member interests. Not having a public listing prevents the CEO from choosing the level of the downstream activities too high. Cooperatives are uniquely efficient when the upstream marginal product multiplied with a function increasing in the strength of the chain complementarities is higher than the downstream marginal product. Feng, L. Hendrikse, G.W.J. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/21869/ 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z This paper investigates the antecedents and consequences of two product advantage components: product meaningfulness and product superiority. Product meaningfulness concerns the benefits that users receive from buying and using a new product, whereas product superiority concerns the extent to which a new product outperforms competing products. The present paper argues that scholars and managers should make a deliberate distinction between the two components because they are theoretically distinct and also have different antecedents and consequences. Data were collected through an online survey on 141 new products from high-tech companies located in The Netherlands. The results reveal that new products need to be meaningful as well as superior to competing products to be successful. This finding is consistent with the prevailing aggregate view on product advantage in the literature. However, the results also show that the effects of the two components on new product performance are moderated by market turbulence. Although each component is important in that it forms a necessary precondition for the other to affect new product performance under circumstances of moderate market turbulence, meaningfulness is most important for new product performance in turbulent markets where preferences have not yet taken shape. In contrast, when markets become more stable, the uniqueness of meaningful attributes decreases, and new products that provide advantage by fulfilling their functions in a way that is superior to competing products are more likely to perform well. In addition, the study shows that the firm's customer and competitor knowledge processes independently lead to product meaningfulness and superiority, respectively. The findings also reveal that under conditions of high technological turbulence the customer and competitor knowledge processes complement each other in creating product meaningfulness and superiority. This implies that the level of technological turbulence puts requirements on the breadth of firms' market knowledge processes to create a new product with sufficient advantage to become successful. The paper concludes that neglecting the distinction between product meaningfulness and superiority when assessing a new product's advantage may lead to an incomplete insight on how firms can improve the performance of their new products. Rijsdijk, S.A. Langerak, F. Hultink, E.J. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/22257/ 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z The relationship between outcome status and encountered problems in the business start-up process is investigated. Contrary to expectations, we find that starters do not substantially differ from quitters in the number and type of problems encountered, and that problems encountered generally do not affect outcome status. This research is based on a sample of 414 Dutch nascent entrepreneurs followed over a three-year period. Its design is comparable to that of the U.S. Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics. Gelderen, A.M. van Thurik, A.R. Pankaj, P. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/21914/ 2010-12-23T00:00:00Z Companies increasingly outsource activities to volunteers that they approach via an open call on the internet. The phenomenon is called ‘crowdsourcing’. For an effective use of crowdsourcing it is important to understand what motivated these online volunteers and what is the influence of rewards. Therefore, this thesis examines the effects of motivation and rewards on the participation and performance of online community members. We studied motivation, rewards and contributions in three crowdsourcing initiatives that varied in reward systems. The findings of these three studies resulted in a refined model of the effects of rewards and motivation on voluntary behavior. With this model we provide a possible solution for contrary findings in empirical studies of online communities and the ongoing debate between two schools of cognitive psychology. Our results also have important implications for organizers of online communities, amongst others, regarding the effective application of reward systems. We also provide a crowdsourcing typology in which crowdsourcing initiatives are classified on the basis of their reward systems and identify the motivation profiles of optimal performers per crowdsourcing type. Borst, W.A.M. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/21680/ 2010-12-03T00:00:00Z A cooperative is a firm collectively owned by many independent input suppliers or buyers. This dissertation examines the nature of a cooperative and its efficiency compared with other governance structures from the perspectives of motivation, coordination and cognition. We find that the lack of public listing in cooperatives may result in the cooperative being the unique efficient governance structure under either one of two conditions: 1) additional sources of information like accounting information and subjective performance evaluations are available; 2) the upstream marginal product multiplied with a function increasing in the strength of the chain complementarities is higher than the downstream marginal product. A cooperative as a coordination device is always efficient due to its prevention of double mark-up. The influence of governance structures (market, cooperative, forward integration, and backward integration) on the information partitions of boundedly rational agents is also investigated. We show that each governance structure can be efficient, depending on the probabilities of the various states and the size of the potential benefit and loss. A cooperative enterprise’s conservativeness to change is explained. In sum, the main objective of the dissertation is to deepen the current understanding of the cooperative as one governance structure out of many. It is compared with other governance structures from various perspectives. In doing so, I hope to ease the doubt of some researchers regarding the efficiency of the cooperative and to identify the conditions under which cooperatives are efficient. Feng, L. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/21585/ 2010-11-30T00:00:00Z This thesis is about the development of industrial tourism in urban regions. It presents a systematic analysis of the conditions under which companies and regions can take advantage of industrial tourism development. By combining insights from tourism, marketing, regional economics, urban governance and theories of the firm we develop a theory that specifies the interests of host firms and urban regions. We state that a common agenda creates opportunities for coordinated action in industrial tourism development resulting in benefits for public and private actors. We test the empirical applicability of this theory by means of four case studies of urban regions with a considerable supply of industrial tourism: Cologne, Pays de la Loire, Rotterdam and Turin. Otgaar, A.H.J. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/21239/ 2010-11-02T00:00:00Z Whereas the determinants of entrepreneurial choice have been thoroughly analyzed in the literature, little is known about the preferred mode of entry into entrepreneurship, such as taking over an existing business or starting a new venture. Using a large international dataset, this study reports considerable differences in takeover preferences across 33 countries. Hierarchical (multi-level) regressions are performed to explore individual-level and country-level determinants of the preferred mode of entry. At the individual level, a person’s human capital, risk attitude, and inventiveness influence the preference for starting a new venture versus taking over an existing business. At the country level, the culture-inherent level of risk tolerance, the country’s level of innovation output, and the administrative difficulty of starting a new business are found to explain the between-country variation in the preferred mode of entry. Implications of our findings for research and practice are also discussed. Block, J.H. Thurik, A.R. Zwan, P.W. van der Walter, S. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/20634/ 2010-09-09T00:00:00Z This book investigates the interrelations between knowledge and entrepreneurship, and their consequences with regard to economic performance. Both knowledge and entrepreneurship are recognized as new twin driving forces for economic growth. Recent studies suggest that neither knowledge nor entrepreneurship alone is sufficient to drive growth. Investing in new knowledge is only a necessary condition; new knowledge needs to be exploited and put into commercial use such that it can lead to higher levels of competitiveness and economic growth. Entrepreneurship is acknowledged to play an important role in this process. It is thus essential for economists and policy-makers to understand how knowledge and entrepreneurship relate to each other and why they lead to economic growth. The five empirical chapters included in this book provide new insights into aforementioned issues on the firm- and country-level. Chapter 2 is based on a country-level analysis and identifies the moderating role of entrepreneurship in turning knowledge into innovation, which may ultimately lead to economic growth. Chapters 3 through 5, taking a firm-level perspective, investigate how small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) manage their knowledge assets (including organization knowledge and human resources) to stimulate innovation performance. Chapter 6 pays special attention to the determinants of SME growth. The findings of the chapters indicate that entrepreneurship catalyzes the transformation of new knowledge into innovation on the one hand; and the other hand, knowledge plays a significant role in stimulating innovation performance and SME growth. Zhou, H. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/20326/ 2010-09-02T00:00:00Z Recent concepts such as ‘megaregions’ and ‘polycentric urban regions’ emphasize that external economies are not confined to a single urban core, but are shared among a collection of nearby and linked cities. However, empirical analyses of agglomeration and agglomeration externalities have so far neglected the multicentric spatial organization of agglomeration and the possibility of the ‘sharing’ or ‘borrowing’ of size between cities. The authors take up this empirical challenge by analyzing how different spatial structures, in particular the monocentricity – polycentricity dimension, affect the economic performance of US metropolitan areas. Ordinary least squares and two-stage least-squares models explaining labor productivity show that spatial structure matters: polycentricity is associated with higher labor productivity. This appears to justify suggestions that, compared with more monocentric metropolitan areas, agglomeration diseconomies remain relatively limited in the more polycentric metropolitan areas, whereas agglomeration externalities are to some extent shared among the cities in such an area. However, it was also found that a network of geographically proximate smaller cities cannot substitute for the urbanization externalities of a single large city. Meijers, E.J. Burger, M.J.