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Innovating firms may acquire foreign knowledge and improve their innovation performance by offshoring their R&D activities to their own foreign affiliates (captive offshoring) as well as by contracting out their R&D to external foreign parties (contract offshoring). This study examines the impact of both R&D offshoring strategies on innovation performance. Based on a panel dataset of 2421 R&D-active firms in Germany, we demonstrate that captive offshoring and contract offshoring differ fundamentally in their impact on firm innovation performance. At low degrees of offshoring, contract offshoring positively affects innovation performance and is preferable over captive offshoring. At larger degrees of offshoring, captive offshoring becomes more beneficial while contract offshoring is disadvantageous. Both offshoring strategies eventually harm innovation performance when excessively employed. Furthermore, the R&D offshoring-performance relationship is leveraged by R&D intensity, such that firms with a larger knowledge stock benefit stronger from both captive and contract offshoring.
Economics meets psychology: Experimental and self-reported measures of individual competitiveness
(2017)
This study examines the relationship between economic and psychological approaches to measure individuals' competitiveness. While psychologists typically use self-reported psychometric scales, economists tend to use behavioral measures obtained from economic experiments, where subjects confronted with specific paid tasks have to select into either a competitive or a piece-rate payment scheme. Both measurement approaches have remained largely isolated from one another. We demonstrate that a standard behavioral measure and a psychometric scale of individual competitiveness are positively associated, but distinguishable with respect to the role of personal development motives. While self-reported competitiveness also emerges from personal development motives, the behavioral measure does not reflect such motives. The distinction between both measures is validated based on divergent associations with personality and interests in a competitive career.
Despite the high prevalence of hybrid entrepreneurs among multiple job holders, research on hybrid entrepreneurship and multiple job holding has largely evolved independently from each other. We take a first step for a fruitful exchange between both research streams by building on hybrid entrepreneurship theories to explain why multiple job holders frequently have higher hourly earnings in their second job compared to their main job. Consistent with these entrepreneurship theories, our empirical analysis, based on the British Household Panel Survey (1991–2008), demonstrates that engaging in self-employment as second job significantly increases the probability of having higher average earnings in this second job, compared to being paid employed in both occupations. Furthermore, we explore the roles of gender and household composition in explaining multiple job holders’ earnings structure.
We shed new light on the structure of the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and firm performance and how this relationship varies across contexts. Using commonality analysis, we decompose the variance in performance—in terms of the effects of innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk taking—into parts that are attributable to unique variations in these dimensions (unique effects) and those attributable to covariation between these dimensions (shared effects). By demonstrating the empirical relevance of unique, bilaterally shared, and commonly shared effects in a heterogeneous sample of low–tech, high–tech, and multi–sector firms, we consolidate existing conceptualizations of EO and propose an extension of the extant theoretical views of the construct.
We introduce “exploratory perseverance” as a novel construct that captures perseverant behavior in settings in which several alternatives can be explored and evaluated. We suggest that entrepreneurs display exploratory perseverance reflected by a tendency to keep exploring broader sets of alternatives, to adopt a parallel rather than sequential approach to trial‐and‐error learning, and, after negative experiences with some alternatives, to be more inclined to give them a second chance. The results from an experimental study of 449 individuals participating in the Iowa Gambling Task indicate that more entrepreneurially experienced individuals display greater exploratory perseverance than those with little to no entrepreneurial experience.
While previous studies demonstrated that, in many settings, women tend to be less willing than men to engage in interpersonal competition, this study focuses on selection into self-competition. Competing against own past performances can be an integral part of life, including job and sports. Using data obtained from a lab-in-the-field experiment, we find empirical evidence that women are, on average, more reluctant than men to compete against their own past performance. Our results suggest that this difference can be mainly explained by gender differences in risk preferences.
We examine how radical innovativeness affects how new ventures can establish legitimacy. While legitimacy research often assumes that new ventures similarly suffer from the liability of newness, radically innovative new ventures face stronger liabilities and are less successful when raising early-stage equity financing. Consequently, they may benefit more from identity-related, associative, and organizational legitimacy-building mechanisms, which mitigate the adverse effect and may turn radical innovativeness into an asset. Campaign-level observations for technology ventures and complementary individual-level experimental analyses of financial resource providers’ legitimacy assessments suggest that legitimation mechanisms are less effective for less radically innovative ventures and might even be counter-productive.
We draw on a variety of research areas that explain why individuals combine paid employment and self-employment. We provide a comprehensive empirical comparison of the relevance and co-occurrence of multiple motives. Our analysis shows that motives can be meaningfully distinguished according to whether a motive is endogenously transitory or not, and suggests the presence of three dominant classes of hybrid entrepreneurs. In particular, learning and growth constraints, which we refer to as transitory motives resolving over time, play a crucial role in distinguishing between the three classes. Based on an analysis of 3,868 hybrid and pure entrepreneurs, we show that our typology helps better understand the potentially heterogeneous relationships between being a hybrid entrepreneur and entrepreneurial performance and innovation behavior.
Among the new ventures actively seeking funds through equity crowdfunding, only a lucky few seemingly survive the rigorous selection process imposed by equity crowdfunding platforms (ECFPs). With a conjoint experiment involving decision-makers from 50 platforms in 22 countries, this study provides first quantitative evidence regarding how ECFPs actually use quality signals to select new ventures to start fundraising campaigns. The ECFPs interpret signals differently, depending on whether they impose a co-investment requirement or generate revenues from new ventures’ long-term performance. The effectiveness of the signals also is contingent on the applicant’s industry background and the signals’ accessibility in the country where the ECFP operates.
As innovation policy targets innovations suffering from underinvestment, we examine the effect of public grants on innovation. While innovation involves a lot of uncertainty, we suggest public grants as the best option bearing no obligations. But not all innovations are alike as they differ by newness level. Hence, we distinguish between ""new-to-world"" explorative and ""new-to-firm"" explotation innovation. Making use of (inter)national knowledge flow, some exploitative innovations are not ""new-to-firm"" but rather ""new-to-region or -country"" leveraging existing knowledge from another region or country. Allocating grants to the most promising startups, we evaluate startups' quality by high-tech industry and ""entrepreneurial orientation"" (EO). Within over 4,000 early-stage German startups, we find that explorative innovations benefit the most from grants, especially high EO startups. Also, grants help low EO firms to become innovative at all and to launch exploitative innovation with (inter)national knowledge flow.