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Prior research on joint ventures using both legal and strategic perspectives provides several transaction cost‐based prescriptions for structuring joint ventures to minimize the threat of opportunistic behavior by venture partners. However, the effects of these prescriptions on the subsequent survival of the alliance are largely untested. Using survey data from senior managers responsible for alliance participation to explore these relationships, results show that many of the prescriptions that impact venture formation also impact survival, but in a somewhat different and more complex manner than previously thought. Managers desiring to influence the long‐term survival of a joint venture should focus on the factors that best fulfill their goals for the partnership. By clarifying these issues we seek to inform our understanding of how the transaction cost‐based prescriptions influence alliance survival, enhance managers’ ability to capture the gains from this potentially valuable strategic tool, and raise important considerations for future research.

This study uses a new, fine-grained, firm-based measure of target resources to investigate the relationship between target resource type and acquirer stock market performance. Our findings suggest that the market punishes acquirers of knowledge-based resources more than those that buy property-based resources due to the perceived uncertainty regarding the value of targets’ knowledge resources. In support of the underlying uncertainty argument, we find that managers announcing knowledge-based mergers provide more information in their press releases than those announcing property-based transactions. While prior studies have suggested that resource relatedness may moderate the resource type and acquisition performance link, our findings do not support either a direct or moderating relationship.

Customer satisfaction's importance is well‐documented in the marketing literature and is rapidly gaining wide acceptance in the healthcare industry. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new customer‐satisfaction measuring method – Reichheld's ultimate question – and compare it with traditional techniques using data gathered from four healthcare clinics.

A new survey method, called the ultimate question, was used to collect patient satisfaction data. It was subsequently compared with the data collected via an existing method.

Findings suggest that the ultimate question provides similar ratings to existing models at lower costs.

A relatively small sample size may affect the generalizability of the results; it is also possible that potential spill‐over effects exist owing to two patient satisfaction surveys administered at the same time.

This new ultimate question method greatly improves the process and ease with which hospital or clinic administrators are able to collect patient (as well as staff and physician) satisfaction data in healthcare settings. Also, the feedback gained from this method is actionable and can be used to make strategic improvements that will impact business and ultimately increase profitability.

The paper's real value is pinpointing specific quality improvement areas based not just on patient ratings but also physician and staff satisfaction, which often underlie patients' clinical experiences.

Declining productivity and disappointing lack of profitability after three decades of biotechnology commercialization, despite enormous investment and the great promise of breakthrough solutions, have led researchers to question whether traditional horizontal acquisition strategies result in superior firm performance. Our chapter explores the answer to this question as well as to the role that disclosure plays in this important emerging industry. Using standard event study methodology, we examine differences in market performance of vertical versus horizontal acquisition strategies, along with the role played by the amount of information disclosed in the announcement. Our results suggest that vertical acquisitions underperform horizontal acquisitions, with the amount of disclosure playing a role in the market's ability to react to a firm's acquisition strategy accurately and quickly. Our results suggest that accountants who have called for additional disclosure, especially in complex industries such as biopharma, are correct in assuming that nonfinancial information plays a significant role in investors’ valuation of an acquisition event. Managers of biopharma firms, however, are cautioned that more disclosure, through the reduction of uncertainty, may result in lower market valuations for acquirers.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the gap between the resources required to build a strong biotechnology ecosystem in Nebraska and the perception of resources currently available within the state for doing so.

Using resource‐based theory along with data from a Battelle survey commissioned by BioNebraska, the authors first identify the human and financial capital needed to support a viable biotechnology industry sector, benchmarking with other regions currently undertaking such development. The authors then compare identified resource requirements with data from a survey of BioNebraska members regarding their perceptions of the importance of these resources to, and their availability within, Nebraska.

This process revealed gaps in several key resource areas that could impede the state's ability to achieve its sector development goals.

In the authors' view, understanding the gap between resources required and resources available for building a high technology industry sector, as well as benchmarking against the competition, are key first steps in developing successful economic policy.

The paper discusses the implications of gaps in several key resource areas for future success and makes recommendations for possible ways in which Nebraska decision makers might develop necessary resources. Also addressed is the importance of considering the perceptions of key stakeholders and decision makers regarding the resources required for developing knowledge industries such as biotechnology.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the attitudes towards and knowledge about entrepreneurship and small business among the people of Nebraska, a mid‐western state in the USA.

The paper discusses the importance of understanding attitudes and knowledge about entrepreneurship at the state‐level. It uses a parsimonious framework to present the findings based on data collected by a Gallup Organization survey of Nebraska residents and small business owners.

Data reveals low interest in becoming entrepreneurs among Nebraskans. Interestingly, however, Nebraskans believe their educational experience is significantly more valuable and applicable to business start‐up than does the US general population. They are also less likely than the US population to believe that successful entrepreneurs and small businesses should give back to their communities.

The paper highlights the need to examine attitudes and beliefs about entrepreneurship in individual states and comparing the findings from the state level data to those from the national data. The results have important implications for teachers interested in providing training to potential entrepreneurs, as well as policy‐makers in states such as Nebraska interested in encouraging entrepreneurial activity in their state.

This paper is the first study to focus on attitudes and beliefs about entrepreneurship among the people of Nebraska, a rural state in USA, an otherwise highly industrialized country. It is also the first study to use the data collected at the state‐level to compare it to findings from a national sample.

The impact of e‐business on export management companies (EMCs) has been debated for some time and several reasons for their survival have been forwarded. Based upon the resource‐based perspective of the firm, this study provides a far more fundamental reason for the survival of the well‐established EMCs‐their market‐based assets. Furthermore, this study analyzes the impact of e‐business proliferation on the well‐established EMCs transaction creating and physical fulfillment exporting services and their efficiency and effectiveness.

This chapter investigates how we have come to know what we know, in the United States, about the terms “ability” and “disability” through the story of Helen Keller and her teacher Anne Sullivan Macy. What is the narrative of Helen Keller as told through children’s literature? How might the ways in which her life is presented contribute to stereotypes of what it means to be disabled? What, if any, are the ways in which authors of these books resist writing about her as someone who “overcame” her disabilities? How is Helen Keller’s relationship with her teacher, Anne Sullivan, portrayed and what might this representation contribute to the concepts of dependence and interdependence?

This project provides a sociological analysis of common themes through a content analysis of 20 children’s books on Helen Keller.

The theme of the widely circulating “story of the water pump moment” (when Keller realizes that hand movements signify language) depicts a one-sided relationship of Helen Keller and her teacher Anne Sullivan Macy. This informs the narrative representations of Anne Sullivan Macy as “miracle worker” and Helen Keller as “miracle child.” Another theme is the “complexities of resistance,” which shows how these narratives uphold the stereotype that Helen Keller needed to “overcome” her disabilities while also resisting this notion and showing how she also helped Anne Sullivan Macy.

This demonstrates how widely circulating stories such as those about Helen Keller shape what we know about what it means to be abled or disabled, challenges simplistic binary understandings of the disability experience, and points to the power of narratives to shape systems of beliefs.