Search results

Despite the importance of brokers in creative projects, limited attention has been devoted to the micro-interactions by which brokers induce others’ collaboration while simultaneously retaining some control over creative production. Building on an interactionist perspective, we develop the concept of brokerage style – i.e., a recognizable pattern in the ways in which a broker interacts with others. By using different brokerage styles in different phases of a creative project, brokers can orient the social interactions among project participants, “charging” those interactions with different types of emotional energy and mutual attention, eventually inducing collective collaboration and limiting participants’ expectations of control. We illustrate our interactionist model of brokerage styles with examples from the music and TV industries.

We argue for a broadened approach to brokerage by distinguishing between brokerage emphasizing a particular structural pattern in which two otherwise disconnected alters are connected through a third party (“brokerage structure”) and the social behavior of third parties (“brokerage process”). We explore a processual view of brokerage by examining three fundamental strategic orientations toward brokerage: conduit, tertius gaudens, and tertius iungens that occur in many different forms and combinations. This processual view is especially relevant in increasingly complex and dynamic environments where brokerage behavior is highly varied, intense, and purposeful, and has theoretical implications for studying multiplexity, heterogeneity, and brokerage intensity.

Knowledge sharing is a fundamental source of competitive advantage. Social networks are thought to play an important role in knowledge sharing, but are presumed to create a trade-off such that a network can be optimized to promote either knowledge seeking or knowledge transfer, but not both. The trade-off, however, is premised on, and representative of a broader tendency to treat, brokerage and closure as contradictory network forms. We challenge this assertion and propose a theory of knowledge sharing with brokerage and closure as compatible and complementary. Evidence from a contract research and development firm broadly supports our theory. We also report the results of a simulation analysis, which illustrate that only in the extremely rare case when a network is characterized by nearly complete balance do brokerage and closure begin to create a trade-off.

In the pursuit of co-exploration, the strength and brokerage dimensions of dyadic ties create a novelty–action trade-off: tie strength facilitates coordination but constraints novelty, while tie brokerage expands knowledge diversity but aggravates coordination difficulty. This study contributes towards a better understanding of this tension by comparing two dimensions of relational ties and examining their contingent values given different environmental factors and exchange characteristics.

The authors used survey data from 194 matched buyer–supplier dyads in China's high-tech industries and employed hierarchical moderated regression analysis to test the proposed hypotheses.

The authors find that compared with tie strength, tie brokerage has a stronger positive effect on co-exploration. Moreover, guanxi importance amplifies the effect of tie strength while decreasing the value of tie brokerage. As market uncertainty increases, the role of tie brokerage becomes more salient. Additionally, tie strength becomes less effective when buyer centralization is high, whereas tie brokerage exerts a stronger impact on co-exploration when an exchange is highly formalized.

This study contributes to the supply chain literature by adopting a relational perspective to integrate relational ties into the study of buyer–supplier co-exploration and by elaborating on the different implications of tie strength and tie brokerage in resolving the novelty–action trade-off. Furthermore, it provides a more nuanced understanding of when distinct dimensions of relational ties are effective, by clarifying boundary conditions in terms of environmental factors and exchange characteristics.

Commercial real estate is a highly specific asset: heterogeneous, indivisible and with less information transparency than most other commonly held investment assets. These attributes encourage the use of intermediaries during asset acquisition and disposal. However, there are few attempts to explain the use of different brokerage models (with differing costs) in different markets. This study aims to address this gap.

The study analyses 9,338 real estate transactions in London and New York City from 2001 to 2011. Data are provided by Real Capital Analytics and cover over $450 billion of investments in this period. Brokerage trends in the two cities are compared and probit regressions are used to test whether the decision to transact with broker representation varies with investor or asset characteristics.

Results indicate greater use of brokerage in London, especially by purchasers. This persists when data are disaggregated by sector, time or investor type, pointing to the role of local market culture and institutions in shaping brokerage models and transaction costs. Within each city, the nature of the investors involved seems to be a more significant influence on broker use than the characteristics of the assets being traded.

Brokerage costs are the single largest non-tax charge to an investor when trading commercial real estate, yet there is little research in this area. This study examines the role of brokers and provides empirical evidence on factors that influence the use and mode of brokerage in two major investment destinations.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how scale and scope of operations, firm age, and the choice to join a franchise formula influences brokerage firms' efficiency.

Four‐year data of 1,282 Dutch real estate brokerage firms is used to compute a relative efficiency measure for all firms. Consecutively, variation in this efficiency measure is explained from the firm and market characteristics.

The results show that scale and scope have a non‐linear, U‐shaped, relationship with efficiency. A reversed U‐shaped relationship is found between age and efficiency. Finally, being a member of a franchise does not necessarily lead to improved efficiency, but it depends on the franchise formula terms used.

Based on these results, managers of real estate brokerage firms are able to reconsider their own organizational design choices.

Compared to prior studies, this study uses data from multiple years. Further, the analysis also incorporates non‐linear effects of scale, scope and age on efficiency. Finally, prior research has only compared efficiency of franchise versus independent firms. This study shows that benefits of a franchise depend on the contract terms.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors leading to turnover among sell‐side financial analysts and the consequences of turnover.

The paper identifies two types of turnover, voluntary and involuntary, and defines voluntary (involuntary) as when analysts leave their employment at one brokerage firm and find (do not find) employment at another brokerage firm. Logistic models are estimated relating the probability of turnover to factors that explain turnover for both voluntary and involuntary turnover.

The paper finds that job performance is positively (negatively) related to voluntary (involuntary) turnover. This finding is consistent with Jackofsky's theory predicting U‐shaped relationship between performance and turnover. For voluntary turnover, analysts' performance and job conditions at the new brokerage firm are examined and related to the factors leading to turnover. It was found that turnover analysts move to smaller brokerage firms and become more accurate. They have lighter workload and enjoy more prestige at the new brokerage firm as they follow larger firms and fewer firms and industries.

This is the first study to apply Jackofsky's theory to the financial analysts' profession. Also, it is the first study to document the consequences to voluntary analyst turnover.

This paper aims to discuss unethical behaviors that small real estate agencies encounter in real estate brokerage practices, the factors that give rise to a trust issue and the potential of legal arrangements for offering a solution. Small real estate agencies, almost the only actor in the real estate brokerage industry until the late twentieth century, still strive to survive despite the globalized market, large corporations increasingly dominating the market, the increasing informality and the real estate portals offering certain brokerage services online. While all these developments put pressure on small real estate agencies, the industry’s unethical behaviors diminish their reliability. Despite the efforts to overcome this issue through legal arrangements, the extent to which these regulations will be successful is still a matter of intense debate.

In total, 85 small real estate agencies operating in Istanbul, Turkey, were posed semi-structured open-ended questions and asked to provide an opinion about the unethical behaviors they face and the potential of a legal arrangement to solve those problems. In the second stage, three focus group interviews were held with representatives from large real estate brokerage companies to make a comparison and they were also posed similar questions. The answers were evaluated using content analysis.

It was found that the unethical behaviors in the real estate industry could mainly be evaluated in two categories, i.e. those stemming from structural problems of the industry and those stemming from problems related to service delivery and that a legal arrangement could only solve the first category.

The research is limited to small real estate agencies that operate in Istanbul, the heart of the Turkish economy and the biggest city of the country where intensive efforts are spent to integrate into the global order.

It is considered that categorization of the causes of problems encountered by the numerous small real estate agencies that struggle to survive in the market and an analysis of the root causes of unethical behaviors in the industry and a discussion on potential solutions that may be brought bylaws will contribute to the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether real estate companies manipulate their earnings through the brokerage fee across ownership expropriation or not.

This study considers Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange listed real estate firms to investigate how the brokerage fee in the real estate industry might affect the earnings management of firms across its ownership expropriation. Using annual report data, the authors investigate the associations over a panel for the period 2008−2012. Robust panel regression is used to divulge the probability values with reference by probit regression.

Overall, the results show that high brokerage fees would drive more events of earnings management and that, generally, the ownership concentration among Malaysian real estate firms significantly affects the earnings management of the firms.

This study shows that firm profitability and brokerage fees enhance the probability of firm’s earnings management. A low brokerage fee would reflect low revenue to the company. Therefore, management would opt to manipulate earnings in order to overstate earnings, which garners more interest from investors.

Real estate values in Malaysia have climbed steadily over the years due to a combination of reasons giving companies a higher brokerage fee. Earnings management has become a big issue for property investors. The study demonstrates the relationship between earnings management and brokerage fee across ownership expropriation which can be considered by shareholders in their own strategic planning and investors in their own investing.

This study examines the possible nonlinear effect of size on stakeholder and shareholder profitability in the Ghanaian insurance brokerage industry.

This study employs a panel dataset of 64 Ghanaian insurance brokerage firms spanning 2011–2015. Static [ordinary least squares (OLS), fixed effect and random effect and dynamic (two-step generalized method of moments (GMM))] estimation techniques are employed to analyze the data.

The study finds the existence of both economies and diseconomies of scale and scope theories in the Ghanaian insurance brokerage industry confirming the existence of nonlinear nexus between size and performance. This finding is consistent for both stakeholder and shareholder profit performance. Thus, the results show that size improves profitability of insurance brokerage firms, but beyond a certain threshold, the relationship turns negative as size negatively affects profitability.

The research findings have implications for both policy and research; the study recommends that Ghanaian brokerage managers should understand that not all growth is good and exercise a duty of care when applying growth strategies by monitoring size effect on performance so as not to go beyond the inflection point. Further research can be done to examine this effect in other contexts, timeframes and jurisdictions.

This research is unique in that it employs a panel dataset consisting of 96% of insurance brokerage firms in Ghana whilst employing both static and nonstatic regression models to examine the effect of size. The research analysis adopted is robust, and the findings are significant. Also, the lack of empirical studies on the operations and dealings of auxiliary institutions such as the insurance brokerage firms adds value to this research.