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In response to Ford and Sullivan's chapter, this commentary poses a number of questions intended to help future research efforts ascertain whether levels of analysis and phases of new-venture emergence happen concurrently. Strongly in agreement with Ford and Sullivan's call for a process approach toward the study of entrepreneurial ventures, the commentary focuses on the potential processes associated with different levels of analysis that might possibly underlie the enactment and effectuation processes depicted in their model. Through the examination of these underlying processes, questions for future research are raised to help address the question, “Do levels and phases of new-venture emergence always happen together?”

Entrepreneurship research has grown in both quality and quantity over the past decade, as many theoretical innovations and important empirical research findings have been introduced to the field. However, theoretical approaches to understanding entrepreneurship remain fragmented, and empirical findings are unstable across different contexts. This chapter describes features of a multi-level process view of new venture emergence that adds coherence to the entrepreneurship theory jungle and brings order to idiosyncratic empirical results, by explaining how ideas become organized into new ventures. The centerpiece of this effort is enactment theory, a general process approach specifically developed to explain organizing processes. Enactment theory – and Campbellian evolutionary theorizing more generally – has a long history of use within and across multiple levels of analysis. Consequently, the description here illustrates how organizing unfolds across multiple levels of analysis and multiple phases of development. After describing the theorizing assumptions and multi-level process view of new venture organizing, the chapter explores implications of applying this perspective by suggesting new research directions and interpretations of prior work. The aim is to advocate process theorizing as a more productive approach to understanding new venture emergence.

Behavior in organizations is predominantly driven by expectations and routines derived from past experience rather than by envisioned scenarios reflecting future potentialities. The disproportionate weight placed on expectations derived from past experience has been blamed for a variety of problems associated with individual and organizational creativity and change. Drucker addressed this long‐standing problem by arguing that decision makers must address the degree of “futurity” they need to factor into their present thinking and action. Specifically, decision makers must consider the relative weight or ratio given to ideas derived from two temporally distinct sources of knowledge – expectations constructed from remembering past experiences, and visions derived from imagining the future. In this paper I seek to describe how varying the priority given to remembering and imagining during enactment (action‐perception‐sensemaking) episodes affects organizational creativity and change.

Organizational learning is depicted most frequently as an intra‐organizational information processing activity, but the role that experience plays in the development of organizational knowledge has recently become a more central focus of learning theories. The two primary perspectives on organizational learning present strikingly different depictions of the relationship between action and learning: systems‐structural models based on positivist epistemological assumptions emphasize internally‐directed information collection and distribution activities aimed at reducing uncertainty; interpretive models utilize an interpretivist epistemology that emphasizes the necessity of taking action in ambiguous circumstances as a means of creating knowledge. Proposes that neither of these alternative views of organizational learning describe how learning outcomes vary as a consequence of different types of action and that, specifically, previous models of organizational learning have not emphasized the critical role that creative actions play in the development of organizational knowledge. Delineates assumptions which serve to legitimize creative action taking within organizational contexts, and describes the learning outcomes which result from creative and routine actions. Extends previous models of organizational learning which emphasize cognition and communication processes by distinguishing the varied influences that different actions have on the production of knowledge.

Cogliser and Stambaugh (this volume) and Jaussi (this volume) provided valuable thoughts regarding the multi-level process view of new-venture emergence that we developed elsewhere in this volume. The current response to their suggestions focuses on two underlying themes that emerged from their commentaries. The first theme explores the existence of recursive links between the micro and macro levels of analysis during the new-venture emergence process. The second theme highlights the importance of understanding the underlying processes that may recursively affect venture organization at each level of analysis. Finally, this response reiterates our belief in the fruitful pursuit of studying new-venture emergence as an evolutionary process involving multiple levels of analysis.

In this empirical study, the aim is to examine the relative effect of various rewards on performance of knowledge workers. It is predicted that non‐monetary rewards are associated with enhanced intrinsic motivation, which in turn is related to better performance and innovation.

Data were collected from 288 research and development employees and their supervisors from 30 Fortune 500 companies. The authors tested the hypothesized relationships with mediated multiple regression.

The results revealed that receiving non‐monetary rewards is a stronger predictor of intrinsic motivation manifested by longer work time in comparison to either group or individual monetary rewards. Furthermore, intrinsic motivation was found to fully mediate the relationships between received non‐monetary rewards and performance and innovation.

The paper offers a field test of the cognitive evaluation theory and the crowding theory that have been mainly applied in experimental research and suggests a potential limit to the efficiency wage models in the case of knowledge workers. However, causal conclusions are limited by the cross‐sectional nature of the data and the operationalization of intrinsic motivation is not without its critics.

The study findings suggest that incorporating non‐monetary rewards in reward systems is necessary to encourage productivity and creativity of knowledge workers. Organizations should critically evaluate all aspects of their reward systems to reflect the uniqueness of their employees.

The increased importance of innovation for business success mandates that organizations design their reward systems to stimulate creative behaviors. The study results show the importance of non‐monetary rewards over monetary for knowledge workers’ intrinsic motivation.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of performance measurement systems in organisational effectiveness in the context of the financial services sector within a developing country.

Using the mail survey method data were collected from 69 financial institutions operating in Nepal. Multivariate analysis, in particular multiple regression analysis was employed to test the hypotheses.

The results suggest that non-financial measures and feedback are tightly intertwined with organisational effectiveness. While institutions are focused on using the performance measures concerning internal business process perspective, less emphasis is placed on using customer and employee-related performance measures because they are considered less significant to organisational effectiveness. The findings also reveal that strategy-related feedback is considered more critical by management, as opposed to performance and staff. The study also provides evidence that 40.58 per cent of the financial institutions in Nepal had implemented the Balanced Scorecard, which is considered to be high when compared with other developing countries.

The findings provide managers with valuable insights pertaining to the role of non-financial performance measures and the importance of feedback in improving organisational effectiveness, which could assist them in (re) aligning their performance measurement practices.

The findings of this study contributes to the limited management accounting literature on performance measurement and the impact on organisational effectiveness by providing evidence from the financial services sector within the context of a developing country.

Argues that expertise based solely on rational, quantitative approaches to decision making problematic in rapidly changing business environments that arrest the tools of forecasting, analysis and planning. Where managers must take action in the face of considerable ambiguity, they must justify decisions on “gut instincts”, “best guesses” and other qualitative considerations. Unfortunately, traditional management education is primarily based on quantitative approaches to analysis and planning that may be ineffectual in ambiguous environments. Discusses an alternative approach to management education and training that seeks to blend analytic rigour with insight, intuition, creativity and learning‐by‐doing. Compares assumptions underlying traditional and action‐oriented approaches, and provides examples that suggest how management education and training can enhance their relevance by balancing quantitative and qualitative methods of decision making.

Climate change, deforestation and hydropower dams are contributing to environmental change in the Lower Mekong River region, the combined effects of which are felt by many rural Cambodians. How people perceive and manage the effects of environmental change will influence future adaptation strategies. The objective of this research was to investigate whether the use of a low-cost, explicitly spatial method (participatory mapping) can help identify locally relevant opportunities and challenges to climate change adaptation in small, flood-prone communities. Four villages along the banks of the Mekong River in Kratie Province, Cambodia, were the subject of this research. To identify perceived environmental hazards and adaptive responses, eight workshops were conducted using focus-group interviews and participatory mapping. The communities’ responses highlight the evolving nature of environmental hazards, as droughts increase in perceived importance while the patterns of wet season flooding were also perceived to be changing. The attribution of the drivers of these hazards was strongly skewed towards local factors such as deforestation and less towards regional or global drivers affecting the hydrology of the Mekong and climate patterns. Combining participatory mapping with focus-group interviews allowed a greater depth of understanding of the vulnerabilities and opportunities available to communities than reliance on a single qualitative method. The study highlights the potential for a bottom-up transfer of information to strengthen existing climate change policies and tailor adaptation plans to local conditions.

Serves as an introduction to the special issue on the strategic use of the past and future in organizations published in the Journal of Organizational Change Management. The issue of how organizations and their members appropriate the past and future in the context of organizational identity is examined.