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Creative industries, such as the designer fashion industry (DFI), are among the toughest in which to establish sustainable business ventures. While studies have examined how networks and social capital contribute to independent DFI start-ups and why such businesses fail, these studies have been largely restricted to well-established entrepreneurial spaces like London, which differ in structure and size compared to emerging DFI entrepreneurial spaces in small economies like New Zealand. This chapter addresses this gap in the creative enterprise literature by presenting findings from an examination of 12 New Zealand fashion designers’ accounts of their responses to start-up challenges. The analysis, which paid particular attention to the relationship between social capital and reported strategic practice, revealed that the designers’ challenge profiles and strategic responses were linked to very ‘biographical’ personal networks and their personal enterprise orientations. While those designers with well-established networks started the most resilient businesses, the analysis revealed that even these designers were not necessarily particularly strategic when tapping into the social capital embedded in their networks. Overall, the findings provide further confirmation of the importance of social capital and network management during start-up. Most significantly, they demonstrate why designers need to be forward looking and employ a strategic approach to developing and accessing social capital and when making business decisions. Those who did so were more likely to have viable ventures than those who accessed social capital in order to react to unanticipated challenges.

We advance entrepreneurship research by developing a theoretical model of how founding teams form. Our neo-Carnegie model situates nascent founders in particular network-structural milieus, engaging in aspiration-driven search for and evaluation of prospective co-founders. The formation of co-founding ties between nascent founders can be divided into four theoretical steps, which we label activation, evaluation, approach, and reciprocation. Successful founding team formation is a consequence of mutually favorable evaluations by nascent founders in a multi-sided matching process. Nascent founders with higher and less flexible aspirations are more likely to undertake distant search for co-founders by seeking referrals, forming ties with strangers, and forming new ties to social foci where they might meet potential co-founders. Churn in newly formed founding teams emerges as a consequence of shifting dominant coalition dynamics in the founding team caused by organic venture evolution and intentional changes in strategic direction. Our theoretical model provides new insights on the formation pathways of founding teams, their initial task and relational resource endowments, and initial team dynamics.

Despite recognition of the centrality of emotions in entrepreneurship, little attention has been given to role of emotions in the development of entrepreneurial identity or enactment of entrepreneurial role. The contribution of the chapter is in the development of a dynamic model of the process leading to identification or dis-identification as an entrepreneur. In this chapter, we develop a dynamic model of the process leading to identification or dis-identification as an entrepreneur. We theorize that the driver behind an individual’s decision to become an entrepreneur, and their significant emotional experiences in the entrepreneurial role, influence the likelihood of following an identification or dis-identification cycle. Specifically, our framework proposes that positive emotions strengthen approach motivation and identification with the role, while negative ones foster avoidance motivation and dis-identification. We argue that contextual embeddedness can prompt transition between these two cycles. Our theorization provides new insights into methods of analyzing the role of emotions in the entrepreneurial process, more specifically in the process of entrepreneurial identity crafting. These insights also can be translated into studying the crafting of any professional identity.

The local property tax is the oldest tax in the United States, as well as being the only substantial tax on landed wealth, a major part of the housing expense of most American families, and the most important revenue source for local governments. It is also increasingly limited by state law. This chapter presents a synthetic review of the literature on property tax limitation laws. Property taxation is a crucial resource for local governments because it is primarily a tax on real estate, and land is the least mobile tax base. A tax on the market value of real estate may have the effect of transmitting real estate price shocks to individual land users. Property tax limitation laws provide some homeowners with social protection from such market-induced economic shocks, but they do so at the price of a substantial reduction in state capacity. A meta-regression analysis of published studies finds that property tax levy limitations, on average, reduce local government budgets by as much as 5%. The potential implications for provision of other public goods, including social protection for other groups, are discussed.

In M&A markets, acquirers face a hold-up problem of losing the value of investments they make in due diligence, negotiations, and post-acquisition planning if targets would pursue the options of waiting for better offers or selling to an alternative bidder. This chapter extends information economics to the literature on M&A contracting by arguing that such contracting problems are more likely to occur for targets with better outside options created by the information available on their resources and prospects. We also argue that acquirers address these contracting problems by using termination payment provisions to safeguard their investments. While previous research in corporate strategy and finance has suggested that certain factors can facilitate an acquisition by reducing a focal acquirer’s risk of adverse selection (e.g., signals, certifications), we note that these same factors can make the target attractive to other potential bidders and can exacerbate the risk of hold-up, thereby leading acquirers to use termination payment provisions as contractual safeguards.

Industry platforms can alter relations among exchange partners in such a way that the industry structure is changed. The focus of much industry platform research has been on how platform creation and leadership offers advantages to the most central firms, but platforms can also be advantageous for small specialist firms that compete with the most central firms. We examine book publishing as an example of an industry in which the central players – large publishing firms – are losing power to self-publishing authors because the distributor Amazon has a powerful platform for customers to communicate independently, and the non-publishing platform Twitter also serves as a medium for readers to discuss and review books. Our empirical analysis is based on downloaded sales statistics for Amazon Ebooks, matched with Amazon reviews of the same books and tweets that refer to the book or the author. We analyze how Ebook sales are a function of publisher, Amazon reviews, and tweets, and we are able to assess the importance of each factor in the sale of book titles. The main finding is that Amazon reviews are powerful drivers of book sales, and have greater effect on the sales of books that are not backed by publishers. Twitter also affects book sales, but less strongly than Amazon reviews.

The purpose of the study is to measure the mediating relationship of online buying intentions between narcissism, materialism and brand experience and their effect on luxury purchase behaviour of luxury items by Phuket, Thailand customers. The study has used primary data collection techniques to gather data and used purposive sampling to analyse the data. The study's sample size is 250 respondents who prefer to buy luxury items. The research has used Smart PLS software to measure the relationship through bootstrapping and algorithms. The study has found significant positive mediation of online buying intentions between narcissism, materialism and brand experience and their effect on luxury purchase behaviour of luxury items. This study suggests the theoretical and practical implications for purchasing luxury behaviour from managerial, policymakers and researched perspectives. This study also discusses the future directions and limitations.

Are radically novel practices more likely to attract recognition when the evaluating audience is composed of external evaluators? Our baseline argument asserts that radical novelty is more likely to be positively evaluated by an external audience and that peripheral (rather than core) producers have higher incentives to adopt novel practices that depart from tradition. Yet, because peripheral producers often lack the necessary support and legitimacy to promote novelty, audiences play a critical role in recognizing their innovative efforts. How can peripheral producers mitigate the challenges associated with novelty recognition? To answer this question, we explore how peripheral producers’ collaboration with acclaimed consultants affects the process of external audience recognition in the context of the Italian wine field from 1997 to 2006. Our findings suggest that radical novelty is positively received by an external audience composed of critics, although we do not find a significant difference between core and peripheral producers. However, external audiences are more open to recognizing peripheral producers’ use of novel practices when they collaborate with well-connected consultants. We find that the use of central consultants produces a “boosting” effect that accentuates the differences between evaluations of peripheral producers who embrace novelty and evaluations of those that follow the tradition. Our study thus advances theory by providing empirical evidence of the value of considering third-party actors such as consultants, who sit at the nexus between the agency required for innovation and external audiences’ recognition of novelty, when studying novelty evaluation and recognition.