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Stock volatility has raised some serious questions about the way some investors ascertain the true value of the quality of a venture proposition. Prior signaling theory argues that the amount of personal wealth offered by individual entrepreneurs as initial equity in a new venture, is a fitting indicator of the proposed project's quality. However, it has typically been focused only on the absolute amount of the initial capital invested by the entrepreneur, while this manuscript arguably demonstrates that a more appropriate signal is the actual proportion, since it signifies both the project's value and the entrepreneur's commitment to the project.

This study examines whether recruitment of local managers helps foreign venture capital (VC) firms mitigate the liability of foreignness measured by cultural differences and improves their performance in relationship-based emerging markets such as China.

From a data set comprising 1,939 Chinese portfolio companies with first-round investments by 282 foreign lead VC firms during 2000–2015, the study tracks the outcome of each investment until the end of 2018 and collects the background information of partners of lead VC firms. A survival analysis using the Cox hazard model is conducted.

Cultural differences of the foreign VC's home country, when compared to China, positively influence the success of VC firms. Recruitment of local managers reinforces this positive influence. The influence of local manager recruitment is more pronounced for VC firms with politically connected local managers, during politically uncertain periods, in industries supported by the government, in provinces with high government intervention and in VC firms with decentralized decision rights given to local managers.

This research complements the international business literature on the advantages of hiring local managers and identifies the channels through which local managers help foreign VC firms obtain relationship-based resources. The findings also have practical implications for those foreign investors who intend to enter into relationship-based emerging markets.

Talk of “macrofoundations” helps foreground the constitutive and contextualizing powers of institutions – dynamics that are inadvertently obscured by the imagery of microfoundations. Highlighting these aspects of institutions in turn opens intriguing lines of inquiry into institutional reproduction and change, lived experience of institutions, and tectonic shifts in institutional configurations. However, there is a twist: taking these themes seriously ultimately challenges any naïve division of micro and macro, and undermines the claim of either to a genuinely foundational role in social analysis. The authors propose an alternative “optometric” imagery – positioning the micro and the macro as arrays of associated lenses, which bring certain things into focus at the cost of others. The authors argue that this imagery should not only encourage analytic reflexivity (“a more optometric institutionalism”) but also draw attention to the use of such lenses in everyday life, as an underexplored but critical phenomenon for institutional theory and research (“an institutionalist optometry”).

The growing uses of digital technologies have been creating several new business opportunities. Recently, a new concept has emerged in the literature, the “digital entrepreneurship ecosystem” (DEE). However, it has been empirically understudied. Thus, this study aims to analyze the influence of DEE on entrepreneurial activity. The meta-organization theory was used as a perspective of analysis. A quantitative methodology was applied in a sample that includes data from 28 European countries through the generalized method of moments. It was concluded that the DEE pillars, informal and formal institutions, market conditions, physical infrastructure, human capital and talent and networking and support positively influence entrepreneurial activity. It was also found that the variables knowledge, creation and dissemination and finance have a negative impact on entrepreneurial activity. Several theoretical and empirical contributions are also left for the various stakeholders. The present study is original, as no known studies analyze the influence of DEE on entrepreneurial activity in European countries from the perspective of meta-organization theory.

The paper aims at extending extant research on sources of divestiture gains by suggesting a novel program‐based perspective on divestitures and analyzing the performance of program divestitures in comparison to single “stand‐alone” divestitures.

Based on event study methodology, the authors analyze the abnormal returns of 160 divestiture announcements within the global insurance industry between 1998 and 2007. In contrast to prior research which relied on ex post statistical clustering to identify transaction programs, ad hoc corporate press releases issued with the divestiture announcements are used to categorize program divestitures.

Empirical results suggest that program divestitures generate higher abnormal returns than stand‐alone divestitures. Further analyses into the sources for these higher gains, however, do not provide support for experience effects as significant explanatory factors. Instead, results suggest that the scheduling of divestitures significantly impacts announcement returns.

The scope and single industry setting of the study suggest future cross‐industry research on the influence of divestiture program characteristics on divestiture performance and the conditions under which these programs improve divestiture performance.

Managers are advised to refrain from piecemeal divestiture behavior lacking clear strategic focus. Instead, they are encouraged to bundle their divestitures as part of a divestiture program with a clear strategic intent and shared business logic.

While prior research on divestitures has treated divestitures as isolated events, the paper directs attention towards the analysis of divestiture programs. Further, experience and timing effects, which have been widely absent from prior divestiture studies, are considered.

The intent of microfinance institutes (MFIs) in developing countries is to provide loans to very poor people in order to help them transform their lives. MFIs tend to receive subsidies; sustainability is being sought to free MFIs from non‐market dependencies. Sustainability is expected to be achieved with “best practices,” of which management with performance measures is a component. The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of performance measures by three Kenyan MFIs, which are classified as formal and client based, and likely to use rational and explicit performance measures. Clients in these MFIs are placed into self‐help groups with two responsibilities: to provide mutual support and advice to the borrowing client; and to provide the MFI with a guarantee that loans of group members will be repaid.

Based on a review of the economics and performance measurement systems literatures, research questions were developed along with an interview guide. Case studies were used to administer an interview guide which was distributed to the respondents prior to the face‐to‐face interviews.

The study concludes that MFIs have relatively well‐developed performance measures that support their particular businesses. There was a good balance between the use of financial and non‐financial performance measures. However, output measures were more commonly used than process measures. The nature of the MFIs suggests the importance of performance measurement. The managers of the MFIs are concerned with performance measurement, as expected within a bureaucracy, and a top‐down demand is present. In addition, group members or clients are interested in performance measurement as each member guarantees the loans of all fellow group members who have loans with the MFI. Thus, the customers exert a bottom‐up demand for performance measurement.

The findings support the view that performance measures are a means for managing MFIs and are a likely requirement for sustainability. Furthermore, the findings have identified performance measures (similar to those at banks) that are appropriate for the three MFIs in Kenya. The findings are important since the identified performance measures may be adopted by other evolving MFIs in this relatively new sector. In addition, the findings contribute to a better understanding of the genesis of the less popular results and determinants performance measurement framework of Fitzgerald et al.