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Given the complexity of green public procurement, decisions are likely to be driven by bounded rationality. However, we know little about what determines supplier selection criteria in any given situation. This study explores buyer behavior when considering environmental criteria. We first conducted interviews and identified 12 operational procedures used by buyers. We then developed a survey to explore the use of these procedures. Our quantitative analysis suggests that public buyers are motivated by their belief that they can make a difference. This is independent of buyers' experience or gender. However, their occupational position and the nature of a procurement seem to influence how buyers seek information about environmental criteria and which information source(s) they use. The data suggest that four specific decision-making heuristics are associated with the selected operational procedures.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of affective appraisal dimensions on the use of two ecologically rational, social heuristics: imitate the majority (IMH) and imitate the best (IBH) during an entrepreneurial strategic decision-making process (ESDM).

The authors test the hypotheses in a controlled field experiment, on a final sample of 98 entrepreneurs.

The study shows that entrepreneurs experiencing affect described by certainty appraisal display a preference for relying on IMH, but not on IBH. Moreover, entrepreneurs who experience unpleasant affect tend to rely more on IMH, rather than IBH. The reverse is true for the entrepreneurs who experience positive affect. Finally, the use of IMH is most likely under unpleasant and certain affect, while the use of IBH is most likely under pleasant and certain affect.

The main contribution of this study is that it provides initial support for the impact of affective appraisal dimensions on the use of ecologically rational heuristics (i.e. heuristics that save important resources, but bring beneficial results) during an ESDM process.

The phenomenon of imitation has attracted immense attention in studies of big companies, but it has been largely neglected in the immigrant entrepreneurship research thus far. The purpose of this paper is to address that gap by proposing a theoretical framework for studying immigrant entrepreneurship imitation decisions.

The framework is based on a review of relevant literature covering the issue of imitation within three perspectives: institutional, heuristics of judgement and organisational learning. We validate the framework by juxtaposing it with existing studies on immigrant entrepreneurship, where imitation practices were directly and indirectly referred to. The framework is also initially validated with data from three qualitative studies performed by the authors.

The literature-derived framework consists of three major building blocks (i.e. causes, target and content of imitation) while immigrant-entrepreneurship specificity (ethnic groups and clusters, ethnic identity, generation, and resources) constitutes the context of the framework. The authors formulate 12 propositions on which the framework is based. The specific character of immigrant entrepreneurs' imitation decision is discussed, and differences in that regard between immigrant entrepreneurs and established local businesses are highlighted.

A more diversified sample and quantitative studies are needed to further verify the proposed framework and propositions.

The framework is intended to expedite future research on immigrant entrepreneurs' imitative decisions and facilitate better-adjusted public policy to support immigrant entrepreneurs.

This paper drives attention to a widely used, yet understudied phenomenon of imitation, provides an analytical framework for the study of imitation in immigrant entrepreneurship, provides a preliminary validation of the framework and contributes to a better understanding of immigrant behaviour.

While recent research has referred to a cognitive view on “business modelling,” it remains unclear in specifying the cognitive foundations of how such modelling happens. This paper proposes building on heuristics as models of individual cognition, which have proved effective foundations of adaptive individual and managerial behaviors. By also drawing on gestalt theory to specify principles of modelling as rule-based form giving, we propose business modelling as a managerial cognitive process of configuring heuristics. The paper makes three contributions. First, we introduce heuristics to the business modelling literature and so provide an established theory of adaptive individual behavior that strengthens the cognitive foundations of business modelling. Second, we conceptualize and theorize on the cognitive activity of business modelling as an iterative process of configuring heuristics by applying gestalt principles. Although the literature on business models has referred to the theories of configurations and gestalt, it has been left to this work to make the theoretical linkages between heuristics, gestalt theory and business modelling explicit. Third, our work contributes to the micro-foundations of the cognitive processes underlying business modelling and thus to broader accounts of adaptive managerial behaviors.

While classical operations strategy research argues that manufacturing organizations should be managed in line with the operational strategic priorities, recent studies have brought up potential institutional explanations for adoption of various managerial practices, including supply chain management practices. The key point in the institutional argument is that organizations are especially affected by other organizations; imitation and isomorphism are a critical part of organizational behavior. The purpose of this paper is to empirically test the institutional argument in explaining the use of supplier integration mechanisms – one of the focal management practices in today’s organizations.

The authors assess empirically the extent to which various economic institutional factors explain the use of supplier integration mechanisms in manufacturing plants with a multi-country and multi-industry survey sample.

The results indicate that institutional explanations play a significant role in explaining supplier integration. The findings suggest that further emphasis on building research around the institutional argument in various areas of supply chain and operations management is important.

As research on supply chain integration – including supplier integration – has focused on its performance implications, more research on the antecedents to integration is needed. This study provides a test of institutional theory as an antecedent to supplier integration.

In this study, the authors examine acquirers’ selection of legal advisors for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) transactions. The authors first confirm the importance of their own prior experience and imitation within this context. Then, the authors propose and find that firms with less experience in performing M&A deals place more emphasis on imitating others while firms with more experience with a particular legal advisor focus less on others’ experience with this advisor. The authors further find that when they imitate, firms selectively, rather than broadly, imitate others by focusing on their industry or state peers. The authors present corroborating evidence for these hypotheses through analyzing a matched sample of acquirer – legal advisor pairs developed from an initial dataset of 29,398 domestic and cross-border acquisitions performed by US firms between 2000 and 2010.

Following Philip Selznick’s lead in using pragmatist social science to understand issues of public concern we conducted a study of failed innovation in the commercial construction industry (CCI). We find that social heuristics – collectively constructed and maintained interpretive decision-making frames – significantly shape economic and non-economic decision-making practices. Social heuristics are the outcome of industry-based “institutionalization processes” and are widely held and commonly relied on in CCI to reduce uncertainty endemic to decision-making; they provide actors with both a priori and ex post facto justifications for economic decisions that appear socially rational to industry co-participants. In the CCI – a project-centered production network – social heuristics as shared institutions sustain network-based social order but in so doing discourage novel technologies and impede innovation. Social heuristics are actor-level constructs that reflect macro-level institutional arrangements and networked production relations. The concept of social heuristics offers the promise of developing a genuinely social theory of individual economic choice and action that is historically informed, contextually situated, and neither psychologically nor structurally reductionist.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the links between entrepreneurial behavior and success factors in a developing country context.

A case study approach was selected to analyze real‐life situations in order to gain an insight about entrepreneurial cognition and action related to success factors. Drawing from the behavioral theory of entrepreneurship, this paper presents a conceptual model which shows that entrepreneurial cognitions about success factors may lead toward entrepreneurial actions. The data were collected through face‐to‐face interviews. Three entrepreneurs were asked to outline responses to identified success factors such as start‐up planning, managing risk, learning, networking, managing human resource, and managing finances.

The results suggest that many behavioral patterns exhibited by the case study entrepreneurs were similar to entrepreneurs' behavior in more developed regions. The similarities include: preparation of business plan, ability cognition for start‐up planning, overconfidence and representativeness heuristics for managing risk, obtaining professional outsider assistance for learning, developing business relationships with suppliers for networking and favorable credit policies, and employing owner‐related and delaying‐payment methods of bootstrapping for managing finances.

For the first time in Pakistan this study explores entrepreneurial cognition and action in managing success factors. The findings of the research will potentially help practitioners and policy makers in nurturing entrepreneurial initiatives in a developing country context.

Research has shown that the assimilation of managers into the growing small business is a process fraught with difficulty. The purpose of this paper is to use the evolutionary approach to shed new light on the process in which the management team broadens in a growing small firm.

The paper puts forward a conceptualisation of the units of analysis, namely habits and heuristics. Then using a case study approach, these concepts are operationalised to describe the process in which the management team broadens in a growing porcelain company. An analysis of the findings is then be organised around the evolutionary mechanisms of variation, selection and retention.

It was seen that existing habits, routines and heuristics acted in a policing fashion to resist variation introduced by the newly arriving manger. This resistance led to the failure of the firm to vary practices in line with changes in the marketplace.

By focusing on the evolution of habits, routines and heuristics, and the fit between these concepts and the changing external world, new insights can be gained on the broadening process and ultimately the survival of the organisation.

It is argued that the approach taken in this paper promotes more theory‐driven research with a strong focus on process and context, and can build on both the behaviour‐based and learning‐based approaches by allowing multi‐level analysis of the process in which the management team broadens.