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Prior research underscores the critical role of prestigious underwriters in shaping the success of the initial public offering (IPO) process, particularly for young firms that do not have much of a track record. Recent scholarly work has shown that the likelihood of a start-up securing a lead prestigious underwriter is influenced by its ability to provide important signals of organizational legitimacy, as conveyed in the employment experiences of the firm's top management team. Building further on theories of organizational attention and decision making, this chapter seeks to examine whether lead prestigious underwriters also consider different types of signals of organizational legitimacy that might be suggested by the existence of ties between young firms and corporate venture capital (CVC) investors.Analysis of 1830 IPOs during 1990–1999 indicates that having a tie to CVC investor provides added legitimacy value over that provided by independent venture capital investors alone. Further analysis of 315 IPOs affiliated with CVC investors suggests that prestigious underwriters pay attention primarily to endorsement-rather than resource-related signals of legitimacy when it comes to CVC ties, and that they pay more attention to investment screening prominence than to business management prominence when it comes to endorsement legitimacy. We also found that prestigious underwriters pay more attention to signals of IPO legitimacy provided by CVC investment in IPO markets that are hot than those that are cold. Our findings provide important theoretical extensions to the study of the certification value of interorganizational affiliations and its impact on IPO success.

Social ventures have been reported to have a hard time obtaining funding. A growing number of social ventures have used crowdfunding as a viable alternative fundraising tool. This paper aims to investigate among social ventures, what makes some more successful than others in crowdfunding.

Theoretically, this study builds upon three streams of literature: nonprofit fundraising literature, crowdfunding literature and social entrepreneurship literature. Empirically, it obtains data with a novel Web-crawling approach from the Indiegogo crowdfunding platform and analyzes them with a variety of statistical modeling.

This study finds that social ventures that have greater internal resources including team size and venture age, stronger partnerships with other entities and more frequent communications with backers via social media and updates have a higher tendency to successfully raise funds from the crowd than those social ventures that do not.

This study seeks to understand social ventures’ crowdfunding performance and identify the specific factors that have led some social ventures to be more successful than other social ventures. It builds a novel data set and uses different statistical models to explore the intersection of social entrepreneurship and digital crowdfunding. In addition, this study provides actionable strategies for social ventures to improve their crowdfunding performance while providing practical implications for increasing people’s knowledge of and participation in social entrepreneurship through education and public policy. Overall, this study contributes to both social entrepreneurship and crowdfunding literature while offering practical implications.

The present study develops a multi-theoretic framework of the mechanisms of value creation in interorganizational relationships and of the key factors influencing those mechanisms. The integrative use of several theories in building the model is justified by numerous studies suggesting that a multi-theoretic approach is required to understand the complexity of interorganizational relationships (Gulati, 1998; Osborn & Hagedoorn, 1997; Park et al., 2002). We believe that the relationships between start-up companies and their corporate investors, with each party holding a diversity of strategic and financial objectives, are not less complex than other potential interorganizational relationships. They may therefore also require ideas from several theories to be properly understood. In this study, we build the models applying primarily the resource-based and the knowledge-based views, as well as social capital theory. Ideas from other theoretical approaches are used to complement these theories.

This study draws upon the interorganizational imitation theory and endorsement literatures to explain the entry mode decisions of emerging-market firms (EMFs) into developed markets. Specifically, the study argues that EMFs entering developed markets pay differential attention to the prior actions of reference groups – by type of country of origin (whom to follow?) and by entry mode (how to imitate?). We test our hypotheses with a sample of 591 entries by EMFs investing in the United States over a 10-year period. The results support an isomorphism-based framework with different influences across reference groups by country of origin and entry mode. We find a dominant form of isomorphism, even after controlling for transaction costs and resource-based explanations.

Although previous research has reached an agreement that finding appropriate alliance partners and reducing selection uncertainty are important for achieving high alliance performance, it has not explored (1) how organizations reduce selection uncertainty, (2) what mechanism enables organizations to do so, and, more generally, (3) how organizations form alliances. This research examined these research questions by conducting fieldwork at 20 biopharmaceutical organizations in the Untied States. I identified three mechanisms for reducing selection uncertainty, including the (1) relational, (2) internal, and (3) contextual mechanisms. One of the findings implies that alliances do not always emerge out of embedded ties, and that there exist variations in organizational usage and reliance on ties and personal rapport in constructing interorganizational networks.

In this chapter, we show how embedded social relations affect economic transactions and intraprofessional stratification in the market for legal services. We argue that networks are critical in fostering individual upward mobility not only because they provide valuable information to ego (lawyer) but also because they function as a crucial mechanism by which the focal actor’s (lawyer’s) status is transmitted to outside alters (clients). Consistent with Podolny’s (1993) general theoretical statement, we claim that ties to prestigious network partners send positive signals concerning the ability and trustworthiness of legal professionals. That is, networks help reduce the information asymmetries faced by potential buyers concerning the actual (unknowable) quality of legal services. Our argument is that, in doing so, the network-embedded status of lawyers serves to contribute to their earnings. We demonstrate this point empirically by examining how networks relate to the process of income attainment among a random sample of lawyers in Chicago (1995).

Current marketing theory and practice have recognized that exchanges between buyers and sellers are frequently embedded in social relationships. Despite the vast body of research on interorganizational exchange, there has been little effort to address the role of larger social networks in which business‐to‐business services firms operate. This paper seeks to present a model of how social network theory can help in understanding why some services firms manage to reinvent themselves and continue to succeed in a business‐to‐business environment, while others are slow to change and decline.

Drawing on 81 in‐depth interviews conducted with general managers/chief executive officers operating in information technology, and biotechnology business‐to‐business services contexts, we consider the relative importance of both network strength and network openness in driving business performance.

The authors identify both network strength between firms and openness towards new actors as underpinning competitive advantage in business‐to‐business services.

Data were collected for service firms operating in two different industries in two regions. The paper underscores the importance of examining the network properties that connect exchange partners when discussing firm performance in business‐to‐business service contexts.

The paper makes a series of important contributions to the small, but growing literature on services networks and has direct implications for managers.

While various scholars have identified relationship marketing objectives as a rationale for sports sponsorship engagement, analytic investigations of the implications of a relational approach to the corporate sponsorship network have been slow to materialize. The purpose of this paper is to advance the discussion of sponsorship as a means of industrial sports marketing towards a network conceptualization, which can be dissected from both the perspective of the sponsoring firms and that of the sponsored enterprise.

This paper employs an illustrative case‐based approach to the application of network analysis tools as a means of exploring the relationship marketing dynamics of corporate sponsorship portfolios.

Several research propositions and applicable network analytics are presented within the context of Formula One racing team sponsorship portfolios. The concepts of network range, density, power, growth, and social capital are explored in regards to their influence on network actors and prospective actors.

Though often neglected in sponsorship research, B2B relational objectives are the focus of this paper, where various evaluative methods are suggested and their dynamic implications illustrated.

By utilizing an international contextual case and explicating several analytic network measures, this research extends the investigation of sports sponsorship beyond the image and awareness‐based objectives that have dominated this area of research. This application of social network analysis to the study of inter‐organizational networks in sport builds on the discussion of sponsorship as a bilateral relationship and advances the dialog towards a broader exploration of corporate sponsors and sport enterprises as network partners.

This chapter examines the use of signaling mechanism to identify promising acquisition targets. It draws on the importance of inter-organizational relationships of target firms and their relevance as signals of firm quality. It takes into account two types of inter-organizational relationships, alliances and corporate venture capital (CVC) investments. It further identifies the boundary conditions that are most likely to influence the acquisition decision of the acquirer. These are based on the characteristics of target firms and their partners. By considering the role of CVC investments and alliances as signals of firm quality, the study draws a connection between how the different types of equity and non-equity relationships of firms influence the acquirer’s choice of potential takeover target.

The theoretical frame based on the signaling perspective provides fresh and valuable insights to evaluate the quality of target firms. The research provides directions for future opportunities to examine the value of signals and whether such signals create synergies in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) deals. The author identifies new avenues of research that would help to move forward the signaling perspective in the literature on M&A.

Strategy and entrepreneurship scholars have identified many benefits of signaling for new ventures to access resources in financial and other factor markets. However, scholars have not studied the extent to which new ventures can employ signals to hire new talent. This chapter investigates inventor mobility across biopharmaceutical new ventures and examines the effects of two signals, venture capitalist (VC) prominence and alliance network prominence. We suggest that VC prominence and alliance network prominence can provide assurances to prospective employees about a venture's resources and prospects, thereby facilitating inventor mobility owing to enhanced labor market efficiency. Empirical evidence from biopharmaceutical startups shows that new ventures can benefit from signals emanating from their ties to VCs and alliance partners and attract inventors to join them. We also find that these signaling effects attenuate as information asymmetry diminishes.