Search results

To explore, describe and explain what processes are at work in facilitating or inhibiting entrepreneurship amongst academics.

A corporate entrepreneurship perspective is used to construct a framework for understanding academic entrepreneurship at different ontological levels within a university context. A single case study method is adopted involving a purposeful sampling strategy of academic entrepreneurs within one university. A sense‐making approach investigated the practice of entrepreneurship by academics.

Develops a tentative framework for bounding the phenomenon of academic entrepreneurship and presents a model that attempts to identify key elements of academic entrepreneurship in terms of different modes of knowledge production and value‐creating processes.

The single case setting limits the applicability of the research to other institutions. However, the framework and model that are developed and the overall approach are valuable contributions to an important, emerging research area. The academic entrepreneurship framework provides a series of logically related conceptual bins that form a basis for future research. The model of academic entrepreneurship attempts to explain how academics produce different types of knowledge.

The paper suggests that academic entrepreneurs have a complex set of relationships with their parent disciplines and the university setting within which they operate. The outcomes indicate that orthodox models of entrepreneurship are not always meaningful as regards understanding what academic entrepreneurs actually do in practice.

The paper investigates a little‐understood phenomenon and one that is increasingly important for UK policy makers and university administrators. The academic entrepreneurship framework and model is an original and valuable contribution to the study of this phenomenon.

Individuals tend to simplify a complex portfolio decision problem into several manageable dimensions, each of which can frame their perception of risk.We check this view by studying the effect of investment horizons on households’ portfolio decisions. Using the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) data, we find that households allocate more of their wealth in stocks if they report longer planning horizons. The existence of foreseeable expenditure significantly changes the dependence of risky stock investment on the planning horizon.We decompose the reported planning horizon into an objective part and a subjective mental accounting part, and find that the mental accounting part has a greater effect on household portfolio choice. This is consistent with the argument that individuals make investment decisions based on the horizon at which the risk is perceived rather than the horizon at which the investment reward or cash is needed.

It is well established in academic literature that self‐tender offers and corporate dividends can be used independently to effectively signal firm value. It is unclear, however, whether these two forms of earnings distributions can be used simultaneously. This paper is an empirical examination of the relationship between dutch auction repurchases and corporate dividend policy. This research indicates that a substantial number of firms choose to repurchase their shares in the form of dutch auctions between dividend payments. Because signalling is a likely motivation for both repurchases and cash dividends, these two events may not be independent of each other. The results of this study confirm positive stock market reaction to repurchase announcements and that firm prediction errors are significantly related to signaling variables.

The financial analysis of international investment decisions is complex. The basic methodology which homes in on incremental cash flows needs to be refined in order to focus upon cash flows which are remittable to the parent company, for it is only these that would logically add shareholder value. Build in the complications of two lots of tax and changing exchange rates and the equation looks anything but simple. But there is another complexity too which renders the traditional discounting methodology less than wholly appropriate. And this applies not just to international investment but to any situation where capital is committed with an option to expand or curtail embedded in it. This is not to say that the typical model cannot be adapted to meet the situation. It can and it is not too difficult.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the interactive element in social and environmental reporting during a controversy between business organisations and a stakeholder over environmental performance.

The paper adopts Aristotle's triangular framework of the rhetorical situation to examine how the writer, the audience, and the purpose of communication interact in the choice of rhetorical strategies used to persuade others of the validity and legitimacy of a claim during a public controversy. The analysis focuses on the strategies (i.e. moves and their rhetorical realisations) in the form of logos (appealing to logic), ethos (appealing to authority), and pathos (appealing to emotion), with a particular emphasis on metaphor, used to achieve social and political goals. The authors base the analysis on a case study involving a conflict between Greenpeace and six organisations in the sportswear/fashion industry over wastewater discharge of hazardous chemicals. The conflict played out in a series of 20 press releases issued by the parties over a two-month period.

All six firms interacting with Greenpeace in the form of press releases eventually conceded to Greenpeace's demand to eliminate hazardous chemicals from their supply chains. The paper attributes this to Greenpeace's ability to harness support from other key stakeholders and to use rhetoric effectively. Results show the extensive use of rhetoric by all parties.

The authors regard legitimacy construction as reliant on communication and as being achieved by organisations participating in a dialogue with stakeholders. For this purpose, the paper develops an analytical framework which situates environmental reporting in a specific rhetorical situation and links rhetoric, argument, and metaphor.

The Nobel Prize is given for good ideas–very good ideas. These ideas often shape the direction of research for an academic discipline. These ideas are often accompanied by a great deal of work by many researchers.