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This paper aims to prove the validity and necessity of knowledge stickiness and knowledge investment level.

Empirical study method is taken in this investigation which focuses on knowledge‐related industries' workers and proves the validity and necessity of knowledge stickiness and knowledge investment level with SPSS13.0 software.

The authors confirm the positive correlation between knowledge contribution and sharing residual claims based on management, and also confirm the positive correlation between knowledge stickiness, knowledge investment level and sharing residual claims based on technology. However, a negative correlation on management is also confirmed.

After an analysis on the incentive distortion caused by the information asymmetry between the principal and agent in the traditional incentive mode, a residual claims sharing structure containing knowledge contract is put forward.

Contemporary supply chain relationships inherently rely on delegation of work between organizations and, thus, are subject to agency problems for which a wide range of governance mechanisms exist. This review of agency theory (AT), across four distinct fields, explains the connection between governance mechanisms and supply chain relationship types.

The study uses a systematic literature review (SLR) of articles using AT in a supply chain context from the operations and supply chain management, general management, marketing, and economics fields.

The authors categorize the governance mechanisms identified to create a typology of agency relationships in supply chains.

The developed typology provides parsimonious theory on different forms of supply chain agency relationships and takes a step towards a “supply chain-oriented agency theory” explaining and predicting relationship types and governance in supply chains. Furthermore, a future research agenda calls for more accurate measuring of agency costs, to examine residual gains alongside residual losses, to take a dual-sided perspective of agency relations and to adopt AT to examine more complex supply networks.

The review provides a menu of governance mechanisms and describes situations under which these mechanisms could be deployed to guide managers when developing their supply chain relationships.

The first review to combine and elaborate views from four major disciplines using AT as a lens to supply chain relationships. Expanding the traditional set of governance mechanisms provides academics and practitioners with a bigger “menu” of options to consider.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a theory of sovereign entrepreneurship, which is a special kind of political entrepreneurship.

This paper uses qualitative methods/historical survey.

Sovereignty is rooted in self-enforced exchange of political property rights. Sovereign entrepreneurship is the creative employment of political property rights to advance a plan.

Because a polity’s constitution is determined by its distribution of political property rights, sovereign entrepreneurship and constitutional change are necessarily linked. The author illustrated how sovereign entrepreneurship can be applied by using it to explain the rise of modern states.

In addition to studying instances of sovereign entrepreneurship in distant history, scholars can apply it to recent history. Sovereign entrepreneurship can be especially helpful as a tool for doing analytic narratives of low-n cases of political-economic development, especially when those polities attract interests for being “development miracles.”

This paper uses treats sovereignty as a political property right.

Enabling and incentivizing organizations to act based on their local knowledge is an important aspect of entrepreneurship. The significance of local knowledge in the context of schools is well recognized, but very little research has been done to investigate how to provide discretion and incentives to schools to use this knowledge. The purpose of this paper is to build a model to guide this understanding for policy makers who may wish to foster entrepreneurship for schools and also use it to critique the literature and provide an alternative approach.

The paper applies fundamentals of principal-agent theory to the ownership and governance of schools, the use of teacher incentive pay, and school reform efforts. Focus is on use of teacher incentives and on school choice initiatives.

The author found that many public school teachers will have attenuated incentives, but mandates to increase test score rewards may be counterproductive. Institutional reform via school choice seems more promising. The author identifies several institutional features that are expected to induce more entrepreneurial and productive activity by schools. The author discusses and critiques school reform efforts in this regard, including Tiebout competition, charter schools, voucher programs, and use of “best practice.”

Reform efforts often lack in addressing critical aspects of institutional empowerment and incentives, and research in this regard also is mostly absent. The author contends, however, that dealing and addressing such issues is a key to effective reform.

The purpose of this paper is to present and compare alternative theoretical frameworks for understanding entrepreneurship policy: targeted interventions to increase venture creation and/or performance. The authors contrast the Standard view of the state as a coherent entity willing and able to rectify market failures with an Individualistic view that treats policymakers as self-interested individuals with limited knowledge.

The authors draw on the perspective of “politics as exchange” to provide a taxonomy of assumptions about knowledge and incentives of both entrepreneurship policymakers and market participants. The authors position extant literature in relation to this taxonomy, and assess the implications of alternative assumptions.

The rationale for entrepreneurship policy intervention is strong under the Standard view but becomes considerably more tenuous in the Individualistic view. The authors raise several conceptual challenges to the Standard view, highlighting inconsistencies between this view and the fundamental elements of the entrepreneurial market process such as uncertainty, dispersed knowledge and self-interest.

Entrepreneurship policy research is often applied; hence, the theoretical rationale for intervention can be overlooked. The authors make the implicit assumptions of these rationales explicit, showing how the adoption of “realistic” assumptions offers a robust toolkit to evaluate entrepreneurship policy.

While the authors agree with entrepreneurship policy interventionists that an “entrepreneurial society” is conducive to economic development, this framework suggests that targeted efforts to promote entrepreneurship may be inconsistent with that goal.

The Individualistic view draws on the rich traditions of public choice and the entrepreneurial market process to highlight the intended and unintended consequences of entrepreneurship policy.

The purpose of this paper is to integrate classical elite theory into theories of constitutional bargains.

Qualitative methods/surveys/case studies.

Open-ended constitutional entrepreneurship cannot be forestalled. Constitutional entrepreneurs will almost always be social elites.

The research yields a toolkit for analysing constitutional bargains. It needs to be used in historical settings to acquire greater empirical content. Need to be applied to concrete historical cases to do economic history. Right now it is still only institutionally contingent theory.

Formal constitutions do not, and cannot, bind. Informal constitutions can, but they are continually evolving due to elite pressure group behaviors.

Liberalism needs another method to institutionalize itself!

Open-ended nature of constitutional bargaining overlooked in orthodox institutional entrepreneurship/constitutional economics literature.

The aim of this paper is to explain the organizational changes along supply chains when a geographical brand, i.e. a place name that has value for commercial purposes, becomes a geographical indication (GI).

Using a case study research design, this paper compares GI vs non-GI supply chains in the European Union and describes the organizational changes that occur in supply chains when a GI is adopted.

When a GI is adopted, an additional “public” level of governance is added along the supply chain that forces it to reallocate and specialize quality controls between the public and private levels of governance to avoid redundancies and to adopt more market-oriented mechanisms of governance in dyadic relationships. The paper argues that these changes occur because the private and public levels of governance complement one another.

More aspects of supply chain management (the power balance or relationship stability) and a more systematic longitudinal analysis using supply chains in various agrifood industries should be considered to generalize the conclusions. An econometric analysis formally testing the main conclusions (propositions) is also required.

The changes needed to successfully adopt a GI are identified, and an explanatory map of these changes is offered.

The structural governance tensions created by the use of common-pool resources within supply chains are explored. It is hypothesized, first, that when a “common-pool resource”, namely, a geographical name, is used in a supply chain, some type of public level of governance that promotes cooperation is required to preserve its value. Second, this public level of governance complements the dyadic mechanisms of governance, requiring the specialization and reallocation of quality controls and the move toward more market-oriented transactions.

Friedrich Althoff (1839‐1908), who created the “Althoff system”, has had a singularly important influence on shaping academic institutions in Germany for almost a generation. As a close collaborator of leading German scholars his influence lasted almost throughout the second empire (1882‐1907). He has been described as brilliant by some and disastrous by others. Recent advances in the new institutional economics and the economic analysis of the organization of inquiry, as well as better access to the archival materials, have created the possibility of arriving at a clearer picture of the Althoff system. Is a first attempt at an economic analysis of the Althoff system; therefore should be viewed as an exploratory essay. In particular, addresses three questions: What precisely was the Althoff system? How can we go about analysing the system? How did the system function and perform? The essay has five substantive parts: first, offers a brief introduction to science research as it is currently practised in economics; second, introduces the historical record and the main criticism levelled against the system and offers a stylized description of the Althoff system in terms of emphasizing key features; third, subjects the stylized features of the system to economic analysis, relying heavily on the property rights theory of the firm and treating the university as an economic institution; fourth, takes a slightly different approach by applying Gordon Tullock′s analysis of the organization of inquiry to the Althoff system; fifth, offers a summary of the findings and an economic definition of the Althoff system.

This paper analyses operational differences between mobile franchising arrangements and fixed‐site franchises from an agency‐theoretic perspective. Almost 40 per cent of all franchised units in Australia operate as mobile or home‐based businesses, predominantly in service industries where products or services are provided directly to consumers. A two‐stage methodology is reported in this paper, incorporating quantitative and qualitative research methods. In stage one, data obtained from a survey of the population of Australian franchisors in 1998 are analysed to compare operational variables of mobile and fixed‐site franchise units. The second stage of the research employs in‐depth interviews with a sample of mobile franchisors and franchisees to further explore relevant issues. The results confirm the agency theory perspective that start‐up investment risk is lower in mobile units and mobile operations exhibit a higher level of repeat customers than fixed‐site franchises. No significant differences between the two arrangements are revealed in relation to the levels of franchisee monitoring, initial training or essential franchisee experience. This study indicates that agency theory contributes to our understanding of mobile franchising arrangements, yet also suggests the findings are not completely explained by agency theory. The results imply that both monitoring and alignment of incentives have complimentary effects and that both forms of contract are necessary in a franchisor's control system.

This paper aims to provide a better understanding of the motivational incentives driving franchising choice from the franchisee's perspective and, in particular, to investigate a comparison of single and multiple unit franchisee incentives.

A qualitative methodology was adopted to gain a clearer picture of the salient issues influencing an individual's evaluation of franchising options. Both single and multiple unit franchisees within the McDonald's restaurant chain were interviewed.

Major contrasts were identified between single and multiple unit franchisees with regard to their motivations for entering franchising. In addition, franchisees who were previously employed were found to be different from those who were self‐employed.

Because it is difficult to identify potential multiple unit franchisees prior to joining a franchise, it was necessary to interview existing franchisees for this research. It is possible that their post‐hoc rationalisations may restrict the value of the research. In addition, motivational disincentives were not examined within this research. However, on balance, the reflections offered by the participants provide a rich and valuable source of information about their motivations.

Franchisors need to consider upfront whether they wish to recruit franchisees who remain single unit holders, or select and groom franchisees who show potential for managing multiple units. Thus, franchisors may need to redesign their selection strategies and communication methods to ensure the recruitment of suitable candidates who have the capacity to activate franchisor goals and promote a harmonious franchising relationship.

Whereas previous research has investigated motivations for entering franchising, this paper supplements that literature by comparing single and multiple unit franchisee incentives.