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We examine how the knowledge workers in the labor force moderate the relationship between industry environmental conditions and entrepreneurial entry using two competing theoretical frameworks: the consensus theory and the conflict theory of employment. Results indicate that the two frameworks can be integrated to explain entrepreneurial entry in knowledge-based economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporate political activity (CPA) is an important area of research due to the high level of CPA many firms engage in. A persistent problem with this research, however, has been the inability of scholars to explain why so many firms do invest in CPA. After all, research has found a link between CPA and performance for firms in highly regulated industries, but not elsewhere. Furthermore, a predicted link between slack and CPA has been likewise elusive. In this paper, we turn to agency theory to help explain this apparent conundrum. We suggest that there are two kinds of firms involved in CPA: one group where these efforts aim to address the company's needs - essentially a stewardship approach; in the other group, top managers use corporate resources in support of their own personal political agenda, even if it does not help the company paying for these efforts. In effect, the top managers of the second group are behaving opportunistically. We test our theory on a unique dataset and find support for our hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While many scholars and commentators praise VCs for the guidance and input they provide when they invest in a venture, we suggest that these purportedly non-financial contributions are in fact efforts by the VCs to protect themselves from opportunism on the part of the ventures' managers. Relying upon agency theory, we argue that the longer a venture has been operating prior to receiving investment from VCs, and the more investment the VCs make into the ventures, the more control the VCs will want to exert over the ventures' managers. We expect, however, that these efforts at oversight will not necessarily help the VCs achieve their goal of a fast, profitable return on their investment. To test our hypotheses, we develop a database of ventures that received VC funding and achieved IPO from 2009 to 2015. To measure the amount of control that the VCs exert, we calculate the level of discretion granted the ventures' managers, theorizing that when VCs exert more control over the ventures the managers will have less discretion. We find strong support for our theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a model that explains corporate political activity (CPA) as a landscape shaped by certain factors related to the public policy suppliers: their ideology, the larger political trends in their constituencies, and their relationships. While it is true that the prior political market theory identified certain essential interactions in CPA, such as financial and constituency building contributions, it needed an explanation as to how these contributions actually impact the process. The political landscape theory, however, suggests that it is the interaction of demanders of public policy with the three factors that influence the suppliers that will create nonmarket pressures. Such an understanding of the mechanism that creates these pressures should help scholars explain behavior that previously seemed puzzling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze automotive safety innovations to compare the drivers of knowledge flows within and outside of the United States. We find that in U.S. contexts interpersonal ties dampened the impact of region on the likelihood of knowledge flows, whereas in non-U.S. contexts interpersonal ties amplify that relationship. Further, the effects of region and firm interacted in a complementary relationship to increase the likelihood of knowledge flow in the United States, whereas in non-U.S. contexts the two acted more as substitutes. Findings underscore importance of distinguishing among nations in investigating patterns of innovative knowledge flows.? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study draws on research on human capital, organizational learning, and competitive dynamics to explore the role that top management team (TMT) members' competitors-specific and competitor-related human capital has on young entrepreneurial firms' IPO performance. Employing a multi-year panel data of new IPOs between the periods of 1995-2010 from the U.S. semiconductor industry, the results of this study show that the prevalence of competitor- specific and competitor-related knowledge in the TMTs of IPO firms leads to higher market valuations of the IPO firm. Additionally, the results show that the employment characteristics such as tenure and the position held at the source firm, the product-market diversity and the learning emphasis of the source firm moderate the relationship between competitor-specific (and competitor-related) human capital and IPO performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine, as the industry moves through the technology life cycle and the industry's technology frontier advances, how the relationship between firms' technological capability and the firms' performance evolves. The capability-performance literature can be split in two (fairly) distinct streams - the supply-side literature and the demand-side literature. Interestingly, these two literature streams make competing predictions about the capability- performance relationship. The supply-side literature posits that, as the technology frontier advances, the positive relationship between a firm's technology capability and the firm's performance should increase (or at least, should sustain). However, the demand-side literature, based on the diminishing marginal utility principle, argues otherwise. That is, as the technology frontier advances, the relationship between a firm's technology level and firm's performance should decrease. Using the technology life cycle framework, we provide an integrative framework for these two literatures, and we add to/ modify the predictions above. Then, we examine the various competing predictions, using data from the U.S. computed tomography industry. We find that the stage of the technology life cycle, i.e. whether the industry is in the product innovation stage or the process innovation stage, determines whether predictions emanating from the supply-side or the demand-side are supported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]