Abstract

Research Summary Health science firms have long product development horizons and need regulatory approval for market entry. In communicating with investors, they may use entrepreneurial orientation (EO) rhetoric to emphasize their strategic and behavioral commitment to product innovation and market entry. However, because EO rhetoric constitutes a soft-information signal rather than evidence of substantive commitment, investors may suspect firm insiders using such rhetoric of impression management. The solution, we argue, is EO rhetoric sustained over time, which produces more reliable information for investors-in contrast to occasional increases in EO rhetoric, which invite skeptical scrutiny. Nevertheless, investors' potential concerns regarding changes in EO rhetoric can be mitigated by concurrent hard-information signals that carry signaling costs or penalty costs for false signaling. Managerial Summary Entrepreneurial orientation (EO) rhetoric can reduce information asymmetry between managers and investors. In strictly regulated contexts such as health science industries, using such rhetoric may be challenging. For firms embracing entrepreneurial strategies and behaviors, maintaining EO rhetoric over time is critical to overcoming skepticism that it is merely "cheap talk." For investors, this study also suggests that health science firms maintaining higher EO rhetoric over time deserve higher valuations, given the variety of benefits an EO can have for health science firms. If a health science firm aims to ramp up its EO rhetoric, managers should be aware that investors may interpret the increase as impression management and should confront this interpretation head-on-for instance, by simultaneously increasing entry commitment or corporate social responsibility.

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corporate social responsibility ;  entrepreneurial rhetoric ;  entry commitment ;  health science firms ;  strict regulations

Abstract

The categorical imperative suggests that since the audience devalues offerings that do not fit within a category, producers should follow conventions to gain legitimacy. This poses a paradox of optimal distinctiveness to entrepreneurs driven by novelty. However, the extant research assumes homogeneous audience and crisp boundaries of the categories in which the entrepreneurs operate. We test these assumptions in a context with multiple audiences and fuzzy categories. By analyzing 208,136 videos of 283 YouTubers nominated for the “Streamys” – prestigious awards in online video – and correcting for endogeneity, we find that novelty is less likely to win an award, but is liked more by its regular platform audience. However, the negative evaluations of the jury audience towards novelty are moderate in fuzzier categories while the regular audience likes novelty more in well- defined categories. Further, we find that winning of Streamys gives YouTubers a status- boost to be more novel in the future. Our results inform firms and entrepreneurs about how they can position themselves to augment their value among audiences."

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Drawing on Social comparison and resource dilution theories, this study posits that sibling rivalry affects peoples’ decisions to enter self-employment through two mechanisms. First, sibling rivalry fosters individual competitiveness, which triggers people to choose occupations that involve competitive behaviors such as self- employment. Second, by diluting parental resources, sibling rivalry negatively influences educational attainment. This, in turn, can affect self-employment in a non-linear fashion; people with lower education may lack the cognitive ability needed for self-employment, while those with higher education may find it more economically attractive to pursue wage jobs. We also argue that these two mechanisms–educational attainment and nurturing competitiveness–are moderated by the gender of the focal individual as well as by the gender composition of her siblings. We find evidence for these mechanisms by analyzing data from a survey of 4,086 individuals in China."

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Stock options have been widely used to align the interests of executives and shareholders. By integrating theories of attention with the behavioral agency model, we offer a framework that predicts opportunistic CEO responses to option incentives that affect firm customers. We argue that CEOs will preserve their option wealth through their timing of product recalls. Specifically, during a fiscal year, CEOs announce product recalls during periods of market inattention to reduce loss or, during high attention fiscal year-end period, may postpone product recalls to delay loss. Such delays and evasions can harm customers both financially and physically. Using a sample from U.S. public medical device producers that made product recalls during 2004–2017, we confirm our hypotheses. Our findings give boards of medical device firms behavioral levers to protect users and the firm’s future."

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Increasing attention has been devoted to firms’ entrepreneurial orientation (EO) as expressed in their communications with stakeholders. However, whether investors value entrepreneurially- oriented rhetoric is unclear. Building on signaling theory, we posit that entrepreneurially-oriented rhetoric may raise investor concerns when pre-entry uncertainties and post-entry risks are common, such as in regulated contexts. We analyze data of 109 health science firms operating in the U.S. during 2003-2012 and find a negative relationship between EO, as communicated in shareholder letters, and firm value. Nonetheless, stronger signals of entry commitment and social responsibility improve the effect of entrepreneurially- oriented rhetoric on firm value. These findings suggest that investors skeptically react to EO expressions by regulated firms, though quality signals may lessen their concerns with firms’ pre- entry uncertainties and post-entry risks.

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Building on the real options logic, we posit that applied patents play a greater role than granted patents in enabling technology ventures to raise capital in initial public offerings (IPOs). Compared with a venture’s granted patents, its applied patents have more call options (e.g., broader protection claims, higher flexibility in resource commitments, and longer exercise time), and thus are more valuable according to the real options logic. We suggest that younger ventures are better able to identify and create value from the options in their applied patents, given their entrepreneurial abilities. We also argue that ventures with more advanced milestones in product development are better able to capture value from the options in their applied patents, given their commercialization capabilities. We analyze data from 251 biotechnology ventures undertaking IPOs in the U.S. during 2004-2015, and find overall evidence for these hypotheses. This study contributes to management and innovation research by theoretically and empirically examining the distinctive roles of applied patents and granted patents in influencing IPO proceeds.

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This study examines how quality signals sent by technology ventures jointly affect investors' decisions under information asymmetry. We categorize signal contents as concerning technology development, venture officers, or early investors. Because similar information may not much reduce information asymmetry, different signals of the same content substitute for one another in enabling ventures to raise capital in their initial public offerings (IPOs). In contrast, signals of different contents collectively reduce information asymmetry, and thus complement each other. Furthermore, public investors may be more capable of assessing, and therefore give more weight to, signals based on the abilities and commitment of venture officers and early investors than to signals based on the viability and appropriability of technology development. We employ fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) and find evidence for these mechanisms from data on 268 IPOs of biotechnology ventures in the United States.

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Initial public offerings ;  Quality signals ;  Signal configurations ;  Technology ventures

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Newcomers contribute to organizational innovation by bringing in new knowledge and ideas, on the one hand, and by collaborating and exchanging with incumbents, on the other. We propose that an organization's ability to use these contributions is influenced by hiring rate, hiring rate change, and hiring rate dispersion, which affect both the flow of new ideas into the organization and the level of collaboration between newcomers and incumbents. Using four years of data from a large, multi-industry sample, we find that hiring rate and hiring rate dispersion increase organizational innovation. We also find that increases in hiring rates from year to year are positively related to innovation for organizations with more collaborative work practices, while the relationship between hiring rate dispersion and innovation is less positive when organizations have more collaborative work practices. This study highlights how temporal patterns of hiring influence human capital acquisition and development.

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