Abstract

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.

Keyword

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

Abstract

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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