Qualitätsbeurteilung in der Wissenschaft geschieht vorwiegend über Publikationslisten. Je mehr Beiträge jemand in Zeitschriften mit hohem Impact Factor hat, umso besser für die Karriere. Aber was sagt ein hoher Impact Factor einer wissenschaftlichen Zeitschrift wirklich über die Qualität einer publizierten Arbeit aus?
Under certain conditions, output related performance measurement and pay-for-performance produce negative outcomes. We argue that in public service, these negative effects are stronger than in the private sector. We combine Behavioural Economics and Management Control Theory to determine under which conditions this is the case. We suggest as alternatives to the dominant output related pay-for-performance systems selection and socialization, exploratory use of output performance measures, and awards.
Technological discontinuities pose serious challenges to top managers’ attention. These discontinuities, which often occur at the fringes of an industry, are usually driven by innovative and (often) venture capital-backed start-ups creating new products and transforming existing industries in ways that are difficult for incumbent managers to understand against the backdrop of their existing cognitive schemata. However, failing to appreciate and embrace successful technological discontinuities might endanger incumbents’ very existence. Extending the attention-based view, we explore whether and how interorganizational relationships guide top managers’ attention either to or away from technological discontinuities. We propose that homophilous relationships (e.g., alliances with industry peers) should exhibit a negative relationship with incumbents’ timely attention to technological discontinuities, whereas heterophilous relationships (e.g., with venture capitalists as a result of coinvestments) should exhibit a positive relationship. Furthermore, we hypothesize that the status of the partners strengthens the effect of homophilous and heterophilous relationships with the timely attention of top managers to technological discontinuities. Based on a longitudinal study of the incumbents in four information and communications technology industry sectors, we find that heterophilous ties through corporate venture capital (CVC), coinvesting with high-status venture capital firms, exhibit a strong positive relationship with timely attention. CVC, when it connects senior management to high-status venture capitalists through coinvestments, has a special role in directing top managers’ attention to technological discontinuities and ensuing business opportunities. Implications for the understanding of the role of interorganizational ties as structural determinants of top managers’ attention are discussed.
Are all startups similarly affected by the survival benefits and drawbacks of locating in geographic clusters? In this paper, we argue that prior theorizing may have missed important contingencies that affect whether a startup experiences the benefits and costs of locating in a cluster. In particular, while the local levels of skilled labor, suppliers, and purchasers have a beneficial influence and local competition has a detrimental influence on startup survival, these relationships are moderated by heterogeneity in firms' resources and capabilities. We find support for these arguments using a dataset covering the early life of all independent startups in the Canadian manufacturing sector from 1984 to 1998.
Tournament compensation systems are widely used in practice and have been extensively analyzed theoretically. However, one major problem has hardly been studied in a company context so far: Although it is theoretically well understood that tournament compensation systems are only effective when employees are homogeneous, it has rarely been analyzed what companies can do when they are confronted with employee heterogeneity. In our article, we derive hypotheses on the performance effects of tournament compensation systems in a context of employee heterogeneity based on tournament and expectancy theory. Using personnel records from incentive travel contests, we are able to show that performance is lower in a situation with employee heterogeneity, but that in heterogeneous tournaments, incentives may still work for a subgroup of employees whom we term the “threshold group.” In addition, we also show how companies manage to design the information disclosure systems necessary to install effective “handicapping” or “league-building” systems in order to increase the effort-performance expectancy.
