Journal Article The Role of Promotion in Inducing Specific Human Capital Acquisition Get access Canice Prendergast Canice Prendergast Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 108, Issue 2, May 1993, Pages 523–534, https://doi.org/10.2307/2118343 Published: 01 May 1993

This research investigated the idea development stage of a strategic decision making process. The tactics that decision makers apply to identify ideas were uncovered from a systematic study of 168 decision cases. These tactics and contextual factors describing the decision situation were analyzed to determine how each influences success measured by decision merit, development time, initial adoption, and sustained adoption. A “synthesized template” which integrated useful practices and procedures from several sources had the most success, but this tactic was seldom used. A “cyclical search” in which repeated searches were carried out to learn about opportunities was quite successful when used under conditions of low importance, low urgency, and good staff support. The success of the design tactic, which calls for innovation, improved when urgency was present and multiple alternatives were sought. The idea tactic which imposed a fully developed solution was widely used and seldom successful.

This study examines the ten U.S. provinces of the largest religious order of Catholic priests and brothers, the Jesuits, and explores the structural/organizational adaptations which these ten provinces employed to accommodate dramatic reductions in membership. The organizational placement of roughly 11,000 individual members of these provinces is traced between the years 1965 and 1979. The research indicates that, by increasing interorganizational cooperation and exchange of information and by enhancing the administrative component, these organizations were able to reduce slack resource requirements and were largely able to protect their core operations from the impact of decline. These observations differ dramatically from those reported in typical, for-profit organizations (e.g., Harrigan 1980). Finally, to the extent that cutback did reach the core, an attempt is made to examine the width and depth of retrenchment at both the divisional and departmental levels and to determine whether the mode of retrenchment affected individuals' willingness to subsequently invest in the organization. The analysis suggests that narrower, deeper cuts at the departmental level may have had a positive effect on members' willingness to invest in the organizations, while narrower, deeper cuts at the division level may have contributed to more members deciding to leave the organizations.

One hundred and sixty-three decision cases were explored to determine how managers carry out formulation during organizational decision making. Four types of formulation processes were identified (called idea, issue, objective-directed, and reframing) as well as the tactics decision makers apply to carry out each process type. Decision adoption, merit, and duration were used to determine the success of each process and tactic. The implications of these findings for decision makers and researchers are discussed.

Research examining predictors of new firm performance is clearly of interest to entrepreneurs and to those who provide advice and funds for their ventures. A growing body of research has examined the influence upon performance of such variables as entrepreneurs' characteristics, processes of founding, venture attributes, and environmental characteristics. However, considered as a whole, this research has shown mixed results and limited findings to date. This paper considers some of the challenges that arise in attempting to predict new firm performance. A key factor is the heavy dependence of new ventures upon environmental developments, many of which may be very difficult to predict. All firms are impacted by the environment, but new ventures have a concentration of risk upon a few products or services, narrow markets, and a few key resources. Thus, well-conceived ventures can fail because of unforeseen environmental shocks and the lack of “deep pockets” to ride out hard times. These same factors can cause new firm performance to swing widely, confounding attempts to identify predictors of good or poor performance. There are also challenges because many entrepreneurs pursue personal goals, some of which are noneconomic in nature. Thus, decisions about whether to found ventures, about how vigorously to grow them, or about whether or not to close down marginal businesses are all influenced by the personal values of entrepreneurs. The diversity of ventures, encompassing firms that differ greatly in scale and potential, complicates the task of determining predictors of performance. It may be that the influence of a particular variable, such as management experience, varies by type of venture. Previous research has also used a variety of performance measures, making comparisons across studies more difficult. Little has been done to determine whether the factors that enhance one measure of performance, such as survival, are the same as those that lead to others, such as growth or profitability. Previous research has been hampered by inadequate theoretical frameworks and, in some cases, by inappropriate methods of analysis. In addition, past research often could have been characterized by a tendency to examine variables that were easy to study, rather than those that were important. Despite limited success to date, we should not forsake research on predictors of new venture performance. The challenges discussed probably put limits on our ability to predict performance of individual ventures. However, the field of study is young and there is much that can be done to add to our understanding. The paper then develops recommendations for future research, noting that each of the challenges considered raises specific research opportunities.

This note is a follow-up on two earlier studies—the first published in 1989 and the second in 1991. A sample of tenured entrepreneurship scholars, with significant track records in publishing, rated key management journals with respect to their appropriateness as outlets for scholarly research in the entrepreneurship field. The results of the survey are reported.

The advantages of the Geometric Mean or Log Strategy have been well documented and recommended by many because a follower of this strategy will ultimately outperform in the long-run any other significantly different strategy, almost surely. This paper provides both theory and evidence to indicate that the “long-run” can be quite long in risky situations. These cases are typified by many business ventures and undiversified speculative investments in OTC securities. On the other hand, it is shown that the Log Strategy can “virtually dominate” in a moderate number of plays in cases when risk is low.

I examine the anomalous behavior of the taxable and tax-exempt yield curves. Long municipal yields appear too high relative to the equivalent after-tax yield that can be earned in Treasury or corporate bonds. I discuss existing explanations of the problem and propose a simple model that relates the yields of taxable bonds to the yield curve for par tax exempts. The ratio of the tax-exempt yield to the taxable yield increases with maturity in the model, so it is consistent with observed phenomena such as inverted yield curves for taxables and contemporaneous rising yield curves for tax exempts. Statistical and descriptive comparisons between the yields predicted.by the model and observed yields on par bonds that the model has some promise in explaining the apparent anomalies in the behaviors of the two yield curves. Article published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Financial Studies in its journal, The Review of Financial Studies.