Antoaneta P. Petkova

Being Good or Being Known: An Empirical Examination of the Dimensions, Antecedents, and Consequences of Organizational Reputation

We examined the extent to which organizations’ reputations encompass different types of stakeholders’ perceptions, which may have differential effects on economic outcomes. Specifically, we propose...

When Is a New Thing a Good Thing? Technological Change, Product Form Design, and Perceptions of Value for Product Innovations

Innovation researchers recognize that the uncertainty with regard to the value-creating potential of product innovations increases with their technological novelty, and have argued that the usefulness and value of novel products are socially constructed. Despite this recognition, researchers have not explored how the outer form in which a technological innovation is embodied influences the processes through which the innovations value is constructed and perceived. In this paper we argue that by embodying novel technologies in objects with specific functional, symbolic, and aesthetic properties, innovating firms also endow their products with cues that trigger a variety of cognitive and emotional responses. Drawing on psychological research we articulate how such cognitive and emotional responses underlie initial perceptions of value and theorize how innovating firms can influence them through product form design. Our framework explains how product form contributes to perceptions of value by modulating the actual technological novelty of a product innovation and facilitating how customers cope with it. Our theoretical framework makes an important contribution to innovation research and practice because it articulates how product form can be used strategically to achieve specific cognitive and emotional effects and enhance the initial customer perceptions of the value of an innovation.

Reputation as an Intangible Asset: Reflections on Theory and Methods in Two Empirical Studies of Business School Reputations

In this commentary, two studies of reputation that use different theoretical perspectives and modeling strategies to analyze the same data are compared. The purpose of the commentary is twofold: (a) to articulate the consequences of different modeling strategies for studying organizational reputation empirically and (b) to highlight some core theoretical issues concerning the attributes of reputation as an intangible asset. It is hoped that the commentary will provide some guiding points for future research seeking to develop a better understanding of reputation as an intangible asset.

No News Is Bad News: Sensegiving Activities, Media Attention, and Venture Capital Funding of New Technology Organizations

A significant body of research has examined how new organizations gain legitimacy and how gaining it affects their subsequent access to resources. Less attention has been given to the problem of how new organizations attract collective attention. Although related to legitimation, the problem of attracting attention is distinct, as attention and evaluation are distinct cognitive processes. In this study, we examine the allocation of collective attention to new organizations in a system of relationships, within which new organizations seek to attract attention through their sensegiving activities; the information properties of their sensegiving activities affect the level of attention they receive from different types of media; and media attention, in turn, increases their perceived value potential in the eyes of venture capital investors VCs. We examine these relationships in a sample of 398 information-technology start-ups that have obtained different levels of venture capital funding. Our results show that new organizations that engage in more intense and diverse sensegiving activities attract higher levels of industry media attention and that these effects are enhanced by the human capital of their founders and leaders. Diverse sensegiving activities are also associated with higher levels of attention from the general media, but only the attention of specialized industry media is positively associated with the level of VC funding obtained. These findings extend current research on information intermediation and institutional legitimation by demonstrating that media attention early in the life of new organizations affects how they are valued by a well-informed expert audience, such as VCs. They also contribute to entrepreneurship research on the effects of new organizations’ strategies on their ability to secure resources and to research on VC funding decisions.

Technology Disruption Narratives: Entrepreneurial Foresight Or Fallacy?

We incorporate and extend the literature on cultural entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial story telling by looking at the introduction of (potentially) disruptive technologies to an existing mature...