Brett Anitra Gilbert

Resource Orchestration to Create Competitive Advantage: Breadth, Depth, and Life Cycle Effects

In this article, the authors discuss how an emerging research stream, which they term resource orchestration, has the potential to extend the understanding of resource-based theory (RBT) by explicitly addressing the role of managers’ actions to effectively structure, bundle, and leverage firm resources. First, the authors review this emerging stream by comparing two related frameworks, resource management and asset orchestration. This comparison leads to their integration, which enables a more precise understanding of managers’ roles within RBT. Then the authors discuss what is known and what remains to be known about resource orchestration. This leads to in-depth reviews of three areas where research on resource orchestration can be used to extend RBT. These areas are (1) breadth (resource orchestration across the scope of the firm), (2) life cycle (resource orchestration at various stages of firm maturity), and (3) depth (resource orchestration across levels of the firm). They close with a discussion of future research that will extend resource orchestration and contribute to a more robust RBT.

Human Capital Pipelines Competitive Implications of Repeated Interorganizational Hiring

This article offers pipelines as a new perspective on human capital heterogeneity between firms. Using resource-based theory logic, we define pipelines as repeated interorganizational hiring and a practice firms use to differentially acquire and accumulate human capital and mitigate human capital risks. Pipelines are a ubiquitous staffing practice with ambiguous implications for firm performance that to date have eluded scholarly examination. Thus we use a systems framework to highlight input, output, and process contingencies in which pipeline hiring can create advantage over rivals—contingencies of human capital scarcity in the labor market, the choice of firm activity system, and product market ambiguity (i.e., credence qualities), respectively. Collectively, the article’s theoretical foundations provide new insights for human resource, strategy, and human capital fields and open the conceptual space of pipelines for examination by organizational scholars. We discuss the theoretical, empirical, and practical implications accordingly.

Emergence of Cleantech as an Investment Category - Public Discourse and Venture Capital Investment

In our paper we observe with an extensive database of press articles about venture capital the emergence and following evolution of the topic clean technology investing. We match our software-based analysis of the press discourse with investment data and observe high synchronicity of the developments of the two datasets. We demonstrate that historical textual information holds as a viable proxy for analyzing circumstances with a lack of rich data. An industry life cycle model can be applied to the development of this investment category. Additionally we develop an understanding of the role of public discourse in the venture capital industry and look at consequences of tone and sentiment in the media data.

Agglomeration, Industrial Districts and Industry Clusters: Trends of the 21st Century Literature

In a previous issue of Foundations and Trends in Entrepreneurship, small firms were commonly acknowledged as an important topic in the 20th century literature on industry concentration. Since the turn of the 21st century, startups have become a topic of significant prominence. Despite this fact, none of the recent literature reviews on industry concentration highlights their importance. Likewise, several other factors that have been identified since Marshall’s (1920) work, have received new attention with fresh perspectives in the 21st century literature. These topics have not yet been sufficiently explored in the literature. The purpose of this monograph is to review the early work of scholarship on agglomerations, industrial districts and industry clusters that has been published in the 21st century. This monograph explicates the prominent themes that emerged between 2000–2015, with the specific objective of highlighting the relationships of entrepreneurs, knowledge, networks and creative and high technology industries in industry concentration.

Agglomeration, Industrial Districts and Industry Clusters: Foundations of the 20th Century Literature

Since Alfred Marshalls acknowledgement of industry concentration within particular regions, a host of studies have emerged that shed light on the phenomena of agglomerations, industrial districts and industry clusters. This monograph overviews the foundation laid by this body of work. It highlights the academic voices that contribute to this strand of research, the geographic regions and industries of focus, as well as the overall themes that have been examined. These topics are discussed for studies published in the 20th Century literature, and are highlighted by decade so that the contributions of each decade of work are understood over time. The monograph concludes with a reflection on how this body of work extends Alfred Marshalls early thoughts on industry concentration.