G. Tyge Payne

Multilevel Challenges and Opportunities in Social Capital Research

Social capital refers to the resources derived from social relationships. Although the concept of social capital has been applied at the individual, group, and organizational levels of analysis, researchers have yet to fully embrace social capital’s potential as a multilevel lens through which we might better understand management and organizational phenomena. With a central objective of advancing social capital’s potential as a multilevel theoretical perspective, the authors make two contributions to the management literature. First, the authors comprehensively review two decades of management research to highlight how social capital has been empirically applied across levels of analysis. Second, based on the shortcomings and challenges revealed through the literature review, the authors identify and discuss avenues for future multilevel research, including suggestions for both macro and micro researchers.

Research on Organizational Configurations: Past Accomplishments and Future Challenges:

Organizational configurations are sets of firms that are similar in terms of important characteristics. This article is intended to help close three gaps in the literature on organizational configurations. First, the authors propose clear definitions that may facilitate progress in the literature. Second, they provide the first major review since 1993 of accomplishments and struggles within organizational configurations research. Third, they describe how the configurational approach to organizations can make greater contributions within its traditional domains of organization theory and strategic management and can be extended to inform areas such as human resource management, organizational behavior, ethics, entrepreneurship, and international business.

Family Firms and Entrepreneurial Orientation in Publicly Traded Firms A Comparative Analysis of the S&P 500

There is considerable disagreement about whether family firm characteristics hinder or support entrepreneurial activities. This article highlights the existence of an entrepreneurial orientation in family firms, and it examines differences between family and nonfamily firms on the entrepreneurial orientation dimensions of autonomy, competitive aggressiveness, innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk taking, using content analysis of shareholder letters from S&P 500 firms. As such, family firms exhibit language consistent with an entrepreneurial orientation for all dimensions but use less language than that of nonfamily firms in relation to autonomy, proactiveness, and risk taking.

Dual Identities in Social Ventures: An Exploratory Study

Drawing on the organizational identity literature, this exploratory study examines the dual identities of award–winning social ventures recognized by FastCompany magazine and the Skoll Foundation. Specifically, we use computer–assisted content analysis to explore identities as reflected in organizational mission statements. Our findings demonstrate that these externally recognized social ventures do exhibit dual identities—a utilitarian organizational identity (i.e., entrepreneurial, product oriented) and a normative organizational identity (i.e., social, people oriented). Further, when compared with the mission statements of other high–performing entrepreneurial enterprises culled from the Inc. 500, our post hoc analysis suggests that social ventures manifest a greater normative identity and an equivalent utilitarian identity.

Social Capital and Entrepreneurship : A Schema and Research Agenda

This introduction to the special issue considers past and current research on “Social Capital and Entrepreneurship” to develop a schema and an associated research agenda. With the general goal of establishing social capital as a foundational theory of entrepreneurship, we discuss how future research can utilize social capital perspectives across levels of analysis and contexts to explain a wide variety of entrepreneurship phenomena.

Corporate Board Attributes, Team Effectiveness and Financial Performance

Researchers have recently begun to integrate the literatures on corporate boards and team effectiveness in an effort to better understand how boards function and impact company performance. This study identifies five attributes of high-performing teams – knowledge, information, power, incentives and opportunity/time – and argues that these attributes will promote board effectiveness, which in turn influence corporate financial performance. These relationships are investigated using combined survey and archival sources of data for 210 Fortune 1000 companies. Findings indicate that most team effectiveness attributes are associated with higher levels of board effectiveness as rated by the board directors, and that board effectiveness is significantly related to corporate financial performance.

Examining Configurations and Firm Performance in a Suboptimal Equifinality Context

Gresov and Drazins (1997) suggestions regarding the study of equifinality are used to investigate the organizational configurations that exists within a suboptimal equifinality context. A suboptimal equifinality situation exists when organizations must satisfy multiple and conflicting functional demands with a restricted set of design options; these restrictions force all organizations to operate suboptimally. Gresov and Drazin (1997) speculate that in such a situation legitimacy claims are made about one function being more important than the other(s) so that an increased quantity of acceptable organizational forms are established. Additionally, they argue that a misfit penalty is likely to exist for organizations that deviate from the preferred configurational design. With data from the medical group industry, these speculations about suboptimal equifinality situations are tested using multivariate regression analyses. Findings show that the configuration type aligning with the preferred functional demand of quality performs relatively higher than those aligning with operational efficiency or attempting to meet both demands. Additionally, the greater the organizations deviation from that design, the lower the financial performance. In summary, this study demonstrates that it is useful to take a functional equivalence perspective when examining variance in firm performance that is caused by design differences. Such an approach allows a more complete understanding of the fit-performance relationship by explicitly considering three factors: (i) the number of and level of conflict(s) among functional demands placed on the organization, (ii) the structural design options available to the decision maker, and (iii) the trade-offs that exist.

The Past, Present, and Future of Entrepreneurship Research: Data Analytic Trends and Training

Competent data analysis is essential to entrepreneurship research and to the disciplines progression. A three–study design was used to evaluate quantitative analytic trends and the adequacy of entrepreneurship doctoral training. First, trends were identified by assessing hypothesis–testing techniques in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice and the Journal of Business Venturing. Second, top entrepreneurship scholars were surveyed regarding the importance of various quantitative analytical techniques to future research and their expectations regarding doctoral training. Third, newly minted entrepreneurship PhDs were queried regarding their perceived competence with these same techniques. These studies provide a past, present, and future perspective on data analysis techniques and competencies in entrepreneurship.

Researching Long-Term Orientation A Validation Study and Recommendations for Future Research

Assumptions about the long-term orientation (LTO) of family firms are common in family business research. Drawing on prior conceptualizations, this article further develops and validates the LTO construct using content analysis techniques on two separate samples of data. Validation comes through empirical analysis of content validity, external validity, dimensionality, and concurrent validity. We find that family firms are higher than nonfamily firms on all three dimensions of LTO. We also discuss how future research can use this now-validated construct to address key questions in family business research, as well as inform the broader business literature.

Using Computer-Aided Text Analysis to Elevate Constructs: An Illustration Using Psychological Capital

Applying individual-level constructs to higher levels of analysis can be a fruitful practice in organizational research. Although this practice is beneficial in developing and testing theory, there are measurement and validation concerns that, if improperly addressed, may threaten the validity and utility of the research. This article illustrates how computer-aided text analysis might be utilized to facilitate construct elevation while ensuring proper validation. Specifically, we apply a framework to develop organizational-level operationalizations of individual-level constructs using the psychological capital construct as an example.