Joshua B. Powers

Entrepreneurial Expectancy, Task Effort, and Performance *

Research to date has not adequately explained the role that expectancy of entrepreneurial performance based on perceived ability plays in motivating persons to persevere on an entrepreneurial task. This study investigated the entrepreneurial expectancy, effort–performance linkage via a World Wide Web–based experiment involving 179 undergraduate business students at a large midwestern university. Results indicated that the type of feedback (positive versus negative) that individuals received regarding their entrepreneurial ability (regardless of actual ability) changed expectancies regarding future business start–up, but did not alter task effort or quality of performance. Individuals receiving positive feedback about their entrepreneurial abilities had higher entrepreneurial expectancies than individuals receiving negative feedback. We also found that males had higher expectancies regardless of experimental condition than females.

Responding to a Plant Closure: The Case of Thomson Consumer Electronics and Bloomington, Indiana

Abstract This case poses the challenge feeing a mayor when a major employer announces that it is closing its production facility in a community. Students can be asked to develop strategies the mayor can use to respond to this announcement and the problems it would create for plant workers and the community. The case study provides background on the firm, the facility, the economic and personal effects of the closing, and resources that might be available to address the problems created by the closing.

Conflict of Interest and US University Technology Licensing

Since the early 1980s, US research universities have rapidly expanded their involvement with technology commercialization, the process by which university innovation is transferred to the marketplace via patenting and licensing activities. A considerable literature has developed around this phenomenon, which has explored its benefits for speeding innovation for societal benefit, others have raised concerns in regards to the implications of privatizing the intellectual commons that has long characterized the conduct of university-based research. This study explores conflict of interest issues as revealed through the study of university licensing documents. Utilizing the tool of content analysis, I investigated 306 licensing deals between 181 companies and 81 US universities. The findings revealed extensive use of exclusive licensing, equity arrangements with faculty and institutions, faculty in managerial positions, and contract language often with considerable firm control over publication or extensive rights to delay publication. Such practices suggest concern in regards to faculty distraction from their primary duties to the institution and individual or organizational interestedness in commercialization outcomes that may undermine the social contract for science.

A Review of The Blackwell Handbook of Entrepreneurship, Edited by Donald Sexton and Hans Landström

This article provides a review and evaluation of TheBlackwell Handbook of Entrepreneurship.