Natalia Martín Cruz

The effect of entrepreneurship education programmes on satisfaction with innovation behaviour and performance

Purpose – This paper attempts to shed light on the effect of educational programmes aimed at entrepreneurs on innovation and business success.Design/methodology/approach – We use as theoretical framework the theory of planned behaviour. We use a sample of 354 entrepreneurs from Castile and Leon, Spain. To estimate the model we use a path analysis (AMOS 7).Findings – Individuals who are concerned about further management education and entrepreneurship education show themselves to be more innovative. Moreover, indirectly, by means of the relationship between innovation and success, specific entrepreneurship education contributes to obtaining better business results. However, to have reached high levels of formal education makes entrepreneurs less conformist regarding the activity of innovation. The existence of a direct effect of innovative behaviour on business success is confirmed.Research limitations – The limitations which our study presents are principally related to the measurement of the variables. S...

Transactive memory processes that lead to better team results

Purpose – The objective of this paper is to evaluate dynamically those transactive memory processes that help to improve team results. Thus, the paper analyzes the processes by which transactive memory systems are created and we evaluate their effect on team results.Design/methodology/approach – To reach this objective, a quasi‐experiment was conducted with 167 students from the School of Business in a Spanish University during 2004‐2005. This experiment consisted of a business game where students had to make decisions in 44 teams.Findings – Transactive memory can help to understand differences in team results.Research limitations/implications – The limitations of our analysis are related to the short period of the quasi‐experiment.Originality/value – For courses which involve team learning, teachers would promote some specific practices and ways to work.

Implicaciones de la organización interna sobre la eficiencia. La aplicación de la teoría de la agencia y la metodología DEA a las ONGD españolas

Resumen La teoria de la agencia postula que para que una organizacion pueda desarrollar su actividad y alcanzar sus objetivos eficientemente, requiere de una arquitectura organizativa equilibrada. Las entidades sin fines de lucro (ENL) estan sometidas a estos mismos requerimientos en su organizacion interna aunque la evaluacion de su eficiencia se muestra como una tarea de gran complejidad. El objetivo basico del presente trabajo es valorar la relacion entre el equilibrio de la arquitectura organizativa y la eficiencia, mostrando, al mismo tiempo, que el analisis envolvente de datos (DEA) es un metodo especialmente indicado para medir la eficiencia de las ENL teniendo en cuenta sus particularidades en terminos de objetivos, composicion y funcionamiento. Con este proposito, se ha utilizado una muestra de 37 ENL dedicadas a la cooperacion internacional al desarrollo, que se han analizado con datos obtenidos a partir de entrevistas personales en profundidad durante el ano 2003. Tal como la teoria pronostica, los resultados muestran que las organizaciones no gubernamentales para el desarrollo (ONGD) en las que existe un equilibrio entre sus niveles de delegacion, sistemas de incentivos y medidas de evaluacion del rendimiento son las mas eficientes.

Social Capital, Knowledge Integration and Ambidexterity of Project-BasedTeams in R&D Organizations

Since the different approaches for analyzing ambidexterity are primarily understood at the organizational level, this article focuses on an operational level by recognizing projects as important sites for the exploration and the exploitation of knowledge. . Specifically, this paper studies the role of social capital that arises between members of a project team, and specifically, how those resources facilitate the process of knowledge integration and subsequent knowledge exploration and exploitation. We analyze 129 RD (2) how the three dimensions of social capital identified by Nahapiet and Ghoshal (1998) -cognitive capital, relational capital, and structural capital- influence the integration of knowledge inside project teams; and (3) how the three dimensions of social capital, internally focused, interact among themselves within project teams. Results show the influence of social capital throu...

Steps towards medication harmonization: A look at Europe and the United States

Abstract Countries with distinct institutional endowments are trying to reach drug harmonization. The explanation given for the beginning of this process is that the rising health concerns governments have about patients transcend their different visions of social welfare and increasing bureaucratic costs, for both pharmaceutical companies and governments. The underlying reasons are, on the one hand, the high transaction costs between the pharmaceutical companies and the patients of medication and, on the other hand, the differing pharmaceutical regulations increase bureaucratic costs. This situation pushed Europe, Japan and the US into initiating a process of harmonization of regulation for new drugs. Even though harmonization is an on-going process, global and simultaneous medication product approval is not easy (the final objective of harmonization). In this paper we present, from a transaction cost approach, the economic reasons why pharmaceutical transactions need to be under public control. At the same time, we evaluate the public policies related to pharmaceutical exchange – technical guidelines, funding and price policies – as elements of the institutional endowment of countries that could facilitate or slow down the harmonization process. We use two protagonists of the harmonization process: Europe and the United States.