Scott Droege

Broken Rules and Constrained Confusion: Toward a Theory of Meso-Institutions

Meso-institutions are weak, intermediate forms of institutions that bridge the gap between institutional disintegration and the development of new, more firmly established institutions. Meso-institutions lack the stronger behaviour-guiding signs and symbols of more established institutions, but instead contain fragments of former institutions mixed with emerging, but fragile, components of developing institutions. Institutional disintegration leads to a disorienting period characterized by the dissolution of fundamental, widely held ideologies. This offers an opportunity for actions rather than institutions to guide actions. Because meso-institutions are weak, only after actions are repeated will they solidify into specific patterns that may be retrospectively granted legitimacy. Using archival data supplemented by interviews, we identified three meso-institutional occurrences with the phenomenologically based manifestations of fractured ideology, actions as rules and retrospective legitimization.

Prior tacit knowledge and first‐year sales: learning from technology entrepreneurs

Purpose – This paper aims to explore differences in tacit knowledge at opportunity recognition reported by founders of new technology ventures. The paper seeks to shed light on the types of tacit knowledge related to achieving sales within the first year of new technology ventures.Design/methodology/approach – A survey was administered to 145 technology venture founders during structured interviews across 13 university‐affiliated technology incubators. To investigate tacit knowledge a framework was used comprised of ways to serve markets, customer problems, markets, and technology. The results were analyzed using t‐tests and logistic regression while controlling for founders years of work experience. A configuration analysis is presented revealing the patterns of knowledge related to sales in the first year of new ventures.Findings – The study provides an understanding of how types of tacit knowledge relate to early sales outcomes in the high technology context. Prior hands‐on experiences with developmen...

Process Mechanisms of Institutional Entrepreneurship

Field and historical data from China delineate two specific process mechanisms that facilitate institutional change: diminished utility of regulatory controls and negotiated boundaries of institutional space. These mechanisms tend to have entrepreneurial origins and, together, create new institutions when in the context of other factors that may be present in emerging economy institutional transition. These mechanisms link praxis, or experiential participation, with institutional change, thus enhancing our understanding of the drivers of entrepreneur-initiated institutional transition. Specifically, the effectiveness of regulatory controls decreases in the presence of collective entrepreneurial action and mobilization. In addition, negotiated boundaries of institutional space increase in the presence of reflective shifts in consciousness and increased activity of potential institutional entrepreneurship.

Incentives and Self-Interest: Balancing Revenue and Rewards in China's Tourism Industry

The travel service industry is a fast-growing part of the Chinese economy. With the recent announcement of Beijing as the host city for the 2008 Olympics, this trend is poised to continue. The quality of a travel service companys (TSC) reputation generates revenue from repeat and referral business and is critical to the ongoing success of firms in this industry. A key factor in maintaining reputation is the level of quality services provided by tour guides employed by these firms. Using an agency theory framework, this paper suggests that the optimal compensation contract of tour guides is a mixture of outcome-based and behaviour-based contracts. The authors propose specific contract components that balance TSC revenue requirements and their need to maintain a strong reputation while providing incentives for tour guides to act in the best interest of the company.

A tumultuous decade in Thailand: competitive dynamics among domestic banks and multi-national entrants in an emerging market

This research is a longitudinal exploratory studying the influence that multinational company (MNC) entry may have on domestic firm entry rates in an emerging market. Although research on competitive exclusion suggests that MNC entrants present entry barriers to potential smaller domestic entrants, we offer an alternative scenario. That is, MNCs and domestic organisations can co-exist as separate strategic groups within an industry. In particular, when small, potential domestic firms have access to idiosyncratic resources that are less available to MNCs, these smaller entrants were successful in overcoming strong MNC entry barriers. Still, this is circumscribed by the height of entry barriers, but not to the extent alluded to in previous industry organisation analysis research. The results indicate less predictable competitive dynamics than previous research would suggest, especially in the context of emerging markets. There is also some indication that domestic banks are more responsive to institutional factors within the home country than MNCs