Steven W. Bradley

The Importance of Slack for New Organizations Facing ‘Tough’ Environments

Strategy-based models centre on the management of unique and valuable resources to take advantage of specific market opportunities. Less examined in this approach are the roles of slack resources in the process of generating firm value – particularly for new firms in ‘tough’ environments where fewer opportunities are available. Using a cohort panel of 951 new manufacturing firms over nine years, our findings provide evidence for the importance of financial slack resources in understanding opportunity generation and also for reconciling theoretical arguments regarding the slack resource–performance link. We find that while financial slack does provide buffering capacity (in hostile and dynamic environments), and flexibility for experimentation (in munificent and dynamic environments) as suggested by prior theory, the most positive relationship between financial slack and performance for new firms was in low discretion environments (hostile and stable environments) – where firms need to develop their own opportunities. The implications of these findings for theory are discussed.

The Role of Spiritual Capital in Innovation and Performance: Evidence from Developing Economies

Forms of capital play a significant role in the innovation and performance of start–up firms. Current entrepreneurial research has focused on the role of financial, human, and social forms of capit...

The influence of tax and regulatory policies on entrepreneurs’ opportunity evaluation decisions

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate effects of policy initiatives on entrepreneurs’ opportunity evaluation decisions. Design/methodology/approach – Factors were selected from real world policy initiatives. The model pricing power as a traditional economic base rate attribute and then considering how variance in use fees and reporting requirements changes the base rate relationship. The factors served as decision attributes in a conjoint analysis experiment. A total of 126 entrepreneurs made 2,268 opportunity evaluation decisions. Findings – While increases in pricing power result in a positive upward base rate opportunity evaluation, government mandated use fees and reporting requirements diminish the base rate toward the negative. This suggest that that even though the likely profits are much higher with the significant pricing power opportunity, entrepreneurs heavily discount these opportunities because they view the combination of economic costs of paying high use fees and the non-pec...

Discerning Opportunity Types: Implications for Entrepreneurial Action and Entrepreneurship Education

Entrepreneurship research has paid little attention to variance in entrepreneurial opportunities, instead choosing to treat them as homogenous. Thus, the field has failed to acknowledge that there are significant variations in meansAends conceptualizations giving rise to different types of opportunities. Further, researchers and educators have not fully considered that the type of opportunity being pursued has implications for which entrepreneurial actions are required to realize a successful ...

Experimental Evidence of Observed Social Media Status Cues on Perceived Likability.

Recent research addresses social media’s increasing importance to relationships and its influence on individual perceptions of self. However, understanding of the value outside observers place on social media status cues (i.e., followers, likes, etc.) in evaluating the perceived likability of others is currently underexplored. Using the theoretical lenses of social exchange and social information processing, we developed a conjoint experiment relating observers’ expected likability of social media users with variance in a social media user’s (1) number of followers and “likes”, (2) physical attractiveness, (3) and the percentage of “selfies” (self-portraits) posted. Data collected from 72 participants and 873 generated observations provided results consistent with our theory that those with more followers and “likes” have higher perceived likability. In addition, this perception was further enhanced by physical attractiveness, but diminished by the percentage of “selfies” posted. Of additional interest, we also found that likability differed by gender, age, and the amount of time spent on social media. Implications for future research are discussed.