A central role of the entrepreneur-manager is assembling a strategic bundle of complementary assets and activities, either existing or foreseen, which when combined create value for the firm. This process of creating value however requires managers to assess which activities should be handled by...

This research examines the common elements that we can find in the outcomes at a national level resulting from clusters. There are 7 common elements of cluster impact, namely: (1) agglomeration economies; (2) knowledge spillovers; (3) increases in productivity and efficiency; (4) positive impact...

Debate in management research on the status of the opportunity construct is now more than a decade old. We argue that the debate has led to little additional insight in entrepreneurship and we develop the case for abandoning the construct altogether. Uncertainty is central to entrepreneurship...

Valve is a “flat” company without a management hierarchy or traditional boss roles: instead of top-down organization and management, Valve employees are free to work on whatever projects they choose and to convince other employees to join collaborative groups. Decision-making is thus...

This paper examines the human network of entrepreneurs, and demonstrates the secrets of effective top management teams. More specifically, among entrepreneurs, founders in particular are dynamic by nature and familiar with their own business. However, some lack good skills in marketing and...

While European health care systems are mostly public and similar the contrast is large to the US health industry based to a large extent in the market. Using competence bloc theory the industrial potential of Swedish and European health care is assessed and compared with US health industry. To...

Cultural evolution is a long-term endogenous process which is revealed in society's cultural traits and it is embodied in institutional characteristics (property rights protection, rule of law, etc.) and transaction characteristics (risk levels, time required for start-ups, corruption levels,...

Emergent economies suffer from underdeveloped market infrastructures and insufficient public institutions to enforce contract commitments and property rights. Informal reputation-based arrangements may substitute for government enforcement but they require close-knit networks that enable...

This work demonstrates the very existence of economic rents in franchising using, for the first time, the franchisees’ actual financial statements. This finding makes franchising more appealing for applicants and supports the hypothesis that rents are efficient devices to motivate franchisees.

We describe and discuss Ronald Coase's approach to managerial authority, placing it in the broader context of recent economics and management research on intrafirm coordination. To do so, we make use of work by Coase that is relatively little known, namely his writings on opportunity cost...