Dynamic capabilities and high-tech entrepreneurial ventures’ performance in the aftermath of an environmental jolt

This paper contributes to studies on dynamic capabilities (DCs) by showing that a neglected environmental contingency – i.e. the occurrence of a jolt – shapes the DCs–performance relationship. We focus on high-tech entrepreneurial ventures because these are the firms that jolts affect most; in so doing, we also advance the understanding of DCs in the entrepreneurship field. We argue that, in the aftermath of an environmental jolt, the high-tech entrepreneurial ventures that use internationalization and new product development capabilities to modify their resource configuration and regain environmental fit enjoy better performance. Econometric estimates on a sample of 340 Italian high-tech entrepreneurial ventures confronting the consequences of the global economic crisis that began in 2008 confirm that separately using these two DCs has a positive performance effect. This effect is stronger for relatively smaller ventures. Interestingly, despite synergies should arise from the combined use of the two DCs, we do not detect any superadditive effects.     

A general inversion theorem for cointegration

A generalization of the Granger and the Johansen Representation Theorems valid for any (possibly fractional) order of integration is presented. This Representation Theorem is based on inversion results that characterize the order of the pole and the coefficients of the Laurent series representation of the inverse of a matrix function around a singular point. Explicit expressions of the matrix coefficients of the (polynomial) cointegrating relations, of the Common Trends and of the Triangular representations are provided, either starting from the Moving Average or the Auto Regressive form. This contribution unifies different approaches in the literature and extends them to an arbitrary order of integration. The role of deterministic terms is discussed in detail.     

A network analysis of student mobility patterns from high school to master’s

Human migration involves the movement of people from one place to another. An example of undirected migration is Italian student mobility where students move from the South to the Center-North. This kind of mobility has become of general interest, and this work explores student mobility from Sicily towards universities outside the island. The data used in this paper regards six cohorts of students, from 2008/09 to 2013/14. In particular, our goal is to study the 3-step migration path: the area of origin (Sicilian provinces), the regional university for the bachelor’s degree, and the regional university for the master’s. Our analysis is conducted by building a multipartite network with four sets of nodes: students; Sicilian provinces; bachelor region of studies; and the master region of studies. By projecting the students’ set onto the others, we obtain a tripartite network where the number of students represents the link weight. Results show that the big Sicilian cities—Palermo, Catania, and Messina—have different preferential paths compared to small Sicilian cities. Furthermore, the results reveal preferential paths of 3-step mobility that only, in part, reflect a south-north orientation in the transition from the region of study for the bachelor degree to that for the master’s.

     

David Schmeidler’s contributions to decision theory

Theory and Decision -     

Individual adoption of convergent mobile phone in Italy

The present study integrates the technology acceptance and convergence streams of research to develop and test a model of individual adoption of convergent mobile technologies. Adopting structural equation modelling, we hypothesize that relative advantage, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating conditions affect directly individual attitude and, indirectly the intention to use convergent mobile technologies. The model explains a highly significant 53.2% of the variance for individual attitude, while individual attitude accounts for 33.9% of the variance in behavioral intention. Authors are listed alphabetically.     

Human Reliability Analysis by Fuzzy "CREAM"

This article proposes a systematic procedure for computing probabilities of operator action failure in the cognitive reliability and error analysis method (CREAM). The starting point for the quantification is a previously introduced fuzzy version of the CREAM paradigm that is here further extended to account for: (1) the ambiguity in the qualification of the conditions under which the action is performed (common performance conditions, CPCs) and (2) the fact that the effects of such conditions on human performance reliability may not all be equal.     

Little naked pangs of the self: the real performance of the self and the function of trust in Goffman's action theory

The aim of this article is to discuss some of the leading features of Erving Goffman's action theory as an alternative to the ‘orthodox’ paradigms of sociology, viewed as a structuralist and functionalist science that defines social constructs by their shared rules and values, and as a drifting of action, in the sense of intention, toward an individualistic version. The author examines Goffman's shift of the focus of attention from the boundaries of a social sense of action to the social dialectic of ‘defining a situation’ (W. Thomas) as conducted by the social actors in a renewal of Simmel's ‘empowering covenants’ (wechselwirkung) in the multiple casual social connections that make up the ‘social buzz’ in a society. The author moreover discusses Goffman's action as a kind of playacting regulating cognitive and expressive face-to-face ‘traffic’ between the social actors. This relational dynamic creates an interactive play based on encounters – in which one's opening to another is fraught with risks of deception – regulated by trust as a central resource for social interactions. Trust, in its interpersonal and systemic variants, constitutes a universal social datum and an elementary precondition for social exchanges and the cooperation between individuals. Trust, thus, functions as comparer between reciprocal expectations and a regulator of freedom tending to the stability of the social system.     

Non-parametric regression on compositional covariates using Bayesian P-splines

Methods to perform regression on compositional covariates have recently been proposed using isometric log-ratios (ilr) representation of compositional parts. This approach consists of first applying standard regression on ilr coordinates and second, transforming the estimated ilr coefficients into their contrast log-ratio counterparts. This gives easy-to-interpret parameters indicating the relative effect of each compositional part. In this work we present an extension of this framework, where compositional covariate effects are allowed to be smooth in the ilr domain. This is achieved by fitting a smooth function over the multidimensional ilr space, using Bayesian P-splines. Smoothness is achieved by assuming random walk priors on spline coefficients in a hierarchical Bayesian framework. The proposed methodology is applied to spatial data from an ecological survey on a gypsum outcrop located in the Emilia Romagna Region, Italy.