Top Management Teams,Business Models,and Performance of Biotechnology Ventures: An Upper Echelon Perspective*

In this paper we introduce a new contingency variable that moderates the effect of top management team composition on organizational performance – the organization's business model. Arguing from an upper echelon perspective and drawing on data from 99 German biotechnology ventures, we show that founder‐based firm‐specific experience of management team members can have either a positive or a negative effect on performance, depending on whether the venture pursues a platform or a therapeutics business model, respectively. Our results also show that managers' experience collected in the pharmaceutical industry has a positive effect on performance, and that this effect is more positive for therapeutics than for platform ventures. We discuss the implications of these findings for the literature on upper echelons and entrepreneurial founding teams.     

The influence of parameter estimation on the ARL of Shewhart type charts for time series

In this paper we discuss the behavior of the Shewhart residual chart and the modified Shewhart chart if the parameters of the underlying process are unknown and thus have to be estimated. We focus on the estimation of the variance. For AR models we also consider the estimation of the AR coefficients. The average run length (ARL) of the control chart with estimated parameters is compared with the ARL of the scheme for known parameters and with the ARL for independent variables. Additionally, we give recommendations on the choice of the estimators in the context of Shewhart control schemes.     

A productive clash of cultures: Injecting economics into leadership research

Research on leadership in economics has developed in parallel to the literature in management and psychology and links between the fields have been sparse. Whereas modern leadership scholars mostly focus on transformational and related leadership styles, economists have mainly emphasized the role of contracts, control rights, and incentives. We argue that both fields could profit from enriching their approach with insights from the other field. We review and synthesize the economics literature on leadership in organizations and discuss how leadership scholars in management and psychology can benefit from the detailed understanding of transactional methods that economists have developed. We link the contributions in economics to a broad set of topics including the foundations of leadership, leader emergence, and leader effectiveness. At the same time, we also point out limitations of the economic approach and outline how the integration of leadership research and economics would broaden the scope of future studies.     

Non-Standard Employment in Irish Manufacturing: Do Firm Characteristics Matter?

Non-standard or atypical employment in Irish manufacturing more than doubled between 1987 and 1995. This paper attempts to analyse empirically the nature of non-standard employment in Ireland using plant-level data for 1995. We focus on firm characteristics as explanatory factors. Our econometric results indicate that there are significant differences in the use of atypical employment between small and large firms, and between indigenous and foreign-owned firms.     

Strictly monotone and smooth nonparametric regression for two or more variables

The authors propose a new monotone nonparametric estimate for a regression function of two or more variables. Their method consists in applying successively one‐dimensional isotonization procedures on an initial, unconstrained nonparametric regression estimate. In the case of a strictly monotone regression function, they show that the new estimate and the initial one are first‐order asymptotic equivalent; they also establish asymptotic normality of an appropriate standardization of the new estimate. In addition, they show that if the regression function is not monotone in one of its arguments, the new estimate and the initial one have approximately the same L^p‐norm. They illustrate their approach by means of a simulation study, and two data examples are analyzed.     

Non nested model selection for spatial count regression models with application to health insurance

In this paper we consider spatial regression models for count data. We examine not only the Poisson distribution but also the generalized Poisson capable of modeling over-dispersion, the negative Binomial as well as the zero-inflated Poisson distribution which allows for excess zeros as possible response distribution. We add random spatial effects for modeling spatial dependency and develop and implement MCMC algorithms in $R$ for Bayesian estimation. The corresponding R library ‘spatcounts’ is available on CRAN. In an application the presented models are used to analyze the number of benefits received per patient in a German private health insurance company. Since the deviance information criterion is only appropriate for exponential family models, we use in addition the Vuong and Clarke test with a Schwarz correction to compare possibly non nested models. We illustrate how they can be used in a Bayesian context.     

Freedom ossified: Political culture and the public use of history in Jamaica 1

The basic thesis of this paper addresses three distinct, yet related, historical developments. Firstly, the democratic promise of freedom for Caribbean people was not fulfilled, as the planter class was not prepared to renounce its power. Secondly, when it was no longer able to hold on to its power, political responsibilities were given to the middle classes, which celebrated this transition as a major achievement. However, the actual arrangements that were made still kept the majority of the people from meaningful participation in the political process and from access to economic resources. Nevertheless, the middle classes introduced the celebratory notion of freedom, although freedom continued to be denied to the majority. Thirdly, in the current period of globalization and neoliberal economics, this ethos has now attained a quasi‐mythical status in many Anglophone Caribbean countries and, at the very same time, the notion of freedom has been emptied of its practical meaning and has in many instances become counter‐productive. In short, Caribbean freedom has become ossified.