ACE research vignette 026 : Do Entrepreneurs’ Personal Networks Influence Small Firm Performance?

This series of research vignettes is aimed at sharing current and interesting research findings from our team of international Entrepreneurship researchers. This vignette, written by Dr. Rene Bakker, examines the evidence on the effects of a entrepreneurs’ personal networks on small firm performance, and the factors that moderate this relationship.

A CLASS act : the teaching team approach to subject coordination

Advancing the development of good practice around the teaching team has been the focus of a recently completed, nationally funded Australian grant entitled Coordinators Leading Advancement of Sessional Staff (CLASS). The project focused on developing leadership capacity of subject coordinators to provide supportive contexts for sessional staff to enhance their knowledge of teaching practice and contribute to subject improvement through a team approach. An action learning approach and notions of distributed leadership underpinned the activities of the teaching teams in the program. This paper provides an overview of a practical approach, led by the subject coordinator, to engaging sessional staff through the facilitation of a supportive network within the teaching team. It addresses some of the gaps identified in the recent literature which includes lack of role clarity for all members of the team and provides some examples of initiatives that teams engaged with to address some of the challenges identified. Resources to support this approach were developed and are shared through the project website. Recommendations for future direction include improved policy and practice at the institutional level, better recognition and reward for subject coordinators and resourcing to support the participation and professional development needs of sessional staff.

'Explain in plain English' questions revisited : data structures problems

Recent studies have linked the ability of novice (CS1) programmers to read and explain code with their ability to write code. This study extends earlier work by asking CS2 students to explain object-oriented data structures problems that involve recursion. Results show a strong correlation between ability to explain code at an abstract level and performance on code writing and code reading test problems for these object-oriented data structures problems. The authors postulate that there is a common set of skills concerned with reasoning about programs that explains the correlation between writing code and explaining code. The authors suggest that an overly exclusive emphasis on code writing may be detrimental to learning to program. Non-code writing learning activities (e.g., reading and explaining code) are likely to improve student ability to reason about code and, by extension, improve student ability to write code. A judicious mix of code-writing and code-reading activities is recommended.

Built to last or meant to end : intertemporal choice in strategic alliance portfolios

A salient but rarely explicitly studied characteristic of interfirm relationships is that they can intentionally be formed for finite periods of time. What determines firms' intertemporal choices between different alliance time horizons? Shadow of the future theorists suggest that when an alliance has an explicitly set short-term time frame, there is an increased risk that partners may behave opportunistically. This does not readily explain the high incidence of time-bound alliances being formed. Reconciling insights from the shadow of the future perspective with nascent research on the flexibility of temporary organizations, and shifting the focus from the level of individual transactions to that of strategic alliance portfolios, we argue that firms may be willing to accept a higher risk of opportunism when there are offsetting gains in strategic flexibility in managing their strategic alliance portfolio. Consequently, we hypothesize that environmental factors that increase the need for strategic flexibility—namely, dynamism and complexity in the environment—are likely to increase the relative share of time-bound alliances in strategic alliance portfolios. Our analysis of longitudinal data on the intertemporal alliance choices of a large sample of small and medium-sized enterprises provides support for this argument. Our findings fill an important gap in theory about time horizons in interfirm relationships and temporary organizations and show the importance of separating planned terminations from duration-based performance measures.

Collagen biosynthesis in cultured rat testicular Sertoli and peritubular myoid cells

The incorporation of 3H-proline into protein was regarded as a measure of total protein synthesis and the incorporation into hydroxyproline as indicative of collagen synthesis. Relative collagen synthesis (expressed as percent of total protein synthesized) by Sertoli and peritubular myoid cells cultured from 20-22 day old rat testis was estimated. In both secreted and cellular pools, relative collagen synthesis by Sertoli cells was significantly greater than by peritubular myoid cells. Coculture of Sertoli and myoid cells resulted in a significant increase in relative collagen synthesis when compared to monocultures of each cell type. Addition of serum to peritubular myoid cells resulted in a stronger stimulation of relative collagen production. Sertoli cell extracellular matrix inhibited relative collagen synthesis by peritubular myoid cells in the presence or absence of serum. Radioactivity into hydroxyproline as corrected per cellular DNA also showed similar results. Immunolocalization studies confirmed that both cell types synthesize type I and type IV collagens. These results indicate that stimulation of collagen synthesis observed in Sertoli-myoid cell cocultures is due to humoral interactions, rather than extracellular matrix, and Sertoli cell extracellular matrix regulates serum-induced increase in collagen synthesis by peritubular myoid cells.

The effect of near-sheath dusts on a surface-wave-sustained gas discharge

The effect of near-sheath dusts on the rf power loss in a surface-wave-sustained gas discharge is studied. The planar plasma is bounded by a dielectric and consists of an inhomogeneous near-wall transition layer (sheath), a dusty plasma layer and an outer dust-free plasma. The discharge is maintained by high-frequency axially symmetrical surface waves. The surface-wave power loss from the most relevant dissipative mechanisms in typical discharge plasmas is analysed.

Optimism : what it is and its relevance in the school context

"For myself, I am an optimist - it does not seem to be much use to be anything else". Winston Churchill Optimism has its modern roots in philosophy dating back to the 17th century in the writings of philosophers such as Descartes and Voltaire (Domino & Conway, 2001). Previous to these philosophical writings, the concept of optimism was revealed in the teaching of many of the great spiritual traditions such as Buddhism and Christianity (Miller, Richards, & Keller, 2001). In the 20th century, optimism became defined in juxtaposition to pessimism, sometimes conceptualized as a bipolar unidimensional construct and by others as two related but separate constructs (Garber, 2000). Contemporary models (Scheier & Carver, 1985; Seligman, 1991) have increasingly focused on distinguishing optimism-pessimism as a general dispositional orientation, as described by expectancy theory, and as an explanatory process, described by explanatory style theory.

Photophysical characterization of light-emitting poly(indenofluorene)s

Time-resolved photoluminescence spectroscopy experiments of three poly(2,8-indenofluorene) derivatives bearing different pendant groups are presented. A comparison of the photophysical properties of dilute solutions and thin films provides information on the chemical purity of the materials. The photophysical properties of poly(2,8-indenofluorene)s are correlated with the morphological characteristics of their corresponding films. Wide-angle X-ray scattering experiments reveal the order in these materials at the molecular level. The spectroscopic results confirm the positive impact of a new synthetic approach on the spectral purity of the poly(indenofluorene)s. It is concluded that complete side-chain substitution of the bridgehead carbon atoms C-6 and C-12 in the indenofluorene unit, prior to indenofluorene ring formation, reduces the probability of keto formation. Due to the intrinsic chemical purity of the arylated derivative, identification of a long-delayed spectral feature, other than the known keto band, is possible in the case of thin films. Controlled doping experiments on the arylated derivative with trace amounts of an indenofluorene-monoketone provide quantitative information on the rates of two major photophysical processes, namely, singlet photoluminescence emission and singlet photoluminescence quenching. These results allow the determination of the minimum keto concentration that can affect the intrinsic photophysical properties of this polymer. The data suggest that photoluminescence quenching operates in the doped films according to the Stern-Volmer formalism.

When to pull the plug and when to take the plunge : timing strategic decisions about new ventures

It is not uncommon for firms to explore a new venture under the belief it will generate profits, only to find out later that although costs accumulated, profits did not materialize. To manage the high level of uncertainty involved in this process, new ventures are generally designed as vehicles of exploration (Wu, 2012) that allow for a staged investment of resources, starting with small initial investments that can be scaled up or discontinued as uncertainty is resolved over time (Folta, 1998; Li and Chi, 2013). As such, new ventures provide firms a vehicle by which they can probe an uncertain future (Brown and Eisenhardt, 1997) without fully committing early on to an irreversible course of action (Folta, Johnson, and O’Brien, 2006). Our focus in the present paper is on the timing of strategic decisions that firms make regarding their exploration ventures. Prior research in the fields of entrepreneurship, real options reasoning, and decision speed has demonstrated a link between the timing of making decisions and performance (Baum and Wally, 2003; Eisenhardt, 1989; Judge and Miller, 1991). The antecedents to the timing of decisions, however, are less understood and pose an interesting dilemma.

ACE research briefing paper 008 : How to Design and Manage Successful Joint Ventures in the Exploration Space

Joint ventures are formed and dissolved regularly in the mining industry. What impact do such changes have on the viability of mineral exploration projects? The Australian Centre for Entrepreneurship Research (ACE) has taken 9 years' worth of data (2002-2011) on 1,025 joint ventures in the Australasian mining industry and studied trends in fomentation, dissolution, and reconfiguration and how they impact project outcomes. This research is generously sponsored by the Queensland Exploration Council (QEC) and the Australian Research Council (ARC).

Pull the plug or take the plunge: Multiple opportunities and the speed of venturing decisions in the Australian mining industry

Effectively capturing opportunities requires rapid decision-making. We investigate the speed of opportunity evaluation decisions by focusing on firms' venture termination and venture advancement decisions. Experience, standard operating procedures, and confidence allow firms to make opportunity evaluation decisions faster; we propose that a firm's attentional orientation, as reflected in its project portfolio, limits the number of domains in which these speed-enhancing mechanisms can be developed. Hence firms' decision speed is likely to vary between different types of decisions. Using unique data on 3,269 mineral exploration ventures in the Australian mining industry, we find that firms with a higher degree of attention toward earlier-stage exploration activities are quicker to abandon potential opportunities in early development but slower to do so later, and that such firms are also slower to advance on potential opportunities at all stages compared to firms that focus their attention differently. Market dynamism moderates these relationships, but only with regard to initial evaluation decisions. Our study extends research on decision speed by showing that firms are not necessarily fast or slow regarding all the decisions they make, and by offering an opportunity evaluation framework that recognizes that decision makers can, in fact often do, pursue multiple potential opportunities simultaneously.