Inscribing value on business model innovations: Insights from industrial projects commercializing disruptive digital innovations

In this paper we seek to show how marketing activities inscribe value on business model innovation, representative of an act, or sequence of socially interconnecting acts. Theoretically we ask two interlinked questions: (1) how can value inscriptions contribute to business model innovations? (2) how can marketing activities support the inscription of value on business model innovations? Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with the thirty-seven members from across four industrial projects commercializing disruptive digital innovations. Various individuals from a diverse range of firms are shown to cast relevant components of their agency and knowledge on business model innovations through negotiation as an ongoing social process. Value inscription is mutually constituted from the marketing activities, interactions and negotiations of multiple project members across firms and functions to counter destabilizing forces and tensions arising from the commercialization of disruptive digital innovations. This contributes to recent conceptual thinking in the industrial marketing literature, which views business models as situated within dynamic business networks and a context-led evolutionary process. A contribution is also made to debate in the marketing literature around marketing's boundary-spanning role, with marketing activities shown to span and navigate across functions and firms in supporting value inscriptions on business model innovations.

Determinants of long-distance investing by business angels in the UK

The business angel market is usually identified as a local market, and the proximity of an investment has been shown to be key in the angel's investment preferences and an important filter at the screening stage of the investment decision. This is generally explained by the personal and localized networks used to identify potential investments, the hands-on involvement of the investor and the desire to minimize risk. However, a significant minority of investments are long distance. This paper is based on data from 373 investments made by 109 UK business angels. We classify the location of investments into three groups: local investments ( those made within the same county or in adjacent counties); intermediate investments ( those made in counties adjacent to the 'local' counties); and long-distance investments ( those made beyond this range). Using ordered logit analysis the paper develops and tests a number of hypotheses that relate long-distance investment to investment characteristics and investor characteristics. The paper concludes by drawing out the implications for entrepreneurs seeking business angel finance in investment-deficient regions, business angel networks seeking to match investors to entrepreneurs and firms ( which are normally their primary clients), and for policy-makers responsible for local and regional economic development.

The determinants of performance appraisal systems: A note (Do Brown and Heywood's results for Australia hold up for Britain?)

This article offers a replication for Britain of Brown and Heywood's analysis of the determinants of performance appraisal in Australia. Although there are some important limiting differences between our two datasets - the Australia Workplace Industrial Relations Survey (AWIRS) and the Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS) - we reach one central point of agreement and one intriguing shared insight. First, performance appraisal is negatively associated with tenure: where employers cannot rely on the carrot of deferred pay or the stick of dismissal to motivate workers, they will tend to rely more on monitoring, ceteris paribus. Second, employer monitoring and performance pay may be complementary. However, consonant with the disparate results from the wider literature, there is more modest agreement on the contribution of specific human resource management practices, and still less on the role of job control.

The MNC as an externally embedded organization: An investigation of embeddedness overlap in local subsidiary networks

MNCs have been conceptualized as differentiated networks that, in turn, are embedded in external networks. Previous research has predominantly focused on the embeddedness of established subsidiaries into their local environment, omitting to shed light on the phenomenon of headquarters linkages to the local context which creates embeddedness overlap. We develop a model of why MNCs develop overlapping linkages to local subsidiary networks even if the subsidiaries have grown out of the initial start-up phase. Using detailed information on 168 European subsidiaries, we find that MNCs build and maintain more overlapping network ties when subsidiaries are high performers, hold important resources, operate in turbulent environments, and are closely connected to multinational actors as opposed to purely domestic firms.

Improving Patient Safety Through Formal and Informal Learning Networks

This paper explores a novel perspective on patient safety improvements, which draws on
contemporary social network and learning theories. A case study was conducted at a Portuguese
acute university hospital. Data collection followed a staged approach, whereby 46 interviews
were conducted involving 49 respondents from a broad array of departments and professional
backgrounds. This case study highlights the importance of two major interlinked factors in
contributing to patient safety improvements. The first of these is the crucial role of formal and
informal, internal and external social networks. The second is the importance and the possible
advantage of combining formal and informal learning. The analysis suggests that initiatives
rooted in formal learning approaches alone do not necessarily lead to the creation of long-term
grounded internal safety networks, and that patient safety improvements can crucially depend on
bottom-up initiatives of communities of practice and informal learning. Traditional research on
patient safety places a strong emphasis on top-down and managerialist approaches and is often
based on the assumption that „safety? learning is primarily formal and context-independent. This
paper suggests that bottom-up initiatives and a combination of formal and informal learning can
make a major contribute to patient safety improvements.

Development of small and medium-sized enterprise horizontal innovation networks: UK agri-food sector study

Within the management literature, there is an emergent discourse on horizontal collaboration among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), whereby individual rivalries are overcome by the need for more resources and innovation, leading to increased competitiveness through joint product development. In particular, a number of these horizontal collaborations between SMEs have occurred within the agri-food sector. As a consequence, this article aims to explore the longitudinal development of horizontal innovation networks within an artisan bakers’ network as part of the UK SME agri-food sector. An interpretivist research approach was used, whereby the development and evolution of an artisan bakers’ horizontal network was studied over a 27-month period. The findings, as summarised in conceptual models which draw upon knowledge-based open innovation and social network constructs, illustrate that a complex three-stage life cycle development occurred within the bakers’ horizontal network.

An examination of regional policy implications pertaining to SME E-Business adoption in South-East Wales

Regional policy frameworks need to focus on strengthening the ICT infrastructure, clarifying market rules to build user confidence, developing networks, facilitating ICT-enabled clustering and infrastructure sharing.