Do Academic and Private Entrepreneurs differ? An empirical analysis of the Micro-Foundation of Entrepreneurial Orientation

This Doctoral Thesis focuses on the study of individual behaviours as a result of organizational affiliation. The objective is to assess the Entrepreneurial Orientation of individuals proving the existence of a set of antecedents to that measure returning a structural model of its micro-foundation. Relying on the developed measurement model, I address the issue whether some Entrepreneurs experience different behaviours as a result of their academic affiliation, comparing a sample of ‘Academic Entrepreneurs’ to a control sample of ‘Private Entrepreneurs’ affiliated to a matched sample of Academic Spin-offs and Private Start-ups. Building on the Theory of the Planned Behaviour, proposed by Ajzen (1991), I present a model of causal antecedents of Entrepreneurial Orientation on constructs extensively used and validated, both from a theoretical and empirical perspective, in sociological and psychological studies. I focus my investigation on five major domains: (a) Situationally Specific Motivation, (b) Personal Traits and Characteristics, (c) Individual Skills, (d) Perception of the Business Environment and (e) Entrepreneurial Orientation Related Dimensions. I rely on a sample of 200 Entrepreneurs, affiliated to a matched sample of 72 Academic Spin-offs and Private Start-ups. Firms are matched by Industry, Year of Establishment and Localization and they are all located in the Emilia Romagna region, in northern Italy. I’ve gathered data by face to face interviews and used a Structural Equation Modeling technique (Lisrel 8.80, Joreskog, K., & Sorbom, D. 2006) to perform the empirical analysis. The results show that Entrepreneurial Orientation is a multi-dimensional micro-founded construct which can be better represented by a Second-Order Model. The t-tests on the latent means reveal that the Academic Entrepreneurs differ in terms of: Risk taking, Passion, Procedural and Organizational Skills, Perception of the Government, Context and University Supports. The Structural models also reveal that the main differences between the two groups lay in the predicting power of Technical Skills, Perceived Context Support and Perceived University Support in explaining the Entrepreneurial Orientation Related Dimensions.

Essays on the Axiomatic Theory of Matching

This dissertation mimics the Turkish college admission procedure. It started with the purpose to reduce the inefficiencies in Turkish market. For this purpose, we propose a mechanism under a new market structure; as we prefer to call, semi-centralization. In chapter 1, we give a brief summary of Matching Theory. We present the first examples in Matching history with the most general papers and mechanisms. In chapter 2, we propose our mechanism. In real life application, that is in Turkish university placements, the mechanism reduces the inefficiencies of the current system. The success of the mechanism depends on the preference profile. It is easy to show that under complete information the mechanism implements the full set of stable matchings for a given profile. In chapter 3, we refine our basic mechanism. The modification on the mechanism has a crucial effect on the results. The new mechanism is, as we call, a middle mechanism. In one of the subdomain, this mechanism coincides with the original basic mechanism. But, in the other partition, it gives the same results with Gale and Shapley's algorithm. In chapter 4, we apply our basic mechanism to well known Roommate Problem. Since the roommate problem is in one-sided game patern, firstly we propose an auxiliary function to convert the game semi centralized two-sided game, because our basic mechanism is designed for this framework. We show that this process is succesful in finding a stable matching in the existence of stability. We also show that our mechanism easily and simply tells us if a profile lacks of stability by using purified orderings. Finally, we show a method to find all the stable matching in the existence of multi stability. The method is simply to run the mechanism for all of the top agents in the social preference.

Modelling and analysis of thin-walled beams in the context of the Generalized Beam Theory

In this work, the Generalized Beam Theory (GBT) is used as the main tool to analyze the mechanics of thin-walled beams. After an introduction to the subject and a quick review of some of the most well-known approaches to describe the behaviour of thin-walled beams, a novel formulation of the GBT is presented. This formulation contains the classic shear-deformable GBT available in the literature and contributes an additional description of cross-section warping that is variable along the wall thickness besides along the wall midline. Shear deformation is introduced in such a way that the classical shear strain components of the Timoshenko beam theory are recovered exactly. According to the new kinematics proposed, a reviewed form of the cross-section analysis procedure is devised, based on a unique modal decomposition. Later, a procedure for a posteriori reconstruction of all the three-dimensional stress components in the finite element analysis of thin-walled beams using the GBT is presented. The reconstruction is simple and based on the use of three-dimensional equilibrium equations and of the RCP procedure. Finally, once the stress reconstruction procedure is presented, a study of several existing issues on the constitutive relations in the GBT is carried out. Specifically, a constitutive law based on mirroring the kinematic constraints of the GBT model into a specific stress field assumption is proposed. It is shown that this method is equally valid for isotropic and orthotropic beams and coincides with the conventional GBT approach available in the literature. Later on, an analogous procedure is presented for the case of laminated beams. Lastly, as a way to improve an inherently poor description of shear deformability in the GBT, the introduction of shear correction factors is proposed. Throughout this work, numerous examples are provided to determine the validity of all the proposed contributions to the field.