There is growing evidence that human biology and behavior are influenced by infectious microorganisms. One such microorganism is the protozoan Toxoplasma gondii (TG). Using longitudinal data covering the female population of Denmark, we extend research on the relationship between TG infection and entrepreneurial activity and outcomes. Results indicate that TG infection is associated with a subsequent increase in the probability of becoming an entrepreneur, and is linked to other outcomes including venture performance. With parasite behavioral manipulation antithetical to rational judgment, we join a growing conversation on biology and alternative drivers of business venturing.

Purpose: the purpose of this study is to identify antecedent factors in addition to merit that contribute to the designation of first author on a publication. A second purpose is to provide knowledge of the significance and implications of being designated first author on a research article in the management discipline. A third purpose is to propose directions for further research. Design/methodology/approach: the study consists of an empirical analysis of archival data gathered from 780 authors of 260 coauthored articles from top-tier journals and uses logit regression to analyze the data. Findings: the empirical analysis shows that under certain conditions author need and author power are factors that combine with merit as antecedents to the designation of being the first author of an article. Originality/value: to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study that identified antecedent factors that contribute to first authorship beyond the prescribed factor of merit which professional norms in management assume is the one and only factor that contributes to being designated as first author.

We examine the relationship between the regional entrepreneurial ecosystem (REE) and the performance of U.S. venture capital (VC)-backed startups. We conceptualize the REE as a complex system and pair a variance decomposition methodology with a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to study the configurations (combinations of regional factors) associated with high levels of performance of nascent early-stage startups and mature late-stage ventures. Our key finding is of an inverse relationship between startup maturity and the combinatorial complexity of regional factors that underlie the REE. Our analyses highlight the conditions under which VC-backed startups benefit most from the resources in the REE, extend prior research on location-based competitive advantages, and demonstrate how regional resource dependencies dynamically shift as a function of the startups' life cycle.

Crowdfunding platforms have attracted the attention of practitioners and scholars alike. The term ‘crowdfunding’ first coined in the early 2000s, describes a new institutional form in the financial markets which utilizes digital platforms to originate and aggregate funding. There is abundant research on the topic. Yet extant work mainly consists of single-platform studies. We argue that observing patterns on one platform does not necessarily advance our understanding of other platforms. Specifically, we use data from eight major crowdfunding platforms to conduct a variance decomposition analysis of funding success. The findings suggest factors associated with success in a given platform do not replicate to the other platforms. It underscores the generalizability challenge facing the crowdfunding literature. We therefore highlight the need to complement single-platform studies with cross-platform studies.

Extant literature, while often suggesting a positive link between green innovation and firm performance, is inconclusive. Moreover, the possibly moderating role of management has not been sufficiently considered. Using a unique dataset sampling 188 manufacturing firms in China, we examine how managerial concern (for green issues) moderates the relationship between green innovation and firm performance. We find that green process innovation and green product innovation both significantly (positively) predict firm performance, when not considering managerial concern for the environment. Once managerial concern is included, we observe that it compounds the positive effect of green process innovation on firm performance – but not product innovation, which no longer explains significant unique variance in firm performance. The findings hold various implications for future research and business policy. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Disciplines such as business and economics often rely on the assumption of rationality when explaining complex human behaviours. However, growing evidence suggests that behaviour may concurrently be influenced by infectious microorganisms. The protozoan Toxoplasma gondii infects an estimated 2 billion people worldwide and has been linked to behavioural alterations in humans and other vertebrates. Here we integrate primary data from college students and business professionals with national-level information on cultural attitudes towards business to test the hypothesis that T. gondii infection influences individual- as well as societal-scale entrepreneurship activities. Using a saliva-based assay, we found that students (n = 1495) who tested IgG positive for T. gondii exposure were 1.4× more likely to major in business and 1.7× more likely to have an emphasis in 'management and entrepreneurship' over other business-related emphases. Among professionals attending entrepreneurship events, T. gondii-positive individuals were 1.8× more likely to have started their own business compared with other attendees (n = 197). Finally, after synthesizing and combining country-level databases on T. gondii infection from the past 25 years with the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor of entrepreneurial activity, we found that infection prevalence was a consistent, positive predictor of entrepreneurial activity and intentions at the national scale, regardless of whether previously identified economic covariates were included. Nations with higher infection also had a lower fraction of respondents citing 'fear of failure' in inhibiting new business ventures. While correlational, these results highlight the linkage between parasitic infection and complex human behaviours, including those relevant to business, entrepreneurship and economic productivity.

Research summary: We use a variance decomposition methodology to assess the degree to which board chairs may influence their companies' performance. To isolate the board chair effect, we focus on firms in which the CEO and board chair positions are separated. Using a U.S. sample of 6,290 firm-year observations representing 1,828 board chairs in 308 different industries, our results indicate that the board chair effect is substantial at about nine percent. Drawing on resource dependency theory, we also theorize and show how this board chair effect is contingent on the task environment in which firms operate. Our results add to the literature examining the role and influence of board chairs and the context in which chairs may have a greater impact on performance. Managerial summary: Following institutional and regulatory changes, more firms are separating the CEO and board chair positions. With an increasing number of individuals separate from the CEO serving as board chairs, a critical question becomes: What influence do these separate board chairs have on firm performance? Prior research suggests that separate board chairs can provide important resources—including advice and counsel, legitimacy, information linkages, and preferential access to external commitments and support—to their CEOs, other top managers, and overall firms. In turn, who the board chair is and the individual's ability (or lack thereof) to provide these resources may have a significant impact on firm performance. Offering support for this perspective, we find that separate board chairs explain nine percent of the variance in firm performance. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

How much of the variance in firm performance can be attributed to CEOs? This question has been the focus of a long debate in management research. In a recent study, I showed that a large portion of the performance differences that are often attributed to CEOs might in fact be due to chance. In a recent article, Quigley and Graffin argue that my conclusions can be avoided if more advanced methodological approaches are applied. Here I show that this is not the case, in fact if more realistic assumptions of how chance can affect firm performance are made, the effect of CEO leadership is almost indistinguishable from the effect of chance, independent of the estimation methodology. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

We examine earnings guidance precision as a mechanism of organization impression management (OIM) and, specifically, suggest that strategic leaders use more precise earnings forecasts as an OIM tactic to convey a greater sense of authority and control over organizational performance after material organizational setbacks. Contributing to the OIM literature, we argue that the use of more precise judgment makes use of different psychological mechanisms compared to kinds of OIM that have been previously studied. The results presented here suggest that (a) OIM is an important motivation for more precise earnings forecasts, (b) precision as an OIM tactic is more likely to arise when managers convey impressions of brighter performance prospects, and (c) investors generally respond favorably to the tactic.

Despite increased interest in examining the factors that influence crowdfunding success, the effects of community context have been relatively unexamined. We address this void by examining the role of cultural context in crowdfunding success. Our unique data set of crowdfunding projects to “save the local theater” are homogenous in their goal, allowing us to test whether crowdfunding campaigns in certain communities lead to better funding outcomes than others. Theoretically, our results suggest the need for further integration of community and cultural constructs into models of venture funding, as such variables may have more relevance than previously believed.

Research on initial public offerings (IPOs) suggests that underwriters as well as venture capitalists (VCs) affect IPO underpricing. However, the magnitude of the effect of VCs on underpricing remains unclear. Are VCs as important as underwriters? We conduct a variance decomposition analysis to compare these two influences. Our results indicate that VCs are of greater importance, and we suggest that VCs’ superior evaluative capacity and signal legitimacy may be responsible for their effects.

Variance decomposition analysis is often used to examine the degree to which CEOs influence their companies' performance (the so-called CEO effect). Such studies play an important role in a body of literature that investigates the effect of leadership on organizations. In this paper, I argue that these previous studies have an important underlying flaw. Empirically, these studies wrongly attribute the performance effect of randomness - of chance - to the CEO. I demonstrate how randomness can affect the measured effects in a variance decomposition analysis, and I show that this is especially problematic for the measurement of CEO effects. I demonstrate how this results in a greatly inflated CEO effect and develop an approach to correct for it.

This study contributes to the research on the effect of diversification on performance under conditions of uncertainty. More specifically, we examine diversification in the context of venture capital firms. Drawing on the knowledge and organizational learning literature, we hypothesize that firms benefit from either low levels of diversification because of efficiencies in processing knowledge or high levels of diversification because of access to broad information that facilitates solving complex problems and the ability to direct a portfolio company down different trajectories. Consistent with our hypotheses, we find a U-shaped relationship. Firms benefit from either low or high levels of diversification; moderate levels yield the poorest results. When uncertainty is highest (i.e. early stage investing, no coinvestors), the effects are most pronounced. © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.