Firms’ top decision makers cannot possibly know what decisions to make. Rather, decision makers must interpret their situations and make the best possible decision based upon their interpretation of their situations. In this dissertation, I examine decision-makers’ goal orientations as influencing how they interpret their situations and then respond through making decisions in terms of their firms’ entrepreneurial orientations. I also examine whether these decisions influence firm performance. I surveyed top firm decision makers in the Association of Former Students’ database at Texas A and M University. The hypotheses were tested using a structural equation modeling. Using a sample of 273 firms, I find that decision-makers’ goal orientations shape their firm’s entrepreneurial orientations, which in turn influence firm growth, relative performance, and expected future performance. Possessing a learning goal orientation was found to be positively related to innovativeness, proactiveness, and risk taking. A performance prove goal orientation was positively related to innovativeness, whereas a performance avoid goal orientation was negatively related to innovativeness and risk taking. Only a proactive firm posture was found to be positively related to firm performance. The results for this dissertation provide compelling support for upper echelons theory. Decision-makers’ finer-grained personal attributes are found to shape firm-level outcomes. More specifically, decision-makers’ goal orientations are found to shape the firm’s entrepreneurial orientation and, to some extent, performance. Interestingly, coarse-grained personal attributes captured in demographic proxies and used as control variables in the analyses did not provide consistent support for upper echelons theory. The results suggest that scholars need to take a finer-grained perspective of upper echelons theory. A substantial amount of research has established the link between individuals’ goal orientations and how they interpret and respond to their situations. The research here has extended this relationship to the top decision-making context in firms where individuals face strong situational forces caused by uncertainty, complexity, and dynamism. I hope that this research encourages other scholars to (1) examine more complex models of how decision-makers’ personal attributes influence their entrepreneurial decisions in terms of both recognizing and exploiting opportunities, and (2) examine other finer-grained attributes of top decision makers within a finer-grained framework of the decision-making process.

The concept of the team identity transformation in entrepreneurial process was addressed in this thesis. In order to effectively and delicately descript the formation and transformation process of the team identity, Qualitative research and single case method were explored that an electronic component manufacturer (thereafter called F company) in Kaohsiung was chosen. I collect the first-hand data not only by interviewing with interviewees but emailing or talking via phone. In aspects of interview, formal interviews took 17hours, informal interviews took about 10hours and 2 hours was used to get data via telephone communication. Except for first-hand data, we collect the secondary data as well. With comparison on differences of technological team identity(ies) between in and after business creation, three categories grounded on interviews was developed, including think¡Bwork and learn. Based on these, we would try to analyze the reasons of transformation. After almost year of observation and data collection, I conclude these below: 1¡BThere is existence of technological team identity in initial stage of entrepreneurship and this will be beneficial to drive the entrepreneurship. The mechanism of formation is how to pick up the members to make them highly consistent in thinking and behaviors. 2¡BAs changes of contexts and self adaptation, the technological team identity would be transformed as the figure6.1 shown. 3¡BI found that the team identity would transform into organizational identity, and that would make the border between technological team and the other groups more and more unspecific. 4¡BIn the process of team transformation, managerial action and machismo play an important roles to harness how the process goes to make the organization more flexible and actively response to the complex environments.

Small and medium enterprises have played an important role in Taiwanese economic development. However, there are few studies talking about their history of initiating entrepreneurship and systematic developments. Therefore, this paper adopts case study method, using qualitative research method to collect and analyze data. We take one medium and public company in Taiwan to study and interview 26 people semi-structurally from the case company. The targets we interviewed include chairman, vice-president, supervisors, stockholders ; others are senior managers and ex-senior managers. This paper made a systematic analysis on the entrepreneurial and development progress. Based on the way of stories-telling, we intend to find out different practices of the case company from the same trade; discuss starting business, operation characteristics, and leadership styles in order to argue its actual construction.

The research aims to explore the relationships among entrepreneurial orientation, social capital and firm performance when Taiwanese SMEs are expanding their business territory in China. Apart from social capital, there would be more other moderating variables existing in the environment. However, after literature review and in-depth interviews with the SMEs owners/directors/executives, social capital has been regarded as the possible influential factor affecting the relationship between entrepreneurial orientation and firm performance. In the second part of the research, comprehensive literature and studies relating to entrepreneurs, entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial orientation are investigated and summarized. Later, the literature of social capital and firm performance is summarized in order to develop the hypotheses to examine the relationships among entrepreneurial orientation, social capital and firm performance. This is an empirical research, assisting with in-depth interviews with Taiwanese SMEs owners/directors/executives to outline the findings more accurately. The statistical tools applied in the thesis include SPSS and AMOS. The findings of the research have come up with some practical implications and suggestion. The implications of the results might intrigue people who are interested in the influence of entrepreneurial orientation on organizational success. Lastly, some suggestions are made accordingly for the further development.

There are more and more women in Taiwan are running their own business. Therefore women entrepreneurs¡¦ sex-role attitudes and their operating characteristics are worthy to study. The interview concludes that the sex-role attitudes of women entrepreneurs can be divided into two parts ¡X family role and work role. In family, women entrepreneurs take part in traditional role taking the most responsibility of house working and child rearing. At the same time, they also take an active role in decision-making and risk-taking in business. She needs to share household duty to keep balance between family and work with her family, her mother or mother in law, and babysitter or servant. The sex-role attitude of spouse will affect the marital relations. If the husband does not support wife¡¦s entrepreneurship and at the same time the wife could not put her family as the first priority, they would have frequent quarrel or argument. Women entrepreneurs have an operational weakness that is they doesn¡¦t have plentiful business¡¦ network. The reason may they didn¡¦t spend much time to set their connection with other business partners but spend most time stay at home after work. When Women entrepreneurs require the emotional support or some business¡¦ suggestions, they usually appeal to their friends. The results to analyze their entrepreneurial behaviors are as follow, although some women entrepreneurs launch their own business for making money but they still want to achieve the goals of personal development and customer satisfaction etc. Besides, they measure their performance in social contributions, good interactions between customer and employee not just only in growth of market share and increase in profit.

Abstracts The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the relationship between the entrepreneurial planning and social networks to realize their positive effects. In this thesis the entrepreneurial planning is defined as the opportunity, business model, resource, and entrepreneurial team. Social networks are connections to people which concentrate on friend, family and colleague. This thesis takes advantage of the qualitative research by in-depth interviews combined with literature review to come to the following research findings: (1)Friends have the very strong positive effects to the resource and entrepreneurial team. (2)The personality of the entrepreneurs is the critical element to do the integration in entrepreneurial planning and social networks. (3)Experienced entrepreneurs have the better ability to integrate or exercise social networks to the entrepreneurial planning on hand than non-experienced ones. (4) As the entrepreneur one has to build up one¡¦s own social networks in daily time. There is some future research recommendations presented as follows. (1)Participant of the interview should focus on the experienced entrepreneurs. (2)Taking advantage of the regression method to make priority of the social networks. Key words: entrepreneurial planning, social network, entrepreneur, positive effects.

Numerous papers relating ¡§the motives of entrepreneurs¡¨ have been published, yet literally few discussed ¡§why do others don¡¦t¡¨. Based on the phenomenon, this study aims at discussing whether significant cognitive differences about entrepreneurial activities exist between entrepreneurs and others and to find key factors causing these behaviors in order to test the hypotheses derived from the concept that ¡§everyone could be an entrepreneur¡¨. This research applies the theory of planned behavior (TPB) as the foundation and categorizes study objects into two groups by ¡§entrepreneurial activities¡¨ ¡V ¡§entrepreneurs¡¨, and ¡§non-entrepreneurs¡¨. Results of the thesis are: I. The two groups possess no significant difference in the ¡§attitude¡¨ category of TPB: The ¡§attitude¡¨ part aims at measuring the importance of certain entrepreneurial motives cognized by people involved, such as: realizing dreams, feeding back to the society, increasing wealth and so on. The results indicate that both ¡§entrepreneurs¡¨ and ¡§non-entrepreneurs¡¨ address significant importance on the category, i.e. this might not be a key distinguishing factor of entrepreneurial activities. II. The two groups possess significant differences in the ¡§subjective norms¡¨: The ¡§subjective norms¡¨ part aims at measuring how one¡¦s decisions are influenced by others, such as whether parents¡¦, spouse¡¦s and others¡¦ support matter when one considering starting a business. The results indicate that ¡§entrepreneurs¡¨ paid significantly less importance on the category than ¡§non-entrepreneurs¡¨, which indicating that this might be a critical factor affecting entrepreneurial activities¡¦ appearance. III. The two groups possess significant differences in the ¡§perception behavior control¡¨: The ¡§perception behavior control¡¨ part aims at measuring one¡¦s concept of the importance of resources when considering starting a business, such as practicability, possession of capital and information, etc. The results indicate that ¡§entrepreneurs¡¨ paid significantly more attention on the category than ¡§non-entrepreneurs¡¨, thus this might also be a critical factor affecting entrepreneurial activities¡¦ appearance. In addition, this study categorizes the ¡§non-entrepreneurs¡¨ into four categories by their willingness of starting a business, they are: ¡§never thought of / not-willing¡¨, ¡§thought of / not-willing¡¨, ¡§might-be / willing¡¨ and ¡§desperately want to / willing¡¨ in order to examine the differences between ¡§non-entrepreneurs¡¨ who possess different levels of willingness and the ¡§entrepreneurs¡¨. It is expected that this thesis could be served as an important source of information for domestic entrepreneur-related groups and to address the problems, for the sake of boosting the entrepreneurship of citizens and the economy as a whole.

<p>Executive summary</p><p>In a world where the Internet and good communications accelerates the globalization, having</p><p>connections across borders becomes a competitive advantage. The easy access to a</p><p>constant stream of information is making the opportunities countless, adding to the equation</p><p>that the Internet and supplementary techniques such as different types of software are</p><p>still very young, the opportunities will keep on emerge. At the moment there are still great</p><p>gaps in terms of technology between countries, which enables fast growing companies such</p><p>as Lintner to fill a niche and gain new market shares due to their technological lead and</p><p>managerial practices. But how should they enter the new markets and reach the new costumers?</p><p>This research has put the emphasis on creating a guiding discussion on how an international</p><p>expansion strategy could be formulated.</p><p>We have found that organizations can lower the risk and increase their profit potential by</p><p>combining several strategies, that they start by expanding with a low-risk strategy and then</p><p>increase the investments on the market to enable higher profitability. The benefits with this</p><p>approach is that a small computer software company can take advantage from the simplicity</p><p>and low needs for capital and then gradually increase the investment as they get market</p><p>knowledge and a solid customer base. They need to work around challenges such as cultural</p><p>differences by allowing the due diligence to take time and the targeted company to</p><p>become familiar with the intentions of the collaboration. It is important that the organization</p><p>prepares itself for the internationalization; this is done by the creation of slack resources.</p><p>The strategy they choose must be formulated and incorporated in the overall business</p><p>strategy.</p><p>To successfully describe the alternatives to expansion currently available to Lintner, an extensive</p><p>literature review has been conducted. But to fully understand the surrounding environment</p><p>and the challenges with international expansion, we have conducted several interviews</p><p>within Lintner, but also with three organizations that have previously found themselves</p><p>where Lintner is today. The findings from these interviews were interpreted and</p><p>placed in context to Lintner’s and to companies in their specific situation. This has been</p><p>done in order for us to create a meaningful contribution to Lintner’s future growth.</p>

Interdisciplinary cooperation among people trained in technical and economic fields has been identified as an important success factor in new venture teams. However, empirical findings also indicate that individuals often refuse to engage in close and trustful relationships with representatives of other disciplines. Thus the question arises whether education programs on interdisciplinary cooperation may be suitable to prepare students for future activities in multifunctional business start-up teams. In this study, we investigate the psychological effects of an interdisciplinary business planning course held at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration with the intention of promoting cooperation between technology-oriented professionals and business management students. The findings show that this course experience changes the students' attitudinal beliefs with respect to representatives of the technical discipline by reducing stereotypical assumptions. At the same time, the course fosters awareness of the challenges involved in cross-disciplinary cooperation. The more students communicate with their technical counterparts and the more they familiarize themselves with the technical aspects of the project, the stronger these effects become.(author's abstract)

One of the most debated topics within public universities in Brazil is the development of alternative resources generated from entrepreneurial activities in order to supplement the lack of government funding for higher education. This study analyzes this issue, addresses questions about the creation of private institutions that provide fiscal support to federal universities, and discusses the relationship between federal universities and these private organizations. In particular, the research for this project is based on a case study of the Federal University of Ceara (UFC) and the eight private foundations that function within its structure and are sources of additional revenue for the institution. This study draws on resource dependency theory, academic capitalism theory, and globalization theory as its theoretical framework. Resource dependency theory is used to clarify why federal universities in Brazil have turned to private institutions within their structures in order to generate external revenue. Academic capitalism theory provides an understanding as to why universities are shifting their focus and functions towards a new market orientation. Globalization theory is used to explain how emerging international markets and concepts are affecting the new environment in public institutions in Brazil. The present research is based on UFC's experience with the eight private organizations which exist to provide support to their respective departments and to the university as a whole. The data collected is based on institutional documents such as statutes, contracts, and financial statements. Interviews were the other source of data gathering. The results indicate that private institutions (foundations and faculty associations) contribute significantly to the activities of their federal universities by generating additional, external revenue. At the same time, this national phenomenon is the subject of a heated debate centering on the question of whether public higher education in Brazil is essentially becoming privatized. The research also confirms that foundations are contributing to a shift in public higher education toward the new market orientation.