The overall aim of this thesis is to uncover the key determinants of innovation in New Zealand firms and consider some of their likely effects. In order to provide a broad perspective on New Zealand’s local innovation processes, a mixed method approach combining both quantitative and qualitative analysis was adopted to allow analysis of both empirical data and case study data. The quantitative part of analysis utilises the unique dataset developed by Statistics New Zealand, namely the prototype Longitudinal Business Database (LBD), and the qualitative analysis includes four in-depth company case studies which complement the regression analyses by uncovering the key patterns of innovation behaviour at the firm level. In summary, a number of conclusions have been drawn from the research. Firstly, firms experience considerably smaller positive size effect because of New Zealand’s unique firm demographics, and the small size has limited individual firm’s innovation opportunities. Secondly, firms’ ability to develop new technologies directly influences their innovative ability, which is highly dependent on the availability of funds and skills. Lastly, innovation in New Zealand has a very strong market focus, while technology suppliers such as universities and Crown Research Institutes only have a limited role in selected industries.

Demographic change as well as pressure from the European Union and national government are forcing organisations to change age-discriminatory Human Resource Management (HRM) approaches. Based on a qualitative analysis of eight British and German organisations, we found that commitment, scope, coverage and implementation of age management differ due to country-specific institutions, particularly government, in nudging employers and unions to preferred age practices. This confirms the path-dependency concept suggested by institutional theory. Nevertheless, we also found that industry-specific factors mediate the implementation of age management, leading to some convergence across countries. This indicates that organisations deviate from the institutional path to implement practices that they deem important. (authors' abstract)

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No / Purpose: Using arguments from the regulatory focus and upper echelons theories, this paper aims to examine the impact of a chief executive officer’s (CEO’s) regulatory foci (i.e. promotion and prevention focus) on small- and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs’) level of innovativeness and how these relationships are jointly moderated by intense competition. Design/methodology/approach: The empirical analysis draws on survey data gathered from 257 SMEs in Ghana. Findings: The study findings indicate that a CEO’s level of promotion focus positively affects the firm’s engagement in innovation, while a CEO’s prevention focus is negatively associated with the firm’s innovativeness. The positive association between a CEO’s promotion focus and a firm’s innovativeness is enhanced under conditions of intense competition. Additionally, the negative relationship between prevention focus and firm-level innovativeness is attenuated under intense competition. Research limitations/implications: This study relied on a single informant and also used subjective measures for the dependent variable. As such, individual respondents might have biased perspectives on firm-level product innovativeness. Future studies may use multiple informants to examine the causal links of the variables. Practical implications: The study’s findings provide managers with a deeper understanding of how to achieve superior firm-level product innovation. The understanding of this issue can promote the development and maintenance of further entrepreneurial ventures in emerging economies. Originality/value: The paper has a strong theoretical value as it pioneers research on the effect of CEOs’ regulatory foci on firm-level innovativeness in competitive environments.

Export, migration and costs of trade: evidence from Central European firms, Regional Studies. This article analyses the link between immigration and trade at the firm level, utilizing information on the export activities of 8300 firms located in different Central European countries (Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary) for various export markets as well as regional data on immigration. The empirical analysis suggests a strong, economically meaningful and statistically significant impact of immigration on the export propensity (extensive margin), whereas the influence on firms' export volumes (intensive margin) is much smaller. This leads to the conclusion that immigrants promote export activities to their home countries mainly by reducing fixed costs of trade.

The positive relationship of firm-level entrepreneurship and performance has received much attention in recent years and has become an attractive title in the entrepreneurship literature. This popularity encourages researchers to study the role played by the phenomenon on other organizational outputs such as internationalization. Until now, the majority of international studies have put their attention on the conceptual explanation of the interaction, and the number of empirical studies on the subject is few. Furthermore, almost all the empirical studies have been performed in developed and emerging markets, and developing areas such as the Middle East are nearly ignored. In the real context of Iranian business, policymakers support entrepreneurship as a proven way to improve the internationalization of smaller companies. Following this assumption, several supportive plans have been designed and executed which aim to increase the entrepreneurial status of SMEs as a way to enhance their internationalization. A question worth answering here is: Does having a better entrepreneurial stature mean better internationalization for Iranian SMEs? To answer this question and to fill the gap in the literature on the subject, this research explains the relationship of firm-level entrepreneurship and the internationalization of Iranian SMEs. To resolve the current conceptualization problem of firm-level entrepreneurship and to respect a broad conceptualization of entrepreneurship, a profile measurement model was employed in which companies are classified into four different groups: non-entrepreneurial, forced entrepreneurial, latent entrepreneurial, and actual entrepreneurial. This profile model incorporates the two popular constructs of entrepreneurial orientation and corporate entrepreneurship to determine the entrepreneurial stature of a company. Surprisingly, while the literature predicted the highest level of internationalization for actual entrepreneurial companies, the forced entrepreneurial firms showed the best internationalization in reality. The only exception was when the environments became very hostile, in which the actual entrepreneurial SMEs suppressed the forced entrepreneurial, showing better internationalization. These unexpected conclusions led the researcher to consider the complementary role of business networks. A case study approach was applied. The results revealed the importance of actor type in the decision to enter a foreign market, structural holes in identifying international opportunities, and network closure in realizing the opportunities. In simpler words, the forced entrepreneurial company held a better position to receive the information about international markets because most actors who dealt with them where international companies. In addition, it enjoyed an external network rich of structural holes and a dense internal network, which respectively facilitated the exploration and exploitation of subsequent international opportunities. All in all, however, firm-level entrepreneurship seems an important factor of companies’ internationalization that could somehow justify why entrepreneurial companies show better international activities than nonentrepreneurial firms, it is not able to explain how different types of entrepreneurial companies could hold different levels of internationalization. This is the mutual interaction of entrepreneurial status and the network structure that presents a powerful explanation of the difference in internationalization among companies. Therefore, researchers are invited to focus more on a configurational analysis of firm-level entrepreneurship, network structure, and internationalization, and policymakers are recommended to see both entrepreneurship and business networks when they design a supportive plan to improve the internationalization of SMEs. / <p>In the printed version is the ISBN incorrrect: 978-91-7519-497-4. The ISBN is corrected in the electronic version.</p>

Esse trabalho tem como objetivo investigar a existência de heterogeneidade no ganho de qualidade informacional com a adoção de IFRS. A adoção de IFRS está geralmente associada com um aumento de qualidade das demonstrações contábeis. Entretanto, as empresas dentro de um mesmo país provavelmente possuem diferentes incentivos econômicos em relação à divulgação da informação. Nesse sentido, tratar as empresas de forma homogênea, sem considerar os incentivos econômicos atrelados, poderia contaminar a investigação da qualidade informacional. É analisado o caso do Brasil, um país classificado como code-law, cuja legislação fiscal induzia a prática contábil e cuja adoção de IFRS foi mandatória. Em primeiro lugar, as empresas brasileiras listadas na BOVESPA foram separadas em dois grupos, a saber: as empresas que emitiram ADR até a adoção de IFRS e as empresas que não emitiram ADR até a adoção de IFRS. Em seguida, esse segundo grupo de empresas foi agrupado, por meio de uma análise de conglomerados, em dois diferentes subgrupos em função de incentivos econômicos em comum. Com base nos grupos identificados, é testada a qualidade da informação contábil para cada grupo antes e após a adoção de IFRS. Esse trabalho utiliza o reconhecimento tempestivo dos eventos econômicos, a value relevance do lucro contábil e o gerenciamento de resultados como proxies para verificar a qualidade da informação contábil. Os resultados encontrados sugerem que um determinado conjunto de empresas obteve, de fato, um incremento de qualidade da informação contábil divulgada após adoção do padrão IFRS no Brasil. Esse grupo de empresas teria incentivos suficientes para deixar para trás a conformidade contábil-fiscal e apresentar uma qualidade superior no seu conjunto de informações contábeis divulgadas. Além disso, foi verificado um segundo grupo de empresas com qualidade da informação contábil antes e após 2008. Em contrapartida, foi identificado um terceiro conjunto de empresas que não apresentou qualidade da informação contábil seja antes ou após 2008. Esses resultados corroboram o pressuposto de que os incentivos no nível das empresas possuem um papel relevante na qualidade das demonstrações contábeis. Isso não implica afirmar que as normas contábeis não importam, mas de que existem outros direcionadores que moldam a qualidade das demonstrações contábeis e que as normas contábeis deveriam ser vistas como um desses direcionadores. / This work aims to investigate the existence of heterogeneity in the quality of accouting information after the adoption of IFRS. The adoption of IFRS is generally associated with an increased quality of the financial statements. However, companies within the same country probably have different economic incentives regarding the disclosure of information. Accordingly, treat companies evenly, without considering the linked economic incentives, could contaminate the identification of information quality after the adoption of IFRS. It examined the case of Brazil, a country classified as code-law, whose tax laws induced the accounting practice and whose adoption of IFRS is mandatory. First, Brazilian companies listed on the BOVESPA were separated into two groups, namely: companies issuing ADRs to the adoption of IFRS and the companies that have not issued ADR to the adoption of IFRS. Then, this second group of companies were grouped by means of a cluster analysis in two different subgroups based on economic incentives in common. Then, based on the identified groups, the accounting quality information is tested for each group before and after the adoption of IFRS. This work uses the timely recognition of economic events, value relevance of net income and earnings management as proxies for the quality of accounting information. The results suggest that a particular group of companies obtained, in fact, an increase of accounting information quality after adoption of the IFRS in Brazil. This group of companies would have sufficient incentives to leave behind the accounting and tax compliance and provide superior quality to your set of accounting information disclosed. In addition, a second group of companies with quality of accounting information was checked before and after 2008. In contrast, a third group of companies has been identified that did not show quality of accounting information either before or after 2008. These results support the assumption that incentives at the level of companies have an important role in the quality of financial statements. This does not imply stating that accounting standards do not matter, but that there are other drivers that shape the quality of financial statements and accounting standards should be seen as one of those drivers.

This paper examines the innovative behavior of agri-food firms located in Central and Eastern Europe. In the literature, empirical analyses on innovation activities of firms focus on various case studies from around the world. However, very few studies explored the innovation of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) from Central and Eastern Europe’s agri-food sector. The analysis uses the logit estimation method and firm-level data, which are obtained from ERBD-World Bank Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Survey (BEEPS). Results suggest that firms that spent some proportion of their financial budget on research and development (R&D), had workforce training programs and bought fixed assets are more likely to launch product, process, organizational and marketing innovations.

Problem: There is a significant lack of research within the family business area which focuses on the micro-processes of strategy. Johnson, Melin and Whittington (2003) stated that while the field of strategy has traditionally concentrated on the macro-level of organizations, it needs now to attend to much more micro-level phenomenon. Furthermore, there is a general lack of research within the family business area in regards to strategy processes due to "the family business definition dilemma" (Lumpkin, Martin &amp; Vaughn, 2008, p. 127). This dilemma is suggested to be lessened by a better understanding of the impact of the individuals on the strategic process. Purpose: This thesis examines influences on the micro-processes of strategy formation in the family firm in order to contribute to the family business research area. The specific influences that are in focus we labeled as 'components of identity'. These components of identity focus on the 'who' of the micro-process. Components of identity include identity, psychological ownership and attachment. Main research question: How and why do the components of identity influence the micro-process of strategy in a family firm? Method: This is an exploratory study which is based on a qualitative study of 14 individuals in six family-owned companies in the Småland area of Sweden. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with both family members and non-family members in an attempt to create case studies and contribute inductively. The case studies are presented in a storytelling format and were then used as a starting point for our analysis. Each case was analyzed from the perspective of the different components of identity as well as studying the influence that the dyadic relationship has on the family members. The names of the companies and the people involved have been changed in order to protect their privacy since this topic is personal in nature. Main findings: Gaining a better understanding within our area of study has allowed us to make some conclusions about the "how and why" of micro-processes of strategy in the family firm. One of the main findings, which makes a vast difference in this area of research, is the fact that the power-base within each company must be identified in order to enable a correct understanding of the micro-processes within the firm. Further, our results show that history, both in terms of historical decisions regarding the family business as well as the individual's past, play a significant role on strategy formation today. Moreover, the circumstances and emotions surrounding the individuals' entry into the family business impacts not only on succession process but also the direction of the firm, risk taking behaviour and asset retention. We were also able to make some conclusions with regards to family business strategy process. As well as provide a starting point for further research into the micro-process and the family business definition, we provide a basis for a possible new direction of governance research.

Using firm-level data of manufacturing sector during the period 1989-2010, this thesis explored the export behavior of firms in Turkey. Up to date, Turkey&rsquo / s export performance has been analyzed from macro perspective extensively. However, far too little attention has been paid to firm-level analysis contrary to ongoing and growing empirical literature. The preliminary analysis revealed the superiority of exporting firms. Both self-selection and learning-by-exporting are found to be valid explanation for the source of this observed export premium. Dynamic discrete choice model results provide supportive evidences for the existence of sunk-costs. Besides, it is observed that sunk-costs varied during the crises. Sunk-costs not only shape export decision but also affect timing decision. The exit and entry dynamics of the firms has been studied using duration analysis. Results showed self-selection of less profitable firms into export markets and importance of non-price competition for the survival of exporters. Impact of crises on export behavior has been examined by regarding extensive and intensive margins of exports separately. The findings implied that for 1994 crisis increase in extensive margins, for the case of 2001 crisis increase in intensive margin and for 2008 crisis decline both in extensive and intensive margins of exports dominated. This thesis makes several noteworthy contributions to the existing literature. First, it contributed to the ongoing and growing empirical literature using Turkish data. Secondly, unlike, existing studies that investigate single feature of the export behavior, in this thesis, using different approaches the issue has been analyzed extensively. Moreover, using advantage of the data set and Turkish economy, the impact of different types of crisis on export behavior has been analyzed and contributed to the literature that studies the impact of shocks on export behavior.