The moral legitimacy of entrepreneurs: An analysis of early-stage entrepreneurship across 26 countries

This article develops our socio-cultural understanding of entrepreneurship by examining the influence of the moral legitimacy of entrepreneurs upon an individual’s engagement in early-stage entrepreneurship. A multilevel analysis conducted across 26 countries demonstrates that the higher the perceived degree of moral legitimacy, the more likely an individual is to consider starting a business, to begin preparing a business and to progress to actually found and run the business. We conclude that moral norms in society are an important influence upon early-stage entrepreneurship; thus, it is critical to legitimize the position of entrepreneurs as moral and beneficial for society as a whole

Predicting the Next Best View for 3D Mesh Refinement

3D reconstruction is a core task in many applications such as robot navigation or sites inspections. Finding the best poses to capture part of the scene is one of the most challenging topic that goes under the name of Next Best View. Recently, many volumetric methods have been proposed; they choose the Next Best View by reasoning over a 3D voxelized space and by finding which pose minimizes the uncertainty decoded into the voxels. Such methods are effective, but they do not scale well since the underlaying representation requires a huge amount of memory. In this paper we propose a novel mesh-based approach which focuses on the worst reconstructed region of the environment mesh. We define a photo-consistent index to evaluate the 3D mesh accuracy, and an energy function over the worst regions of the mesh which takes into account the mutual parallax with respect to the previous cameras, the angle of incidence of the viewing ray to the surface and the visibility of the region. We test our approach over a well known dataset and achieve state-of-the-art results.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures, to be published in IAS-1

How market standards affect building design: the case of low energy design in commercial offices

This paper develops existing work on building design through a focus on one important yet understudied form of regulation: market standards. Market standards are agreed upon definitions of ‘necessary’ provision in buildings and are fundamental in ‘formatting’ markets and determining the value of a building in the market. The paper presents a case study of the design of ten commercial offices in London, UK, the effects of market standards on the designs and on the potential for the development of lower energy buildings. Theoretically, the paper integrates literatures on standards, institutions and markets to argue that market standards do important ‘work’ in design processes that requires closer scrutiny. In particular, we show that market standards: are an important form of normative and cultural regulation in the field of commercial office design; format and act as calculative devices in property markets; and result in forms of knowledge diminution that break the relationship between building design and occupiers’ practices. Together, these effects result in particular designs being legitimised and valued, and lower energy designs being delegitimised, devalued and pushed to the periphery of the attention of commercial office designers

Global institutions and local filtering: Introducing independent directors to Taiwanese corporate boards

Drawing on the idea of selective interaction between organizations and environments, the authors examine how organizations change their traditional practices when they are exposed to new institutional environments. In the context of corporate governance change in response to financial market globalization, they argue that global institutional influence is moderated by local corporate control contexts that function as filtering mechanisms. The authors empirically analyse the adoption of a new corporate governance practice, i.e., the initial introduction of independent directors, in Taiwanese public firms, where family governance has been a dominant governance model. The findings suggest that while firms exposed to US capital markets are more likely to adopt independent directors, this facilitating effect weakens when the firms are under strong family control and is amplified when they are unbound from local frameworks through the key leader???s education or their geographic context

Mitigating agency risk between investors and ventures’ managers

The general management literature has long focused on the agency risks involved in the relationship between general managers and shareholders. Shareholders can deploy contractual and non-contractual mechanisms to reduce these inefficiencies. This study examines - based on a broad international sample of investment contracts - how the use of contractual and non-contractual mechanisms is related to the degree of risks associated with the venture’s development stage as well as how these practices differ across countries. Hypotheses are tested using a proprietary dataset of 265 hand-collected investment contracts associated with ventures in the U.S., Israel and nine European countries. Findings suggest that the use of mitigating contractual and non-contractual mechanisms is related to the degree of agency risks, and that these practices vary across countries. This study draws implications for how investors can best deploy their capital in different institutional settings whilst nurturing their relationships with managers and entrepreneurs

Governors and directors: Competing models of corporate governance

Why do we use the term ‘corporate governance’ rather than ‘corporate direction’? Early British joint stock companies were normally managed by a single ‘governor’. The ‘court of governors’ or ‘board of directors’ emerged slowly as the ruling body for companies. By the nineteenth century, however, companies were typically run by directors while not-for-profit entities such as hospitals, schools and charitable bodies had governors. The nineteenth century saw steady refinement of the roles of company directors, often in response to corporate scandals, with a gradual change from the notion of the director as a ‘representative shareholder’ to the directors being seen collectively as ‘representatives of the shareholders’. Governors in not-for-profit entities, however, were regarded as having broader responsibilities. The term ‘governance’ itself suggests that corporate boards should be studied as ‘political’ entities rather than merely through economic lenses such as agency theory

Differential Pre-mRNA Splicing Regulates Nnat Isoforms in the Hypothalamus after Gastric Bypass Surgery in Mice

Background Neuronatin (NNAT) is an endoplasmic reticulum proteolipid implicated in intracellular signalling. Nnat is highly-expressed in the hypothalamus, where it is acutely regulated by nutrients and leptin. Nnat pre-mRNA is differentially spliced to create Nnat-α and -β isoforms. Genetic variation of NNAT is associated with severe obesity. Currently, little is known about the long-term regulation of Nnat. Methods Expression of Nnat isoforms were examined in the hypothalamus of mice in response to acute fast/feed, chronic caloric restriction, diet-induced obesity and modified gastric bypass surgery. Nnat expression was assessed in the central nervous system and gastrointestinal tissues. RTqPCR was used to determine isoform-specific expression of Nnat mRNA. Results Hypothalamic expression of both Nnat isoforms was comparably decreased by overnight and 24-h fasting. Nnat expression was unaltered in diet-induced obesity, or subsequent switch to a calorie restricted diet. Nnat isoforms showed differential expression in the hypothalamus but not brainstem after bypass surgery. Hypothalamic Nnat-β expression was significantly reduced after bypass compared with sham surgery (P = 0.003), and was positively correlated with post-operative weight-loss (R2 = 0.38, P = 0.01). In contrast, Nnat-α expression was not suppressed after bypass surgery (P = 0.19), and expression did not correlate with reduction in weight after surgery (R2 = 0.06, P = 0.34). Hypothalamic expression of Nnat-β correlated weakly with circulating leptin, but neither isoform correlated with fasting gut hormone levels post- surgery. Nnat expression was detected in brainstem, brown-adipose tissue, stomach and small intestine. Conclusions Nnat expression in hypothalamus is regulated by short-term nutrient availability, but unaltered by diet-induced obesity or calorie restriction. While Nnat isoforms in the hypothalamus are co-ordinately regulated by acute nutrient supply, after modified gastric bypass surgery Nnat isoforms show differential expression. These results raise the possibility that in the radically altered nutrient and hormonal milieu created by bypass surgery, resultant differential splicing of Nnat pre-mRNA may contribute to weight-loss

The labor market regimes of Denmark and Norway – one Nordic model?

The literature on the Danish and Norwegian labor market systems emphasizes the commonalities of the two systems. We challenge this perception by investigating how employers in multinational companies in Denmark and Norway communicate with employees on staffing changes. We argue that the development of ‘flexicurity’ in Denmark grants Danish employers considerably greater latitude in engaging in staffing changes than its Nordic counterpart, Norway. Institutional theory leads us to suppose that large firms located in the Danish setting will be less likely to engage in employer–employee communication on staffing plans than their Norwegian counterparts. In addition, we argue that in the Danish context indigenous firms will have a better insight into the normative and cognitive aspects to flexicurity than foreign-owned firms, meaning that they are more likely to engage in institutional entrepreneurialism than their foreign owned counterparts. We supplement institutional theory with an actor perspective in order to take into account the role of labor unions. Our analysis is based on a survey of 203 firms in Norway and Denmark which are either indigenous multinational companies or the subsidiaries of foreign multinational companies. The differences we observe cause us to conclude that the notion of a common Nordic model is problematic

The politicisation of evaluation: constructing and contesting EU policy performance

Although systematic policy evaluation has been conducted for decades and has been growing strongly within the European Union (EU) institutions and in the member states, it remains largely underexplored in political science literatures. Extant work in political science and public policy typically focuses on elements such as agenda setting, policy shaping, decision making, or implementation rather than evaluation. Although individual pieces of research on evaluation in the EU have started to emerge, most often regarding policy “effectiveness” (one criterion among many in evaluation), a more structured approach is currently missing. This special issue aims to address this gap in political science by focusing on four key focal points: evaluation institutions (including rules and cultures), evaluation actors and interests (including competencies, power, roles and tasks), evaluation design (including research methods and theories, and their impact on policy design and legislation), and finally, evaluation purpose and use (including the relationships between discourse and scientific evidence, political attitudes and strategic use). The special issue considers how each of these elements contributes to an evolving governance system in the EU, where evaluation is playing an increasingly important role in decision making