In this study we explore whether celebrity CEOs use certain types of language that affect stakeholders’ perceptions more than noncelebrity CEOs do during earnings calls. We focus specifically on the ...sociocognitive processes associated with possessing celebrity and how they are likely to influence celebrity CEOs’ language use. We argue that the sociocognitive outcomes associated with the confidence and sense of authority resulting from the CEOs’ celebrity will increase the likelihood they use more relatively positive, concrete, certain, and self-regarding language, all of which can influence stakeholders’ reactions. We also distinguish between A-list and B-list celebrities, and expect greater celebrity will result in greater language attribute use. Based on 8,203 quarterly earnings call transcripts involving celebrity and noncelebrity CEOs, we find general support for our hypotheses. A-list celebrities employ all four language attributes more than both B-list celebrities and noncelebrities, but B-list celebrities differ from noncelebrities only with respect to some language attributes. Our study contributes to the celebrity literature by enhancing our understanding of how achieving celebrity, and the degree of celebrity achieved, affects CEOs’ behaviors. We also contribute to the corporate communications literature by demonstrating how the sociocognitive processes and outcomes associated with CEO celebrity affect language use that can influence stakeholders’ confidence in what the CEO says, even if it reveals no new information.
Research summary: Alliances offer benefits such as access to capital, knowledge, and markets. Yet, due to their lack of legitimacy, entrepreneurial firms find it challenging to engage in alliances. ...Thus, it is important to examine which factors may drive alliance formation for entrepreneurial firms. We examine whether the presence of venture capitalists (VCs) is such a factor. Whereas current research suffers from endogeneity concerns that make the comparison of VC- and non-VC-backed firms problematic, our empirical design reduces this problem. Overall, we find that the presence of a VC and a VC's experience with taking firms public are positively associated with entrepreneurial firms' alliance formation, and that VCs are more active in forming an alliance when the exit outcome is an acquisition, rather than going public. Managerial summary: Alliances can be of fundamental importance to the growth of entrepreneurial firms. However, because entrepreneurial firms hold limited resources, their access to alliances may be limited. We study whether entrepreneurial firms backed by venture capitalists (VCs) are more likely to enter into alliances than firms without VC backing. A major problem with this sort of analysis is that VCs may cherry pick the best firms, which in turn are more likely to engage in alliances to begin with, irrespective of VCs. Accordingly, we control for the quality of funded firms, and therefore, isolate the VCs' contribution to alliance formation. In doing so, we find support for the importance of the role VCs play in entrepreneurial firms' alliance formations.
Blevins and Ragozzino coment on the study by Etter et al that raises important questions regarding the existing assumptions about media reputation and its impact on organizational reputation. The ...authors argue that the rise of social media means that the previous view of media reputation is less able to account for the substantive effect of organizational reputation. They view social media as new information and communication technologies that enable their users to connect and publicly exchange experiences, opinions, and views on the Internet. This contrasts with the limited social interaction afforded by traditional media, defined as the press organizations, such as newspapers, radio, and television, that inform mass audiences. Here, Blevins and Ragozzino intend to demonstrate that the growing influence of social media, and how it challenges assumptions related to existing views of media reputation, actually makes the relationship between organizational reputation and previous studied aspects of media reputation even more cohesive.
The authors argues the recent article of Parker, Krause and Devers (2019) wherein they integrate concepts from Mishina, Block, and Mannor's (2012) study of reputation and Shen and Cho's (2005) study ...of managerial discretion. Parker et al. call for a more nuanced view of organizational reputation to understand managerial discretion, and they separate reputation into two components: outcome-based reputation, which arises from observations regarding the firm's quality and performance characteristics, and behavior-based reputation, which arises from the firm's behavioral tendencies and past actions. Overall, they argue that these two types of organizational reputation shape the perceived range of actions and objectives available to managers (which represent two distinct forms of managerial discretion). Hence, the authors argue that the two reputation dimensions must be treated as "separate and distinct" when understanding managerial discretion.
In this paper, we predict that venture capital (VC) backed initial public offerings (IPOs) will attract more attention than non-VC-backed IPOs, as VCs offer important signals to investors searching ...for information about entrepreneurial firms. We use a measure developed by Google (i.e., Trends) to capture the spikes in investors' attention experienced by firms in the time period surrounding their IPOs. Our results demonstrate that firms backed by VCs enjoy a far greater spike in attention than their counterparts. Furthermore, we find that firms with more prominent VCs, a larger number of VCs, and VCs situated at farther geographic distances exhibit significantly greater spikes in investors’ attention during the week of their IPO. Combined, the findings show a clear demarcation between entrepreneurial firms with or without VC backing, they bring to the fore new upshots stemming from the relationship between VCs and entrepreneurial firms, and they raise new potential questions on this relationship and beyond.
This paper investigates how venture capitalists’ involvement in new ventures affects the likelihood of entrepreneurial exit, either via an acquisition or via an initial public offering. We examine ...the prominence of venture capitals (VCs), the number of VCs invested in a company, as well as the timing, duration, and magnitude of their investments in new ventures. We find that each of these dimensions directly explains entrepreneurial exit, although their effects tend to differ depending on whether the exit occurs via an acquisition or an initial public offering (IPO). These results withstand several robustness checks and offer a more precise account of how the relationship between new ventures and VC firms unfolds in the early years of the entrepreneurial cycle.
Our paper studies how gender and organizational status affect a university president’s compensation. Similar to previous findings, we hypothesize that women will receive less pay than men. However, ...we go beyond a dyadic view of individual differences to examine gender’s impact on compensation, and we explicate the importance of institutional forces in understanding the gender pay gap. In doing so, we rely on organizational status and hypothesize that the gender pay gap will be less pronounced as a university’s status rises. Although we find that the gender pay gap persists within the university president context, we also find that as a university’s status rises, the pay gap declines. Moreover, our findings show that the gender pay gap disappears at higher-status universities. Hence, accounting for
where
the glass ceiling is broken is an important consideration in understanding the gender pay gap. In sum, by integrating a broader institutional perspective to explain gender differences in pay levels, our paper demonstrates the importance of contextualizing gender to better understand its effects on compensation.
The online appendix is available at
https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2018.1266
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Corporate governance has received substantial scholarly attention for decades, although the focus of this research has by and large been on publicly traded for-profit organizations. However, agency ...problems are increasingly recognized in nonprofits. As such, we examine the application of corporate governance logic in the context of nonprofits. Our study relies on nearly a decade of data spanning 6853 US-based charities and comprising nearly US$346 billion in total revenue. Our results show that common corporate governance practices—such as independent boards, chief executive officer oversight, and transparency—enhance the degree to which donor contributions are allocated toward a charity’s mission. Overall, we assess the broader applicability and benefits of corporate governance and build on literature highlighting links between for-profit and nonprofit organizations. In doing so, we demonstrate the usefulness of governance in this economically and socially consequential context.
Since being introduced over a century ago, trait extraversion and introversion have generated substantial research. However, this research has focused primarily on extraversion, with introversion ...being relatively neglected. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to take stock of extraversion and introversion research in the workplace. Doing so allows us to propose a shift in focus away from extraversion to the study of introversion and its potential positive benefits. First, we briefly review the traits’ evolution during the past century and then examine 10 commonly used trait extraversion scales to better understand how extraversion and introversion are studied. Thereafter, we review 10 years of scholarship (2009–2019) appearing in 12 leading management journals. Overall, we find that there is a positive bias towards extraversion and its positively valenced characteristics such as positive affect, outgoingness and socialness. In contrast, our review reveals that introversion is treated as ‘low extraversion’ and often imbued with negatively valenced characteristics such as social awkwardness and low social self‐esteem. Based on our multilevel review of the literature, we propose a working list of positively valenced characteristics of introversion and suggest how these introversion characteristics might be beneficial at multiple levels in organizations. In doing so, we hope that our paper will generate new ways of seeing introversion and extraversion alike, which should help right the balance in our shared understanding of how extraversion and introversion can positively shape workplace outcomes.
The Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act was signed into law on April 5,2012. A key objective of the JOBS Act was to allow new ventures in the United States to go public and raise growth ...capital more easily and cost-effectively than before. The aim of this paper is to discuss the implications of the JOBS Act for initial public offerings (IPOs). We argue that the JOBS Act gives rise to important spillover effects that may create ambiguous consequences for fibras' IPOs. The central question is whether the JOBS Act's mandate of facilitating rand raising can come to fruition and, if so, which features of it may lead to shifts in capital markets in entrepreneurship. Our paper begins to address these questions and aims to serve as a catalyst for future academic work in this area.
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