Strategy and entrepreneurship

Groupon has often been mentioned as the “fastest growing company of all time”. In few years, the company spread over many countries, but was at the same time very criticized for its business model, its profitability and its impact on local businesses. For all these reasons, and even though Groupon has a strong team dedicated to Customer Support and Social Media, Groupon has a weak brand image and a low reputation. This has a strong negative impact on the company’s wealth. How could Groupon’s online reputation be improved?

The aim of this paper was to analyze video-sharing websites, and
understand what makes users prefer either Dailymotion or Youtube.
Youtube is preferred rather than Dailymotion, and I found users complained about Dailymotion usability. I finally tried to give some ways to improve Dailymotion’s interface by using more structured pages, with less information and advertisement, but also by using expressive interfaces and avoiding being qualified as a “frustrating interface” by avoiding a too long waiting time before videos.

Philippe PAILOT et al. C e papier vise à explorer la légitimité perçue par les femmes entrepreneures (FE) et ce, tant dans leurs relations à elles-mêmes (« légitimité identitaire ») que dans leurs interactions avec leurs parties prenantes (« légitimité entrepreneuriale »). La méthodologie basée sur la théorie ancrée repose sur 41 entretiens auprès de FE de secteurs d'activités variés. Nos résultats montrent comment les interactions sociales sont fortement empreintes de jugements catégoriels sexués et genrés contre lesquels les FE vont devoir élaborer des stratégies pour acquérir leur légitimité.-Mots-clés : légitimité entrepreneuriale, légitimité identitaire, femmes entrepreneures T his paper focuses on the perceived legitimacy by these women entrepreneurs (WE). It aims at exploring how WE see themselves as legitimate entrepreneurs ("identity legitimacy") and also how WE perceive the recognition of their different stakeholders ("entrepreneurial legitimacy"). We use a qualitative research design based on grounded theory and undertaken with 41 French WE in different sectors. The findings underline mechanisms of acquiring legitimacy through gendered social interactions. In this context, WE define and implement interesting strategies which challenge traditional norms.

Dans cet article, les auteures s’attaquent aux stéréotypes et proposent une réflexion critique sur l’entrepreneuriat des femmes, au moyen de l’exploration de mythes liés à la création d’entreprises, et plus spécifiquement à ceux entourant les secteurs d’activité dans lesquels oeuvrent les femmes entrepreneures. On y aborde notamment l’accessibilité des secteurs d’activités et les déterminants sociaux influençant le parcours des femmes entrepreneures. Plutôt que de se limiter une présentation descriptive, les auteures cherchent à comprendre pourquoi certaines situations perdurent. Il ressort que la situation des femmes est fortement enracinée dans un écosystème entrepreneurial où les biais persistent et par conséquent favorisant peu la diversité d’entrepreneurs. Des recommandations et pistes d’actions sont proposées pour contrer ce modèle unique.

En s’appuyant sur la théorie de la transaction sociale, cet article propose une grille de lecture interprétative destinée à cerner le processus de construction du sentiment de légitimité des femmes entrepreneures. Sur la base d’une étude qualitative menée auprès de quarante et une chefs d’entreprise, nous montrerons dans quelle mesure ce sentiment est indissociable d’éléments de cadrage de leurs expériences relationnelles qui, loin d’être une réalité extérieure aux séquences interactionnelles, les incluent et forment, en quelque sorte, la toile de fond des situations transactionnelles.

The study investigates the relationship between the three components of perceived quality (service quality, food quality and restaurant atmospherics), positive emotions, and behavioral intentions. By testing competing structural models on a sample of international tourists to casual dining restaurants on the French Riviera, we found that positive emotions have a strong influence on behavioral intentions. Competing paths between service quality, food quality, and restaurant atmospherics with positive emotions were found. The results hold important theoretical and managerial implications for service providers and encouraging international visitors to revisit and recommend restaurants on the French Riviera.

Prior studies show that access to academic knowledge plays a crucial role in new venture financing. We extend this research by shifting the focus from the access to academic knowledge to the developmental state of the academic field, where the academic knowledge is generated. Using natural language processing (NLP), we clustered peer-reviewed academic knowledge from Scopus into various fields. We then analyzed a sample of 341 new biotech ventures from Crunchbase to determine if increased past activity by (1) academics and (2) early-stage venture investors in a particular academic field is associated with the early-stage equity financing of new ventures associated with that field. We found that new ventures associated with academic fields for which academic activity has grown in the past receive more early-stage equity capital. However, contrary to our expectations, we also revealed that when a particular academic field shows greater early-stage venture investments in the past, the amount of early-stage equity capital received by subsequent ventures associated with the same academic field decreases. This suggests that while emerging academic fields signal the presence of business opportunities with high reward potential, past increase in the number of investments by peer earlystage investors associated with a particular academic field signals the opposite.

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Summary This study presents a meta-synthesis (1904-2010) of seminal voices on the 'relevance gap', the abyss between management science and management practice, and on remedies proposed. We then discuss dominant paradigms about truth and meaning and demonstrate how they can lead to irrelevance. We discuss relevance and its implications. We revisit basic notions of pragmatism and suggest how they might influence the meaning of management science. We seek answers in action research and, more specifically, in design-driven action research methods. We introduce the notion of pragmatic adequacy to explain how design-driven action research approaches can reduce the relevance gap, facilitate change and enhance creativity.

Management, an undergraduate business program jointly operated by Reims Management School and Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées. Previously he was on the Faculty of Wharton School and of Rotterdam School of Management, as well as high-tech entrepreneur, manager and management consultant to companies and other organizations in the United States, Latin America and Europe. He holds a Ph.D. in management from the Wharton School and a D.E.A. (advanced post-masters degree) in mathematics from the University of Paris at Orsay.

Purpose – Management practice is progressing at unprecedented pace and often academia is lagging behind, if not totally irrelevant, both in management research and in education. This paper strives to show how principles of pragmatism and action research are likely to increase the relevance of management research and education. Design/methodology/approach – A reflection based on a broad review of ontological and epistemological issues leads to a call for philosophical re-foundation of management academia. Findings – Pragmatism defines truth seeking as reducing doubt, and therefore necessarily includes the notion of a client for the research effort. Action research is a practical embodiment of this approach and deserves a more prominent role. Research limitations/implications – The research limitations and implications are inherent in the chosen methodology/approach: a viewpoint that hopefully stimulates others. Practical implications – This paper makes concrete suggestions as to how ...

Purpose – To provide managers, researchers, and consultants with practical insights on using Communities of Practice to support innovation in organizations. Design/methodology/approach – The research design is based on a four-year longitudinal case study of five Communities of Practice (CoPs) within a Specialty Chemicals division of a multinational company Alpha. Primary (interviews, direct observation) and secondary (internal documents) data were collected and analysed resulting in several conclusions about the role of Communities of Practice in supporting organizational innovation. Findings – The main conclusion drawn from the study is that supporting innovation involves switching between different degrees of managerial involvement in Communities of Practice, namely step-in and step-out modes. The step-in mode results in knowledge expansion, which supports incremental innovation while the step-out mode leads to knowledge probing which supports radical innovation. Research limitati...

Drawing on a longitudinal case study of Alpha Chemicals, we use four complexity theory constructs – adaptive tension, enabling leadership, enhanced cooperation, and boundary spanning – to explain the continuous knowledge creation dynamics in Communities of practice (CoPs). Our findings show that the virtual cycle of knowledge creation results from CoPs oscillating between guided and self-directed modes. In a guided mode, adaptive tension and enabling leadership prevail, resulting in knowledge expansion. In a self-directed mode, enhancing cooperation and boundary spanning are the most significant, resulting in knowledge probing. This research uncovers the value of conceptualizing CoPs as complex adaptive systems with emergent and intentional processes coexisting to create a virtual knowledge creation cycle. Our findings complement the dominant theory on CoPs’ insights by moving beyond the control/autonomy debate and highlighting that knowledge creation dynamics results from a flexibl...

The capacity to innovate impacts organizational performance and is crucial for competitive advantage. However, as structural inertia sets in, large organizations tend to lose their ability to sustain continuous knowledge creation dynamics. Moreover, created knowledge is not always efficiently integrated into new marketable product offerings. As a consequence, organizations continually experiment with designs allowing them to combine both imperatives. Drawing on a longitudinal case study of a large firm operating in the highly competitive Specialty Chemicals industry, we explore how this organization has been able to conjugate the apparently contradictory processes of knowledge creation and integration. Our findings suggest that this capacity is enhanced by effective knowledge flows within and between the different organizational communities.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to gain a better understanding of the challenges to the emergence of a learning organization (LO) posed by a context of generational diversity and an enterprise social networking system (ESNS). Design/methodology/approach This study uses a qualitative methodology based on an analysis of 20 semi-structured interviews in a high-tech organization and internal company documents relating to the introduction of a new, centralized ESNS. Findings This study uncovers fundamental differences between Generation X and Y employees regarding their ESNS adoption and use. While Xers take more time to adopt the new centralized ESNS introduced into the company, their use seems in line with the company culture and corporate norms of behavior. At the same time, even if Yers are faster ESNS adopters, they use it as they use Facebook disregarding the hierarchy and organizational boundaries. This creates tensions between Generation X and Y and undermines the formation ...

In nowadays knowledge intensive organizations – like f.i. IT companies and consultancy firms knowledge sharing process and collaboration represent key success factors for competing in a dynamic business environment. In large organizations characterized by distributed settings, managers need to develop tools and technique that can allow employees and teams dispersed in different geographical area to collaborate and share data, information and knowledge in order to avoid reworks and inconsistencies among projects. The present research in progress paper aims to understand the mechanisms and the tension between the organization that mandates the use of certain technologies and the actors that are supposed to adopt it. The preliminary findings show three different strategies put in place in order to align existing practices and the new logics introduced by the new tool: We have identified three strategies: 1) parallel use strategy; 2) overuse strategy; 3) and tolerant strategy.

This research, focused on strategy-innovation relationship in manufacturing SMEs, investigates whether industry and firm contingencies, generate specific strategy-innovation alignments. The scope of analysis of this relationship is enhanced to the technical, marketing and organizational dimensions of innovation but also to the source (market or technology-based) and nature (sustained or disruptive) of innovation behaviour. To this aim, we use a hybrid model enabling the emergence of contingency-specific combinations of strategic attributes with differentiated innovation attributes. Results support first, the existence of differentiated strategy-innovation alignments, thus, supporting the predictive validity of competitive strategy on firms’ innovation behaviour. Second, results highlight the influence of distinct but complementary industry-specific and firm-specific effects on strategy-innovation relationship, depending on innovation dimensions. Third, from a managerial standpoint, ...

This doctoral research, conducted on French manufacturing SMEs, investigates the relationship between competitive strategy, innovation, and performance. More specifically, the purpose of this work is to understand whether specific patterns of alignment between competitive strategy and innovation influence firm performance. We propose to explore, in three essays, firstly, the influence of strategic posture on innovation behavior, and the existence of strategy-innovation alignments. Secondly, we explore the influence of industry effects and firm's specific effects on strategic posture, innovation behavior, and on strategyinnovation fit. Thirdly, this research investigates the implication of fit between strategic posture and innovation behavior from a performance perspective. The research enhances the scope of analysis of this relationship to the technical but also marketing and organizational dimensions of innovation. Our model, stemming from the rationale of Miles and Snow's adaptive cycle (1978), contributes to further understanding the content-the conditions for achieving competitive advantage-and the process-the dynamics-dimensions of competitive advantage in small businesses. First, results confirm the existence of differentiated alignments between the Entrepreneurial, Engineering and Administrative characteristics of Miles and Snow's strategic postures and the characteristics of their respective innovation behavior, thus supporting the predictive validity of competitive strategy on firms' innovation behavior. Second, results highlight the influence of distinct but complementary industry and firm contingencies on the strategy-innovation relationship. Finally, we confirm the performance implication of fit between strategic attributes and innovation attributes and emphasize the influence of contingencies on this fit and the related performance.