Purpose The purpose of this study is to apply the motivation–opportunity–ability (MOA) framework to investigate the relationships between ambiguity tolerance (AT), reflective thinking (RT) and performance in a complex task to predict knowledge-sharing intent. Design/methodology/approach In this study, 190 subjects performed a complex scheduling task in which they were randomly assigned to either participate in RT or not. Findings Results show that factors of the MOA framework positively predicted knowledge-sharing intent. In addition, RT significantly increased intention to share for individuals with low performance or with low AT. Research limitations/implications More research is needed to determine relationships between complex task performance and knowledge sharing, and the role of learning strategies, particularly self-directed ones such as RT. Future studies may use a larger sample size for more complex analysis. Practical implications RT may be used to create a sustainable and low-cost method of increasing knowledge sharing in complex tasks, without which those with low AT or low performance may not have participated. Originality/value The study supports the importance of contextual influences and points to how organizations can use RT in addition to individual motivation and ability to encourage knowledge sharing.

This study examines the impact of environmental munificence on young firm revenue growth. One hundred and ninety young U.S.-based firms from 42 states are studied for their growth over a three-year period. Specifically, we find that the environmental munificence in terms of entrepreneur’s selected industry has a significant impact on young firms’ revenue growth but the state’s economic condition has no such impact. However, the positive effect of industry growth on young firms’ revenue growth is significantly stronger in states with declining GDP. The findings suggest that state economy may not be as important for starting a business for its revenue growth, and the choice of industry for the business is more important in a declining regional economy than has been previously understood.

Drawing on human-capital theory, we propose divergent associations of professional employees' base pay and incentive pay with their levels of human capital in the small business context. Based on secondary data on 3,750 professional employees representing 65 small firms, we found that, whereas human capital has a positive relationship with base pay, the relationship between human capital and incentive pay is less apparent. Specifically, we found that the relationship between incentive pay and position-specific experience is negative. Our findings suggest that small firms may use higher incentive pay to initially attract talent. Yet, the incentive pay does not grow as professional employees gain firm-specific experience. Moreover, the incentive pay significantly falls as professionals gain more position-specific experience, and this negative relationship is stronger in small firms with higher sales productivity. Further, firm longevity shows a moderately significant positive relationship with base pay; however, the findings show that firm longevity is negatively related to incentive pay.

Prior research suggests significant gender disparities in entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE). Cultural norms, gender role stereotypes, and resulting diverse self-beliefs are often used to explain the significant gender differences in ESE. This study argues that besides cultural norms and stereotypes, the gender difference in ESE can partly be explained by individual background variables such as supervisory experience, business process knowledge, and the level of education. With data from 57 small business owners and 120 graduate and undergraduate entrepreneurship students, the study found that the gender difference in ESE is partly explained by the mediating role of business process knowledge and supervisory experience. The gender difference is also significantly lower at the graduate level of education. These results shed light on the value of business process knowledge, supervisory experience, and graduate level business education in increasing women’s ESE. Implications of the study and its limitations are discussed.

The study investigated the effects of expected reciprocity on knowledge sharing, as moderated by team and individual variables. Data (n = 84) were collected in an experimental study from undergraduate business student participants. The effects of expected reciprocity on knowledge sharing depend on the levels of individual competence, positive team attitudes, functional diversity, and demographic diversity. Implications include that the effectiveness of reciprocity in knowledge sharing depends on several factors relating to the team and individual. Encouraging reciprocity may have positive effects, but these can be overridden by poor team attitudes, low ability perceptions, and team diversity. Future research suggestions are offered.

Drawing on human capital theory, we propose divergent associations of base pay and incentive pay with professional employee human capital in small high-tech firms. Based on secondary data on 3,750 professional employees representing 65 small hi-tech firms we found that while human capital has a positive relationship with base pay, the relationship between human capital and incentive pay is not so consistent. Our findings suggest the relationship between incentive pay and position-specific experience may be negative. We found that small high-tech firms use higher incentive pay to initially attract talent. Yet, the incentive pay does not grow as professional employees gain firm-specific experience. Moreover, the incentive pay significantly falls as professionals gain more position-specific experience.

This introductory chapter portrays the overview and chapterwise contents of this book covering a wide spectrum of activities from oil exploration and production (E&P) operations to business process improvement and the like. It contains 11 real-life optimization and business improvement studies that are worth mentioning and emulating and also explains the purpose and structure of the book. Oil accounts for one-third of world's energy need, while oil and gas together meet more than half of global energy demand. It will continue to dominate global energy mix in the foreseeable future. Oil and gas exploration and production activities are technology-intensive and require expertise of diverse fields. A wide range of topics are covered in the book containing powerful drivers to capitalize opportunity cost and shore up business performance. These studies are easy to emulate and have the potential of saving billions of dollars, besides improving organizational efficiency.

Research suggests that entrepreneurial collective efficacy (ECE) is a potentially valuable construct in understanding the behavior and performance of entrepreneurial teams. Very little research evidence exists about ECE, however. Using 389 graduating BBA and MBA entrepreneurship students representing 91 teams, we investigated the role of ECE as a moderator of the well-established relationships between entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) and individual effort on simulated entrepreneurial activities. Results show that while ESE has a positive association, ECE has a negative association with individual effort. Additionally, as a moderator ECE strengthened the positive association between ESE and effort.

The first purpose of this paper is to present a review of reciprocity in management research, with a particular focus on its use in knowledge sharing studies. The second purpose is to synthesize the varied conceptualizations and measures in the literature into a model with hypotheses to guide future research. Three commonly used theoretical perspectives are reviewed for their underlying assumptions, measures and applications – social exchange, social capital and social influence. Main findings include that reciprocity is not often studied with multiple levels (group, individual, etc.), even though group and individual reciprocity are clearly distinguished in each perspective. Individual reciprocity has three distinct facets important to predict behavior – beliefs, expectations, and attitudes. Finally, the longitudinal nature of reciprocity is rarely studied, even though its role in the theory is critical. Researchers agree that reciprocity is a construct that has not been clearly defined and this lack of clarity has led to multiple applications of the term with different assumptions, measures and applications. Here, a specific focus on three commonly-applied research perspectives allows some clarification of conflict issues, along with a model and hypotheses for future researchers.

The human capital of a firm, as manifested by the experience and education of its workforce, represents a key resource that improves firm productivity. The current study proposes that task-specific experience is a significant organizational resource for small firms seeking productivity. Utilizing objective data from 1572 core-employees representing 100 small firms in two different industries, this study examines how two types of experience (task-specific and firm-specific) interact with education to influence firm productivity. Results show that the relationship between task-specific experience and productivity is stronger in firms with higher levels of core employee education than in firms with lower levels of core employee education.

Executive compensation research has primarily focused on CEO pay and paid very little attention to other executives. This study investigated compensation of upper level managers and their human capital excluding the CEO within firms. We also investigated if this relationship varies across firms with different levels of performance. Specifically, we examined firm-level performance moderated individual-level relationships between an upper-level manager’s human capital and his/her compensation. With multi-level analyses using 728 upper-level managers representing 87 firms we found that ROI growth rate exhibits positive cross-level positive moderating influence on the main effect of education and a negative moderating influence on the main effect of experience on compensation.

Research suggests that entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE), one’s confidence in successfully starting and running a new venture, is an important indicator of one’s intention to start an entrepreneurial venture. Since entrepreneurial teams are well documented reality of the current economic environment, entrepreneurial collective efficacy (ECE) becomes a key variable for the study of entrepreneurship. While a small but growing body of organizational research has started examining collective efficacy, very little is known about its role in entrepreneurship. The current study offers a conceptualization of entrepreneurial collective efficacy and provides a reliable and valid team-level measure. In addition, this study examines important entrepreneurial team-level variables for their contribution toward building entrepreneurial collectively efficacy. Data for this study came from 386 graduating BBA and MBA students representing 90 teams engaged in a semester long venture startup project. Results show that ECE is a team level construct, which is different from ESE and team-level commitment and decision comprehensiveness contributes positively toward ECE.

ABSTRACTWe asked 96 small business owners to rate the criticality of 10 Human Resource issues to their current businesses. The owners perceived the HR issues as having different criticality levels. The analysis showed that the innovation facet of Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) explained significant differences in owners' perceptions of HR activities. The risk propensity facet of EO did not predict differences in the perceived criticality of HR issues. Relevant literature is presented, and then the survey method and measures are detailed. We discuss the findings, limitations and strengths of the research, and, finally, suggested next steps.INTRODUCTIONBased on the resource based view of the firm, entrepreneurship literature proposes that resource accumulation plays a significant role in the entrepreneurial process (Greene, Gene, & Edison, 1997; Haber & Reicheil, 2007). This stream of research in entrepreneurship posits that people are a significant source of competitive advantage. Human capital resources in terms of technical experts, design experts, productive service providers, expert factory workers, talented managers are all thought to be important resources that create competitive advantage and improve performance. Therefore, human resource practices to develop and utilize human resources become important for firm performance. Human resource practices have mainly been studied in large firms, and research in small firms is primarily descriptive (Heneman, Tansky, & Camp, 2000; Golhar & Deshpande, 1997). Deshpande and Golhar (1994) suggest that there are significant differences in human resource practices based on firm size.Accordingly, we are still not clear as to what human resource management (HRM) advice can we offer to small- or medium-sized entrepreneurial (Katz, Aldrich, Welboume, & Williams, 2000: p.7). The lack of research indicates a tremendous opportunity for expanding our knowledge of HRM practices in small and midsized enterprises (SMEs) (Heneman et al, 2000). Hence, scholars have suggested that more research of human resource practices in small firms would make a significant contribution to the SME literature (Rauch, Frese, & Letsch, 2005).Since a company's human capital is defined as the collective productive capacity of its employees (Buchholtz, Ribbens, & Houle, 2003), developing and maintaining employees who provide superior human capital is critical for improving productivity in SMEs. A lack of trained and qualified workers can therefore be a critical threat to the effectiveness of small firms (Ibielski, 1997). HRM practices that are designed to select and retain the best employees, such as hiring and compensation, are important factors in developing and maintaining human capital within SMEs. However, both the popular press and scholarly research in SMEs suggest that the task of attracting and retaining talented employees is more difficult for small firms compared to their larger counterparts (McKee, 1991; Hornsby & Kuratko, 1990; Gilbert & Jones, 2000; Kotey & Sheridan, 2001).The dearth of research makes the current knowledge of effective HRM practices in the context of SME sorely lacking. It is not clear if entrepreneurs vary in their perceptions of human resource practices as significant activities. Despite challenges to applying HRM in SMEs, the limited available research indicates that entrepreneurs' perceived importance of HRM differ depending on individual and firm characteristics (e.g., Cooper, Ramachandran, & Schoorman, 1997; Tocher & Rutherford, 2009). Furthermore, current studies are primarily descriptive and do not incorporate current theoretical knowledge about entrepreneurs. In this study, we propose that entrepreneurial orientation (EO) is a useful theory that may help researchers understand entrepreneurs' perceptions of HRM issues. Since entrepreneurs may possess different levels of EO based on their propensity for entrepreneurship, they may vary in terms of their perceived importance of specific human resource activities. …

The authors investigated the effects of expected reciprocity on knowledge sharing, as moderated by team and individual variables. Data (n = 84) was collected in an experimental study from undergraduate business student participants. Effects of expected reciprocity on knowledge sharing depended on the levels of individual competence, positive team attitudes, functional diversity and demographic diversity. Implications include that the effectiveness of reciprocity in knowledge sharing depends on several factors relating to the team and individual. Encouraging reciprocity may have positive effects, but these can be overridden by poor team attitudes, low ability perceptions and team diversity. Future research suggestions are offered.

The human capital of a firm as manifested by employee knowledge and experience represents a key resource of a firm's capabilities. Prior empirical studies have found that firms composed of high levels of human capital experience superior firm performance. Human capital theory proposes that an individual's general or firm-specific human capital is positively related to compensation. However, empirical studies examining firm-specific human capital's association with higher employee compensation have been inconclusive. The current study proposes that firm-specific human capital be categorized as task-specific and non-task-specific. Employees accumulate task-specific human capital through duties conducted in their current position. Non-task-specific human capital represents experiences gained in prior positions to an employee's current job within the firm. Utilizing human capital data from 38,390 employees representing 76 firms in the IT sector, this study examines the association between forms of human capital and employee compensation at different levels of firm productivity. Results show that task-specific human capital is associated with higher employee compensation. In addition, firm productivity moderates this association.

Close exchange relationships with customers are recognized as important for young firms. In fact, close partnerships with customers provide many advantages, such as innovation, opportunity recognition, reputation, etc. The current paper argues that customers with their close exchange relationships create significant complexities for young firms that require effective structural response. Based on past work on customer driven complexity, four parameters of customer driven complexities were conceptualized: customer variability, customer opportunism, customer-interaction variability, and customer-interaction specificity. Using both archival and survey data from 134 young (6year old or younger) firms, this study tests the moderating influences of customer driven complexity variables on the relationship between structure and growth of young firms. Findings support the suggestion that more formalization and less delegation of authority at the customer interface significantly contribute to the growth in young firms. However, the positive relationship between formalization and revenue growth is found to be weaker when young firms face a higher level of customer variability and stronger when firms face a higher level of customer opportunism. Similarly, the negative relationship between delegation of authority and revenue growth is weaker when these firms face either a higher level of customer-interaction variability or a higher level of customer-interaction specificity.

Drawing on job demands and control theory, we propose a model demonstrating how client variability and safety climate influence occupational well-being in the nursing service environment. We surveyed 194 registered nurses regarding client variability, safety climate, and occupational strain in two large hospitals and obtained injury data for the six months after primary data collection. We found that unit-level safety climate moderated the partially mediated relationship between client variability and injury through occupational strain. Specifically, a stronger safety climate attenuated positive associations between client variability and occupational strain, occupational strain and injury, and client variability and injury.

Organizational decision making requires the ability to process ambiguous information while dealing with overload and conflicting requirements. Although researchers agree that ambiguity tolerance is a critical skill for making high-quality complex decisions, few have investigated the effects of ambiguity tolerance on self-efficacy to make complex decisions. In the current experiment, 151 participants were randomly assigned to either a moderate complexity or high complexity decision task. Ambiguity tolerance moderated the relationships between task complexity and self-efficacy, and between task complexity and the accuracy of self-efficacy in predicting future performance. In the highly complex task, individuals with a higher tolerance for ambiguity reported higher self-efficacy and more accurate self-efficacy versus individuals with lower tolerance for ambiguity. In the moderately complex task, tolerance for ambiguity had no effects on self-efficacy or accuracy. Implications for research and practice are presented, along with study limitations.