Now showing 1 - 10 of 56
  • Publication
    Assessing the Sustainability of the Business Model: Firm Governance Using the Sustainable Value Creation Framework and Its Measurements
    (Haupt Verlag AG, 2023) ;
    The generally accepted definition of sustainability's has a future orientation where "the needs of the present" are satisfied "without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (Brundtland, 1987). That sustainability is at the firm level (as in von Carlowitz, 1712) is an increasingly self-evident proposition. Yet leaders aspiring to make their organizations sustainable face a multitude of challenges, and not exactly because of a lack of choice in the CSR and ESG options available to them. Bafflement can easily turn into frustration when inconsistency, the lack of connection to the firm’s business model or poor-quality data become apparent. On the other hand, progress towards applying sustainability has been considerable over the last decade as exemplified by the ‘big’ global ESG framework and standard-setting organizations. Yet despite the progress made by the copious number of frameworks and measurements, serious issues and blind spots persist. For instance, monopoly positions, subsidies or regulatory privileges are clearly unsustainable and yet rarely captured by existing sustainable frameworks and measurements. This is but one issue—a review of all those identified in the academic and practitioner literature is the paper's first step. In a second step, this paper proposes requirements for sustainability frameworks and measurements. These include: (i) comprehensive capture of sustainable activities; (ii) comprehensive capture of unsustainable activities; (iii) pricing all the value creation and appropriation of the firm; (iv) measuring business model sustainability in relation to the financial statement; (v) measuring the balance of the business model’s sustainable and unsustainable activities. In the third and final step, the paper discusses two sustainable value creation measurements (VCr/VCp) anchored in a multi-disciplinary body theory while developing specific metrics for their calculation. Once empirically validated, the VCp/VCr measurements might inform managers and investors in their choices, inform public policy and could even be employed to adjust equity valuations and credit ratings.
  • Publication
    Measuring Elite Quality
    The aim of this paper is two-fold. Firstly, we present a methodology to measure the novel concept of elite quality (EQ), that is, country’s elites’ propensity– on aggregate – to create value, rather than rent seek. A four-level architecture allows for both an overall quantification of a country’s EQ, as well as an in-depth analysis of specific political economy dimensions, such as elite power. Secondly, the Elite Quality Index (EQx) is brought to life using data on 107 indicators for 151 countries. Our index negatively correlates with inequality measures, which suggests that more powerful elites less inclined to run value creation business models will exacerbate inequality. A variety of robustness tests suggest that the EQx scores and ranking are robust to ceteris paribus changes in key modelling assumptions. Thus, the EQx offers a reliable framework and potentially a new tool to analyze the political economy of countries.
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  • Publication
    Towards a construct of entrepreneurial strategising: the case of private equity
    (Inderscience Enterprises, 2015)
    Hilb, Michael
    ;
    The obvious relevance of entrepreneurship in value creation has set off an intense debate in academia over how strategic management and entrepreneurship relate to each other culminating in the concept of 'strategic entrepreneurship'. As a result, the term 'strategic entrepreneurship', albeit widely used and defined, remains a theoretical concept indicating little more than a potential relationship between the two fields. Such debate, therefore, although fruitful for and typical of dynamic research fields in the process of transformation, may not be as useful for theoretical advancement as practice–informed approaches to theoretical model construction. We thus adopt such an approach by choosing as a starting point a setting in which strategic and entrepreneurial forces meet: the management of private equity funded firms. At the heart of our contribution lies the development of a new theoretical construct, entrepreneurial strategising, which is embedded in the relevant streams of both the strategy and entrepreneurship literature and, to a lesser extent, of behaviourist economics and the statistical notion of uncertainty. Specifically, entrepreneurial strategising refers to the dynamic capability of an organisation to employ discrete strategic and entrepreneurial mindsets; that is, mental models used by decision–takers situationally and, in some instances, simultaneously. Keywords: strategic entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial mindset, behavioural entrepreneurship, theoretical construct, private equity, entrepreneurial strategising, entrepreneurial venturing, mental models
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    Scopus© Citations 3
  • Publication
    ‘Uncertainty Over Risk' to Transform China's Growth : Theoretical Basis to Reassess Investment Spending in National Income Simulations
    (Shanghai People's Publishing House, 2014-07-01)
    China plans the next steps of its remarkably successful economic transformation on the basis of innovation-based endogenous economic growth. Policy-makers across the world aim to generate endogenous or Schumpeterian growth to complement the better understood mainstream varieties of growth; Smithian (trade) and Solovian (capital investment). Schumpeterian growth is associated with the undertaking of uncertain investments with Type III Knightian unknown probabilities. Uncertainty undertakers, investors in innovation, generate true or naïve profits and hence quality economic growth. Facing the ‘unknown' makes this investment type distinct; these investors must rely (to a degree significantly higher than their risk-return investor paradigm peers), on decision-making supported by behavioural (including non-rational choice theory) premises. This paper suggests that before encouraging endogenous Schumpeterian growth, policy-makers must first develop methods to measure this distinct economic activity associated with investment flows in the discrete uncertainty-(naïve) profit paradigm. Such investment flows have distinct properties (compared to classical risk-return investments) and are also constitutive of the investment spending function of national accounts. The Discrete Investment Theorem* postulates two types of investment classes. On one hand, the type of growth resulting from investment in inputs (capital and labour as specified in mainstream economic models). On the other hand, endogenous Schumpeterian growth resulting from innovation. That is, [I = I(u) + I(r)], where [I(r)] represents investment in risk-return projects and [I(u)] investment in uncertainty-profit projects. The GDP spending function [Y = C + I + G + NX] is also the result of past deconstruction (e.g., Marshall did not distinguish between consumer and investment spending). Entrepreneurship (including intra-preneurship, whether corporate or governmental) in its innovative high-growth variety, is the economic activity leading to endogenous growth, and at present it is not measured separately in economic models. In [I(u)] we have an independent (and actionable) variable standing for endogenous growth in econometric simulations. For China's economic policy-makers this approach to national income simulations, could yet be another method to manage the next stages of economic transformation towards an innovation-based economy relying on Schumpeterian growth.
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  • Publication
    Shuei de WeiDu (Chinese)
    (Shanghai Literature and Art Dayi Publishing House Ltd, 2013-12-01)
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  • Publication
    Asian Management and Entrepreneurship: From Identity to Narrative, via Structure
    (World Scientific, 2013-12) ;
    Mitussis, Darryn
    Special Issue on Asian Management and Entrepreneurship, Guest Editorial
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