Browsing by Author "Keyhani, Mohammad"

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    Acquisitions as entrepreneurship: asymmetries, opportunities, and the internationalization of multinationals from emerging economies
    (Wiley, 2012-02-13) Madhok, Anoop; Keyhani, Mohammad
    We investigate the rapid internationalization of many multinationals from emerging economies through acquisition in advanced economies. We conceptualize these acquisitions as an act and form of entrepreneurship, aimed to overcome the ‘liability of emergingness’ incurred by these firms and to serve as a mechanism for competitive catch-up through opportunity seeking and capability transformation. Our explanation emphasizes (1) the unique asymmetries (and not necessarily advantages) distinguishing emerging multinationals from advanced economy multinationals due to their historical and institutional differences, as well as (2) a search for advantage creation when firms possess mainly ordinary resources. The argument shifts the central focus from advantage to asymmetries as the starting point for internationalization and, additionally, highlights the role of learning agility rather than ability as a potential ‘asset of emergingness.’
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    Essays on the Effect of Founders on Performance and Exit of New Ventures
    (2019-04-18) Soleimani, Leila; Keyhani, Mohammad; Woiceshyn, Jaana
    For the last four decades, the entrepreneurship literature has been interested in the effect of entrepreneurs’ characteristics on different aspects of the entrepreneurial process. Yet, there are gaps in our understanding of these effects. A significant limitation of this literature is that little attention has been paid to exit. In Chapter 2 and Chapter 3, this dissertation addresses this gap by studying the relationship between entrepreneurs’ characteristics and new venture exit, in particular mergers and acquisitions. These chapters discuss that entrepreneurs can affect acquisition likelihood through their actual performance, signalling, and exit intention. The analysis in Chapter 2 indicates that team-founded new ventures are more likely to be acquired, and that there is a positive and diminishing relationship between team size and acquisition likelihood. Chapter 3 focuses on the effect of team composition in terms of demographic and human capital characteristics on the acquisition likelihood of new ventures. Chapter 3 shows that gender diversity and the average education level of team members are positively related to acquisition likelihood. In addition, this chapter indicates a negative effect of industry-experience-level diversity on acquisition likelihood. Chapters 2 and 3 contribute to the entrepreneurship literature by recognizing several drivers of new venture exit (i.e. acquisition vs. closure) and emphasizing the need to include exits such as acquisition as a success measure of performance. Chapter 4 aims to address the inconsistencies reported in the literature of the magnitude and direction of the relationship between gender and entrepreneurial performance. Using meta-analysis structural equation modelling, Chapter 4 provides some insights into why female entrepreneurs may under-perform in terms of growth and financial performance; females’ comparative lack of experience and less hours allocated to the businesses are two factors. The higher satisfaction shown by females suggests that overall performance may not be lower if non-financial dimensions are included. These results show that there are direct relationships between gender and different measures of performance which were not explained by the mediator variables in the model. Future research is needed to include other possible explanations to provide a clearer understanding of the relative performance of female and male entrepreneurs.
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    Geographic Tradability and Political Ideology in Crowdfunding
    (2021-08-31) Rezaei, Mohammadhossein; Whalley, Alexander; Keyhani, Mohammad; Beaulieu, Eugene C; Pandes, J. Ari
    Despite the promise of digital technologies such as crowdfunding platforms to remove geographic barriers to trade, distance and local bias effects persist on these platforms, and an active program of research is aiming to identify the drivers and mechanisms of these local bias effects. Using two novel measures of tradability in the context of crowdfunding, we show that crowdfunding campaigns in highly tradable product sectors set higher goals for their campaigns on average. However, correlational analysis suggests that the extent to which tradability can be leveraged can depend on other factors such as political context. We find that political ideology context may act as a barrier to trade such that campaigns located in blue states set higher goals than campaigns located in red states, and also show a stronger association between tradability and goal level compared to campaigns in red states. This thesis is the first ever study on tradability as well as the first ever study on political ideology in the context of reward-based crowdfunding.
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    The Impact of Human Capital on Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurial Outcomes
    (2019-06-11) Sinha, Kanhaiya Kumar; Dewald, Jim R.; Saunders, W. Chad; Keyhani, Mohammad; Kwon, Seok-Woo; Kline, Theresa; Yuan, Wenlong
    In the extant literature, innovativeness, opportunity identification, and performance of the firm are considered to be independently affected by the human capital (i.e., knowledge, skills, and experience) and entrepreneurship. The view that entrepreneurship involves both opportunity and people has led to the call from scholars to look at entrepreneurship in conjunction with human capital to better explain the firm’s growth. Acknowledging this need, the three studies in this thesis explore the relationship between human capital and its impact on entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial outcomes. Chapter 2 of the thesis examines the underlying similarities and complementarities of human capital and entrepreneurship by studying the relationship between learning orientation and entrepreneurial orientation. Using a meta-analysis methodology, this study finds a fairly high correlation of 0.44 between learning and entrepreneurial orientations. The findings indicate that these two orientations have a combinative impact on firm performance, with a combined ability to explain as high as 38% of performance variance. Chapter 3, taking a process view, studies the relationship between human capital and innovation as an essential component of entrepreneurship. The study theorizes and tests the novel idea that learning across the organization (i.e., learning breadth) is associated with organization-wide innovation (i.e., innovation breadth) which in turn impacts performance. Using ordinary Least squares moderated regression, the study demonstrates a curvilinear relationship between learning breadth and innovation breadth. Further, past venture experience of the firm’s leadership moderates this relationship, while innovation breadth is positively related to business performance. The findings highlight the breadth of the innovations as an important extension of inquiry in addition to consideration of a single or dominant type of innovation. Drawing on the insights of the behavioral theory of the firm, Chapter 4 argues that human capital of founders, apart from being associated with the mean performance of new ventures, is also associated with performance variability. The estimated multiplicative heteroscedasticity regression model reveals that (i) past venture experience positively affects firm growth without affecting the variability, (ii) team industry work experience and education increase variability without affecting the mean, and (iii) the age of team members and the ratio of native-born owners hurt the firm’s growth and have a positive effect on variability. Finally, Chapter 5 provides a synthesis across the three essays to demonstrate three interrelated but little explored aspects of human capital and its impact on entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial outcomes.
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    Learning and Performance in Serial Crowdfunding
    (2018-12-19) Hosseini Amereei, Seyed Abbas; Keyhani, Mohammad; Hemmati, Hadi; Malhotra, Ayesha
    Entrepreneurship scholars have long been interested in serial entrepreneurs who engage in multiple entrepreneurial ventures. The opportunity to learn from experience and find ways to systematize entrepreneurship is intriguing, and new technological developments such as the availability of crowdfunding platforms provides new possibilities in this direction. Various theories have been suggested for why past experience may have both positive and negative effects on the subsequent performance of entrepreneurs. In this thesis, I ask: do the theories about the positive and negative effects of past entrepreneurial experience on subsequent performance apply to the crowdfunding context? Do positive effects prevail over negative effects in aggregate? What are the specific mechanisms through which the effects of past crowdfunding experience on subsequent crowdfunding performance are realized? Building on a comprehensive data collection effort, I find that with experience, crowdfunders tend to adjust their goal levels downward, which results in lower pledge amounts for their campaigns (although it increases their chances of success). They also learn through experience to design better campaigns by including more visual elements, more reward tiers, and lengthier descriptions, and these in turn improve subsequent performance. The evidence in this research generally supports the proposition that after controlling for these mediation effects as well as social capital, crowdfunding experience still has a positive direct effect on performance.
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    Mobilizing Female Entrepreneurship Research to Inform Policy
    (2024-04-15) Carlson, Jessica Lynn; Keyhani, Mohammad; Kano, Elena (Liena); Osiyevskyy, Oleksiy; Saunders, Chad; Huq, Jo-Louise; Musabende, Jacqueline
    Gender and entrepreneurship scholars are increasingly called upon to consider policy implications in both identifying research questions and analyzing research results. Similarly, policy professionals are looking to inform policy with best available evidence. Yet, gaps between policy and gender and entrepreneurship scholars remain in both the availability of policy relevant academic research and the applied use of such research within policy domains. This dissertation represents an attempt to fill at least part of this gap by three diverse methods as represented in chapters two through four. Chapter two leverages qualitative methodology to a real-time policy problem and explores how women entrepreneurs experienced the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic to inform the development of specific policy supports. Chapter three leverages an application of the public organization management science approach to identify policy relevant research questions for gender and entrepreneurship scholars, alongside of a review of current literature. Chapter four advances a particular policy relevant research question of special relevance within the current Canadian context, the impact of institutional support, subnational variation and providing unpaid care on the choice to become an entrepreneur. Collectively, these papers aim to advance theory, policy, and practice in helping to close the gap between the academy and policy professionals. The main limitation of this thesis is scope, as the setting both academically and for policy is limited to Alberta. Despite this, the findings of from this thesis can be broadly applied to both theory and practice. Contributions include an increased recognition of who policymakers are and what they are looking for alongside of an extension to the institutional theory of gender inequality of entrepreneurial entry. Future research can further explore policy-relevant research questions such as implications of subnational variations in institutional context on entrepreneurship.
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    A Neopragmatist Approach To Entrepreneurship Research
    (2022-03-15) Schaefer, Reiner; Keyhani, Mohammad; Weinhardt, Justin; de Koning, Alice; Dick, David; Gartner, William
    This dissertation will use neopragmatist philosophy (particularly the work of Robert Brandom and Donald Davidson) to examine three important concepts in entrepreneurship theorizing: entrepreneurial uncertainty, venture ideas, and entrepreneurial opportunities. Neopragmatist philosophers typically understand meaning, objectivity, correct reasoning, and knowledge in terms of social-linguistic interpretive practices. Each of these concepts are perspectival in the sense that different people will interpret others as having a different view than themselves on what is actually objective etc.. According to neopragmatists we should analyse these concepts not by trying to identify any sort of criteria which distinguishes which perspectives are actually correct (e.g. what is actually known), but instead identify how these concepts are used when people try to interpret the perspectives of others in relation to their own. This dissolves many difficult ontological problems (e.g. realism vs constructivism). I will argue that the concepts ‘entrepreneurial uncertainty’, ‘venture ideas’, and ‘entrepreneurial opportunities’ are similarly perspectival and that a neopragmatist lens allows us to fruitfully understand them in terms of how we scholars use them when interpreting the perspectives of the entrepreneurs we are studying—who are in turn interpreting the perspectives of their stakeholders. In chapter two I will argue that Knightian uncertainty (understood as the inability to calculate probabilities) seems largely irrelevant to practicing entrepreneurs, and that we should reconceptualize and study entrepreneurial uncertainty as a lack of social justificatory resources. In chapter three I argue that instead of conceptualizing venture ideas as mental representations we should instead conceptualize them in terms of their role in social justificatory practices whereby entrepreneurs have to navigate how their perspectives diverge from their stakeholders. In Chapter four I argue that when an entrepreneurship scholars says that an entrepreneur pursues an opportunity they are not only claiming that the entrepreneur perceives the course of action as favourable, but are themselves taking a stand on its favourability relative to whatever theoretical lens they are using. The question “what are entrepreneurial opportunities” ceases to be an ontological debate and becomes instead a more fruitful debate about how we scholars can bring relevant theoretical insights to the perspectives of practicing entrepreneurs.
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    The impact of intangible intensity on the amount and quality of accruals, the tone of narrative disclosures, and the stock of capital assets
    (2023-07) Iqbal, Aneel; Srivastava, Anup; Warsame, Hussein; Anderson, Mark; Zhao, Rong; Nault, Barrie; Trabelsi, Samir; Keyhani, Mohammad
    My dissertation consists of three studies about the impact of intangible intensity on the amount and quality of accruals, the tone of narrative disclosures, and the stock of capital assets. In my first study, presented in Chapter 2, I examine whether the amounts of accruals, their composition (components such as working capital, long-term, conditionally conservative, nonarticulating, and financial accruals), and their properties (alleviating timing difference between the occurrence of economic events and cash flows, as well as accruals’ ability to predict cash flows and earnings) differ for knowledge versus physical firms. I find that, as a percentage of assets and revenues, the absolute value of accruals is larger for knowledge firms than for physical firms. This pattern indicates that accounting for knowledge firms requires at least as much judgment and estimates as for physical firms. Meanwhile, accruals’ timing mitigating role is more prone to estimation errors for knowledge firms. Despite higher errors, knowledge firms’ accruals are as predictive of future earnings and cash flows as for physical firms, at least by the time knowledge firms become large and mature. This study contributes to the ongoing debate on the changing usefulness of accrual accounting vis-à-vis cash accounting, as the composition of listed firms shifts toward knowledge firms. I show that accrual accounting remains prevalent and useful despite this shift. In my second study, presented in Chapter 3, I estimate investment and maintenance portions of research and development (R&D) and MainSG&A (SG&A minus R&D), and their amortization rates, on an industry-year–specific basis. My modified book value, inclusive of capitalized intangibles, exhibits greater association with future returns, investments, and bankruptcies, relative to as-reported and mechanically estimated book values. I provide a better estimate of book values of assets and equity for consumers of financial statements. In my third study, presented in Chapter 4, I develop a model that uses the level of uncertainty in the narrative disclosures of the loss-reporting firms to predict their future earnings. I find that the level of uncertainty in narrative disclosures contains incremental information about the future performance of the loss-reporting firms. This information is economically significant as a size-adjusted hedged portfolio based on this information provides abnormal returns. In additional analysis, I find that the level of uncertainty in the narrative disclosures is more informative for young firms and those that report special items and research and development expenditures.
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    Three Essays on Early Internationalization: Antecedents, Process and Performance Outcomes
    (2018-07-27) Fariborzi, Hadi; Verbeke, Alain; Keyhani, Mohammad; Osiyevskyy, Oleksiy; Roessingh, Hetty; Sui, Sui
    Internationalization of firms in the early years after their start-up is a phenomenon on the rise. Scholarly work on these early internationalizing firms have made significant contributions to our understanding about the antecedents to their emergence, the process of their formation and operation, and their performance outcomes. There are, however, important gaps in our understanding about these firms due to inconsistency in findings of past research and lack of cohesive, integrative and theory-driven studies. This dissertation is an attempt to fill these gaps by integrating findings of past research and exploring processes and outcomes seldom analyzed before. The meta-analysis structural equation modelling in Chapter 2 integrates findings of past empirical research and finds support for an explanatory framework consistent with mainstream international business theories. The analysis in Chapter 3 showed that firms rely on balancing the slack in their human resources across alternative growth paths, whereby lower levels of slack motivate international product development while higher levels of slack stimulate international expansion. Lastly, the survival analysis in Chapter 4 shows that when the preparedness of firms based on their firm-specific advantages to enter international markets is accounted for, young ventures with an international presence have a higher survival rate compared with their domestic counterparts. Despite limitations, the totality of these findings have important contributions to our understanding of early internationalization. They show that mainstream international business theories can be used to explain the case of early internationalizing firms. This theoretical framework can be supplemented, rather than supplanted, by findings of empirical research on early internationalization. This dissertations also provides details about growth decisions of young firms explaining a choice of international expansion as opposed to alternative growth paths, and offers insights about the performance outcomes and survival effects of early internationalization. The findings of these manuscript cast new light on the significant role of firm-specific advantages at the individual- and firm-level in the internationalization process of entrepreneurial firms. Besides they suggest there might be boundary conditions to a widely accepted concept in international entrepreneurship, the learning advantages of newness that can be further explored in future research.
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    Toward a theory of entrepreneurial rents: A simulation of the market process
    (Wiley, 2014-01-02) Keyhani, Mohammad; Lévesque, Moren; Madhok, Anoop
    While strategy theory relies heavily on equilibrium theories of economic rents such as Ricardian and monopoly rents, we do not yet have a comprehensive theory of disequilibrium or entrepreneurial rents. We use cooperative game theory to structure computer simulations of the market process in which acts of creation and discovery disequilibrate and equilibrate the market over time. Using simulation experiments, entrepreneurial rents can be isolated from structural rents by keeping initial structural advantages constant. We impute entrepreneurial rents to underlying actions of creation and discovery under various combinations. Our results have relevant implications for entrepreneurship strategy, particularly for firm boundaries and resource allocation decisions.
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    What is Data?
    (2023-04-14) Chattoraj, Ananya; Waters, C. Kenneth; Ereshefsky, Marc; Zach, Richard; Keyhani, Mohammad; Griesemer, James
    Philosophers of science researching data-intensive scientific practices have largely converged on the idea that data are relational artifacts, where data are defined through their relations to scientific practices. I use the relationality of data as a starting point to construct a schema that highlights three relata of data. My aim is to foreground relata that I believe have largely been pushed to the background in the current literature. My schema is: Communities use technologies to create data for a purpose. Beginning with a survey of philosophical literature, I show the development of data as a relational artifact. I first present the accounts of Patrick Suppes and of James Bogen and James Woodward. The relevant works of these philosophers focus on how data relates to theories, expanding it to proposing that data provides evidence toward claims for phenomena, which in turn provide evidence for claims of theories. Then, I present the relevant works of Ian Hacking and Sabina Leonelli. Here, data are considered in relation to laboratory practices and the content and form of data are investigated in more detail. I move on to constructing my schema of data. I argue that philosophers ought to foreground communities, technologies, and purposes when analyzing data practices. I do so by analyzing a historical case of thermometry before inspecting communities, technologies, and purposes in greater detail. Communities influence data practices through their complex interactions, done between individuals, groups, and groups of groups. Choices in technology affect the pace of data practices since tools directly influence the content of data that are created. Furthermore, technological choices are determined through community interactions, and often influenced by practical limitations of financial and resource limitations of a lab. Lastly, much of philosophical literature has focused on data's use as evidence, but I argue that there are multiple uses for data. In particular, data may be used as representation without abandoning relationality, and that data may be used to train algorithms. Evidence, representation, and training are distinctly important uses of data. My schema may be used a starting point for further philosophical investigation into data practices.