ESCP Business School

Scholars studying entrepreneurship are increasingly interested in understanding the impact of informal factors, such as national culture or norms, on entrepreneurial behavior. One concept that is receiving particular attention is fear of failure. While the prevailing assumption here is that it functions as a hindrance, recent studies are beginning to challenge this view. Adopting a perspective on fear of failure as a country’s cultural characteristic, we examine its differential effects on the emergence of entrepreneurship at the country level across three stages of the entrepreneurial process: the pre-launch, launch and post-launch stage. Across a set of 89 countries, we find empirical evidence showing that the effects of collective fear of failure unfold differently at subsequent stages of entrepreneurship. While collective fear of failure is negatively related to the emergence of entrepreneurial intentions and opportunity-seeking behavior, it is positively related to entrepreneurial activity in later stages that aims to achieve growth and innovation. Our research contributes to the field of entrepreneurship by reconciling previously conflicting findings on the role of fear of failure in entrepreneurship and extends the ongoing discussion of entrepreneurship as a process.

Impact investors are supposed to generate financial returns alongside social and environmental benefits. Increasingly, they must also measure these benefits as a form of performance management to provide robust evidence of impact. However, it is an “open secret” that because of inconsistencies and fragmentation in the applied means of impact measurement, ends are imperfectly met. In this article, we probe how and why means–ends decoupling occurs in impact investing in plain sight. We apply a qualitative and interpretative approach, drawing on 135 interviews and 102 documents gathered from impact investors. We find that impact measurement is not primarily used for performance management but plays a relational role between stakeholders. We uncover and conceptualize three mechanisms that drive decoupling between the ideal and actual functions of impact measurement, namely impact measurement as: (1) communication, (2) categorization, and (3) construction of the domain. We also find an important contingency: decoupling becomes more likely with increasing systemic opacity in an investment field. We outline contributions to the organizational decoupling literature and the sociology of quantification, and we show how the problems that arise from means-ends decoupling could be overcome.

Drawing on self‐determination theory, this study advances our understanding of employees' experiences working from home (WFH). Specifically, we examine the effects of two social‐contextual characteristics of WFH arrangements: whether employees voluntarily initiate their arrangement ( WFH initiation) and the proportion of WFH employees in a unit ( WFH density ). We conducted multilevel analyses on a multisource dataset drawn from organizational HR records and two surveys of 2115 WFH employees in a Fortune 500 organization. Employees who voluntarily initiated WFH, rather than at their employer's direction, experienced higher job autonomy and lower isolation. WFH employees in units with a lower proportion of other WFH employees experienced higher job autonomy. WFH initiation and WFH density also had effects on several distal employee outcomes, including job satisfaction, organizational knowledge, and turnover intentions, through their effects on job autonomy and isolation. Our findings provide valuable insight into the experiences of WFH employees and call attention to two important, yet understudied, factors that shape these experiences.

The invasive wasp-mimicking Tiger Longicorn Beetle, Xylotrechus chinensis, a potentially lethal pest of mulberry trees (Moraceae: Morus spp.), was first reported in Europe in 2018. In Catalonia its spread has been impressive: one district, four towns, 44 km2 in February 2018; four districts, 12 towns, 378 km2 in July 2020; seven districts, 65 towns, 1,134 km2 in December 2023. It is likely the infestation will spread further in the future, in particular along the Mediterranean coast from Spain to Greece. The flight period of this beetle in Mediterranean countries is expanding on both ends (from the end of April to mid-October), probably due to increasing temperatures because of climate change, although this should be further proved. The adult beetle life span is 18-23 days in insectaria, likely somewhat shorter in the wild since they do not feed and spend more energy flying outside. The single treatment with abamectin carried out in a Catalonian town in June 2022 on a sample of 24 trees (12 treated, 12 untreated) has been effective in reducing the infestation of this beetle in relation to untreated trees. But the reduction was not complete since new exit holes appeared during the summer of the following year. Therefore, an additional treatment carried out during the first ten days of October should be tested to achieve a better control of this pest. It would also be worthwhile trying a single treatment of abamectin in mid-July since it should be able to kill larvae hatching before the treatment and still have sufficient residual activity for larvae hatching after the treatment, and thus cover the entire activity period. Also, to get satisfactory mulberry tree protection, it is likely that treatments might have to be repeated for a few consecutive years. Yearly re-infestations from untreated public and/or private mulberry trees are also a concern and make short-term control of this pest difficult, no doubt accounting for the rapid spread of this beetle.

Strategic leaders’ reputation plays a pivotal role in shaping organizations and their success. Numerous authors across disciplines have begun to study strategic leader reputation, leading to the results being scattered across different literatures. We perform a systematic literature review to synthesize the literature across the different academic subfields of business administration and economics. First, we establish a multidimensional definition of strategic leader reputation. Next, we structure and synthesize the relevant literature on three types of strategic leaders: CEOs, other top executives, and directors. We structured our study around three overarching themes: the antecedents of strategic leader reputation, the consequences of such reputation, and moderating effects. We present these themes in a coherent and comprehensive framework, accounting for different theoretical lenses, contexts, and empirical methods. We consequently contribute by providing a holistic perspective on strategic leader reputation in organizational research. Finally, we develop a comprehensive roadmap for future research, specifically highlighting measurement issues and the question of the stability of reputation.

Forecasting emergency medical service (EMS) call volumes is critical for resource allocation and planning. The development of many commercial and free software packages has made a variety of forecasting methods accessible. Practitioners, however, are left with little guidance on selecting the most appropriate method for their needs. Using 5 years of data from 3 cities in Alberta, we compute exponential smoothing and benchmark forecasts for 8-hour periods for each ambulance station catchment area and with a forecast horizon of two weeks—a spatio-temporal resolution appropriate for tactical planning. The methods that we consider differ on three spectra: the number and type of time-series components, whether forecasts are computed individually or jointly, and the way in which forecasts at a specific resolution are converted to forecasts at the resolution of interest. We find that it is important to include a weekly seasonal component when forecasting EMS demand. Multiplicative seasonality, however, shows no benefit over additive seasonality. Adding other time-series components (e.g., trend, ARMA errors, Box-Cox transformation) does not improve performance. Spatial resolutions of station catchment area and lower, and temporal resolution of 4–24 hours perform similarly. We adapt an existing hierarchical forecasting framework to a two-dimensional spatio-temporal hierarchy, but find that hierarchical reconciliation of forecasts does not improve performance at the forecast resolution of interest for tactical planning. Neither does jointly forecasting time series. We show that added complexity does not materially improve forecasting performance. The simple methods that we find perform well are easy to implement and interpret, making implementation in practice more likely. In a simulation study we alter the empirical weekly patterns and demonstrate how extreme differences between the weekly seasonality patterns of different regions cause hierarchically-reconciled bottom-up approaches to outperform top-down approaches.

International climate agreements are one of the best-known approaches to coordinating climate actions among governments but face a free-rider problem, where individual governments lack sufficient incentives to reduce emissions. This study examines the role of investors in providing rewards to governments through sovereign bond yields to encourage climate cooperation and reduce emission intensity. Using a difference-in-differences method, this study examines how sovereign bond yields change around the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. The findings show that investors reward governments committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions with a 4 to 5 basis point decrease in sovereign bond yields. This suggests that investors better compensate countries making significant commitments to climate agreements, helping mitigate the free-rider problem and encouraging effective climate action.

Ante Starčević shares his concept of clean work. Ante Kovačić erects money as the absolute master in the world. Toma Bebić confesses that: “All my life, I made the mistake of thinking that there were other ideals in life than money”. He humorously describes the relationship between employees and employers. Pajo Kanižaj writes on intergenerational sacrifice. Mirko Božić warns about the image we project when making a gift. Marin Držić, Ante Starčević, and Benedikt Kotruljević provide insights into wealth. Ivan Raos explains why the public is not outraged by the growing public debt. Vladimir Nazor observes that people you help cease to be your friends, Ante Starčević that the poor help the poor in the sincerest way. Ante Dukić’s view is that idleness is the root of all evil.

Hans Christian Andersen sees virtues in making small gifts. Poul Schlüter defines Denmark’s national specificity. Concerning taxation, Poul Martin Møller rightly considers that: “The money is best in the citizens’ pockets”. As early as 1939, the rector and historian Aagot Lading demanded “equal pay for equal work”. A Danish proverb makes the point that if all will be masters, who will carry the sack.

Christopher Pissarides and American economists Peter Diamond and Dale Mortensen received the Nobel Prize “for their analysis of markets with search frictions. The subject of the Prize Lecture by Christopher Pissarides was “Equilibrium in the Labour Market with Search Frictions”. Christopher Pissarides and Dale Mortensen systematically developed and applied the theory proposed by Peter Diamond in a model that became known as the Diamond-Mortensen-Pissarides (DMP) model. This deals with markets with search friction, in which the cost, time, and effort spent by economic agents on searching and matching are central. The main assumption is that players behave rationally. The two economists reached two paradoxical conclusions regarding unemployment: it is a factor of equilibrium and it is an efficient vehicle to move workers from one productive activity to another (which would be considerably harder if there was full employment), contributing to a better functioning of the economy.

Bengt Holmström shared the 2016 Nobel Prize with British economist Oliver Hart “for their contributions to contract theory”. His research looked into contracts, CEO remuneration, stock options, firms, bonuses, and subordination relationships.

Nobel prize winner Friedrich von Hayek writes about the role of the State, liberalism, and socialism, about what makes a great economist, also competition, economics, and the freedom to undertake. From the 1930s onwards, Hayek was a staunch adversary of socialist planning. He argues that, as the economy is constantly changing, even the information that is quantifiable will be obsolete by the time it has been processed by the central planner. Furthermore, the information needed is too vast, too complex, and dispersed across society, what has become known as Hayek’s ‘knowledge problem’. Only the market is capable of capturing and bringing together the fragmented knowledge of the various members of society and doing the work of the planner in real time. He criticises the establishment of a Nobel Prize in economics. He resurrected the archaic term “demarchy” to describe what he saw as potential threat to the market order. For Hayek: “Money is one of the greatest instruments of freedom ever invented by man” for Hans Selye, who coined the term stress and conceptualised its physiology, money has no value in itself. Hayek has these words of warning: “The contention that only the peculiar wickedness of the Germans has produced the Nazi system is likely to become the excuse for forcing on us the very institutions which have produced that wickedness”.

Horace made the point that Greek culture conquered Agresti Latio (‘rustic Latium’): Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit (“Once conquered, Greece conquered its conqueror”). The Greek truths that perfectly captured human nature found resonance in the Roman Empire and continue to resonate in Europe today. Money still reigns supreme and opens all doors, opportunity continues to be decisive, fortune to turn, reputation to be eternal, wealth to bring honour, the poor to be crushed everywhere, intelligent risk-taking and perseverance to be indispensable for success in business. As for human resources, the Romans pointed out that as master, so servant, and insisted on the need to motivate the troops. They taught how to ask so as not to be refused. They drew attention to the fact that the higher one’s position, the more likely and the harder the fall. Both Cicero and Seneca encourage us to restrain our needs by limiting our desires and following the example of nature, which is content with little. For the Romans, it was clear that the economic difficulties of society eventually caught up even with the most prosperous. The belief that too much tax kills tax already appeared under Vespasian, who also considered that money does not smell. Nobel prize winner Franco Modigliani explained that: “The immediate effect of the deficit is to make you feel good […] until you pay later”. He demonstrated the relation between the life cycle, personal savings, and the wealth of nations. Considered the father of financial economy, he developed theorems on company valuations and wrote about the moral unacceptability of unrewarding work. Corrado Gini measured the distribution of income relative to perfect equality, developing the index that would bear his name. Umberto Eco draws up a list of the characteristics of what he called primitive, eternal fascism, while Ignazio Silone describes economic governance under the far right.

The Order of Malta represented the Ancient Regime in the eyes of Napoleon, as well it might, for Frà Cesare Magalotti described the Order as “a sacred, ecclesiastical Republic, the flower of the most select and the most eminent nobility of all Christendom”. Napoleon would order the expulsion of the Knights Hospitaller from the island. Since 1834, the Order of Malta has carried on its humanitarian work from Rome. It currently has 13,500 members, 95,000 permanent volunteers, and a qualified staff of 52,000 professionals, most of whom are medical personnel and paramedics.

Dimitrie Cantemir urges mankind to apply its gifts in the service of good, not bad deeds. He acknowledges that “the rich man will settle himself in the highest chair”, and warns against riches turning the heart to stone. In Opera politica, Mihai Eminescu, Romania’s greatest romantic poet, considers that poverty leads to corruption more often than wealth. He explains that poverty is a source of physical and moral ills, and in turn the cause of economic decadence. For him, the definition of true corruption is the promotion to high places of nonentities, earning money easily and without work. His view is that the reality of work alone resists all crises and upheavals. He draws attention to the fact each item of public expenditure is paid for by the perspiration and physical exertion of someone. A popular Romanian saying is that money is the devil’s eye. Petre Tutea qualifies this by saying that everything depends on how money is used. Alexandru Macendonski talks of the lure of money in the Divine Comedy with as title “Money”. Vasile Alecsandri describes money as the little wheels that set the world’s big wheel in motion. Nicolae Titulescu’s view is that there can be no monetary stability as long as there is a fiscal deficit, stressing the need to balance expenditures and receipts. He draws a distinction between savings (resulting from a reduction in expenditures) and sobriety (resulting from a reduction in consumption). His view is that destiny is the excuse of the weak and the doing of the strong. According to Emil Cioran, it is not the fear of effort but the fear of success that explains more than one failure. He chastises those who wallow in misfortune. As for the work of Nicolae Georgescu, it has inspired the degrowth movement.

Luis de Camões and António Vieira write about the lure of gold and eternal fame, Almeida Garrett about wealth. For Vieira, a good education is gold, and “the fruit harvested is in the image of the work accomplished”. Camões explains that the only constraint in man’s life is change. Camilo Castelo Branco explains how pride and its effects depend on one’s station. José Maria de Eça de Queiroz explains the role of curiosity. Fernando Pessoa writes about endeavour. Vieira urges serving your country, ungrateful towards you though it might have been. On the subject of communication, Vieira draws attention to the supremacy of images over words, but that in the end deeds are what matter. For him, generosity is the key to the success of any undertaking. Literature Nobel prize-winner Sousa Saramago discourses about time, chance, and strategy. Like Camões, for Saramago there is no better teacher than experience. Arthur Dunkel explains the role of international commerce.

Nicolas Oresme considered that money did not belong to the Prince but to the “community of merchants”. Jean-Baptiste Say considered that money is neutral in the functioning of the economy. Émeric Crucé wrote about the benefits for trade of European countries adopting a common unit of currency, joined later by Victor Hugo who called for a “continental currency”. Jacques Rueff was convinced that: “Europe will be created by means of a single currency or not at all”. Jean Bodin considered that there is no wealth or strength except in men. Writing when agriculture was the main economic activity, François Quesnay concluded that poor peasants, poor kingdom. While poverty is the backdrop to the works of many writers such as Voltaire, Balzac, Zola, and Céline, French economist Esther Duflo gave poverty pride of place in her research, awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for her experimental approach to alleviating global poverty. Antoine de Saint Exupéry urged a change of mindset, with the realisation: “We do not inherit the earth from our parents, we borrow it from our children”. Francis I and Jules Verne grasped where the economy was heading, succeeding where economists have systematically failed. Many opposing views on international trade have been propounded, from Antoine de Montchrestien to Colbert and Montesquieu, from Flaubert and Balzac to Jules Verne. Montesquieu, Tocqueville, Frédéric Bastiat, Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, and Léon Walras have all demonstrated that competition is essential to the functioning of a market economy. In Panurge, Rabelais praises private credit for cementing society and the universe, preventing them from careening out of control. Turgot warned Louis XVI there must be no national bankruptcy, no increase in taxes, and no new loans. The Controller-General of Finance made the case for liberalism. Nobel prize winner Gérard Debreu was of the same view, stating: “The superiority of liberalism has been demonstrated mathematically”. Victor Hugo lambasted communism. Jean-Baptiste Colbert teaches us that the art of taxation is to pluck the taxpayer with the smallest possible amount of hissing, while Vauban and Jean-Baptiste Say explain why the lighter the tax, the greater the tax receipts. Talleyrand, France’s greatest diplomat and financier, shares pearls of wisdom on rising to power, daring to act, know-how, time, confidentiality, team spirit, and corruption. Charles Gide defends automation. Charles de Gaulle explains the French passion for equality with a quip.

For Francis Bacon, David Hume, and John Stuart Mill, money must circulate to benefit the economy. Adam Smith draws attention to the mobility of capital and the harmful effects of monopolies that hurt the interest of all orders of men in a country, and of all men in all other countries. He stresses the importance of the liberal reward of labour. For him, trade is the quintessence of the market economy, and the interests of the consumer must take precedence over those of the producer. David Ricardo explains price formation. John Maynard Keynes defines what it takes to be an economist. He sets out his vision of unemployment dynamics, not shared by Arthur Cecil Pigou. Winston Churchill sees the entrepreneur as the engine of growth. Nobel prize winner Angus Deaton explains that nothing guarantees there is a general relationship between growth and poverty unless Nation-States intervene in the redistribution of wealth in their country. He draws attention to the importance of well-being and worries about extreme inequality. Another Nobel prize winner, John Hicks, the father of modern microeconomics, sets out his theory of wages. Nobel prize winner Oliver Hart explains why contractual incompleteness matters. Nobel prize winner Ronald H. Coase discovered and clarified the significance of transaction costs and property rights for the institutional structure and functioning of the economy.

Erasmus of Rotterdam explains the making of man. Nobel prize winner Jan Tinbergen defines econometrics, the field of science to which he devoted his research. He created the first macroeconomic model and developed the coherence rule. He would go down as one of the first theorists of the post-war welfare state. Nobel prize winner Tjalling Koopmans devoted his academic research to the optimum allocation of resources. Koopmans was one of the first economists to stress the need to distinguish between endogenous and exogenous shocks. Koopmans shares his thoughts on the role of the economist and economic theory. Nobel prize winner Guido Imbens, rewarded for his contribution to labour economics, argues that social sciences deal more with cause and effect than correlations because more useful to policymakers who want to know what will be the effects of certain measures. He demonstrated that when universal basic income is provided, this has a very modest impact on labour supply. As for Willem Frederik Duisenberg, he identifies the main reason that leads to fiscal deficits.