Lorraine Uhlaner

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• PhD University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
• Professor at Prague University of Economics and Business

This study examines the relationship between bonding and bridging ownership social capital (OSC) for a random sample of 679 privately held small and medium-sized firms. Results confirm the positive effects of bonding OSC (quality of relationships and shared vision) on bridging OSC (network mobilization) as well as two- and three-way moderator effec...

The use of virtual and online tools has become commonplace in organizations to remain competitive in a global and dynamic environment. To understand the impact of these tools on team performance, we examine virtuality through a dynamic lens and test a model that links two team characteristics—virtuality and team density—to team performance across p...

We advance research on social entrepreneurship by offering a constraint-based individual perspective of “who” (gender, education) chooses to create social value “when” in their life course (proxied by age). Integrating predictions from situational strength theory in psychology and the life course perspective in sociology, we theorize that resource...

This study adapts a multi-level view of culture, including society- and family-based gender norms and the family embeddedness perspective, to predict the career status of a sample of 2897 young Europeans (aged 18–35) from 11 countries, with at least one self-employed parent. We find that gender identity is associated with career status such that a...

Purpose As the transition between exploration and exploitation is a unique challenge for SMEs, what mechanism(s) might facilitate this transition? Building on the entrepreneurship literature's entrepreneurial opportunity identification and development framework, this study hypothesizes that the novelty-centered business model (NCBM) may serve as su...

This paper aims to investigate the antecedents of formal human resource management (HRM) in private family firms. Specifically, we adopt a socio-emotional wealth perspective to predict the relationship between family-centered noneconomic (FCNE) goals and formal HRM practices. In addition, we rely on the extension of the behavioral theory, i.e., the...

We propose and test a deliberate innovation management model for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) reconciling the “cognition-action” logic underlying the knowledge management and innovation literature and the “intention-action” logic underlying Mintzberg and Waters’s deliberate strategy perspective. Consistent with a proposed “cognition-intentio...

In board governance literature and practice, the presence of outside directors is presumed to have a beneficial effect on board effectiveness and firm performance./home/hum This study challenges this prevailing view by exploring the boundary conditions and intermediate mechanism preventing the potential benefits of outside directors. Our results re...

Owners have a central role in decision-making in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and seek to achieve a mix of economic and non-economic goals. This paper aims to test if bonding ownership social capital mediates the relationship between family firm identity and satisfaction with both economic and non-economic goals. In a sample of 284 Cze...

In privately held firms, owners are a social group of people who are aware of, interact with, and influence each other. There are dynamic relationships between them and potential clashes between self- and collective interests. At the same time, the management literature suggests that family firms behave differently than non-family firms and follow...

This study investigates the effect of both family-centered goals and family board representation (family member representation on the board of directors) on family firm capital structure. Based on a sample of 327 Belgian family SMEs, our findings show that family-centered goals indirectly affect the total debt rate through family board representati...

Early research on succession in owner-led family firms described succession as a process of mutual role adjustment. This means the parallel lessening of the previous owner's involvement (POI) while a new generation family member gradually takes office as new CEO and owner. In this article, we analyze the performance impact of the frequent phenomeno...

This study examines the relationship between bonding and bridging ownership social capital (OSC) for a random sample of 679 privately held small and medium-sized firms. Results confirm the positive effects of bonding OSC (quality of relationships and shared vision) on bridging OSC (network mobilization) as well as two- and three-way moderator effec...

Purpose The topic of dividend policies of private family-controlled firms has aroused the interest of corporate finance and governance scholars and practitioners alike. However, a lot of questions concerning the dividends in privately held family firms remain unanswered. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether a private family firm’s divide...

German Mittelstand firms are globally recognized for their innovation, especially regarding product, process, and service innovation. So what can scholars and managers across the globe learn from the success story of German Mittelstand innovation? Drawing on information collected on innovative Mittelstand firms and extant knowledge on innovation, t...

Employing a unique data set on CEO successions, we analyze the enterprise performance implications prolonged predecessor CEO activity subsequent to a CEO succession. Drawing on agency theory and upper echelon theory, we find that whether a positive or negative performance is observed is highly context specific. Using 2SLS-IV regressions, we find that...

We develop the institutional configuration perspective to understand which national contexts facilitate social entrepreneurship (SE). We confirm joint effects on SE of formal regulatory (government activism), informal cognitive (postmaterialist cultural values), and informal normative (socially supportive cultural norms, or weak-tie social capital)...

This paper investigates whether students change their entrepreneurial entry preference if they are presented with different options. We propose that students' entry preferences are mediated by concepts proposed by threshold theory: choice options, opportunity costs and psychic income. This study is exploratory in nature, analysing 31 case studies....

Manuscript Type Empirical Research Question/Issue This study examines whether certain proxies for board incentives and board capital are linked with bankruptcy in unlisted firms. Research Findings/Insights Based on data analyzed over a five‐year period with a sample of 232 matched pairs of unlisted firms, results reveal that firms with boards led...

This paper focuses on certain drivers of SME sales growth related to knowledge and innovation. Building on the dynamic capabilities literature, we test whether two organizational capabilities (external sourcing and employee involvement in renewal activities) predict sales growth, and if so, whether such effects are mediated by process and/or produc...

This paper explores possible differences in investment strategies between specialty and non-specialty funds in the life sciences industry. The results were based on proprietary information collected in telephone interviews from 28 mutual funds located in nine European countries. As predicted, specialty funds have shorter holding periods, are more e...

This research focuses on exit choices within SMEs. In this study, “exit choice” refers to the decision to opt for either liquidation or sale of the firm. The predictions focus on human-capital and firm-resource variables. The hypotheses are tested on a set of 158 owners of small firms, the majority of which are micro-firms with 0–9 employees. The r...

This study focuses on the prediction of the engagement of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in environmental management practices, based on a random sample of 689 SMEs. The study finds that several endogenous factors, including tangibility of sector, firm size, innovative orientation, family influence and perceived financial benefits from e...

Based on a sample of 475 SMEs, this study investigates the link between family commitment and family business performance, and how this relationship is moderated by the generational involvement in the company. By taking into account both financial performance and family performance, we find evidence that family commitment is not equally important i...

This paper explores the relationship between family governance practices and financial performance of the business and family assets of business-owning families. A business-owning family that shares a focus on preserving and growing wealth as a family is defined as the enterprising family. Results of the study are consistent with predictions about...

Purpose This study aims to examine the relationship of ownership behaviors with both firm financial performance and family assets in the context of family owned businesses. Design/methodology/approach The research framework allows for a comparison of predictions drawn from social psychological, economic, and management literature. The hypotheses a...

Cooperation and teamwork is often a challenge for technology start-ups. Cooperation is usually needed in order to combine the variety of expertise and it requires trust between partners. The idea of national locality is changing in European enterprises because of the new shared markets and possibilities for cooperation. In this article we explore t...

This paper provides an overview of this special issue on human, social and cultural capital effects on the SME. After providing initial definitions for these three concepts, it provides an overview of the other seven papers in the special issue, including research questions, methods used and key findings. As concluded in the other papers, each of t...

This study applies social capital theory to the ownership group in private firms. Extant research on ownership focuses primarily on the type or structure of ownership, whether as independent or control variable, to predict various firm effects. However, especially in the private firm, owners are individual actors whose attitudes and behaviors play...

This paper is a cross-national study testing a framework relating cultural descriptive norms to entrepreneurship in a sample of 40 nations. Based on data from the GLOBE project, we identify two higher-order dimensions of culture - socially-supportive culture (SSC) and performance-based culture (PBC) - and relate them to entrepreneurship rates and a...

Different types of strategic renewal by the successor are identified: organizational change, innovation, combined actions and no action. The main assumption is that renewal after succession improves SME post-transfer performance compared to no actions taken. Also, successor’s timing of the takeover is observed, looking at the economic conditions in...

This study focuses on the prediction of sustainable entrepreneurship, that is, behavior which demonstrates a firm’s concern about the natural environment, especially among small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Using a random sample of 382 Dutch SMEs we examine how organizational context (firm sector, size, ownership structure) and innovativene...

This study advances a knowledge-based dynamic capabilities framework to predict innovation in SMEs. We presume that SMEs can develop and renew their absorptive capacity and transformative capacity (i.e. their realized knowledge capacities) by actively implementing external knowledge acquisition and internal knowledge sharing practices (i.e. their p...

This study focuses on the transfer process and the importance of human capital and succession planning as firm resource from the seller’s perspective. It further differentiates amongst two types of human capital - specific and generic - to predict the transfer duration, obtained price and satisfaction with the transfer. A representative dataset of...

In this study, we examine the prevalence of different KM practices and the organizational determinants of KM among SMEs by conducting a quantitative study of empirical data from nearly 500 Dutch SMEs. Our empirical results show that knowledge is managed in a people-based approach in SMEs. SMEs are most likely to acquire knowledge by staying in touc...

This study examines the relationship between knowledge management (KM) (in terms of external acquisition and internal sharing) and innovation behavior. The concept of absorptive capacity and assumptions from the dynamic capabilities view underlie the proposed framework and hypotheses. The framework is empirically tested using a random sample of 649...

This study examines the relationship between successor characteristics, transfer planning characteristics and post-transfer profitability within Dutch SMEs. On the one hand, based on the resource dependency view, it is assumed that successors with more knowledge and experience, derived from work experience from outside the target firm, will be able...

This study examines the main drivers for the exit choice of small firm owners. Only recently studies have begun to compare the exits of mature firms. Previous studies concentrated on start-ups, primarily trying to explain survival. Exit choice as used in this study differentiates between liquidation vs. sale of the firm. Predictions are drawn from...

We introduce a new hybrid approach to joint estimation of Value at Risk (VaR) and Expected Shortfall (ES) for high quantiles of return distributions. We investigate the relative performance of VaR and ES models using daily returns for sixteen stock market indices (eight from developed and eight from emerging markets) prior to and during the 2008 fi...

The journal prints conference abstracts of the International Congress of Psychology (ICP) - this paper was presented at the ICP. The paper was later published as Stephan & Uhlaner (2010) Performance-based vs socially supportive culture: A cross-national study of descriptive norms and entrepreneurship. Journal of International Business Studies 41 (...

In this study we test if strategic renewal improves SME performance after change of ownership. We apply Child’s (1999) strategic choice approach on SMEs and infer direct hypotheses from his main concepts: action, organizational design and environment. Organizational change, innovations and correct timing are expected to improve post transfer perfor...

The relative stability of differences in entrepreneurial activity across countries suggests that other than economic factors are at play. The objective of this paper is to explore how postmaterialism may explain these differences. A distinction is made between nascent entrepreneurship, new business formation and a combination of the two, referred t...

This article provides a definition of corporate␣governance and highlights the challenges in adapting understanding of governance to the privately-held firm. We emphasize the need to develop the scope of governance in privately-held firms beyond the traditional agency theory focus in the financial economics literature relating to large publicly-list...

This paper examines owner commitment and relational governance in the privately-held firm. The proposed model goes beyond agency theory to include research on organization commitment and organization citizenship behaviors, as well as stewardship theory, organizational social capital theory, social identity theory and social exchange theory. Results...

Past research suggests a negative effect of family orientation on innovation performance. However, many past studies have certain limitations that this study is designed to overcome. In particular,this study estimates lagged effects of family orientation on innovation performance while controlling for organization context variables and the mediatin...

Knowledge management (KM) is becoming a growing concern in management research and practice because of its role in determining firm innovation capability and in enhancing working life quality of knowledge workers. Although research and policy interest in KM is beginning to grow for small and medium-sized suppliers, still relatively limited attentio...

This article investigates the relationship between knowledge management (KM), innovation and firm performance of smaller firms (less than 100 employees), based on a panel of more than 400 Dutch firms. Regression analyses explain the variations in sales turnover growth from various measures of KM strategies. We distinguish between KM input, throughp...

Past research suggests a negative effect of family orientation on innovation performance. However, many past studies have certain limitations that this study is designed to overcome. In particular,this study estimates lagged effects of family orientation on innovation performance while controlling for organization context variables and the mediatin...

Western economies are increasingly viewed as knowledge-driven (Audretch and Thurik, 2001, 2004). Knowledge plays a crucial role in determining firm innovation capability and in enhancing working life quality of knowledge workers (Corso, Martini, Pelligrini, and Paolucci, 2001). Previous studies show that knowledge is managed in a different manner i...

This study examines determinants of professional human resource management (HRM) practices within a sample of approximately 700 small to medium-sized firms. Predictions from the agency theory and the resource-based view of organizations lead to alternate hypotheses regarding the direct and indirect negative effects of family ownership and managemen...

This study aimed at identifying some of the factors determining innovation performance in the SME. Based on a sample of 388 Dutch SME's, hypotheses were tested in particular regarding the main effects of strategy, and the direct and indirect efects of family orientation on firm performance. The results clearly support a relationship between differe...

This research study tests whether family orientation criteria in small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMEs) can be ordered in difficulty from broad to narrow, using an existing statistical technique referred to as the Guttman scaleogram or scale. The results of the study lend support to the notion of imbeddedness of criteria, at least among SMEs, that...

This study examines the relationship between successor and planning characteristics and post-transfer profitability in small businesses. Planning (by means of a written plan) is found to positively relate to profitability, particularly for non-family-firms. This study suggests that certain variables, especially the use of outside advisors may have...

This paper explores corporate social responsibility in family businesses. In particular, the research investigates family businesses in relation to a wide variety of constituent or stakeholder groups. It reports the preliminary results of focused interviews with 42 small and medium-sized Dutch family businesses. The data obtained from content analy...

The study of predictors of entrepreneurial activity at the country level has been dominated by economic influences. However, the relative stability of differences in entrepreneurial activity across countries suggests that other forces such as institutional and/or cultural factors are at play. The objective of this paper is to explore more specifica...

This study focuses on the prediction of three firm performance indicators, sales growth, innovation performance and profitability, on a sample of small and medium-sized firms in the Netherlands. Predictions from agency theory and the resource based view of organizations lead to alternate hypotheses regarding the direct and indirect effects of famil...

Drawing on Bem's psychological theory of self-perception, this paper presents and tests a model that examines the impact of business accomplishments and gender on entrepreneurial self-image and explores the definition of entrepreneurship according to Vesper's entrepreneurial typology. Regression techniques are used to identify those business accomp...

This study examines determinants of the formalization of HRM practices with small firms. We derive five hypotheses that identify possible determinants of the level of formalization, including firm size, family business, the availability of an HRM department or HRM manager, and the existence of a formal business plan. We test these hypotheses using...

This article serves as an introduction to the special issue on Entrepreneurship Research in Europe, a selection of papers from the XIVth RENT conference held in Prague, the Czech Republic, November 23-24, 2000. It provides an overview of the articles and also discusses some of the themes that bind them together: Networking and the diffusion of inno...

The present paper provides a theoretical framework of the relationship between the rate of entrepreneurship and national economic performance. The first part deals with some aspects of the recent economics literature on the relation between entrepreneurship and small business on the one hand, and economic growth on the other. In particular, it give...

The rate of entrepreneurship, a multidimensional concept including both the percentage of existing business owners in the labor force as well as the start-up rate of new enterprises, varies substantially across countries and over periods of time. Data for several modern Western nations including the United States, the United Kingdom and the Netherl...

Drawing on Bem's psychological theory of self-perception, this paper presents and tests a model that examines the impact of gender and entrepreneurial activity on entrepreneurial self-perception. Based on a sample of alumni of a large Midwestern U.S. university, regression techniques are used to identify those activities associated with self-percep...

ABSTRACT : This paper looks at how well Finland performs in high growth entrepreneurship and uses data from the Global Entrepreneurship monitor to benchmark Finland against other European countries. It is found that Finland’s prevalence rate of high growth entrepreneurial activity lags significantly behind most of its European and all of its Scandi...

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new approach for operationalising family-business variables. It is consistent with multidimensional definitions of family business such as the F-PEC scale. This paper demonstrates the use of the Guttman-scaling procedure, on a random sample of 885 Dutch SMEs. More specifically, the research question is as...

This paper examines the relationship between organization contextual variables and human resource management (HRM) practices in small firms. The proposed model is based on an integration of theoretical perspectives, including the resource-based approach, institutional theory, transaction cost economics (TCE), and concepts from strategic management....

This research investigation addresses why somecountries have more entrepreneurs than others. To investigate determinants ofentrepreneurship, data points are included from several countries and differentperiods of time between 1974 and 1994. The bivariate relationship between levelof entrepreneurship and a number of economic factors, cultural traits...

Defines environmental entrepreneurship as entrepreneurial activity that benefits the environment. Building on this definition, presents two related conceptual schema that may be used to study environmental enterprises. Presents an environmental classification scheme that can be used to categorize the mission or market strategy for different environ...

For several decades researchers have attempted to explain the process of organization growth and development. The various models devised can be divided into roughly two categories: those which emphasize nature, and those emphasizing nurture as the cause for change. The Dynamic System Planning Model is described, which borrows from both traditions,...

This dissertation focuses on the problem of coordination or fit of efforts among hospital emergency unit staff members, and specifically on means which might be relied upon to achieve adequate organizational coordination within such units. Answers are sought to three primary research questions based on empirical data: (1) Which coordination means a...