Entrepreneurship & Organization Management

This paper has tried to assess the impact of relational capital components on the performance of bell-metal clustered firms in Dharmada region of Nadia district in the State of West Bengal in India. The issue of relational capital has been considered in relation to the notion of intangible asset. Eight components of relational capital indicators were considered and they were combined into a single overall index by using principal component method. A study was conducted on a sample of sixty firms in the cluster. Cronbach’s alpha has been used to assess the reliability or internal consistency of the set of individual relational capital indicators. The overall index of relational capital is found strongly associated with profitability performance. The overall regression of profitability figures on individual relational capital indicators has been observed to be significant and some of the indicators are also found to significantly influence firm performance level. The analysis identifies and provides suggestion regarding upgrading and maintaining relational capital components in which the firms may have some advantage. This can make substantial contribution to the performance of firms.

There exists abundant literature on business strategy topics. Yet very few of these examine the role of business mission and vision statements and their influence on strategic objectives. It is this apparent gap in the literature that this paper aims to cover. The paper aims at highlighting the importance of business vision and mission statements and how these dictate the strategic goals and objectives of the organization - both short term as well as long term. The paper consists of three sections. The first section provides a quick overview of business strategy. The remaining sections discuss the mission statement and vision statement. It provides guidelines including templates on how to develop effective mission and vision statement. Finally, it applies the learning’s to a case study - that of a hotel. My aim is to highlight how the three - mission statement, vision statement, and strategic objectives - are intertwined. It is necessary to first define the mission and vision statement prior to defining the strategic objectives. The mission and particularly the vision statement provide the foundation upon which strategic objectives are framed.

The study aims towards verifying the effects of the level of psychological wellbeing (mental health) and its relationship with the employee job performance. It further explores the understanding of psychological wellbeing through comparisons between projectized and non-projectized organization structures. The study is based upon the self-assessment of 84 employees’ psychological wellbeing and the evaluation by their superiors of their job performance from 17 Information Technology companies. The study validated that higher psychological wellbeing is useful for the increased employee job performance in the organizations and this relationship is equal in projectized and non-projectized organizational structures. Furthermore, the study shows that the psychological wellbeing and employee job performance levels are same for both projectized and non-projectized organizations.

In his genre-defining book titled “Leadership”, James MacGregor Burns made striking mentions of ‘qualities of leaders’ and since then i.e., for past few decades, it is being discussed and understood that a leader’s qualities and his character will make a greater difference to his effectiveness. According to Burns, civilization depends on ‘transforming leaders’ i.e., not only problem solvers but those who could help the society to a higher level of morality and motivation. Some writers on Leadership say that leaders are those who not only ‘do things right’ but are also seen ‘to do the right thing’. In that case, which type of leaders would necessarily be counted on for doing the right thing? Lee Iacocca who is a domineering charismatic battler; Highly performance oriented ruthless leaders like Jack Welch; Proponents of ‘Servant Leadership ‘styles like Max De Pree of Herman Miller; Darwin Smith, CEO Kimberly- Clark who is a quiet stoic and is lauded by Jim Collins in his book ‘Good and Great’; people like Attila the Hun whose leadership secrets have been collected with time? According to Mintzberg [1], leaders share one personality trait in common, a passion to lead. But each of the above styles of leadership have their own and multiple advocates and acolytes. The field of Leadership does not have a dearth of experts or sophistication of approaches but there is still no consensus on which style of leadership is the most effective. Even though individual qualities of leaders do matter, the effectiveness of leadership is increasingly believed to depend on the situational and context factors in which the leaders are working. Research of 160 CEOs shows that leadership is driven not so much by what someone is like inside but by what the outside demands [2]. It is essential to consider temporal changes in patterns of leader behaviour and dynamics of the task undertaken by them when conceptualizing the effectiveness of their styles

Business Creation is something that does not come into being on its own; but it emerges from people who see a need for service or product in a society, with that desire to be self-employed and rise above, and use that opportunity. These individuals are dedicated people who are willing to absorb all their time, passion, and money in the work they have created to ensure business growth and success. Though these entrepreneurs operate in a condition where costs may be known but rewards are uncertain, yet they are motivated and the question here is; what really drives the performance to engage in such entrepreneurial activities? The general results show that though individuals motives for seeking self-employment are diverse and numerous; and differ on certain points. However, there are some basic motives common to all and that is majority of the respondents with the average score of 63.3% supported that Economic Mobility, Financial Independence, Success Perspective, and Social Factor, are the most driven factors for the engagement in transnational entrepreneurship. It was also discovered that the success of these entrepreneurs are based on attitudinal, the degree of embededdness in the home country, personal and the institutional regulations of the destination countries. The results found that Ghana Transnational Entrepreneurs are more into Merchandising Business with (59.21%) as compared to Service Business (34.21%) and Manufacturing Business (10.53%). The results also disclosed that, in Ghana, transnational entrepreneurs businesses are managed and run mostly by their families (59.21%). Ashanti Region of Ghana was spotted to be more involved in doing business with 52.63%. The research employed both deductive and exploratory approach and the methods were both primary and secondary. The study focused on small-scale entrepreneurs who run their businesses through personal social connections. The research is subjected to the bias of the respondents, therefore, 100% accuracy cannot be guaranteed.

Although numerous studies have adopted social exchange theory to investigate the mechanism through which leadership influences employee voice behavior, few studies have placed their focus on the mediation of employees’ basic psychological needs. To address this research gap, this study adopted self-determination theory to explore how supervisor support encourages subordinates to engage in voice behavior. Furthermore, the moderating effect of impression management motive was clarified. This study adopted structural equation modeling and hierarchical regression approach to analyze 268 sets of data of a pair of supervisor and subordinate. The results revealed that basic psychological needs mediated the relationship between supervisor support and self-determined prosocial motivation, which, in turn, was positively related to voice behavior. In addition, subordinates’ impression management motive weakens the positive relationship between self-determined prosocial motivation and voice behavior.

Drawing from self-determination theory, this study investigated the influence of psychological need satisfaction as a determinant of entrepreneurship personality profile, thereafter a pre-determinant of entrepreneurial intentionality. Data was collected on a sample of 407 Chinese undergraduate students from four universities in Hefei-Anhui China. The results of structural equation modeling revealed that the satisfaction of each three psychological needs: autonomy, competence and relatedness was a significant positive predictor of entrepreneurship personality profile and altogether contributed to its variance. Entrepreneurship personality profile was a significant positive predictor of entrepreneurial intention at 67% variance. The study concludes with some theoretical and practical recommendations.

When people obtains MBA degree, can he/she performs better in founding a firm than ones without it? If so, is it because of prestigious signal of MBA degree or because of acquired capability thorough the MBA program? In order to answer this question, we originally collected a survey of 1503 entrepreneurs in Japan via internet. We divide MBA degree effect on entrepreneurial activity into three effects; gifted talent, occupational experience and acquirement thorough MBA program. Gifted talent and occupational experiences of an individual enable him/he to entry a MBA program while this talent also enhance possibility to be a successful entrepreneur. When only these two effects matter on entrepreneurship, it leads that an MBA program signals that the entrepreneur is talented in nature and occupationally experienced but her/his capability acquired through the program do not matter on entrepreneurship. In our data, however, it is clarified that after controlling the effects of gifted talent and occupational experience, MBA still impacts entrepreneurship. This result implies that acquirement through MBA program positively affects on success of start-ups. This insight is useful for candidates of MBA program, who are also targeting to be entrepreneurs in the future and certificates that the program is worth to be invested for them.