The paper laments the current confusion in business science with regard to its epistemology. Any scientific discipline needs a firm structural basis, otherwise research is unfocused and flawed. In business science not even the vocabulary is clear: terms like Management and Business...

We explore the joint determination of product differentiation strategy and corporate leverage in a setting where (i) product differentiation is valued by customers; (ii) debt is necessary to discipline managers; and (iii) liquidation is costly for customers, in particular, when products are...

The co-existence of franchised and company-owned stores influences the dynamic of innovation in franchise systems as well as the balance of power between franchisees and their chain. We report on case studies of five franchise system. We focus on how innovation and authority are interrelated in...

This study investigates the changes in the performance of Turkish companies which were the target of acquisitions by foreign companies. Pre-acquisition and post-acquisition accounting ratios are compared by parametric t-tests. The results show an insignificant decline in the ratios. We conclude...

Many successful franchise chains directly own a positive fraction of stores --- a structure referred to as plural form. We propose that this ownership structure is chosen as a commitment not to expropriate franchisees. The theoretical model is based on an empirical analysis of contract and...

Thirteen million people in the United States--roughly one in ten workers--own a business. And yet rates of business ownership among African Americans are much lower and have been so during the last 100 years. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, businesses owned by African Americans tend...

The field of knowledge management focuses on how organizations can most effectively store, manage, retrieve, and enlarge their intellectual properties. The repository view of knowledge management emphasizes the gathering, providing, and filtering of explicit knowledge. The information in a...

Entrepreneurship has been a subject of much recent discussion among academics and policymakers because of the belief that it invigorates the economy -- producing greater productivity, more jobs, and higher economic growth. President George W. Bush promoted his economic plan by pointing to its...

When we think of the Internet, we generally think of Amazon, Google, Hotmail, Napster, MySpace, and other sites for buying products, searching for information, downloading entertainment, chatting with friends, or posting photographs. In the academic literature about the Internet, however, these...

A method for selecting personnel for China assignments and preparing and helping them in adapting to the culture is presented. The purpose is to avoid the cost of failures in assignments that can range from $ 300 thousand to $ 1 million (Black & Gregersen, 1999). The proposed selection process...