0000000000138967
AUTHOR
Andranik Tumasjan
Next Generation Home Sharing: Disrupting Platform Organizations with Blockchain Technology and the Internet of Things?
During the last decade, the sharing economy has given birth to a number of market mediators, which have grown to become the world’s most valuable companies. Centralized sharing platforms like Uber, Didi Chuxing, and Airbnb have transformed several traditional industries. However, with the rise of the blockchain technology, some voices predict that these platform companies will soon be at risk of being disrupted themselves. In this chapter, we address the question of whether blockchain technology has given birth to a new breed of sharing economy platforms that can challenge the incumbents’ business models. We identify five different stages of the application of blockchain technology in emerg…
In the Eye of the Beholder: How Regulatory Focus and Self-Efficacy Interact in Influencing Opportunity Recognition
Although there is evidence that regulatory focus is associated with opportunity exploitation, there is a lack of research examining its role at the early stages of opportunity recognition. The present study makes two major contributions to address this gap. First, we demonstrate that entrepreneurs' promotion focus is positively related to opportunity recognition, whereas prevention focus is not significantly related to opportunity recognition. Second, integrating two theories of self-regulation – regulatory focus theory and self-efficacy theory – our findings reveal that a high promotion focus compensates for entrepreneurs' low levels of creative and entrepreneurial self-efficacy in opportu…
Individualizing gamified systems: The role of trait competitiveness and leaderboard design
Abstract The success of gamified systems depends on how user characteristics and behavior interact with system design. Prior research, however, has largely neglected this user-system interaction, thus limiting our understanding of gamification design. To addresses this limitation in the current literature, we investigate how users' trait competitiveness is related to the usage intention of a competitive gamified system. Based on our theoretical model, we hypothesize and test both direct and indirect effects (through perceived enjoyment), as well as whether and how system design moderates the effects of trait competitiveness. Results from structural equation modeling demonstrate an indirect-…
What you see is what you get? Measuring companies' projected employer image attributes via companies' employment webpages
Information on a company's employment webpage sends signals about the employer image the company intends to project to applicants. Nonetheless, we know little about the content of recruitment signals sent via company employment webpages. This study develops a method to measure companies’ projected employer image attributes based on their employment webpages. Specifically, we analyze companies’ projected employer image attributes by applying computer‐aided text analysis (CATA) to the employment webpages of 461 Fortune 500 companies (i.e., more than 11,100 individual pages). Our results show that projected employer image attributes remain relatively stable over time. Moreover, we find relativ…
Blockchain-Based ICOs: Pure Hype or the Dawn of a New Era of Startup Financing?
This study explores the determinants of ICO success, where success is defined as the amount of capital a project was able to raise. ICOs are a tool for startups in the blockchain ecosystem to raise early capital with relative ease. The market for ICOs has grown at a rapid pace since its start in 2013. We analyze a unique dataset of 278 projects that finished their ICOs by August 2017 to assess determinants of funding success that we derive from the crowdfunding and venture capital literature. Our results show that ICOs exhibit similarities to classical crowdfunding and venture capital markets. Specifically, we identify resemblances in determinants of funding success regarding human capital …
Disrupting Industries With Blockchain: The Industry, Venture Capital Funding, and Regional Distribution of Blockchain Ventures
The blockchain (i.e., a decentralized and encrypted digital ledger) has the potential to disrupt many traditional business models. This study investigates the emerging blockchain business-application landscape by analyzing its industry, venture capital funding, and regional distribution. We do so by matching four venture databases on blockchain-based startups. First, our results show that blockchain startups are most prominently represented in the Finance & Insurance and Information & Communication industries. A fine-grained analysis of financial services yields increasing novel applications in existing service offerings – especially in payment networks and processing. Second, consistent wi…
Industry Emergence between Technology and Zeitgeist
Abstract This chapter examines the dynamics of industry emergence using the case of the blockchain and crypto (BC) industry. The BC industry is a rapidly developing field that has—in less than a decade—transformed from initially being a volunteer project of a small group of cypherpunks to a global industry with a plethora of actors involving vivid entrepreneurial and corporate activity. Importantly, the review of the extant literature and evidence reveals that ideological driving forces, which have been neglected in prior industry emergence research, constitute a major catalyst of this rapid industry development. In this vein, the chapter shows that the ideological notion of ‘decentralizati…
Twitter sentiment as a weak signal in venture capital financing
Abstract How do venture capitalists (VCs) incorporate weak and strong signals in the valuation of technology-based startups? Based on a sociocognitive perspective of signaling theory, we introduce Twitter sentiment as a novel and weak signal, which we juxtapose with patents as a traditional, strong signal. While we find a positive association between both signals and VCs' venture valuations, our results reveal that Twitter sentiment does not correlate with actual long-term investment success, whereas patents do. Additionally, we identify and test novelty and experience characteristics (i.e., startup age and VC firm experience) as boundary conditions for our proposed signal-valuation relatio…
Blockchain-Based Decentralized Business Models in the Sharing Economy: A Technology Adoption Perspective
Recently, blockchain technology has increasingly been deemed to enable novel “decentralized” business models for the sharing economy and thereby potentially provide an alternative to extant “centralized” sharing economy business models. Using a technology adoption perspective, our chapter explores under which circumstances such blockchain-based decentralized sharing economy business models may be widely adopted. Building on extant research, we theorize on the factors that are relevant for adoption from the individual users’ perspective. We then derive eight potential adoption scenarios of blockchain-based decentralized sharing economy business models and explore adoption using an agent-base…
Construal Level Theory - Eine Theorie für die Grenzenlose Unternehmung? (Construal Level Theory - A Theory for the Boundaryless Organization?)
Der Umgang mit Distanz ist eine Kernaufgabe grenzenloser Unternehmen. Trotz der grosen praktischen Relevanz von Distanz fur Organisationen und obwohl bereits empirische Befunde zu den Auswirkungen von Distanz auf organisationales Verhalten vorliegen, ist das theoretische Konzept der Distanz nur unzureichend in die Organisationstheorie und -forschung integriert. Der vorliegende Artikel bietet eine individuumzentrierte Perspektive auf den Umgang mit Distanz in verteilt arbeitenden, insbesondere virtuellen, Organisationen und Teams. Die Construal Level Theory ist eine sozial-kognitive Theorie, die sich in besonderer Weise zur Erklarung und Vorhersage der Auswirkungen von wahrgenommener Distanz…
What is the Right Mix? Toward a Compensatory Theory of Employer Attractiveness
Despite its long history, employer attractiveness research so far has almost exclusively studied large corporate firms and focused on the question which employer benefits influence firms’ employer attractiveness. However, we know only little about to what extent these findings generalize to more resource-constrained firms, such as small companies and start-ups. To address this void in the literature, this study integrates the theory of instrumental-symbolic employer benefits with a neo-configurational perspective to propose and test a compensatory theory of employer attractiveness that explains how start-ups achieve high employer attractiveness. Using set-theoretic methods, we analyze 219 s…
Linking employer branding orientation and firm performance: Testing a dual mediation route of recruitment efficiency and positive affective climate
Faced with competitive labor markets, firms increasingly use employer branding to build a qualified workforce and engage their employees. However, our understanding of the impact of employer branding orientation on firm performance and the theoretical firm‐level mechanisms underlying this potential impact is very limited. To address this gap, we integrate brand marketing theory with human resource management (HRM) research to develop a model explicating how employer branding orientation is linked to firm performance through a dual route by enhancing both recruitment efficiency (i.e., external route: applicants) and positive affective climate (i.e., internal route: incumbent employees). The …