Working papers overview 2006

• 2006/43 - Managing with style: a qualitative study on how cognitve styles influence managerial behaviour

  Authors: Cools, E., Van den Broeck, H.
  Our study aims to contribute to an enhanced understanding of how cognitive styles, being individual preferences for perceiving and processing information, influence managerial behaviour using a qualitative approach. Based on content analysis of written testimonies of 100 managers, we found interesting differences between managers with a knowing, planning, and creating style with regard to both task-oriented behaviour (decision making) and people-oriented behaviour (conflict management, interpersonal relationships).

• 2006/42 - Searching the heffalump: using traits and cognitive styles to predict entrepreneurial orientation

  Authors: Cools, E., Van den Broeck, H.
  The aim of this study was to get more insight into what typifies Flemish entrepreneurs. We compared entrepreneurs with non-entrepreneurs for five traits (tolerance for ambiguity, self-efficacy, proactive personality, locus of control, need for achievement) and for cognitive styles.

• 2006/41 - A finite capacity production scheduling procedure for a belgian steel company

  Authors: Debels, D., Vanhoucke, M.
  We present a finite capacity production scheduling algorithm for an integrated steel company located in Belgium. This multiple-objective optimization model takes various case-specific constraints into account and consists of two steps. A machine assignment step determines the routing of an individual order through the network while a scheduling step makes a detailed timetable for each operation for all orders.

• 2006/40 - A scatter search procedure for maximizing the net present value of a project under renewable resource constraints

  Authors: Vanhoucke, M.
  In this paper, we present a meta-heuristic algorithm for the well-known resource-constrained project scheduling problem with discounted cash flows. This optimization procedure maximizes the net present value of project subject to the precedence and renewable resource constraints.

• 2006/39 - The relationship between career-related antecedents and graduates’ anticipatory psychological contracts

  Authors: De Vos, A., Meganck, A.
  This paper addresses the results of a study about the antecedents of the anticipatory psychological contract of graduate students entering the labor market. The anticipatory psychological contract (ACP) is conceptualized as an incomplete mental model about the conditions of the future employment relationship (the employee and employer contributions being part of this deal).

• 2006/38 - Navigating the culture theory jungle: divergence and convergence in models of national culture

  Authors: Nardon, L.
  Research on cultural differences in management has been facilitated and hindered by the existence of multiple models of national culture. In this paper we briefly review the most popular models of national culture, identify the convergences and divergences among them.

• 2006/37 - The role of culture in coping with uncertainty

  Authors: Nardon, L.
  This paper builds on prior cross-cultural research to explore the role of national culture in providing mechanisms to cope with uncertainty. The concept of uncertainty is critical to organization and management theories, and has been central in explaining the relationship between organizations and their environment.

• 2006/36 - Individual and organizational facets of change in the public and private sector: a comparative study

  Authors: Bouckenooghe, D., Devos, G.
  This study compares individual (i.e., readiness to change and locus of control) and organizational aspects of change (i.e., participation in decision making and risk-taking reward orientation) in Belgian public and private sector organizations. This empirical research is based on perceptions of 930 managers and 629 employees collected through a questionnaire survey from a variety of public (n = 35) and private sector organizations (n = 21).

• 2006/35 - Managerial learning from on-the-job experiences: an integrative framework to guide future research

  Authors: Wouters, K., Buyens, D.
  Both scholars and practitioners increasingly attest to the importance of developmental on-the-job (OTJ) experiences as the primary source of managerial learning. However, there is no single theory of managerial OTJ learning; several elements are missing in the conceptualization of the developmental OTJ experience construct, no comprehensive nomological network of the construct has been developed so far, and the underlying mechanisms explaining the relationship with relevant learning outcomes have not been examined in depth.

• 2006/34 - Outside board members in the high-tech start-ups

  Authors: Clarysse, B., Knockaert, M., Lockett, A.
  Board composition in large organizations has been subject to much empirical research, however, little attention has been focused on board composition in start-ups, and more specifically high tech start-ups. This lack of research is surprising given that many high tech start-ups have multiple equity stakeholders such as venture capitalists or public research organizations, such as universities.

• 2006/33 - The use of limited dependent variable techniques in strategy research: assessment and critique

  Authors: Wiersema, M.,  Bowen, H.P.
  Strategy researchers are increasingly turning their attention from examining the implications of strategic choices on firm performance to examining the factors that determine strategic choice at the firm level. This shift of research orientation has meant that researchers are increasingly faced with a limited dependent variable (LDV) that takes a limited number of usually discrete values.

• 2006/32 - The distribution of output in integrated economies: theory and evidence

  Authors: Bowen, H.P., Munandar, H., Viaene, J.M.
  We show that in a fully integrated economy, in which there is free mobility of goods and factors, each member’s share of total output will equal its shares of total stocks of productive factors (i.e., physical and human capital). We label this result the equal-share relationship.

• 2006/31 - A composite index of the creative economy with application to regional best practices

  Authors: Bowen, H.P., Moesen, W., Sleuwaegen, L.
  This paper develops a “Composite Index of the Creative Economy” (CICE) for the purpose of benchmarking an entity’s (e.g., country or region) creative capacity as reflected by it’s achievement in three dimensions: Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Openness. To determine the weight each sub-dimension should contribute to the total value of the CICE, we introduce a novel method – endogenous weighting – that allows each entity to have its own unique set of “best” weights.

• 2006/30 - A self-determination model of feedback-seeking behavior in organizations

  Authors: De Stobbeleir, K.
  The current paper presents a theoretical framework on feedback-seeking behavior in organizations. Based upon the model, which is derived from self-determination theory, we summarize and systematize two decades of research on feedback-seeking behavior and we identify potentially fruitful avenues for further research.

• 2006/29 - A note on performance measures for failure prediction models

  Authors: Ooghe, H., Spaenjers, C.
  This note briefly describes some important performance measures that can be used in failure prediction research. We do not only give an overview of the measures, but also clarify the connections between them and illustrate their use with numerical examples.

• 2006/28 - More management concepts in the academy. Internationalization as an organizational change process

  Authors: Kondakci, Y., Van den Broeck, H.,  Devos, G.
  The purpose of this paper is to elaborate on the internationalization process in higher education as an organizational level managerial issue. This approach brings a new perspective to internationalization in higher education. This is believed to be a necessary step toward filling a gap in the internationalization of higher education discussions.

• 2006/27 - The well-being of flemish primary school principals

  Authors: Devos, G., Bouckenooghe, D., Engels, N., Hotton, G., Aelterman, A. 
  The goal of this inquiry is to indicate which individual, organisational and external environment factors contribute to a better understanding of the well-being of Flemish primary school principals.

• 2006/26 - Linking job motivating potential to frontline employee attitudes and performance: testing the mediating role of psychological empowerment

  Authors: Dewettinck, K., Buyens, D.
  In this study, we relate job motivating potential to frontline employee job satisfaction, affective commitment and performance levels and test the mediating role of psychological empowerment.

• 2006/25 - Explaining company-level influences on individual career choices: towards a transitional career pattern? evidence from belgium

  Authors: Soens, N., De Vos, A., Buyens, D.
  Although current career literature continues to build on the new career concepts that reflect a shift from ‘traditional’ towards ‘transitional’ career patterns, recent research presents a different reality. In Belgium, among other countries, the traditional career pattern remains the dominant picture on the labour market.

• 2006/24 - Who gets private equity? The role of debt capacity, growth and intangible assets

  Authors: Baeyens, K., Manigart, S.
  While informed private equity (PE) investors screen for the most promising ventures, firms may avoid raising of PE for issues of cost and control. A critical question therefore is: which firms get PE? We consider both supply and demande side arguments to study the characteristics of a sample of 231 firms that did receive PE and compare them to those of a matched sample.

• 2006/23 - The job challenge construct revisited: conceptualization, antecedents, and consequences of experienced challenge and overchallenge in the job

  Authors: Dewettinck, K., Buyens, D.
  In this study, we propose a conceptual model on individual and job-contextual antecedents, and affective and behavioral employee consequences of experienced job challenge and overchallenge.

• 2006/22 - Socially responsible investment: differences between Europe and the United States

  Authors: Louche, C., Lydenberg, S.
  Since the early 1970s, Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) has grown from a curiosity and niche-market phenomenon in the financial world to become a global movement, which is embraced now in most countries around the world. The paper focuses on the development and practices of SRI in the United States and Europe.

• 2006/21 - A Failure processes and causes of company bankruptcy: a typology

  Authors: Ooghe, H., De Prijcker, S.
  This paper describes a typology of failure processes within companies. Based on case studies and considering companies’ ages and management characteristics, we discovered four types of failure processes. The first failure process describes the deterioration of unsuccessful start-up companies leaded by a management with a serious deficiency in managerial and industry- related experience.

• 2006/20 - To move or not to move? The relationship between career management and preferred career moves

  Authors: De Vos, A., Dewettinck, K., Buyens, D.
  This paper explores professional employees’ career move preferences and the impact of both individual and organizational career management. Departing from theoretical work on the “new career”, different types of career moves employees can make on the internal labor market are discussed (i.e. vertical moves, lateral moves, job enrichment and temporary moves). Next, these are related to the literature on both organizational and individual career management.

• 2006/19 - Pre-emptive resource-constrained project scheduling with setup times

  Authors: Debels, D., Vanhoucke, M.
  Resource-constrained project scheduling with activity pre-emption assumes that activities are allowed to be interrupted and restarted later in the schedule at no extra cost. In the current paper, we extend this pre-emptive scheduling problem with setup times between activity interruptions and the possibility to fast track pre-emptive subparts of activities.

• 2006/18 - Meta-heuristic resource constrained project scheduling: solution space restrictions and neighbourhood extensions

  Authors: Debels, D., Vanhoucke, M.
  The resource-constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP) has been extensively investigated during the past decades. Due to its strongly NP-hard status and the need for solving large realistic project instances, the recent focus has shifted from exact optimisation procedures to (meta-) heuristic approaches.

• 2006/17 - Co-branding in advertising: the issue of product and brand-fit

  Authors: Geuens, M., Pecheux, C.
  Three studies are conducted to investigate co-branding in advertising by manipulating product and brand fit. Polarity of brand images (positive or neutral) and the type of ad processing (top-down versus bottom up) were also taken into account.

• 2006/16 - The moderating impact of relational strength on the relationship between relationship quality and purchasing behavior

  Authors: De Cannière, M.H., De Pelsmacker, P., Geuens, M.
  We investigate the moderating impact of relational strength on the relationship quality model, that is extended from intentions onto real behaviour.

• 2006/15 - The impact of various activity assumptions on the lead-time and resource utilization of resource-constrained projects

  Authors: Debels, D., Vanhoucke, M.
  The well-known resource-constrained project scheduling problem (RCPSP) schedules project activities within the precedence and renewable resource constraints while minimizing the total lead-time of the project. The basic problem description assumes non-pre-emptive activities with fixed durations, and has been extended to various other assumptions in literature.

• 2006/14 - Exit in globalising industries: the role of international (out)sourcing

  Authors: Coucke, K., Sleuwaegen, L.
  This paper studies the impact of globalisation on the exit behaviour of domestic and foreign firms in the manufacturing industries of Belgium, one of the most open economies in the world. The strongest effects are found to come from rising import growth and rising multinational firms penetration of the industry, which systematically increase the probability of exit of (inefficient) domestic firms.

• 2006/13 - Linking behavioral control to frontline employee commitment and performance: a test of two alternative explanations using motivation theories

  Authors: Dewettinck, K., Buyens, D.
  We propose and empirically test a model in which behavioral control is linked to frontline employee commitment and performance. We test two alternative explanations by examining the intermediate role of job autonomy and situational learning orientation.

• 2006/12 - Do not forget the strategic architecture of your manufacturing network while offshoring

  Authors: Vereecke, A., De Meyer, A.
  Offshoring manufacturing to low labor cost countries has become trendy. Nearly everyday one sees an announcement in the business press of companies moving to China or India. Whilst production cost is an important consideration in choosing a location for the factory, we argue that one should not become victim of a herd effect and that other parameters e.g. quality, flexibility, transportation and energy costs, etc. need to be taken into consideration in the determination of the optimal manufacturing network.

• 2006/11 - A multi-level approach to program objectives: definitions and managerial implications

  Authors: De Hertogh, S., Van den Broecke, E., Vereecke, A., Viaene, S., Harpham, A.
  Projects are recognized as the building blocks of strategy. Outputs, outcomes, benefits and related concepts have been put forward by the program management community to bridge the gap between strategy and projects.  Yet, firstly there appears to be some discordance among authors on the exact nature of these concepts.

• 2006/10 - The Cognitive Style Indicator: Development and Validation of a New Instrument

  Authors: Cools, E., Van den Broeck, H., Bouckenooghe, D.
  This paper describes the development and validation of a cognitive style measure, the Cognitive Style Indicator (CoSI). Three studies were conducted to validate the CoSI. The first study consisted of 5924 employees who took part in a large-scale research with regard to career decisions.

• 2006/09 - Simultaneous competitor and customer diffusion: a market growth model based on market space and competition

  Authors: Debruyne, M.
  This paper addresses the interaction between competitive dynamics and market evolution. Specifically, it focuses on the development of the market of a new product, in terms of customer adoption as well as competitive entry. The objective of this paper is to develop a model for the growth stage of a new market that addresses the supplier and customer diffusion process and the interaction between them.

• 2006/08 - (R)E-tail satisfaction: retail customer satisfaction in online and offline contexts

  Authors: Weijters, B., Schillewaert, N.
  Building on the e-Satisfaction model proposed by Szymanski and Hise (2000) and further validated by Evanschitzky, Iyer, Hesse, and Ahlert (2004), we develop an instrument to measure shopper satisfaction in online and offline retail contexts: the (R)E-Tail Satisfaction scale.

• 2006/07 - An efficient hybrid search algorithm for various optimization problems.

  Published in Lecture Notes on Computer Science, 2006, Vol. 3906, page 272-283
  Authors: Vanhoucke, M.
  This paper describes a detailed study of a recursive search algorithm for different optimization problems. Although the algorithm has been originally developed for a project scheduling problem with financial objectives, we show that it can be extended to many other application areas and therefore, can serve as a sub-procedure for various optimization problems.

• 2006/06 - New computational results for the nurse scheduling problem: A scatter search algorithm.

  Published in Lecture Notes on Computer Science, 2006, Vol. 3906, page 159-170.
  Authors: Vanhoucke, M.
  In this paper, we present a scatter search algorithm for the well-known nurse scheduling problem (NSP). This problem aims at the construction of roster schedules for nurses taking both hard and soft constraints into account. The objective is to minimize the total preference cost of the nurses and the total penalty cost from violations of the soft constraints.

• 2006/05 - Follow-on financing of venture capital backed companies: the choice between debt, equity, existing and new investors

  Authors: Baeyens, K., Manigart, S.
  We study the financing strategies of 191 start-ups after they have received venture capital (VC) and thereby contribute to the staging literature. The VC backed start-ups have raised financing on 345 occasions over a five-year period after the initial VC investment.

• 2006/04 - Consumer innovativeness and GLB: a comparative study

  Authors: Vandecasteele, B., Geuens, M.
  Gays are often assumed to be innovators, but academic evidence for this assumption is lacking. Therefore, the objective of this paper was to test whether gays and heterosexuals really differ in innate and realized innovativeness, and whether the relations between the variables in an innovativeness model differ for both groups.

• 2006/03 - Evidence and implications of zipf’s law for integrated economies

  Authors: Bowen, H.P., Munandar, H., Viaene, J.M.
  This paper considers the distribution of output and productive factors among members of a fully integrated economy (FIE) in which there is free mobility of goods and factors among members and whose members share the same technology. We first demonstrate that, within an FIE, each member’s share of total FIE output and its shares of total FIE stocks of productive factors will be equal.

• 2006/02 - Firm resources: a double-edged sword? Resources as enablers and inhibitors of competitive responsiveness

  Authors: Debruyne, M., Frambach, R., Moenaert, R.
  We show that resources possess a dual, and opposing, role in influencing competitive responsiveness. On the hand, resources enhance decision-makers’ belief that they are able to respond effectively to competitive attacks, but the presence of resources also makes them less motivated to respond.

• 2006/01 - Human capital and the internationalization of venture capital firms

  Authors: Manigart, S., Collewaert, V., Wright, M., Pruthi, S., Lockett, A., Bruining, H., Hommel, U., Landström, H.
  We examine the neglected area of internationalisation by VCs. Using a representative sample of 195 VCs, we show that the decision of a European VC firm to invest internationally is driven by its human resources.