In 1974 an article appeared in Science magazine with the dry-sounding title “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” by a pair of psychologists who were not well known outside their discipline of decision theory. In it Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the world to Prospect Theory, which mapped out how humans actually behave when faced with decisions about gains and losses, in contrast to how economists assumed that people behave. Prospect Theory turned Economics on its head by demonstrating through a series of ingenious experiments that people are much more concerned with losses than they are with gains, and that framing a choice from one perspective or the other will result in decisions that are exactly the opposite of each other, even if the outcomes are monetarily the same. Prospect Theory led cognitive psychology in a new direction that began to uncover other human biases in thinking that are probably not learned but are part of our brain’s wiring.

Thinking fast and slow.

What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

https://thema.u-cergy.fr/IMG/pdf/07-02-13_AEEF.pdf

Crowdfunding: Tapping the right crowd

With crowdfunding, an entrepreneur raises external financing from a large audience (the "crowd"), in which each individual provides a very small amount, instead of soliciting a small group of sophisticated investors. This article compares two forms of crowdfunding: entrepreneurs solicit individuals either to pre-order the product or to advance a fixed amount of money in exchange for a share of future profits (or equity). In either case, we assume that "crowdfunders" enjoy "community benefits" that increase their utility. Using a unified model, we show that the entrepreneur prefers pre-ordering if the initial capital requirement is relatively small compared with market size and prefers profit sharing otherwise. Our conclusions have implications for managerial decisions in the early development stage of firms, when the entrepreneur needs to build a community of individuals with whom he or she must interact. We also offer extensions on the impact of quality uncertainty and information asymmetry.

/pdf/crowdfunding-tapping-the-right-crowd-2jqrl5m0g4.pdf

Crowdfunding: Tapping the Right Crowd

Eye-tracking applications are surveyed in a breadth-first manner, reporting on work from the following domains: neuroscience, psychology, industrial engineering and human factors, marketing/advertising, and computer science. Following a review of traditionally diagnostic uses, emphasis is placed on interactive applications, differentiating between selective and gaze-contingent approaches.

/pdf/a-breadth-first-survey-of-eye-tracking-applications-wroq0b948r.pdf

A breadth-first survey of eye-tracking applications

This paper examines the mechanisms by which new organizations establish their initial network positions, or sets of network ties from which their future tie networks evolve. I develop hypotheses from two competing logics, one based on the effects of previously developed network ties and the human capital of a new organization's founders and the other based on the effects of a new organization's early accomplishments. I test these logics in a study of 92 Internet security ventures forming ties by receiving investments from venture capitalists and other investment organizations between 2000 and 2005. In contrast to how the network positions of established organizations evolve, I find that new organizations forming their first ties early obtain their initial network positions through their founders' ties and human capital, while new organizations forming their first ties later achieve their initial network positions through their organizational accomplishments.

The Causes and Consequences of the Initial Network Positions of New Organizations: From Whom Do Entrepreneurs Receive Investments?

Although network ties are crucial for firm performance, the strategies by which executives actually form ties are relatively unexplored. In this study, we introduce a new construct, tie formation e...

Catalyzing Strategies and Efficient Tie Formation: How Entrepreneurial Firms Obtain Investment Ties

We present a framework for accelerating interactive rendering, grounded in psychophysical models of visual perception. This framework is applicable to multiresolution rendering techniques that use a hierarchy of local simplification operations. Our method drives those local operations directly by perceptual metrics; the effect of each simplification on the final image is considered in terms of the contrast the operation will induce in the image and the spatial frequency of the resulting change. A simple and conservative perceptual model determines under what conditions the simplification operation will be perceptible, enabling imperceptible simplification in which operations are performed only when judged imperceptible. Alternatively, simplifications may be ordered according to their perceptibility, providing a principled approach to best-effort rendering. We demonstrate this framework applied to view-dependent polygonal simplification. Our approach addresses many interesting topics in the acceleration of interactive rendering, including imperceptible simplification, silhouette preservation, and gaze-directed rendering.

Perceptually driven simplification for interactive rendering

Using a nested multiple-case study of participating ventures, directors, and mentors of eight of the original U.S. accelerators, we explore how accelerators’ program designs influence new ventures’...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0001839218782131

The Role of Accelerator Designs in Mitigating Bounded Rationality in New Ventures

Interorganizational relationships offer many potential benefits, but they also expose firms to dangers, such as misappropriation, which pull partners apart. This tension between collaboration and competition is central to tie formation, especially for young technology firms that have both a high need for resources and high appropriability of their own resources. Prior work has examined legal and timing defenses that enable interorganizational ties by such low-power firms; we focus here on social defenses. In a longitudinal study of equity tie formation between young firms and established corporate “sharks,” spanning five technology-based industries and 25 years, we unpack the effects of social defenses and find, intriguingly, that centrally positioned third parties are a particularly powerful social defense and that third-party social defenses are especially significant when more traditional defenses are unavailable. We thus offer the insight that third-party chaperones (central venture capital investors) play a key role in helping young firms to mitigate and navigate vulnerabilities while mobilizing resources

Benjamin L. Hallen

Papers

The Causes and Consequences of the Initial Network Positions of New Organizations: From Whom Do Entrepreneurs Receive Investments?

Catalyzing Strategies and Efficient Tie Formation: How Entrepreneurial Firms Obtain Investment Ties

Perceptually driven simplification for interactive rendering

The Role of Accelerator Designs in Mitigating Bounded Rationality in New Ventures

How Do Social Defenses Work? A Resource-Dependence Lens on Technology Ventures, Venture Capital Investors, and Corporate Relationships