Showing papers by "Danny Miller published in 2013"

Polymedia: Towards a new theory of digital media in interpersonal communication

Abstract: This article develops a new theory of polymedia in order to understand the consequences of digital media in the context of interpersonal communication. Drawing on illustrative examples from a comparative ethnography of Filipino and Caribbean transnational families, the article develops the contours of a theory of polymedia. We demonstrate how users avail themselves of new media as a communicative environment of affordances rather than as a catalogue of ever proliferating but discrete technologies. As a consequence, with polymedia the primary concern shifts from the constraints imposed by each individual medium to an emphasis upon the social, emotional and moral consequences of choosing between those different media. As the choice of medium acquires communicative intent, navigating the environment of polymedia becomes inextricably linked to the ways in which interpersonal relationships are experienced and managed. Polymedia is ultimately about a new relationship between the social and the technological, rather than merely a shift in the technology itself.

Is family leadership always beneficial

Abstract: There has been much debate concerning the performance of family firms and the drivers of their performance. Some scholars have argued that family management is to blame when family firms go wrong; others claim that family management removes costly agency problems and encourages stewardship. Our thesis is that these disagreements can only be resolved by distinguishing among different types of family firms. We argue that family CEOs will outperform in smaller firms with more concentrated ownership and underperform in larger firms with more dispersed ownership; they will do neither where firms are smaller and ownership is more dispersed or firms are larger and ownership is more concentrated. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Family Firm Governance, Strategic Conformity, and Performance: Institutional vs. Strategic Perspectives

Abstract: A fundamental schism divides the family firm and strategy literatures, on the one hand, and the institutional literature, on the other, regarding both the situational prevalence and the utility of conforming behavior. The first two schools, respectively, view strategic differentiation as especially common among family firms and an important source of competitive advantage. By contrast, the reasoning of institutionalists would suggest that family firms will be subject to unusually powerful motivations to conform, in part because of their pursuit of socioemotional wealth objectives. Unfortunately, the relationships between conformity and family firm governance—and, in fact, governance in general—have not been amply studied. This analysis of Fortune 1000 firms finds considerable support for the institutional perspective: family involvement is related to greater, not lesser, conformity in many aspects of strategy. Although strategic conformity related to superior returns on assets, it did not enhance firm market valuations.

Socioemotional Wealth Across the Family Firm Life Cycle: : A Commentary on 'Family Business Survival and the Role of Boards'

Abstract: The differences among family firms can be as telling as their overall distinctiveness from other forms of enterprise. In order to advance and condition the arguments of Wilson, Wright, and Scholes, we employ a typology of family firm evolutionary development to illustrate how changes in patterns of family involvement in the business can influence several socioemotional wealth priorities and how these in turn can shape the board composition required to enhance firm survival. We conclude by arguing how public listing and environmental competitive circumstances can condition these relationships.

Economic and Technological Importance of Innovations in Large Family and Founder Firms An Analysis of Patent Data

Abstract: Prior research has analyzed R&D spending in family and founder firms. Yet little is known about the economic and technological importance of innovations in these types of firms. Using patent citation data, we show that founder-managed firms, which we argue favor an entrepreneurial orientation, receive more patent citations when compared with other firms, even controlling for R&D spending. By contrast, family-managed firms, many of which, we argue, pursue socioemotional wealth for the family, receive fewer patent citations compared with other firms, again, controlling for R&D spending. Patent citations have been shown in the literature to reflect the economic and technological importance of innovations.

A DYNAMIC MODEL OF HOUSING DEMAND: ESTIMATION AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS*: a dynamic model of housing demand

Abstract: Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) we specify, estimate and simulate a dynamic structural model of housing demand. Our model generalizes previous applied econometric work by incorporating realistic features of the housing market including non-convex adjustment costs from buying and selling a home, credit constraints from minimum downpayment requirements and uncertainty about the evolution of incomes and home prices. We argue that these features are critical for capturing salient features of housing demand observed in the PSID. After estimating the model we use it to simulate how consumer behavior responds to house price and income declines as well as tightening credit. These experiments are motivated by the U.S. recession starting in December of 2007 that saw large falls in home prices, large negative income shocks for many households and tightening credit standards. In the short run, relatively few households adjust their housing stock. Households respond instead by reducing non-housing consumption and reducing wealth because they wish to avoid losing their home and the associated adjustment costs. Households that adjust in the short run are those hit with a series of bad shocks, such as a negative income shock and a home price decline. A larger proportion of households do adjust their consumption in the long run, increasing their housing stock since housing is less expensive. However, such changes may occur several years after the shocks listed above.

A Dynamic Model of Housing Demand: Estimation and Policy Implications

Abstract: In the U.S., macroeconomic policy makers are concerned about how consumers will respond to falling incomes, nominal home prices, falling income, rising mortgage interest rates and tightening credit standards. In order to address these questions, we estimate and simulate a dynamic structural model of housing demand. In the model, consumers maximize expected discounted lifetime utility from housing services and a composite consumption good. The model allows for realistic features of the housing market including non-convex adjustment costs from buying and selling a home and credit constraints from minimum downpayment requirements. We use the forward simulation procedure of Bajari, Benkard and Levin (2007) to estimate the structural parameters, especially the elasticity of substitution between consumption and housing services, using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Given the estimated model parameters, we simulate the partial equilibrium consumption and housing and

How our Frames Direct Us: A Poker Experiment:

Abstract: We adapt Erving Goffman’s (1974) frame analysis to discover how frames shape individuals’ decisions in a poker-based experiment. The frames that surfaced in our subjects’ verbalizations suggest the ways in which they form very different impressions of “what is going on” in an identical situation. Our findings revealed that people’s frames drive the information they attend to in a situation, the interpretation they put on that information, and the way they synthesize the information to make a decision. The thematic frames that emerged differed dramatically across groups of individuals; they also were cohesive, multifaceted, and relatively few in number. As a result they were predictive: one could foretell a person’s behavior across multiple situations given the consistency in the frame adopted. In most cases, frames also revealed a significant mismatch with the requirements of the situation. Management scholars and practitioners would be wise to be more alert to frames which can do as much to derail effect...

Bayesian Methods in Family Business Research

Abstract: Bayesian methods constitute an alternative to null hypothesis significance testing (NHST). This article briefly reviews the concept of Bayesian methods, describes its differences with NHST, and discusses the potential of Bayesian methods to advance family business research and practice. We argue that Bayesian methods are well suited to take into account the significant heterogeneity that exists within the population of family firms. The article closes with a short guide for how to use Bayesian methods and report their results. The focus of the article is on regression models.

Hitchcock’s Understyle: A Too-Close View of Rope

Abstract: Disorganizing the narrative economy of Hitchcockian suspense and at odds with the formal perfection of the director’s acclaimed style, Rope ’s secret understyle traffics in faults, oversights, and inelegancies of various kinds, all strangely accepted and even flaunted, rather than hidden, by the film. Though visible only to those who view Rope too closely, these errors touch on a central aspect of Hitchcock’s perfectionist art, disclosing an essentially imperfect Hitchcock, one who is endlessly and deliberately making and cleaning up messes, and whose very corrections cause further mistakes to proliferate.

A Note on Necessity Entrepreneurship and Competitive Strategy

Abstract: Many start-ups chose to compete with incumbent firms using one of two generic strategies: cost leadership or differentiation. Our note demonstrates how this choice depends on whether the start-up was founded out of necessity. Our results, based on a representative dataset of 4,568 German start-ups, show that the start-ups of necessity entrepreneurs are more likely than others to pursue a cost leadership strategy, and less likely to pursue a differentiation strategy.

The Impact of Horizontal Mergers on Plan Premiums and Drug Formularies in Medicare Part D

Abstract: In this paper, we examine the impact of horizontal mergers amongst insurers on competition in the Medicare Part D prescription drug market. Theory predictions about the e ect of mergers on price and product quality are confounded by three competing forces: market power, increased cost e ciency, and bargaining power with upstream suppliers. Applying a di erences-in-di erences identi cation strategy to panel data for the full set of plans o ered by Part D insurers between 2006-2012, we document the e ects that merger activity has on plan pricing and drug coverage characteristics. We nd that plans a ected by a merger experience higher premiums as a result of increased market power. However, for merging insurers that restructure their plan o erings, price falls to o set the market power e ect. The results on drug formulary measures show that merging on its own has no e ect on the generosity of drug coverage. Yet for restructured plans, there are sizable merger e ects on coverage in the form of reduced out-of-pocket drug cost and increased scope in the set of covered drugs. The lowered prices and improved drug coverage for restructured plans suggest cost e ciencies and bargaining power with drug suppliers are a major source of gains stemming from mergers.

People that make machines that script people

Abstract: Amongst the original sins that anthropology students are warned against from the start of their education are those of functionalism and technological determinism. Things never to be espoused accept under pain of extreme denigration. The implication being that these were primitive forms of anthropological explanation now superseded by more advanced positions. In historical context these prohibitions may have seemed reasonable enough. Perhaps there once was a threat of a full fledged ideological commitment to modelling the world as an organic or systemic functional model, which we needed to eschew. But, at least outside the study of ecology, those days are long gone, leaving these prohibitions as generic, rather undefined and possibly by now somewhat debilitating to any anthropology that seeks to provide plausible accounts and explanations for social change. The three books under review here are concerned with transformations in the digital world, and it is clear that at some level this new digital world has dramatically transformed all our lives because of advances in technology that function rather well. The reason for picking these three books, in particular, is that they highlight an ambiguity at the heart of explanations that implicate technology and function. Because it is always people who create the machines that, as these books clearly reveal, have the ability to script people. We will examine them in a sequence that reflects another variable factor in such equations. In this first case it is the creation of a machine, in the second it is the development of software, that is a game. While in the third case it is the creation of narratives. Furthermore the three vary with respect to whether the intention is to control or to facilitate the people at the user end of the spectrum.

Competitive Dynamics: Toward a Multidimensional Transcendence

Abstract: Competitive dynamics research is being challenged to transcend its present boundaries. Increasing stakeholder power, globalization and new forms of competition have made it useful to construct a framework for the field that broadens our conception of competition. Our framework consists of five defining dimensions that expand the boundaries of competitive dynamics: aims of competition, mode of competing, roster of actors, action toolkit, and time horizon of interaction. We use these dimensions to contrast three prototypical perspectives of competition: the familiar rivalrous competition, competitive- cooperative dynamics, and a new approach we designate as relational competition. We draw conjectures about the industry, cultural, organizational, and governance moderators that condition the appropriateness of these forms of interaction, and relate our approach to configurational, transaction cost, and stakeholder views.