Copyright (c) 2009 All rights reserved. http://works.bepress.com/m_diane_burton Recent documents in M. Diane Burton en-us Sat, 31 Oct 2009 23:19:24 PDT 3600 http://works.bepress.com/m_diane_burton/9 http://works.bepress.com/m_diane_burton/9 Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:29:25 PDT [Excerpt] This chapter examines the employment models founders use as they begin to construct new firms. The empirical setting is a sample of emerging technology firms in Silicon Valley. This chapter focuses on two questions: (1) Why are new firms founded under different conceptual models? and (2) What are the factors that lead a founding team to espouse a particular employment model? M. Diane Burton http://works.bepress.com/m_diane_burton/8 http://works.bepress.com/m_diane_burton/8 Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:07:14 PDT This paper examines how founding conditions shape subsequent organizational evolution-- specifically, the proliferation of management and administrative jobs. Analyzing quantitative and qualitative information on a sample of young technology start-ups in California's Silicon Valley, we examine the enduring imprint of two aspects of firms' founding conditions: the employment blueprints espoused by founders in creating new enterprises; and the social capital that existed among key early members of the firm--their social composition and social relations. We find that the initial gender mix in start-ups and the blueprint espoused by the founder influence the extent of managerial intensity that develops over time. In particular, firms whose founders espoused a bureaucratic model from the outset subsequently grew more administratively intense than otherwise-similar companies, particularly companies whose founders had initially championed a "commitment" model. Also, firms with a higher representation of women within the first year subsequently were slower to bureaucratize than otherwise-similar firms with a predominance of males. Our analyses thus provide compelling evidence of path-dependence in the evolution of organizational structures and underscore the importance of the "logics of organizing" that founders bring to new enterprises. Implications of these results for organizational theory and research are discussed. James N. Baron http://works.bepress.com/m_diane_burton/5 http://works.bepress.com/m_diane_burton/5 Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:07:13 PDT This study investigates how top management team (TMT) demographic characteristics affect firm outcomes for young high technology firms in Silicon Valley. We study how team composition and turnover shape an entrepreneurial firm's ability to attract venture capital and its ability to successfully complete an initial public offering. We find that broad access to information by virtue of having top management team members that have worked for many different employers (diverse prior company affiliations) and have diverse prior experiences (functional diversity) tend to be associated with positive outcomes. In addition, entrants to and founder exits from the TMT increase the likelihood that a firm achieves an IPO. TMT exits, in turn, reduce the likelihood of achieving an IPO. Results also suggest that prior human capital experience is consistently associated with positive firm outcomes. These findings suggest that team experiences, composition and turnover are all important for bringing new insights to the firm and are associated with the likelihood that an entrepreneurial firm will succeed. Christine M. Beckman http://works.bepress.com/m_diane_burton/6 http://works.bepress.com/m_diane_burton/6 Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:07:13 PDT [Excerpt] Organizational theories, especially ecological perspectives, emphasize the disruptive effects of change. However, the mechanisms producing these effects are seldom examined explicitly. This article ex-amines one such mechanism-employee turnover. Analyzing a sample of high-technology start-ups, we show that changes in the employment models or blueprints embraced by organizational leaders increase turnover, which in turn adversely affects subsequent organizational performance. Turnover associated with organizational change appears to be concentrated among the most senior employees, suggesting "old guard disenchantment" as the primary cause. The results are consistent with the claim of neoinstitutionalist scholars that founders impose cultural blueprints on nascent organizations and with the claim of organizational ecologists that altering such blueprints is disruptive and destabilizing. James N. Baron http://works.bepress.com/m_diane_burton/7 http://works.bepress.com/m_diane_burton/7 Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:07:13 PDT [Excerpt] This paper considers processes of organizational imprinting in a sample of 100 young, high technology companies. It examines the effects of a pair of initial conditions: the founders' models of the employment relation and their business strategies. Our analyses indicate that these two features were well aligned when the firms were founded. However, the alignment has deteriorated over time, due to changes in the distribution of employment models. In particular, the 'star' model and 'commitment' model are less stable than the 'engineering' model and the 'factory' model. Despite their instability, these two blueprints for the employment relation have strong effects in shaping the early evolution of these firms. In particular, firms that embark with these models have significantly higher rates of replacing the founder chief executive with a non-founder as well as higher rates of completing an initial public stock offering. Some implications of these findings for future studies of imprinting and inertia in organizations are discussed. Michael T. Hannan http://works.bepress.com/m_diane_burton/4 http://works.bepress.com/m_diane_burton/4 Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:07:12 PDT We examine the impact of high commitment work systems (HCWS) on high-technology start-ups. We differentiate two components of a HCWS: the human resource practices and the espoused values of the firm's leadership and demonstrate that both are associated with an increased likelihood of IPO and a decreased likelihood of firm failure. Importantly, there are interactions between practices and values such that the benefit of one tends to amplify the other. Implications of these interactions for future research on high commitment work systems are discussed. M. Diane Burton http://works.bepress.com/m_diane_burton/3 http://works.bepress.com/m_diane_burton/3 Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:07:12 PDT We examine how the social structure of existing organizations influences entrepreneurship and suggest that resources accrue to entrepreneurs based on the structural position of their prior employers. We argue that information advantages allow individuals from entrepreneurially prominent prior firms to identify new opportunities. Entrepreneurial prominence also reduces the perceived uncertainty of a new venture. Using a sample of Silicon Valley start-ups, we demonstrate that entrepreneurial prominence is associated with initial strategy and the probability of attracting external financing. New ventures with high prominence are more likely to be innovators; furthermore, innovators with high prominence are more likely to obtain financing. M. Diane Burton http://works.bepress.com/m_diane_burton/2 http://works.bepress.com/m_diane_burton/2 Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:07:12 PDT [Excerpt] This article examines the impact of organizational founding conditions on several facets of bureaucratization--managerial intensity, the proliferation of specialized managerial and administrative roles, and formalization of employment relations. Analyzing information on a sample of technology start-ups in California's Silicon Valley, we characterize the organizational models or blueprints espoused by founders in creating new enterprises. We find that those models and the social composition of the labor force at the time of founding had enduring effects on growth in managerial intensity (i.e., reliance on managerial and administrative specialists) over time. Our analyses thus provide compelling evidence of path dependence in the evolution of bureaucracy--even in a context in which firms face intense selection pressures--and underscore the importance of the "logics of organizing" that founders bring to new enterprises. We find less evidence that founding models exert persistent effects on the formalization of employment relations or on the proliferation of specialized senior management titles. Rather, consistent with neo-institutional perspectives on organizations, those superficial facets of bureaucracy appear to be shaped by the need to satisfy external gatekeepers (venture capitalists and the constituents of public corporations), as well as by exigencies of organizational scale, growth, and aging. We discuss some implications of these results for efforts to understand the varieties, determinants, and consequences of bureaucracy. James N. Baron http://works.bepress.com/m_diane_burton/1 http://works.bepress.com/m_diane_burton/1 Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:07:11 PDT [Excerpt] Drawing on a unique archive of qualitative and quantitative data describing 100 Bay Area high technology firms within their first decade, this paper examines the models of employment relations espoused by company founders and bow those models shaped the evolution of human resource management within their organizations. Information gleaned from interviews suggests that founders and others involved in designing and launching these companies had blueprints for the employment relation that varied along three key dimensions: the primary basis of employee attachment and motivation, the primary means for controlling and coordinating work, and the primary criterion emphasized in selection. Based on combinations of these three dimensions, firms in our sample cluster fall into one of four distinct types, which we label the star, factory, engineering, and commitment models. Multivariate statistical analyses document how the founder's employment model shaped the subsequent adoption and timing of various human resource policies and documents over these companies' early histories, as well as the speed with which the first full-time human resource manager was appointed The findings are strongly suggestive of complementarities and a tendency toward internal consistency among dimensions of human resource management, and of strong path dependence in the evolution of employment systems in organizations. Some implications of these findings for transactions cost perspectives on the employment relationship are discussed. James N. Baron