Amsterdam in Science, Business and Society: Issue I

ABRI Amsterdam Business Research Institute

AMSTERDAMIN SCIENCE,BUSINESS AND SOCIETYSCIENCE WITH IMPACT WHEN DO ENTREPRENEURIAl TEAMS IDENTIfY SUSTAINABlE OPPORTUNITIES?

THE ART Of INVESTING IN ART

EffICIENCY DRIVERS IN SMAll BROKERAGE fIRMS

AMSTERDAMCREATIVEIN BUSINESS

COLOPHON

45

INTRODUCTIONSvetlana Khpaova

NEWS IN SCIENCE, BUSINESS AND SOCIETy

AT ABRI

CONTACT

ABRI-Amsterdam Business Research Institutede Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HV Amsterdam

020-598 3889

[email protected]

CONCEPT, DESIGN AND lAYOUT

Room for ID’s, NieuwegeinEDITORIAl STAff

Svetlana KhapovaMargriet Buseman

Katie Stephenson

12 INDIVIDUALSPresenting ABRI researchers /

New hires

18

8SCIENCE WITH IMPACTAlliance portfolio

diversity and service innovation

16WHEN DO

ENTREPRENEURIAL TEAMS IDENTIfy

SUSTAINABLE OPPORTUNITIES?

Strategy & OrganisationEVALUATINg kNOWLEDgE Of THE CROWD:

THE CASE Of CULTURAL HERITAgE ORgANISATIONS

Information & Innovation Management

INDEX

ABRI - Amsterdam Business Research Institute

PAGE 3

24EffICIENCy

DRIVERS IN SMALL BROkERAgE

fIRMSAccounting

& Financial Management26

2829

AN EyE ON THE fUTURE

Opinion paper

gEOMARkETINgMarketing

DISSERTATIONS Recently published

32REfLECTIONS ON CAREERS RESEARCH

IN PERfORMINg ARTSOrganisational Behaviour

35gET TOgETHER IN SCIENCE,

BUSINESS AND SOCIETy EventsPRINT

NPN drukkers, BredaPHOTOGRAPY

ABRI, Amsterdam © Nick Wake, Zuiver Photography’

© Henri WillemsShutterstock

CONCEPT, DESIGN AND lAYOUT

Room for ID’s, Nieuwegein

20THE ART Of INVESTINg IN ARTAccounting & Financial Management

30THE LOgISTICIAN BEHIND THE DJ

Logistics & Operations Research

23STRATEgIC ALLIANCE MANAgEMENT

Recently published: management bookBrian Tjemkes

Dear Reader,You are holding the first issue of Amsterdam in Science, Business and Society - the research magazine initiated by the Amsterdam Business Research Institute (ABRI). Its aim is to provide an intellectual platform for ideas-exchanges, debates, and opportunities for collaborations. With this initiative we hope to bring business science, practice and society closer to each other.

The development of this magazine comes from the demands of our contemporary economy. No longer is it only about efficiencies and effectiveness, but additionally it is about business innovation, differentiation and knowledge sharing. With this magazine the Amsterdam Business Research Institute hopes to contribute in sharing knowledge and innovation to help build a successful economic region.

We themed the first issue of the journal: Amsterdam Creative in Business. We believe that Amsterdam is not only a European capital of the creative industry, but that it is also a business capital in which individuals and organisations, regardless of their focal activities, are creative and innovative. Through our research and educational activities we offer support to this claim!

We are hoping that you will enjoy reading the first edition of Amsterdam in Science, Business and Society, and that you will become inspired by the possibilities that collaborations with scientists can offer to your business. We want this to be an additional, but highly important step, toward making Amsterdam even more dazzling and a successful business community!

Dr. Svetlana KhapovaAssociate Professor Director of ABRI - Graduate School Amsterdam Business Research Institute

INTRODUCTION

AMSTERDAM CREATIVE

IN BuSINESS PREBEM


PAGE 5

The conference focuses on providing room for discussion and presentation of studies that focus on answering the question of how individuals or organisati-ons manage their creativity and innovative-ness and whether innovation and creativity are important in striving for sustainable value creation and appropriation. Concur-rently, other studies focusing on other parts of business research (management, finance, marketing, strategy, logistics) will be presented. The day will also host workshops and key note speeches of pro-fessor Gerry George (Imperial College) and Sean Carney (Chief Design Officer Philips) about the topic. Finally, the day also has an award ceremony for the selected best business and best academic paper. Moreover, the NOBEM best dissertation award is given to a recently graduated PhD candidate. If you are interested in more information, participating or spon-soring look at www.prebem.nl or contact Johannes Drees ([email protected]).

Creativity and innovation have a vital role in kindling the economy and enhancing organisations competitive advantage and sustainability. Innovation is about breaking out of boundaries, which can result in a high payoff. However, innovation also brings along risks and uncertainties. Taking too much risk can result in failure, but not responding to changing environments may result in being outperformed by competitors. Therefore, in order to find and manage the right balance and to create a roadmap for the future, organisations often invest in internal and external knowledge sharing, cooperation through different inter-organisational arrangements and networks. Amsterdam is the European hub for creativity and innovation, and invests in paving the road for innovation by stimulating creative minds, startups and established organisations to work together.

On March 22, 2013, the 13th PREBEM conference for PhD candidates in Business Economics

and Management organised by ABRI will take place in Amsterdam. This conference focuses

on facilitating contact, sharing knowledge and helping PhD candidates prepare for a successful

start to their career. The theme of the conference is: Creativity and Innovation – A Roadmap to the future.

PREBEM

news IN SCIENCE, BUSINESS

AND SOCIETy

MIREllA KlEIjNEN AND CORINE NOORDHOff

RECEIVE GRANT AS PART Of MSI’S

50TH ANNIVERSARY IDEAS CHAllENGE

The Ideas Challenge, launched in 2011 by the Marketing Science Institute, is aimed to “spark a new generation of fresh ideas, and a new wave of ventures, sourced across the whole community of marketing scholars and thinkers.” Out of 64 submissions, eight proposals received a seeding grant of $10,000 to further develop their ideas. Among those was the proposal by Mirella Kleijnen, Corine Noordhoff, together with Koen Pauwels (Ozyegin university, Istanbul), and Rosanna Garcia, (Northeastern university, Boston) on “The Innova-tion Journey: How to Pave the Road to Success”. In this proposal, the authors argued that the call for rigour and relevance in research remains an issue

of great importance, while at the same time the call for manage-rial relevance has consistently been increasing over the years. To increase this managerial relevance, the authors proposed that it is important to seize new opportunities to create interaction between academics and practitioners. A growing number of companies incor-porate consumers as active contributors, collaborators, and sources of competence in the value creation process. Innovation processes are becoming more outward-oriented, involving the target audience in the creation process by means of so-called open source platforms in the online environment. Kleijnen and Noodshoff’s study investigates what the boundary conditions and requirements are for establishing an effective online platform that serves the purpose of fostering creativity in terms of interesting research ideas, i.e., research ideas that have high relevance for both science as well as practice.

Professor Henri Dekker (De-partment of Accounting) is the 2012 recipient of the Notable Contribution to the Management Accounting Literature Award. Henri Dekker (Department of, Vu university) has been selected for the Contribution to the Manage-ment Accounting Literature

Award for his research conducted jointly with Professor Shannon Anderson (uC Davis) and Profes-sor Karen Sedatole (Michigan State university) about the influence of incentive compen-sation on goal negotiation, slack building and firm performance. The study, published in 2010 in Management Science, has been selected by a committee of the Management Accounting Section of the American Accounting Association (AAA) based on its broad appeal to theory, prac-tice and education, its original and innovative contribution to

knowledge, its relevance to practice, and its potential impact upon other research. The award is granted for the single article published within the last 5 years judged to fulfil these criteria and has been presented to the aut-hors in August 2012 at the annual AAA conference in Washington DC. Anderson, S.W., Dekker, H.C. & K. Sedatole. 2010. An Empi-rical Examination of Goals and Performance-to-Goal Following the Introduction of an Incentive Bonus Plan with Participative Goal. Management Science, 56(1), pp. 90-109.

PROf. DR. HENRI DEKKER 2012 RECIPIENT Of THE

MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING lITERATURE AWARD


PAGE 7

news IN SCIENCE,BUSINESS

AND SOCIETY

Erik A. Mooi (Department of Marketing, Vu university Amsterdam) and Stefan H.K. Wuyts (Koç university Istanbul ) have won a prestigi-ous grant from the Institute of the Study of Business Markets (ISBM) of Penn State university. The grant is intended to study how the stock market’s performance effects technology licensing contracts. Tech-nology licensing is particularly prevalent in the pharmaceutical and information technology sectors. The study aims to understand what investors’ reactions are to such licenses for the licensor and the licensee. Initial research suggests that the stock market returns to licensing around the day of announcement show much variation for the licensee and licensor. Interestingly, the returns for the licensor and licensee show little correlation. The implication of this is that “good” deals for the licensor are typically “poor” deals for the licensee and vice versa. Mooi and Wuyts attribute these returns to how licensing

agreements were drafted: some licensors insist in much control over the marketing process resulting in difficulties for the licensee to

adapt to a changing market. However, too little control may result in problems. Similarly, coordination may also cause issues.

Some deals involve separate steering bodies that guide the further development or commercialization of the licensor, and could help but sometimes also hinder the deal. Also, the scope of the agreement, the method of payment (upfront and/or afterwards, a fixed value and/or a percentage) could impact the returns for the licensor and licensee differentially. Lastly, issues like prior experience in licensing, the type of technology and the stage of licensing (early or late stage), and industry differences could drive these returns. Mooi and Wuyts’s goal is to get insight into how such licensing agreements are drafted, and how investors react to such deals. As such, Mooi and Wuyts hope to provide specific advice on which contracts result in more favourable reactions of the investors. The ISBM was founded in 1983 to expand research and teaching in business-to-business marketing and sales in academia. The ISBM also aims to improve the practice of business-to-business marketing and sales in industry. It is supported by over 70 firms, including Cisco, Deloitte, IBM, SAP, and uBS.’

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, self-employ-ment is gaining popularity on a global scale. A roadmap of how to become a successful entrepre-neur still needs to be made. Yet, we do know that an entrepreneurial team, and more specifically the combination of entrepreneurs who work together on a team, has a large impact on the firm’s future suc-cess. From prior research, Eva de Mol has learned that a balance between similarity and diversity of founders’ resources is crucial. In addition, it is sci-entifically proven that a firm’s founder’s prior career experiences correlate with an emerging firm’s per-formance. Yet, a question still remains: how can one

find a perfect business partner, a partner who both complements

a founder’s experience, but is closely related in entrepre-

neurial identity?

To make the process of finding this perfect business partner a little bit smoother and science based, de Mol has developed an algorithm for entrepre-neurs looking for a business partner. Based on prior research de Mol framed questions according to different typologies that entrepreneurs can be distinguished. More specifically, de Mol looked at the career capital that entrepreneurs bring along with them. De Mol’s algorithm proposes matches based upon career capital scores. In this context, career capital points to: specific passion for en-trepreneurship, specific and general experiences, prior industry experience and networking skills and capabilities. The matching algorithm is embedded in a website, which also serves as a platform for entrepreneurs to share ideas and experiences related to the process of setting up a new venture. So, if you are

looking for a business partner, or are just curious how your entrepreneurial profile looks like, don’t hesitate and take the test (free!) online. - By taking the test you are supporting scientific research and help de Mol further the algorithm! www.teamventure.nl

Eva de Mol - PhD Candidate Vu university Amsterdam [email protected] Venture is sponsored by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Provincie Utrecht in the context of the support policy Pieken in de Delta.

DR. ERIK A. MOOI WINS ISBM AWARD TO STUDY

THE PERfORMANCE EffECTS Of TECHNOlOGY lICENSES

MATCHING CAREER RESOURCES IN ENTREPRENEURIAl TEAMS

SCIENCE WITH

IMPACT AllIANCE

PORTfOlIO

DIvERSITY

AND SERvICE

INNOvATION

DR. MARC BAHlMANN

PROf. DR. ARD-PIETER DE MAN

DR. AlExANDER AlExIEV

DR. BRIAN TjEMKES

Approaching innovation through open innovation principles allows for the combination of different knowledge to

take place, resulting in either incrementally or radically new product and service offerings. Not surprisingly, firms such as Siemens, Philips and ABN Amro build so-called alliance portfolios, which can be defined as all the alliances of the focal firm. Purposefully building and constructing an

alliance portfolio can be an effective way of executing new corporate strategies and innovation trajectories. IBM, for example, was able to realise a radical redirection from an exploitation strategy to an exploration strategy by means of fundamentally changing its alliance portfolio. The current research frontier focuses on the effect of alliance portfolio diversity on firm performance and innovation (see box 1).

Alliance portfolio diversity can be defined as the amount of variation among the partners present in the focal firm’s alliance portfolio, meaning the variation in characteristics such as industry background, functional speciali-zation, size, et cetera. The alliance partners of a focal firm, let’s say Phillips, could all be from the same industry. This would imply that the Phillip’s alliance portfolio has a uniform setup. If the alliance partners stem from

Innovation in general, and service innovation in particular, flourishes when designed in accordance with open innovation principles. This being said, it makes sense for an or-

ganisation to engage in innovative activities together with other organisations. Service innovation – which can be defined as the process of improving current or developing

new services—is increasingly recognised as an important and timely subject of economic renewal and firm competitiveness, yet our knowledge regarding en-

hancing innovation remains biased primarily toward technological innovations. Service innovation, however, takes place outside the traditional boundaries

of the organisation, requiring service firms to engage in the establishment of multiple partnerships simultaneously in order to successfully achieve

required levels of service innovation. This raises a crucial question: are knowledge intensive business services (KIBS) ready and prepared for

enhancing service innovation through their alliance portfolio, and what threats lie ahead in so doing? We identify three approaches

managers can take to manage their alliance portfolio.


PAGE 9

a variety of industrial backgrounds, on the other hand, this would imply a diverse setup. In the latter case, the alliance portfolio of Philips can be considered diverse in terms of industry diversity. Alliance portfolio diversity can be conceptualised in different ways: they can be diverse or homogeneous in terms of alliance partner function, nationality, size, et cetera. All of these variations make this concept multidimensional.

UNDERSTANDING DIVERSITYIn our research, we examine the effect of al-liance portfolio diversity on service innovation, which we divided in two types: 1) exploitative service innovation, which should be understood as the refinement of current services, and 2) explorative service innovation, which can be de-fined as developing services that are completely new to the focal firm. Both types of innovations need to be balanced to some extent. Too much

focus on exploitative service innovation, on the one hand, will cause a company to fall in a so-called competency trap, that is, the company will be confronted with an obsolete knowledge base, thereby jepardising long-run adaptation. Too much focus on explorative service innova-tion, on the other hand, will cause a company to fall in a so-called learning trap, that is, it ne-glects the attainment of revenues on the short term, putting to risk organisational survival.

PAGE 9

Box 1: current state of artResearch from an alliance portfolio perspective is still in an emerging state. Prior literature has predominantly stu-died the effect of alliance portfolio con-figuration on firm performance, thereby overlooking its potential effect on other organisational outcomes, in particular, innovation outcomes. understanding how innovation can be stimulated and sustained is pivotal with respect to ensuring organisational survival and long-run adaptation. Only recently have academics started to study this issue, focusing primarily on certain configura-tive qualities of alliance portfolios such as size, structure, and partner characte-ristics in relation to innovation outcomes. A relatively new, and promising stream of literature focuses on a distinct aspect of alliance portfolio configuration: diversity.

We conducted our research in the service industry, with a focus on Knowledge Intensive Business Services. KIBS tend to offer servi-ces that are charactersed by a high degree of tacitness and heterogeneity, while its pro-duction and consumption often takes place simultaneously. KIBS typically are to be found in sectors such as finance, legal consultancy, marketing, IT and the creative industry. Because of the non-technological nature of the services involved, KIBS do not have the occasion to organise service innovation through research and development (R&D) departments, as is commonplace in manu-facturing and high technology industries. We studied the effect of alliance portfolio diversity and firm innovation both qualitatively (by means of four case studies) and quan-titatively (by means of a questionnaire). For the qualitative line of inquiry, we performed four case studies at 1) a large technological

service provider, 2) a multi media company, 3) a technical engineering firm, and 4)

a financial institution. For the quanti-tative line of inquiry, we distributed

questionnaires among KIBS in the IT-sector, the engineering sector

and the creative industry.

The research results made clear that alliances are

pivotal to realising service innovation. In particular,

long lasting relations with clients and

suppliers played a significant role.

Much innovation took place in

joint coope-ration with

suppliers and

clients. Also, we found KIBS to be strug-gling in optimising both explorative and exploitative service innovation. The four case studies made clear that organisations have a tendency to specialise in either explorative or exploitative service innovation, thereby running the risk of falling into either the learning or the competence trap. The concept of alliance portfolio diversity appears to play a decisive role in this matter.

Alliance portfolios characterised by a high level of diversity, for instance in the industry domain, were associated with an organisation excessively engaging in service innovation. This is understandable given the fact that an alliance portfolio characterised by high levels of diversity is likely to yield a high variety of knowledge, thus providing the focal firm with plenty of opportunities to realise service inno-vation through combining distinct knowledge bases. Conversely, the case study showed that firms adopting a homogeneous alliance portfolio would primarily focus on exploitative innovation. Also, data indicated a prominent role for alliance coordination. Firms with a so-called dedicated alliance function would yield alliance portfolios characterised by higher levels of explorative and exploitative innovation. The case studies provide ad-ditional information with respect to designing alliance coordination. A laissez-faire style of portfolio coordination is associated with alliance portfolios characterised by an explo-rative orientation, while alliance portfolios characterised by an exploitative innovation orientation are associated by coordination styles focused on control.

In balancing explorative and exploitive service innovation, we found organisations put into practice the following three standard ap-proaches:

A parallel approach, where both forms of innovation are simultaneously being designed in a given business unit or organisation. One of the main advantages is the explorative and exploitative innovations are continuously balanced. However, achieving this balance

implies a continuous juggling act, requiring a high level of alliance management experience from the focal firm.

A temporal approach, where an organsation chooses to focus on one of the types of innovation over time. The main advantage is that particular periods are characterised by a clear focus on either explorative or exploi-tative innovation. The main challenge is to make the transition, in terms of organisatio-nal design, from one innovation orientation to the other, and to recognize when to make the change from one innovation orientation to the other.

A structural approach, where explorative and exploitative service innovation purposefully are separated and allocated to different units. The advantage of this approach is that diffe-rent business units can specialize in different types of innovation. The main challenge is to align business units with differing innovation orientations.

The choice for a particular approach should be guided by the specificities of the market environment an organisation is confronted with. The structural approach is most applicable in markets characterised by low speeds of innovation, giving the focal firm time to transfer knowledge from one depart-ment to the other. The temporal approach is most applicable in markets characterised by episodic changes, in other words, markets characterised by short periods of large scale change, alternated by periods of stability or low levels of change. The parallel approach is most applicable in markets characterised by continuous change.

KEY lESSONSTo summarize, alliance portfolios represent rich opportunities for enhancing service innovation. The following key lessons can be derived from our research:1. Firms are advised to actively seek relation-

ships with partners in different parts of the value chain, e.g., like suppliers and customers.

2. Alliance portfolio diversity affects innovation outcomes. A diverse portfolio setup advances explorative innovation, less diversity advances exploitative innovation. Thus, in configuring an alliance portfolio, a firm should be well aware of the innovative purposes it wishes to address.

3. Designing the alliance portfolio in either a diverse or a homogeneous way, bears the danger of falling into the learning or the competence trap.

4. Portfolio management increases the success of a firm’s alliance portfolio significantly. The inherently complex nature of alliance portfolios necessitates the implementation of an alliance portfolio function as well as the development of

alliance portfolio management capabilities.5. The choice for the structural, temporal

or parallel approach should be guided by specific market characteristics: markets with low speed innovation – structural ap-proach, markets characterised by episodic changes – temporal approach, and markets that experience continuous change – the parallel approach.

The research presented in this article was funded by the Dutch Pieken in de Delta-program. Earlier results were presented at the Academy of Management Meeting (2011) and EURAM (2011). Other results of this study are, or will be, made available at www.opendiensteninnovatie.nl.

PAGE 11


relevant IN SCIENCE

Marc Bahlmann is assistant professor at the VU University

Amsterdam, Faculty of Economics and Business Adminis-

tration. Dr. Bahlmann received his PhD from the Faculty

of Social Sciences (VU), studying knowledge dynamics

among IT-entrepreneurs located in the Amsterdam-based

IT and new media-cluster.

He can be contacted at: [email protected].

Ard-Pieter de Man is professor at the VU University Amster-

dam, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.

Also, he is principal consultant at Atos Consulting. Prof.

De Man published many books and articles on alliances,

networks, knowledge management and innovation.

He can be contacted at [email protected].

Alexander Alexiev is assistant professor at the VU University

Amsterdam, Faculty of Economics and Business Admi-

nistration. Dr. Alexiev received his PhD from the Erasmus

University, and specializes in explorative innovation, service

innovation and alliance portfolios.


Brian Tjemkes is associate professor at the VU University

Amsterdam, Faculty of Economics and Business Adminis-

tration. Dr. Tjemkes received his PhD from the Radboud

University Nijmegen, and recently coauthored a book

entitled ‘Strategic Alliance Management’ (Routledge).


HAN GERRITS

FuLL PROFESSOR AND ENTREPRENEuR

INFORMATION & INNOVATION MANAGEMENT

Han is a researcher and lecturer at the Vu university in addition to working as an innovation consultant and entrepreneur. His research and courses focus on doing business by using the Internet.

The courses that Han coordinates at the Vu focus on aspects of business using the Internet. Specifically, he coordinates a course that describes the Internet industry, explains how companies work together to deliver services such as email, search and social networks, and maps the way in which these companies make money. In the other course that he coordinates, Han teaches student teams to write business plans for Internet start-ups: something he has personal practice in doing. His current business, Innovation Factory, is the third company that he started. At Innovation Factory, Han develops idea management software that is used globally by companies like Heineken and Vodafone.Through his research, lecturing, and consulting, Han hopes to inspire people to see the importance of the Internet in managing practices, organisation design and business processes. He argues that many managers today do not understand the Internet, and that they think it is unimportant to learn about it. Han thinks that ignoring the internet will not be possible in the near future, and therefore he challenges his students to think in ways that challenge out-dated designs for organisations and business practices.

ZUZANA SASOVOVAASSISTANT PROFESSOR

ACCOuNTING & FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT

Zuzana is a researcher with interests that include dynamics of social networks, cognitions, and social processes of innovation. Within these broadly defined research areas, she is interested in understanding the

role of personality in the dynamics of social networks and social influence; how negative ties influence accuracy of perceptions of friendship relations; and how perceptions of leadership are formed depending on the ties of the leader and his/her followers. Zuzana is collaborating on two PhD projects in which she strives to understand drivers of successful innovations and knowledge sharing in the context of new product development. These fascinating topics are highly relevant in today’s networked world. The next challenge is to develop a new line of research that will bring together the more applied projects on social processes of innova-tion with the more fundamental network research. Zuzana’s recent work has been published in top tier management journals such as the Administrative Science

Quarterly and the Journal of Product Innovation Management.

fONS TROMPENAARSPROfESSOR

STRATEGY & ORGANISATION

Fons is a researcher, author, consultant and expert in management studies particularly in regards to cultural differences in business. He earned his PhD from the Wharton School at the university of

Pennsylvania with a dissertation that focused on differences in conceptions of organisational structures from various cultures. In 1989, Fons became the Mana-ging Director of Trompenaars Hampden-Turner, a consulting and training organi-sation for international management. In addition to his consulting work, Fons has written 15 books including the bestseller, Riding the Waves of Culture, Understan-

ding Cultural Diversity in Business. In 2011, Fons was mentioned as one of the top 50 management thinkers amongst Michael Porter, Gary Hamel, Tom Peters and Clayton Christiansen. At the Vu university, Fons directs the Servant Leadership Center for Research and Education (SerVus) with Sylvia van de Bunt. This center aims at contributing to the empirical foundation of the concept servant leadership. The research at this center is conducted by PhD students and master’s students alike. Beyond his commitment to research in servant-leadership, Fons is working with PhDs to empirically validate the hypothesis that the sustainable success of business organisations is based on the competency of its leaders to reconcile the dilemmas originating between its stakeholders and the organisational culture in which business is done. The results will lead to the possibility of predicting the value of an organisation rather than establishing it by looking backwards.

BART BOSSINKENDOWED PROFESSOR OF TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION

INfORmATION & INNOvATION mANAGEmENT

Bart is responsible for the educational and research programme Science, Business and Innovation. This programme is collaboration between the faculties of Economics and Business, Natural Sciences,

and Social Sciences. The basic concept of the programme is to speed up the development of science and technology into new products and services in busines-ses and society. The key idea is that this can be realised by connecting the world of natural science and technology development with the world of new product and service development. The educational programme teaches bachelor and master students all relevant ingredients of this exiting field. Those participating in the research programme study how firms successfully develop and commercialize new science-based and technology driven products and services portfolios. Bart likes this field because he is convinced that the connection between the scientific-technological world and the commercial world can be improved. He thinks that business and society needs people who understand the connection between science and the commercial world, and are able to act as a bridge between the two worlds. These researchers can help specialists that are ‘locked’ in one of these worlds to cooperate and contribute to business and societal development. His aim is to realise an educational and research programme that attracts both students, researchers, and practitioners who are aware that science and technology commercialization needs the best of both worlds.

INDIVIDUALS


PAGE 13

PRESENTING ABRI

RESEARCHERS

HIllE BRUNSASSISTANT PROfESSOR


Hille’s main interest is how people develop collective action when they come from different backgrounds. She received her doctorate from Boston university, where she studied knowledge development in

interdisciplinary cancer research. She found that scientists at the Harvard Medical School developed particular strategies to make their work compatible to that of their collaborators. This study is forthcoming in the Academy of Management Jour-

nal, a top-tier journal for empirical research. Currently, she is finalising a theory of coordination in collective work across diverse domains of expertise. Hille’s work is particularly relevant to firms that seek to innovate, such as pharmaceu-tical companies. While innovation thrives on the effective combination of diverse expertise, increasing specialization often makes teamwork frustratingly slow and difficult. Therefore, her next research project will examine how conditions such as expertise diversity and task complexity affect the duration and shape of the col-lective work process. Next to a course on International Management, Hille teaches a course titled Expertise and Coordination in Knowledge Intensive Firms in the newly launched Science, Business, and Innovation program that provides cross-disciplinary training to prospective managers of innovative ventures. Her goal is to make collaboration more efficient and help managers coordinate projects that depend on the successful integration of diverse expertise.

IRINA MIKHAIlAVAASSISTANT PROFESSOR


Irina is a recent graduate of Lancaster university Management School, uK. In August 2011, she joined the Management Consulting group at Vu university as an Assistant Professor. Throughout her

career, Irina engaged in multiple projects that included industry driven research, business development, cross-European scientific collaborations and cross-cultural training. She is an avid networker engaging in collaborations worldwide, as well as an active tutor contributing to multiple graduate, undergraduate and executive management courses. Currently, Irina is working towards understanding the ways knowledge as a resource can be capitalised on by various industries, and how organisations enable growth through learning. She is continuously ad-ding new perspectives to her research; HR and innovation are amongst the most recent. Irina is passionate about bringing practice perspective into management research. ultimately, with her activities she is aiming to bridge the gap between academics and practitioners.

BERND HEIDERGOTTASSOCIATE PROFESSOR IN ECONOMETRICS

lOGISTICS & OPERATIONS RESEARCH

Bernd’s research is in the area of stochastic operations research. His specialisation is on advanced simulation techniques for optimisation of stochastic networks, and on the development of algorithms for the

numerical evaluation of performance characteristic of stochastic networks. To give a better idea on what type of problems he works on, here is a typical example. A railway company wants to plan additional times to the technical travel times of trains so that small perturbations of the travel time do not affect the overall train operation too much. How can this be done in a way such that the time table does not become too slow (keep the additional times small) while a certain level of punctuality is met? While many beautiful and powerful approaches for optimiza-tion exist, typically, the sheer size of real life problems makes them infeasible. The development of approaches for optimisation under uncertainty that are ap-plicable to realistically sized systems has therefore become the main theme of his research. Rather than trying to develop heuristically analytical solutions, he takes computer simulations as starting point and develops mathematically advanced search/optimization algorithms. This research is carried out in close cooperation with the business analytics group at Vu’s faculty of science. Bernd Heidergott has published over 30 papers in international scientific journals and is author of 2 monographs. He is research fellow of Tinbergen Institute and of EuRANDOM.

DAVID KROONASSISTANT PROFESSOR


David’s research focuses on post-merger integration with a parti-cular emphasis on identity/identification, justice, culture and trust. Merger and acquisition (M&A) activity over the last decade has run at

unprecedented levels. However, as several researchers and practitioners have indicated, most M&As fail, at least to some extent. Since traditional financial and strategic perspectives face difficulties in explaining these disappointing outcomes, there is an increasing interest in less tangible, social, cultural and psychological factors related to the integration of merged and acquired firms. In other words, the post-merger integration phase can be seen as potentially critical to M&A success or failure. David recently published pioneering research about the merger between KLM and Airfrance, which demonstrated scientific as well as practical relevancy. In his teaching he always tries to make use of his real-time experience with business companies, and the real-world experiences of his students. David’s teaching philosophy reflects his interests in collaborative authorship. Within the department of Management and Organisation, he collaborates with several people, in research as well as in teaching.

AMIR GRINSTEIN/ [email protected]

ASSOCIATE PROFESSSOR / MARKETING

Amir’s research is in the area of pro-social marketing. He focuses on the interface between marketing and society in various social, environmental and public policy contexts such as the enhancement of “green” behaviour and the effectiveness of demarketing (e.g., minimising behaviours with negative influence on society such as smoking and over-consumption). He is passionate his about research because he believes that it can have a significant impact beyond its academic scope, and help public policy makers and consumers to make better decisions. He will conti-nue to advance his research on pro-social marketing to better understand how po-licy makers can use the power of the marketing discipline to improve well-being in modern societies at the Vu university. His main goals are to help develop a global research community of scholars that study pro-social marketing, and to conduct research that can influence both policy making and consumers’ well-being.

RUBEN VAN WERVEN/ [email protected]

PHD CANDIDATE / STRATEGY & ORGANISATION

Ruben’s research concerns the interactions between entrepreneurs and resource providers, or more specifically how founders of startups use language to convince investors that their business is worth investing in. Since startups often do not have a track record of past performance, nor have support from established actors in their industry, founders have to rely on their communication skills to reduce un-certainty amongst resource providers, hoping this will convince them of the future success of the new firm. To provide a complete picture of the communicative ef-forts of startup founders, he will also study which nonverbal forms of communi-cation they use, and how these relate to spoken language. Thus bylooking into the details of entrepreneurial communication, Ruben ultimately hopes to be able to explain what aspects of it are most likely to persuade resource providers to invest.

MATTHIjS BAl/ [email protected]

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR / ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOR

Matthijs’s research concerns psychological contracts and individualised agree-ments between employees and their organisations, and he has integrated this with his research on older workers and the aging workforce. He aims to bring together both societal trends (e.g., the aging workforce) and scientific developments. He thinks that these correlations are at the forefront of what will happen in the world of work in the next years and decades, and therefore it is imperative to research the relationships between societal trends and scientific developments. In the next few years, he will be busy with his research on how organisations can keep their employees—especially their older workers—motivated, productive, and healthy through an individualised approach, so that employees can develop themselves as human beings in organisations and are not treated as mere human resources.

NEWHIRES

SIgHTSDOMINIqUE VAN WINGERDEN/ [email protected]

JuNIOR RESEARCHER / ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOR

Dominique is a talented up and coming researcher whose research focuses on academic performance. To do her research, she studies the dynamics of personal determinants as predictors for student’s academic success. Her research project is a cooperation between Vu university and Hogeschool Leiden, but can be a contribution to all existing educational institutions. This is exactly what she is passionate about: researching and making knowledge that is a contribution to her own development, but more importantly to society at large. Her research plans at Vu university are diverse. First, she would like to learn how to write great articles that would be accepted by reputable scientific journals. Second, she would like to bring creativity into her research, and finally, she wants to make sure that her research will ultimately contribute to the decrease of drop-outs in higher education institutions.

AROOj ZAHID BAKHTAWARI/ [email protected]

JuNIOR RESEARCHER / ACCOuNTING & FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT

Since the Global Financial Crisis in 2007, Arooj has been motivated to be able to explain how phenomena occur especially when it has an impact with such gravity as the Global Financial Crisis, and because of this she is driven as a researcher. Currently, Arooj is a junior researcher at the Vu university, and she works with Professor Herbert Rijken, an expert in cost of equity. Arooj’s research is oriented around cost of equity and its relationship with corporate governance, audit con-trols and agency costs. Cost of equity is one of the most important determinants of investment because it determines the eventual rate of return required by the investors and is thus important for investors and funds alike. Because of this, Arooj would like to point out some of the patterns, practices, and relationships of corporate governance and audit control mechanisms.

MARIjN PlOMP/ [email protected]

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR /INFORMATION & INNOVATION MANAGEMENT

Marijn’s research focuses on the combination of ‘organisation’ and ‘technology’. In practice, often only one of these dimensions is considered. For example: “our or-ganisation should work via the cloud” or “our business processes need to become more agile.” Research shows that it is the combination of many factors concerning an organisation, its people, environment, and information technology that should be in alignment in order to be successful. Marijn is especially passionate about interorganisational IS – information systems that cross the boundaries of a single organisation. Topics like the electronic patient record or identity fraud are often featured in headlines, proving the importance of this subject to both business and society. In the coming years, Marijn hopes to be able to help close the gap between both organisation and IT, and business and academia.

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WHEN DO ENTREPRENEURIAL TEAMS IDENTIfy SUSTAINABLE

OPPORTUNITIES?Strategy & Organisation

EVALUATINg kNOWLEDgE Of THE CROWD: THE CASE Of CULTURAL

HERITAgE ORgANISATIONSInformation & Innovation Management

THE ART Of INVESTINg IN ARTAccounting & Financial Management

EffICIENCy DRIVERS IN SMALL BROkERAgE fIRMSAccounting & Financial Management

gEOMARkETINgMarketing

THE LOgISTICIAN BEHIND THE DJ Logistics & Operations Research

REfLECTIONS ON CAREERS RESEARCH IN PERfORMINg ARTS

Organisational Behaviour

SIgHTS

WHEN DO ENTREPRENEURIAl TEAMS IDENTIfY SUSTAINABlE OPPORTUNITIES?

Never waste a good crisis, the proverb says. Entrepreneurs therefore could creatively leverage an economic crisis to come up with

innovative solutions and explore new opportunities. In this study, we focus on the identification of sustainable opportunities in times of a crisis: entre-preneurial opportunities that sustain the natural and/or communal environment as well as provide development gain for others. Entrepreneurs who pursue

sustainable opportunities make an impact by reducing environmental and societal problems. As soon as we know when entrepreneurs identify sustainable opportunities, we can inform entrepreneurs how to spur such creativity, and to acknowledge the factors and processes that may hinder identification of sustainable opportunities. In this study, we explore the effects of resources constraints and team composition on opportunity identification.

DR.ElCO VAN BURG

DR. KSENIA PODOYNITSYNA

lIEN BECK MSC

DR. TINNE lOMMElEN



PAGE 17

BACKGROUND In general, entrepreneurial oppor-tunity identification is explained by ‘context’ factors and from ‘cognitive’ processes. Resource constraints are a relevant context-factor for entrepreneurs who severely expe-rience the effects of the economic crisis, and who may feel triggered to identify relatively promising sustai-nable opportunities. The literature on the effect of resource constraints implies that when people perceive constraints, their mind will be more productive, and result in identifying increasingly diverse opportunities.

A dominant cognitive influence on opportunity identification is the interaction in the venturing team. In particular, we explore whether team composition in terms of functional diversity has a positive influence on creative processes. Functional diver-sity refers to the number of different functions represented in a team. Most entrepreneurship studies find functional to be positively related to team-level creativity, the number of identified opportunities, and performance.

METHODSWe studied 209 Dutch and Belgian small and medium-sized (SME) firms. We gathered data by an in-depth interview with the lead-entrepreneur, a survey among the top-management team of the firm and a session in which this team composed a ranking of five firm-specific strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

fINDINGSDifferent resource constraints appear to have different effects on opportunity identification, and not a univocal positive effect. Recent sales decreases have a positive effect on the identification of opportunities,

METHODA count measure for sustainable opportunities was derived from the team’s conversation sessions. The opportunities reported by each venture team were coded by two raters. These coders used standardised coding instructions. The simple inter-rater agreement between the two raters was 76%, confirming that the coding was reliable. Functional team diversity was computed by the Teachman/Shannon index and we controlled for team size. With regard to the constraints, we focused on con-straints that are likely to arise

due to the economic crisis: 1) prior sales decreases (from two years ago to one year before the date of filling out the question-naire), 2) recent sales decreases (sales decreases from one year before the measurement date), 3) decreasing margins, and 4) marketing and sales capability constraints. Negative binomial regressions were used to test the predicted relationships as the dependent variable measures the number of identified opportuni-ties representing an integer count without a normal distribution.

but decreasing margins appear to have a strong negative effect on the identification of sustainable opportunities. In contrast to what we expected, functional team diversity does not have a direct effect on the identification of sustainable opportunities. However, we find that functional team diversity has an indirect, negative effect on the iden-tification of sustainable opportuni-ties when entrepreneurs experience marketing and sales capabilities constraints and prior sales decrea-ses on opportunity identification.

DISCUSSIONBy exploring when entrepreneurs who run an existing business identify sustainable opportunities, this study shows the influence of different business arrangements by which new opportunities are identified. As an important context condition, and consistent with the literature on resource constraints, we find that sometimes perceived constraints, rather than perceived strengths, lead to identifying sus-tainable opportunities. However, we also consistently find that decrea-sing margins have a negative effect on the identification of sustainable opportunities. Apparently, a certain degree of healthiness of the cash-flow, or even financial slack is needed to identify sustainable opportunities. Yet, earlier research showed that the lack of adequate financing stimulates resourceful-ness and creative bootstrapping strategies. This seems not to be the case for the identification of sustainable opportunities. In this respect, sustainable opportunities may be considered by the entre-preneurs in our sample as a ‘luxury option’, which identification and prioritization is triggered by other types of constraints, but prevented by reduced margins.

Moreover, the results show that cog-nitive team-level diversity negatively moderates the positive effect of con-straints on the identification of these new opportunities. An explanation for this result is that there is a social categorization effect in the team. Some earlier studies showed that team-members prefer similar col-leagues, and that dissimilarity leads to reduced acceptance of another person’s strengths and suggestions. Diversity then leads to categoriza-tion processes, in which the ideas of the ‘dissimilar’ individuals are earlier rejected, and team-members may decide to withhold their input. This leads to less creative team output. Thus, the individual who first comes up with a sustainable opportunity might be categorised as an unworldly visionary or environ-mentalist, and his or her ideas are more likely to be rejected in diverse teams.

PRACTICAl IMPlICATIONS These results imply that resource constraints, for instance in time of a crises, can have a positive role in

small and medium-sized enter-prises. Awareness of the fact that perceived difficulties spur creativity can help to create positive energy to overcome the existing constraints by identifying new opportunities. Proverbially, entrepreneurs should ‘never waste a good crisis’ to move away from mental ‘paths of least resistance’. Such difficulties could stimulate focus on new and pro-mising areas, and simultaneously make a positive impact on the envi-ronmental and social environment.

A second important implication of this study is that entrepreneurs and managers should note that functional team diversity can have a negative impact on team-level creativity. In particular, when the firm is facing resource constraints, dissimilar team-members can feel pressure to avoid too radical new avenues of thinking. This can be avoided by either reducing the functional diversity in the team or by making the team aware of the fact that they should stimulate thinking out of the box.

EVAlUATING KNOWlEDGE Of

THE CROWD THE CASE Of CUlTURAl

HERITAGE ORGANISATIONS

The Netherlands is among the forerunners in applying new techno-logies in the cultural heritage sector. Cultural heritage organi-sations, including libraries, archives and museums, have the

important responsibility of preserving the past to be exhibited or used in the present and to be passed on to future generations (Gray, 2011). In the last two decades, these organisations have felt pressures from different directions to change (Black, 2005): governmental pressures involving less dependence on public funding and more generation of income; and higher expectations from the public, including a more ac-tive participation in the development, selection and retention of cultural heritage knowledge. Therefore, many cultural heritage organisations are embracing innovative and more participative ways to interact with the public.

Participation of the ‘crowd’ or public in the cultural heritage covers a broad range of activities: from the tagging of paintings such as those in the Rijksmuseum website; to the contribution of personal stories, like the Geheugen van Oost organised by the Amsterdam Museum; to the more knowledge intensive manuscript transcription, such as that of

the 17th century Hijacked Letters available through the Meertens Institute or the 13th century encyclo-paedia De proprietatibus rerum facilitated by the Huygens Institute. These are some examples in the Dutch cultural heritage, but this phenomenon is also taking place in other areas. For instance, crowds are increasingly successful in supporting astronomy (GalaxyZoo.org) or medicine (Fold.it), which is refer-red to as citizen science, and in collaborating with organisational R&D to solve problems and increase innovation (Innocentive).

Despite the increased attention for public participa-tion, so far little is known about the potential tension that might arise when including the public in the organisation’s knowledge related activities. Allowing the public to participate in tasks previously carried out by experts brings about questions about the quality of knowledge of the crowd. Managing external

RESEARCHERS

M. PRATS lóPEZ (MSC)

PROf. DR. M. H. HUYSMAN

DR. M. SOEKIjAD

DR. IR. j. j. BERENDS

INfORMATION & INNOVATION MANAGEMENT


PAGE 19

THE CASE Of CUlTURAl

HERITAGE ORGANISATIONS

knowledge depends for a large part on the absorptive capacity of the organisation. Absorptive capacity is the organisational ‘ability to identify, assimilate and exploit knowledge from the environment’ (Cohen & Levinthal, 1989). Given the concern of keeping high quality standards of cultural heritage knowledge, our research focuses on the processes of evaluation and selection of publicly generated external knowledge. Little is known about how organisations assess and decide what external knowledge or ideas have value (Chesbrough, 2003). In fact, to our knowledge, no business studies have systematically explored how evaluation and selection of external knowledge actually happens. Consequently, in order to fill this gap, our research aims at answering ‘how do cultural heritage organisations evaluate and select publicly generated external knowledge while maintaining their quality level’. Data will be collected in three cultural heritage institutions to help us gain insights

into the changes in work practices and identity, as a consequence of these organisations opening up to the knowledge contribution of the crowd driven by web 2.0 based applications.

Knowing how existing organisational routines, identity and technology relate to the evaluation and selection of knowledge from the crowd is of outmost importance for managers to enable their organisati-ons to learn, change and innovate, especially in times of great pressures and economic crises. We expect that our findings about the actual use and conse-quences of web 2.0 for knowledge collaboration with the crowd will help participants in this sector, and beyond, to reflect upon and make better informed decisions about the adoption and use of these tech-nologies.

REFERENCES

Black, G. (2005). The engaging museum:

Developing museums for visitor involvement.

London: Routledge.

Chesbrough, H.W. (2003). The Era of Open

Innovation. MIT Sloan Management Review,

44(3), 35-41.

Cohen, W.M. & Levinthal, D.A. (1989). Innova-

tion and Learning: The two faces of R&D. The

Economic Journal, 99(397), 569-596.

Gray, C. (2011). Museums, Galleries, Politics

and Management. Public Policy and Adminis-

tration, 26(1), 45-61.

Once viewed almost exclusively as the pastime of connoisseurs, art collecting is increasingly seen as an investment. Current research evaluates whether such investing is justified financially — and whether art might serve as an alternative to standard assets such as equities and bonds, affecting a portfolio’s yield or diversification. In strictly financial terms, art investing is unattractive. Its risks include attri-bution errors, fakes, forgeries, thefts, and physical damage. Furthermore, it involves high transaction, insurance, maintenance, and restoration costs, and it has no current cash flow — money comes only when works are sold. Artworks are heterogeneous, illiquid, and sold on a subjective, segmented, and almost monopolistic market in which no valuation guidelines exist. Investors must perform their own

Investors are constantly on a hunt for as-sets that can improve the risk-adjusted return of their financial portfolios. In

times when the economy is performing poorly, there is a demand for assets that have a low correlation with such traditional asset classes as stocks and bonds. Articles in the financial press that report on the record prices paid for paintings give rise to the idea that art might be an asset that can be used to make large returns. However, it is important to remember that works of art are very different from stocks and bonds. first, unlike stocks and bonds, which offer returns in the form of dividends or interest, art can be classified a consumer

good that provides its owner with aesthetic pleasure and social status. Second, stocks and bonds are traded almost continually, while the time between a sale and resale of a particular painting can take more than a century. finally, compared with owning a stock, owning art has additional risks such as theft, forgery, and possible physical damage. In order to tell whether reported high returns on art are consistent or just the result of plain speculative luck, it is important to investigate whether investing in art yields a competitive risk-adjusted return in comparison with other, more-traditional asset classes and can be used to diversify a financial portfolio.

DR. ROMAN KRAUSSl

ACCOUNTING & fINANCIAl MANAGEMENT

THE ART Of INVESTING

IN ART


PAGE 21

due diligence. But artworks, unlike stocks, bonds, real estate, and certain funds, provide aesthetic returns as well as financial ones. It is when these aesthetic aspects are combined with the financial behaviour of the assets that it gets interesting.

Nonetheless, Finance 101 would tell us to consider returns, but this is difficult with unique products like art. No daily closing and opening prices exist. Transactions involving the same artist are infrequent, and for spe-cific artworks the average turnover term is more than 30 years. Academics have develo-ped a number of methods to try to overcome these problems. Investors need not necessa-

rily understand these methods, but learning how to read art market indices can be a very important first step in evaluating the risk and return potential of an investment in art. With the help of so-called hedonic price indexes we can measure the price appreciation of artworks over time while considering such characteristics as size, medium, provenance, and artist’s reputation. The main advantage of these indexes is that they contain all auction records and not just a limited sample of repeat sales. They are thus the most repre-sentative and liquid art-market indexes. And they can be constructed for submarkets such as Chinese Contemporary, Old Masters, and photography, as well as for individual artists.

Hedonic indexes can answer the questions: How does art perform? Which segment performs better in turbulent times? How does one artist compare with another in the same genre?

Historically art has been viewed as an exclu-sive market, with limited supply and demand. Today there are more art creators and consumers because of increased disposable income and time to devote to non-commercial endeavours. Moreover, new wealth has ope-ned new market segments, such as the BRIC economies of Brazil, Russia, China, and India, but also the Arab world with a strong interest of buying premium artworks. However, the

Photography: Adriano Castelli / Shutterstock.com

ROMAN KRÄUSSlassociate professor of finance at VU University Amsterdam, specialised in research on art investment. In 2006, he founded the Web site www.art-finance.com, where he publishes studies on art as an asset class and provides indexes that track the market performance of art and individual artists to help investors evaluate and optimise different portfolio allocations. Dr. Kräussl, an Art + Auction contributing editor is also adjunct as-sociate professor of finance at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, in Atlanta, Georgia, and research fellow at the Center for Financial Studies in Frank-furt/Main, Germany, at the Duisenberg school of finance (DSF) in Amsterdam, and at the Emory Center for Alternative Investments in Atlanta.

THE ART Of INVESTING IN ART

fact that the art market did not seem particularly worried by the sub-prime crisis in September 2008, did not stop it from suffering a very serious correc-tion with the subsequent economic crisis. The S&P 500 fell by 45 percent in 6 months between Sep-tember 2008 and March 2009, whereas art prices contracted by 34 percent over the same period. In response to the financial turbulences, central banks lowered interest rates and governments injected billions into the recapitalization of banks in order to ensure the continuity of a faltering system. At the same time, the auction houses stopped their bad habits of offering guaranteed prices and deliberate-ly thin catalogues to boost prices. Within a matter of months, global finance was back on an upward path and art prices recovered back to their 2007 levels.

In 2011, the total global art auction revenue set an absolute record of 11.5 billion uSD. The total exceeded 10 billion for the first time ever, and grew 21 percent since 2010. This strong growth was sustained throughout the year. After a record first semester (6.5 billion uSD), the second half of the year was just as exceptional (5.1 billion uSD, the best second semester ever recorded). The global unsold rate has been above 35 percent since the art market downturn in 2008. In 2011, it dipped below this threshold to 34.8 percent despite a 7 percent increase in the number of lots offered at auctions. In 2011, the art market did not experience a new global record for a single work, but a 33 percent increase in the number results above the million-dollar line (at low inflation rates) compared to 2010, totalling 1,688 artworks. Excluding auction debuts, in 2011 more than 12,400 artists reached new auction summits including Qi Baishi (57.2 million uSD in 2011 vs. 12.5 million uSD before 2011), Clyfford Still ($55m vs. $19m), Roy Lichtenstein ($38.5m vs. $38m), Egon Schiele ($35m vs. $20m), Salvador Dali ($19m vs. $5m), and Gerhard Richter ($18.5m vs. $13m).

2011 was the most prolific year ever recorded for the global art market. Whereas financial markets closed the year 1 percent down (S&P 500) with an 18 percent drop between July and October, the overall auction art market posted a 15 percent increase in revenue in 2011. At the start of the year, art price le-vels were close to those observed in the second half of 2007 (several months before the historically high levels observed at the end of 2007), and they finished 2011 close to the levels reached in July 2008 (just a couple of months before the meltdown that knocked 37 percent off art prices until the recovery in autumn

2009. Overall, in 2011 the global art market offered an extraordinary level of resistance to the general context of the continuing financial crisis.One of the primary reasons the market for art and luxury collectibles has been so robust over the past decade, and that the crisis was only short-lived is that more people have large amounts of money to spend on passion invest-ments: those made out of personal interest ra-ther than for pure economic gain. The number of high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs)—people with financial assets totalling at least $1 mil-lion — more than doubled from 1996 to 2009. Although in 2008 the global financial crisis left the world with nearly two million fewer wealthy individuals than in the previous year, by 2009 the number had strongly rebounded. In particular, the Chinese population has become wealthier over the past decade, with the number of HNWIs increasing from 211,000 in 2002 to 535,000 in 2010.

Overall, investing in art has been a sound invest-ment over various periods considered. Art invest-ments provide a lower, but still positive, average risk-adjusted return than the broad financial mar-kets with which they have a low but often slightly positive correlation. In the beginning of 2008, for instance, art markets showed a spectacular resistance to the economic trauma caused by the subprime crisis, but they got caught up in it by the fall. Current research indicates that the global art market tends to come late to economic downturns. This makes art useful as a hedge against financial market risk. But this is purely backward looking, thus, what to expect for the future? At a time when today’s art market is increasingly resembling the dynamic observed in 2008, will its structural adjustments be sufficient to prevent a correlation of art prices to the correction of financial assets? The auction results of 2011 and the most recent ones at Sotheby’s and Christie’s in May 2012, including the price record of $119,922,500 for any work of art at auction set for Edvard Munch’s The Scream, look very promising for considering art as an alternative investment. Nonetheless, the current market is highly selective, very cautious and more mature than previous art markets. Although buyers are clearly motivated and still liquid despite the financial crisis, they show that they want nothing but the best at reasonable prices. My best practice recommendation is to buy something that you enjoy aesthetically and can live with forever.

PAGE 23


MANAGEMENT BOOK

STRATEGIC AllIANCE

MANAGEMENT

BRIAN TjEmkES

“Brian Tjemkes (Department of Management & Organisation) has written a new book

on Strategic Alliance Management, together with Pepijn Vos (TNO) and Koen Burgers (Nyenrode/Damen Shipyards).

S trategic alliances have become cornerstones for the competitive strategy of many firms, enabling those firms to achieve objectives

that otherwise would be difficult to realise. un-surprisingly, the increase in alliance activity over the last few decades has occurred in parallel to enormous growth in academic and managerial at-tention in the subject. Paradoxically, however, firms’ increased focus on and use of alliances is paralleled by moderate-to-high alliance failure rates over the same period. With a few exceptions, firms appear unable to manage their alliances successfully.

‘Strategic Alliance Management’ provides a detailed, evidence-based approach outlining the design, management, and evaluation of these alliances. Elaborating on the decision-making structures apparent during each stage in the alli-ance life-cycle and in elucidating cases from across the world, the book offers a systematic framework that provides insights into the development and deployment of alliances. In recognition of the fact that distinct alliance objectives, alliance partners, and alliance context constitute unique management challenges, the book also elaborates on these specific conditions. Furthermore, the book looks in detail at alliance capabilities: the ability to create successful alliances through learning about alliance management and leveraging alliance knowledge inside the company. The conclusion builds on the preceding chapters by discussing three alliance pa-radoxes that are inherently tied to the management of strategic alliances.

Strategic Alliance Management depicts a more comprehensive book than has previously been avai-lable, while acknowledging that decision-making constitutes a critical success condition. The book is written with an even-handed appreciation for theory and practice. Therefore, students participating in advanced courses in graduate and MBA programs in business schools will find this book useful, as will professionals seeking a deeper understanding of the subject.

-This book has a nearly intuitive consistent struc-ture and contains a wealth of insightful examples. It has the potential to become a widely used book in the world of strategic alliances. I will keep it on my desk to have it close with me during my daily al-liance activities.’ John Bell, Radboud University, The Netherlands and Head of Strategy & Partnerships, Philips Research-

-This book makes an important contribution to our understanding of alliance management. The authors treat the subject matter comprehensively. One of the few books on the topic that is both academically grounded and useful to managers.’ Anoop Madhok, Schulich School of Business, York University, Canada-

Brian Tjemkes is Assistant Professor of Management and Organisation at VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

INTRODUCTION

A large majority of Dutch enterprises are composed of small to medium- sized firms. Most of these firms operate in competitive markets, and are active in the service industry. Notable examples are consulting firms, marketing agencies, retail companies and real estate brokerage companies. Our study focuses on the real estate brokerage firms. Almost 80 per cent of the approximately 180,000 housing transacti-ons per year are undertaken through three multi listing services. The largest of the three, the Dutch Association of Brokerages (Nederlandse Vereniging van Makelaars (NVM)) has a majority market share in resi-dential sales, which is executed by its 2,000 NVM members. Most brokerage firms are small firms of one to seven employees. The brokerage market in the Netherlands is a competitive market in which brokerage companies compete on service quality and price. Maintaining a high level of efficiency is one of the major challenges brokerage firms face. Our study tries to identify the drivers of efficiency in or-der to understand better how high efficiency levels can be attained and secured.

PROf. DR. TOM GROOT

PETER RISSEEUW (DIRECTOR Of PERISCOOP CONSUlTING)

DR. EElKE WIERSMA

ACCOUNTING & fINANCIAl MANAGEMENT



PAGE 25

BACKGROUNDThe efficiency of brokerage firms (and other service firms as well) are generally considered to be dependent on four strategic choices. The first one is firm size. Smaller firms may be easier to handle, but larger firms may produce more ef-ficiently because of economies of scale. Previous studies have shown different results: some find that larger companies are more efficient than smaller ones, while other studies show a nonlinear relationship between size and efficiency. These studies also reach different conclusions: some find that small and large firms are more efficient than medium-sized firms, others claim that medium-sized firms are more efficient than

small or large firms. The second strategic choice is the scope of operations. Most firms face, at some point in time, the question

of how many services they will provide. Brokerage firms need to decide whether they should focus on market transaction mediation

services only, or whether they should expand their services to also include financial services, valuation advice, renting services and new

residential project development. Expanding the scope of operations may lead to higher efficiency when producing multiple services, and lower the cost of each individual service (also referred to as econo-mies of scope). A third strategic choice is to join a franchise arrange-ment. A franchise contract may improve the firm’s reputation, product quality, selling power, and efficiency. High efficiency can be reached by more efficiently manage production, marketing, and distribution activities. The last strategic choice is firm age. When do owners of the firm need to step aside and give way to a new generation of brokers? Older firms have a more extensive network and might attract more customers. However, older firms and their owners may also have more difficulties maintaining high efficiency levels and adjusting to new business conditions.

METHODSWe used the annual benchmark study of the NVM from four different years to conduct our study. The database contained 2,802 firm-year observations. The most important variable is the efficiency level of each brokerage firm. We calculated this level by using the Data

Development Analysis technique, which produces a relative ef-ficiency level for each firm compared to similar other brokerage

firms. This technique enables the comparison of firms with different production functions and product offerings. Firm size is measured by number of full-time equivalent employees, firm age by years since foundation, scope by the number of product offerings weighted by number of transactions, and franchise is measured by membership of one out of two franchise formulas. We take into con-sideration the influence of external conditions such as: differences in housing markets, regional differences

and differences across observation years.

fINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONBoth scale and scope are positively related to efficiency: larger brokerage firms, and firms offering more different services turn out to be more efficient. Economies of scale and scope can be attained by growing both in size, and in number of products offered. However, this relationship is not straightforward but appears to be non-linear. Small brokers and brokers offering only one or two products are more effi-cient than medium sized brokers or brokers offering a limited number of services. They are, however, less efficient than large brokers and brokers offering a full range of services. These so-called u-shaped relations between size and efficiency demonstrate that a strategy of growth in number of employees, and number of services may lead to higher efficiency. However, the first steps in this growth strategy will cause efficiency to drop. The main reason why the efficiency may drop at first is that the additional employees a firm contract may not be im-mediately efficient. A similar problem may arise when expanding the product offering: new services need to be learned, and this learning process may also lower firm efficiency. We found a reversed u-shaped relation between firm age and efficiency. Brokerage firms appear to reach their optimal efficiency level after six years. Afterwards, the efficiency of firms decrease until 23 years, and then rises sharply again. A possible explanation for this last phenomenon may be that old owners have by that time handed over their firm to new owners who manage to improve efficiency levels, much in the same way as the original owners did during their first years in office. Membership of a franchise formula does not automatically lead to higher effici-ency levels. In fact, brokers in one franchise formula reached higher efficiency levels, whereas brokers in another franchise formula saw their efficiency levels reduced. The first franchise formula turned out to be different from the second one in that the first contract offered more tailor-made assistance and advise for the broker, while the se-cond formula only offered standardised business formulas and work procedures.

PRACTICAl IMPlICATIONSThe lessons learned from brokerage firms may also be relevant for other small service firms. Larger and more diversified brokers reach higher efficiency levels. However, small brokers who aspire to become larger may face temporary reductions in efficiency levels when they add more personnel and expand their product offerings. Becoming a member of a franchise formula does not always lead to higher ef-ficiency, but it depends how much tailor-made assistance a franchise formula can provide. Lastly, owner succession is an important issue when efficiency is concerned. Finding a successful new owner in a reasonable time span is important for securing an efficiency level that permits the firm to continue operations on the longer term.

Origineel research paper waarop dit artikel is gebaseerdGroot, T., Risseeuw, P., & Wiersma, E. (2011). The impact of design choices and market factors on brokerage firms’ efficiency. Journal of European Real Estate

Research, 4(1), 48-68.


How is it possible that in the last decades twenty new fortune 500 companies emerged in the state of California whereas only one was founded in Europe? Not to mention the absence of any companies located in the Netherlands or Amsterdam. Of course this difference has been partly explained by the cluster effect or specific entrepre-neurship; why does it work ‘there’ but not ‘here’ in Amsterdam? In the context of these questions it is interesting to examine creativity and innovation. How can creativity be stimulated? A first three-fold answer: think outside the box using varied knowledge and experi-ence, provide productive tension, and recognise and acknowledge creativity.

RECOGNISE AND ACKNOWlEDGE CREATIVITYCreativy, like change, is not always appreciated. As Machiavelli said: Change has no constituency. Today’s authority and status – political, economical, and in the most general sense of the word – are intri-

STEVEN TEN HAVEProfessor

Strategy & ChangeVu Amsterdam

Member of theSupervisory Board

ABN AMRO

Chairman, Foundation ‘Center for

Evidence-Based Management’

INPERSPECTIVE

AN EYE ON THE

fUTURE

OPINION PAPER

OPINION PAPER

MANAGERS SHOuLD READ

MORE PHILOSOPHY

BOOKS INSTEAD OF MANAGEMENT

LITERATuRE


PAGE 27

cately bound to the known, to what already exists, and as such are rooted in the past. Some products and ideas are truly creative, but simply do not sell. Moreover, products that are com-mercially successful are commonly frowned upon from a creative point of view: commercial suc-

cess will be associated with ‘mass’, lowbrow, and the ordinary. But to accept and acknowledge creativity is not the only problem, it is also necessary to recognise it. A popular proverb says: it takes one to know one. In other words, to recognise creativity you need to have it to begin with. Or at least be familiar with it. The same can be said about enterpreneurship: experienced enterpreneurs in productive environments are often the ones to identify enterpreneurship.

TO lOOK: MUlTIDIMENSIONAl VISIONCreativity is often constrained and limited because people are caught up in old beliefs. Their expertise and knowledge are at the same time a strength and a limitation: a way of seeing, is a way of not seeing. The extent to which you are determined by your own frame of reference is illustrated by a cultural anthropological experiment: in Papua New Guinea an hour-long movie about life in New York City was shown to a indigenous tribe. Subsequently researchers asked the members of the tribe to describe what they had seen, to which the tribe members answered: a chicken. Indeed, a chicken had appeared on film for a split second. That is what they ‘saw’ in the movie. Everything else was so foreign to them that they were not able not ‘see’ it within their frame of reference. A similar thing happens when we judge people or organisations. It is easy to judge a fai-ling company: we say that their strategy was flawed. Or when a company is very successfull we will ascribe this to a charismatic leader. We go for the obvious, even though there will be many other, less apparent factors in play. The crash of the Herald of Free Enterprise, for example, was not simply caused by a bow door that had not been properly shut. Research showed that the crash was caused by an interplay of 35 different factors. It is not easy to ‘see’, it requires effort and

demands you to look beyond the obvious. It requires that managers, professionals, and enterpreneurs look at an organisation in a multidimensional way. Real attention is a starting point: to be aware of your own field of work and your own predelictions, but also of other people’s point of view. In this sense the human mind is like a parachute: it only works when opened. This requires a certain state of mind, a mentality. But it also demands work and time, the willingness to study philosophy and to share in the experiences of others. Choose to read some of the classics from the liberal arts and sciences: put aside that popular management book about the learning organisation in favour of a classic book on development psychology. Gain know-ledge so you are able to see beyond the ‘chicken’. Take time. Time to reflect, to be able to think and act wisely with the right mix of involvement and distance.

PRODUCTIVE TENSIONIn order to work, to be productive and creative, organisations and individuals need tension. We need environments that provide at the same time change and stability, flexibility and coherence. To denote this tension professor Van Witteloostuijn coined the term ‘flexertia’ – a combination between flexibility and inertia. Productive antonyms are needed in order to provide a productive tension. We often speak of control versus self-control: the first generally understood with a negative connotation, the latter with a positive one. Professionals and creative people desire autonomy and self-control. Yet they benefit from more. That is why Van Witteloostuijn promotes a new, more positive, formulation of these dualisms: not to speak of auto-nomy versus control, but of freedom versus security. In order to function and flourish the majority of people will benefit from having freedom, yet also need security and attention, care, protection, and love. The lone wolf does exist, but is highly romanticsed. When we speak of creativity and innovation the skills of that one indi-vidual or genius are relevant, of course. But we should not romanticise this individual. If we want to learn from California we will have to see and recognise that there is more to it. We need to create a climate that caters for both freedom and security: an environment where people with different perspectives and ideas can engage in a constructive dialogue. Open-mindedness, awareness, and empathy: in order to recognise and acknowledge creativity and innovation.

relevant IN SCIENCE, BUSINESS

AND SOCIETYAS THEY SAY: IT TAKES ONE

TO KNOW ONE. TO RECOGNISE

CREATIVITY ONE MuST KNOW

CREATIVITY

GEOMARKE

TINGPAGE 28

MARKETING

PROf. DR. jAAP BOTER

We sat down with

Jaap Boter,

Extraordinary Professor,

working at the Department

of Marketing and

one of the founding

partners of

geomarketing

knowledge Centre (gkC),

to speak to him about

what exactly it is

that geomarketing

does and how it can

be applied in practice.

Governments commonly use Geographic Information

Systems (GIS) for several purposes, such as urban planning

and cadastral surveying. Similarly, the transport sector uses GIS to

solve routing issues, and construction companies visualise construction sites using the same software. Far less common, however, is the ap-plication of GIS in marketing. This is surprising, since ‘place’ is one of the classical four elements of the well-known marketing mix (people, price, promotion and place). The Geomarketing Knowledge Centre (GKC) specialises in developing methods for analy-sing, explaining and predicting consumer (buying) behaviour based on location and movement. Jaap Boter has also studied the use of geomarketing within creative industries. For example, GIS soft-ware can help to get a better understanding of the customer buying patterns in theatre box office data. Looking at when customers bought their tickets and where they live, for instance, showed that the closer

the show is in time the smaller the market area from which customers still buy tickets. Theatres cannot email all customers every day to sell their empty seats; they have to be very selective in emailing their customers not to antagonise them. Similarly, budget for outdoor advertising is tight. By showing when customers at what distance to the theatre would still be interested or not, the marketing department can make better selections as to who still to email or

where to book billboards; thus substantially redu-cing customer irritability and advertising costs. Another case particular to creative industries that demonstrates the benefits of geomarketing is of public libraries. Libraries know exactly where their customers live and what books they have borrowed, when they borrowed them, and on what date they are likely to return them, given their distance to the library. Based on this infor-

mation, public libraries can predict how many and on which days books are borrowed or returned, and from these predictions they can develop their staffing and acquisition policies. Geographical information can also help deciding whether a library needs all books from a popular author or whether it is better to only buy his early work and start collaborating with another library in case a client requests his most recent novel. Apart from theatres and public libraries, the GKC has also examined the effects of location on consumer behaviour in retail, the automotive industries and financial services. As argued for by professor Boter, contemporary technological software developments such as: Facebook check-in, Foursquare, and Google Latitude contribute to the availability of ‘place’ information of consumers. Moreover, by combing this knowledge with consumer behaviour related to a particular organisation, geomarketing can provide organisations with unique knowledge that helps them in the decision making process to better understand their markets, consumers, potential and competitors.

PAGE 29


recently published IN SCIENCE, BUSINESS

AND SOCIETY

DISSERTATIONS

21 – 06 – 2012 MARLOUS AgTERBERgInformation & Innovation ManagementPhD research conducted at the KIN Research Group Currently an assistant profes-sor Faculty of Economics and Business Administration

WALKING A TIGHTRO-PE: THE DYNAMICS OF COORDINATING INTRA-ORGANISATIONAL NETWORKS OF PRACTICEWith the ever increasing globalisation, the knowledge economy, and the rise in ICT that is becoming increasingly interwoven with organising processes, the issue of how to integrate dispersed knowledge is becoming of utmost importance to the survival of many organi-sations. The studies presented in this dissertation expose how knowledge sharing and organi-sational learning processes in distributed contexts may take shape within intra-organisational Networks of Practice (NOPs). Coordinating these networks, in which people voluntarily share knowledge around their shared practices within a hierarchical setting, induces the unique chal-lenge of reconciling ‘firm-based’ coordination principles with ‘community-based’ coordination principles. Studying the dynamics of coordinating NOPs from the perspective of management,

leadership and core members, reveals that the main challenge of coordinating intra-organisati-onal NOPs is to balance between the often conflicting practice-related interests of the network members, and the organisational level interests to institutiona-lise learning outcomes in the organisation. This dissertation contributes to both theory and practice by illuminating how coordinating NOPs resembles walking a tightrope and by unra-velling the dynamics integral to keeping your balance.

28 – 06 – 2012JULIE fERgUSONInformation & Innovation ManagementPhD research conducted at the KIN Research GroupCurrently an assistant profes-sor Faculty of Social Sciences, Organisational Studies

PERSPECTIVES ON AID: ACCOMMODATING HETEROGENEITY IN KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT FOR DEVELOPMENTPeople in professional settings are increasingly turning their focus outward to access sources of knowledge and expertise that can help them respond more effectively to complex challen-ges. This focus toward dispersed sources of knowledge is further stimulated as ICT-enabled forms of communication have become more readily available. The sec-

tor of development cooperation exemplifies this tendency. De-velopment cooperation depends on the resources and expertise of heterogeneous stakeholders, including NGOs, donors, policy-makers and local beneficiaries, to realise its objectives. However, with a broad range of stakehol-ders comes a broad range of perspectives on what deserves priority.

This research shows how deve-lopment professionals accom-modate heterogeneous per-spectives, while simultaneously collaborating toward shared goals. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, it comprises three qualitative empirical studies of knowledge exchange at organisa-tion, network, and individual le-vels of development practice, and addresses the overall research question: ‘How does knowledge management for development contribute to participatory objectives, given the hetero-geneous perspectives on aid?’ So doing, the research sheds light on the way in which people manage their knowledge needs, both formally and informally, and how this strengthens or inhibits participatory development, aimed at making development decision-making more inclusive. The research contributes to develop-ment studies, by generating a development-specific perspective on knowledge management. It also contributes to organisa-tion studies by explaining how heterogeneous perspectives are not necessarily overcome, but ac-commodated in dispersed, multi-stakeholder collaborations.

14 – 12 – 2012ASTRID TER WIELStrategy & OrganisationPhD research conducted in the

Department of Management & OrganisationLecturer Faculty of Economics and Business Administration

LEARNING TO COLLABORATE A QuALITATIVE STuDY OF INTER- ORGANISATIONAL RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENTInterorganisational relationships offer strategic solutions to help firms overcome resource limitati-ons and potentially improve firm performance. In order to benefit from these alliances, adequate relationship management is key. By repeatedly dealing with interorganisational relationships, organisations gain collaborative experience, which may increase their ability to manage future alliances. In order to enhance the development of such alliance capability, it is crucial to under-stand how organisations learn from collaborative experience. Astrid ter Wiel’s thesis adds to that understanding by providing insight into how the diversity of interorganisational relationships, the fragmentation of alliance management knowhow, the applicability of collaborative ex-perience and the configuration of alliance management activities influence learning about alliance management.

BY KATIE STEPHENSON

Behind every successful event there is a logistician who spent painstaking and focused hours

considering the countless occurrences that may unfold during it. To under-stand some of the challenges, deve-lopments and research on this subject, we spoke with our resident logistician/international DJ Walther Ploos van Amstel. Walther is not only an expert logistician who researches global supply chains, but he is a DJ who travels the world with his own event Furball. Over the past 25 years, Walther has noticed tremendous changes in both areas of his expertise. One particular phenomenon that Wal-ther points out when it comes to festi-vals, like Lowlands, is that the age po-pulation is getting older, approximately nine months older per edition of the festival. Twenty years ago the average age of a Lowlands attendee was 23, but now it is 32. Walther explains that an

older population has more demands at a festival making the pressure on the organisation more intense. He explains festival goers, “don’t just want a sand-wich; they want a Panini. They don’t want just beers, they want champagne, and they’re willing to pay for it...They want a perfect organisation.” These demands, which correspond to the increasing age of festival goers, require organisations to provide more service and execute perfect planning. A combination of new technologies and standardisation practices has made it easier for organisations to satisfy their customers. In the events field, Walther points out that the emergence of technologies and global standards has made it much ea-sier to create successful events. When he first started DJing, Walther would have to carry over 80 vinyl records to a show. With CD’s he could bring 500, which stored up to 1500 songs. Today, however, a DJ only needs a uSB stick.

Not only that, but today a DJ can down-load a desired track during the show. This has changed the way DJs can do their work, and actually is similar to the way in which logisticians can do their work. Walther explains that by following the guidelines of sense and response, now, “we can immediately react on an audience by taking a sample. You can make your own tracks on site today, and that’s the same in logistics. In the past it was always make to stock; you made the product and put it in the store. Today, you make to order.” In addition to all of these budding technologies, com-panies all over the globe have improved their quality of service by following international standards to reduce the cargo that needs to be transported with events, and to reduce the time it takes to set up events and take them down. It is evident that new technologies and the development of international standards have improved the level of service that organisers of an event can provide, but there is another element of logistics and events that has undergone a tremendous amount of development in the past 20 years. That is in the arena of crowd control. Crowd control, Walther points out, does not just refer to when a crowd is out of control, but rather responding to the crowds’ behaviours. A majority of this task is preventative, and it depends on an organiser’s planning.

THE lOGISTICIAN

BEHIND THE Dj

DR. WAlTHER PlOOS VAN AMSTEllOGISTICS & OR


PAGE 31PAGE 31

Crowd behaviour can be incredibly unpredictable, and even more so with the advent of social media. Walther explains that a large amount of tweets or Facebook status updates during a festival could change the predic-ted order of how many people view a particular performer. A performer who has fewer downloads or exposure than other performers at a festival may have an unforeseeable high viewer turnout based solely on a number of people con-stantly tweeting, “this is the show where everyone needs to be.” In order to keep the service level high, Walther highlights new technologies that are used. To keep the queue for drinks short, Walther describes a technology that ensures there are enough bartenders at a particular bar. At Lowlands, for example, the organisers implemented a heat seeking camera that determined how long a line was. If the line was deemed too long, a bartender at a less visited bar would receive an SMS telling him or her to move to the bar that had a long queue. At the event Amsterdam Sail, organi-sers used blue tooth information from mobile phones to indicate where people were. If an area would have been too dangerous, the organisers could have sent an SMS to people warning them not to walk towards a danger zone. One of the most important technologies

used today, however, is serious gaming. Serious gaming is a way for organisers to practice decision making before an event. By playing games that simu-late situations that can arise during an event, organisers have practice at making decisions. With all of these advancements and care for event logistics in the Nether-lands, it is not a surprise that the Dutch are known for their work. Their approach is known as the Dutch School of events logistics. Walther states that the Netherlands has a 500 million Euro dance event export industry. In addition of the top 20 DJs in the world, six to se-ven of them are from the Netherlands. These DJs in turn bring along Dutch people to work for them. This means that the Dutch have a lot of experience in events logistics. In addition to all of this practice, culturally the Dutch are desirable logisticians for events. They are known for building alliances due to their famous polder model, which is complemented by the Dutch culture of gains sharing.

THE lOGISTICIAN

BEHIND THE Dj

WALTHER PLOOS VAN AMSTEL’S TOP 3 TIPS AS A DJ TO A LOgISTICIAN

1. Really take care of me. A DJ needs to be taken care of by an organiser. This means: make sure everything is in place, and that there are no lights shining in my eyes. A good logistician should be in love with the artists.

2. Make sure the crowd is spoiled. Too many people at the bar can ruin the party. At a party of four to five hours, you do not want to wait twenty minutes each time you want a beer. You also do not want to wait for twenty minutes for your coat. To spoil the crowd you need to be a good organiser.

3. Make sure we get home safely. The party is not over when it is “over.” It is the same in logistics. You need to organise every detail until it is through. This means making sure the DJ gets a cab to his or her hotel, or making sure that invoices are paid. A good event en-sures that everything “gets home safely.”

REflECTIONSx

ON CAREERS RESEARCH IN

PERfORMING ARTS

MANAGEMENT

OB DR ClAARTjE j. VINKENBURG

VU UNIVERSITY AMSTERDAM,

MANAGING DIRECTOR Of THE AMSTERDAM

CENTER fOR CAREER RESEARCH

IR BASTIAAN W. VINKENBURG

MANAGING CONSUlTANT BERENSCHOT

RESPONSIBlE fOR ARTS & CUlTURE PRACTICE

DR IR HUUB H. VINKENBURG

fORMER PARTNER TWYNSTRAGUDDE

ExPERT ON qUAlITY Of SERVICESCL

AART

JE

BAST

IAAN

In 2009, the board of the “Vereniging voor Schouwburg en Concertgebouw Directies” or

VSCD commissioned the Amsterdam Center for Career Research (ACCR) at Vu university Amsterdam

to perform a study of the career determinants and outcomes of performing arts managers. The VSCD is

the Dutch association of employers in performing arts, i.e. theatre and concert hall executive committees. The design

of this research project was a typical example of co-creation, i.e. t theory driven research questions and methods to fit the

issues raised those commissioning the study. The performing arts are a fascinating domain where intrinsic motivation is considered

to be a strong driver of individual success – looking into careers of those responsible for managing performing arts provided us with an unique opportunity to learn more about this sector, and to see whether general notions of careers in the early 21st century would “hold” in this particular context.

ACCR used a web based survey to measure relevant career determi-nants (e.g. career orientation, proactivity) and outcomes (e.g. salary, engagement) among 366 employees of VSCD member organisations (a 11% response rate), focusing on three subsamples in particular, namely those in general management positions, technicians, and marketers. According to the VSCD, this subsamples each faced particular issues related to their careers. These issues were person-job fit of general managers (who often had a background in art, not in management), sustainable employment for technicians (often older men with physically demanding work who struggle with rapid ICT developments), and retention of marketers (often younger women with care responsibilities who worked reduced hours).

While this survey was only administered once and we cannot make any claims in terms of causality, some answers to the initial research issues as put forward by the VSCD could be given. All participants indicated high levels of personal involvement with the cultural sector, with positive impact on work engagement especially, supporting our expectation of the particular importance of intrinsic motivation in this type of career. Both marketers and technicians would benefit from being posed (more) challenging work, which when combined with pro-active behavior is associated with higher and faster growing salaries. Those who are interested in challenging assignments are also more likely to consider leaving – which means job enrichment is a way to retain marketers and sustainably employ technicians. For the many marketers looking for work-life balance there is a trade-off however, as these assignments may pose additional demands on their time and energy.

This initial study served as a starting point for enhancing our under-standing of careers and career related issues in the management of performing arts. However, we were not able, due to various circum-stances, to follow up longitudinally to look at careers over time. The cultural sector in the Netherlands has been in turmoil in the few years since 2009, which sheds an interesting light on some of these findings retrospectively.

The performing arts sector in the Netherlands used to considered to be a great place to work,

especially for those who wanted to turn a personal source of inspiration into a career. Yes it was hard

work for little pay, but that was ok if it allowed you to make a living out of art. In contrast, in the uS performing

art producers typically work in fast food restaurants during the day, and produce their plays at night. In the Netherlands,

the government facilitated a broad cultural infrastructure, and audiences would pay reasonable prices for rich cultural

offerings.

But times are changing, even in the Netherlands. On account of the economic crisis, the government has to cut their bud-get, including the budget for performing arts and culture. But even without the crisis, there is a growing expecta-tion that the cultural sector should be able to stand on its own two feet and become more market oriented. Starting 2013, there will be fewer companies, and the remaining ones will make fewer productions. For performing arts this means there is less budget for programming and more income needs to be generated from a mix of cultu-ral and commercial activities.

This puts pressure on performing arts management. While they could focus in their cultural product before, now they have to also pay attention to commercial activities. People who chose to work there for love are increasingly confronted with high professional expectations.

General mana-gers are forced


PAGE 33

REflECTIONSx

ON CAREERS RESEARCH IN

PERfORMING ARTS

MANAGEMENT

REflECTIONS fROM RESEARCHER AND fROM ExPERT

CONSUlTANTS ON THE CUlTURAl AND SERVICE SECTOR

“SNAPSHOT” AS RAPID CHANGES

IN THE CUlTURAl SECTOR AffECT

OUR RETROSPECTIVE SENSEMAKING

Of fINDINGS AND IMPlICATIONS

Of THIS STUDY

Photography: Nick Wake / Zuiver Photography

HUUB

to promote efficiency of their internal organisation and effectiveness of their external profile, which puts an additional burden on those that have limited formal management training.Marketers have to become sales managers operating on a fighters market, not only producing artistic flyers and programme brochures, but also trying to sell every single seat or empty space in the house.

Technicians often have to perform under severe time constraints with little room for experimentation and by leaning on routine rather than expertise.

In addition, performing arts management is t by flat organisational structures, with three and often only two hierarchical layers. This leaves almost no room for upward mobility, which means opportuni-ties for career development simply require leaving. At the same time, the number of management positions within the sector is decreasing, leaving even less room to maneuver.

Recent developments dictate increasing demands and challenges, but not more enjoyment, let alone more salary. One of the most interes-ting findings in the ACCR study is the relationship between the need for challenge and career success. Challenges have certainly appeared in the last four years, but the question remains whether these were the kind of challenges those in performing arts management were looking for. The sector does not appear to have become more at-tractive as an employer, and young employees are more likely to look elsewhere than before.

My first concern when I read this is the question who “owns” this problem? Who says these are the

issues when it comes to careers in performing arts management? Do managers, marketers, and tech-

nicians themselves view these issues as most central to their careers? What would happen if you would talk

to these people in depth about their career in the cultural sector and what would they identify as challenging? Even

if engagement and career satisfaction represent indicators of subjective career success, to what degree do these kinds of

survey items actually capture people’s personal experiences?

My second concern is related to careers over time and how careers are often discontinuous marked by jumps, switches, and step back investments. This type of study does not pro-vide insight into career development or patterns over time. It is a snapshot. Nor does it provide insight into what triggers career movements whether it be a little (or big) push or pull that makes a person decide to leave or to stay or to reconsider. Especially when intrinsic motivation and personal involvement plays such a big role, it would be interesting to find out how people respond to the current developments and how the initial love affair may have turned into a nightmare for some and a long term monogamous commitment for others.

My third concern has to do with the apparently formal categoriza-tion of management, technical functions, and marketing functions. According to Taylorism or the 100 year old principles of scientific management, this kind of task or functional separation is cheaper and more efficient, but it clearly has its disadvantages too, especial-ly when there is a clear call for more developmental challenges and task enrichment. Once a technician, always a technician? Is more variety possible in careers in performing arts? And if yes, would this help solve some of the issues the sector is dealing with currently?

My final concern is related to the pressure on the cultural sector to become more externally or client oriented, and to develop com-mercial activities in order to generate additional sources of income. While this perspective is new to some, others in the sector would say the audience has always been a primary source of existence. Art exists in the eye of the beholder; without an audience, performing arts may cease to exist. Increased interaction with the audience as a means of generating income while at the same time improving service levels would benefit from taking a reflective stance on client interactions.

ExAMPlE Of “CO-CREATED”

RESEARCH BY ABRI TO BRIDGE

THE SCIENCE PRACTICE GAP

STARTING POINT

fOR THEORY

DEVElOPMENT AND

ORGANISATIONDEVElOPMENT

MARCH

MAY

STARTING POINT

fOR THEORY

DEVElOPMENT AND

ORGANISATIONDEVElOPMENT ROOS ERKElENS

(KIN research group)PRESENTATION TOPIC

Building memory in dispersed organisational settings. A qualitative

study on the role of experts.REVIEWER

fleur DekenProduct Innovation Management

PRESENTATION DATE 05 March 2013 at 16.00 in 1H-17

(BelleVUe)

ABRI RESEARCH SEMINAR CHARlOTTE VONKEMAN

Information & Innovation Management

PRESENTATION TOPIC Willpower and impulsive

online shopping REVIEWER

TBA PRESENTATION DATE

28 May 2013 @ 16:00 in 1H-26 (BelleVUe)

ABRI RESEARCH SEMINAR YUVAl ENGEl

S&O PRESENTATION TOPIC

Deciding How to Decide: The Role of Un-certainty

and Metacognition in Entrepreneurial Cognition

REVIEWER TBA

PRESENTATION DATE july 9, 2013 at 16.00 in 0H-36

(BelleVUe)

get together IN SCIENCE, BUSINESS

AND SOCIETYPhD Research Showcase

from 10:00-13:00 in room 8A-26

APPLICATION DEADLINEfor 3-year PhD positions

Junior Researchers graduation An entire day event where

Junior Researchers present their academic research

APPLICATION DEADLINEfor Junior Researcher positions

PREBEM conference

fEBRUARY

MARCH

MAY

07

15

22

30

Please check our website

www.abri.vu.nl

to see when we have scheduled various open

seminars in 2013 from scholars such as:

Henri Schildt

Mike Hitt

Joe Walther

AMSTERDAM IN SCIENCE,

BUSINESS AND SOCIETY

AMSTERDAM BUSINESS RESEARCH

INSTITUTEThe Amsterdam Business Research Institute (ABRI), established in 2009 by Vu university Amsterdam,

is one of the largest institutes of business and management research in Europe. Located in the midst of the business and financial district of Amsterdam – the Amsterdam ZuidAs – the distinct

expertise of ABRI lays in the business performance and management of professional and financial services. With a specific focus on this sector, ABRI’s researchers conduct research

and offer doctoral (PhD) education in six areas: 1. Accounting & Financial Management

2. Information & Innovation Management3. Logistics & Operations Research

4. Marketing5. Organisational Behaviour & HRM

6. Strategy & Organisation

Dozens of public and private organisations, among which are ABN AMRO, Deloitte, KPMG, Lloyd’s Register, collaborate with ABRI in research and

business intelligence and in addressing today’s business and management challenges. These business-science partnerships are aimed at delivering

rigorous and relevant contributions not only to better business practices and processes within organisations in the Netherlands, but also to

contribute to a stronger European economy.

Visit our web-site www.abri.vu.nl to learn about recent research findings concerned with business and management, and to initiate

a new collaboration to benefit your organisation!

Amsterdam in Science, Business and Society: Issue I

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Transcript of Amsterdam in Science, Business and Society: Issue I