Flinders Business - Collected Works
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ItemDoes kindness lead to happiness? Voluntary activities and subjective well-being(Elsevier, 2018-09-19)This paper investigates empirically the effects of voluntary activities on subjective well-being. After controlling for individual fixed effects, we show that volunteering significantly improves people’s subjective well-being. The positive well-being effects of volunteering are highly heterogeneous, with larger impact at the lower end of the distribution of subjective well-being. Our dynamic analysis shows that the beneficial effects of volunteering are transitory. We find evidence of complete subjective well-being adaptation one year after volunteering. We show that more frequent socialisation, increasing satisfaction with feeling part of local community and rising satisfaction with neighbourhood living in are three channels for the contemporaneous positive linkage between volunteering and subjective well-being.
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ItemLobbying, campaign contributions, and electoral competition(Elsevier, 2018-05-29)This paper studies the effect of lobby groups on electoral competition and equilibrium policy outcomes employing a ‘money for policy favours’ model of lobbying. Our results show that when a lobby group seeks to influence an electoral outcome, it will make a financial contribution to only one political party whose policy is closely aligned to its own ideal policy. When misappropriation of campaign funds occurs, political parties that divert more funds for personal gain stand on more independent platforms and require larger contributions from lobby groups. Greater electoral competition could reduce policy distortions but this, in turn, sparks more intense lobbying thereby increasing the scope of misappropriation of funds. In the case of multiple lobbying, political parties either demand different levels of campaign contributions or leave them with different levels of satisfaction.
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ItemIntellectual capital system perspective: a case study of government intervention in digital media industries(University of Adelaide Press, 2015)South Australia is a small economy that faces a fundamental need to re-shape its approach to innovation. The manufacturing sector, as the backbone of the state’s economy, has and will continue to change in its nature and form. This necessitates a re-think about how innovation happens and how the respective actors within an economy interact and engage with each other. In effect, innovation relies on intersections between people, knowledge, information sharing, ideas, financial and other resources. Innovation happens through regional social and economic system dynamics; innovation relies on a system view of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship can be taken as a study of the entrepreneur and new business creation. However, this conception of entrepreneurship misses the critical link to economic outcomes; the ebb and flow of social and economic fortunes that are underpinned by the actions, reactions and engagement of individuals in a specific social and economic system that brings about innovation and change. In this book the authors are exploring how the linkages within the system can be conceptualised and made transparent.
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ItemUnderstanding the Barriers to and Opportunities for Access to Private Equity for Small to Medium sized Family owned Enterprises (SMFEs).(CPA Australia, 2010)The main finding of this study was that there is growing interest within the private equity (PE) community to invest in family businesses. However, finance, knowledge and empathy gaps between SMFE owners and the PE community limit the extent to which PE is a practical solution to the growth and succession of family firms. Interestingly, there was no statistically significant difference in attitude to PE between family and non-family firms. Rather, it was the attributes of the owners (intended succession / exit strategy, knowledge of PE, objectives) which determined attitudes towards using PE. These findings suggest that PE investment in family firms can be encouraged through the education of owners and their accountants (their preferred advisers) on how PE can assist family firms in growth and ownership transition. Accountants can also play a key role in professionalising the managerial capabilities within family firms and thereby making them a more attractive investment to PE providers. Specifically, SMFEs are in need of assistance in developing strategic business plans and succession plans, the establishment of independent / advisory boards, the utilisation of outside managerial expertise and the development of performance measurement systems.
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ItemSilver Entrepreneurship Agenda in Malaysia: A Proposed Model for Productive Aging(BINUS University (Bina Nusantara University), 2012)This paper aims at proposing a framework for productive aging among those aged 45-plus or retiree via entrepreneurial initiatives, known as ‘silver entrepreneurs’. Evidence has shown that the number of Malaysians aged population is estimated to be more than 1.4 million and is projected to increase to 3.3 million in the year 2020 (Mafauzy, 2000). It is acknowledged that a group of these will comprise of professionals who are aged 45-plus and retirees with relevant industry experience as well as knowledge and well-established networks built up over their working careers which will enable them to effectively identify entrepreneurial opportunities and secure resources efficiently to exploit them. However, there is little research on and understanding of what drives these ‘silver entrepreneurs’, with most of the research, focussed on entrepreneurial ventures started by 18-35 year-olds. This means that policy-makers are ill-equipped to develop specific measures that will assist retirees into a second or sunset career in entrepreneurship. This research aims to bridge the gap by assessing the profile and motivations of silver entrepreneurs in Malaysia with a specific focus on understanding the internal and external factors that affect their intentions to start new ventures as well as factors that affect the success and growth of these ventures.
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ItemOrganization Capital and Firm Life Cycle(Elsevier, 2017-12-13)We hypothesize, and examine empirically, two types of association between organization capital and firm life cycle. Are firms with high organization capital more likely to be in a particular stage of their life cycle than firms with low organization capital? Are firms' transitions from one life cycle stage to another over time associated with how much they invest in organization capital? Our findings suggest that firms with high (low) organization capital are more likely to be in the introduction and decline (growth and maturity) stages. Our results also show that firms that invest more in organization capital (i.e., changes in organization capital) are less (more) likely to move to the introduction, shake-out and decline (growth and maturity) stages in the subsequent five years. Our results are robust to alternative specifications of organization capital, life cycle proxies and endogeneity concerns.