AbstractResearch SummaryCollecting fine‐grained, longitudinal data to study new venture creation (NVC) is critical but empirically challenging given the partly invisible, collective, and highly discursive nature of NVC. This article offers the ethnography/accelerator approach as one powerful solution to this problem. This approach theorizes the implications raised by the invisible, collective, and highly discursive nature of NVC as challenges of accessibility, multivocality, and reflexivity. It provides a framework articulating these challenges with key ethnographic insights to advance data collection and theory building, before discussing five implications of this approach for NVC research and providing recommendations and points of caution.Managerial SummaryExplaining how to create, organize, and operate a new venture is critical but raises important methodological challenges. Early‐stage ventures have no operating history, the stakeholders collaborating with entrepreneurs are geographically dispersed, and entrepreneurs' stories are often examined uncritically. The ethnography/accelerator approach suggests overcoming these challenges by using business accelerators as a research setting to apply ethnographic methods and collect reliable data. It provides guidance for enabling the full‐time immersion of the researcher into this setting, allowing the collection of finely‐grained data capturing the day‐to‐day practices and interactions at the heart of new venture creation and the views of the entrepreneurs, mentors, investors, policymakers, and the like playing a pivotal role in this process.

Digital representations are ubiquitous in the workplace. Screen displays, forecasts, simulations, indicators, multi-dimensional models, figures, and images are increasingly central to work of all kinds. Representations are simultaneously transparent and opaque. They contain and reveal information about the organization. At the same time, they conceal the computational work used to convert data about the physical world into abstract depictions. Computational opacity is consequential when representations become misaligned with the physical world they depict. We examine how computational opacity can be breached, allowing non-programmers to repair misalignments between representations and the physical world. Drawing on an ethnography of a machine-shop floor, we show how operators develop practical computational literacy skills—the capacity to visualize and talk about physical objects and processes independent of them; to translate this noncomputational thinking and talking into computational symbols, syntax, structure, and assumptions; and to create computational solutions. We show how operators develop this skill vicariously, observing programmers as they solve problems. We contribute to understanding how, in an increasingly digitized workplace, those without programming capacities may decrease their dependence on programmers and increase their capacity to create and alter representations of the physical world.

The use of mobile phone apps for digital transactions has increased by leaps and bounds due to the proliferation of smart phones at affordable prices and rapidly growing ease of access to quality internet services. This study uses the technology acceptance model and unified theory of acceptance and use of technology as lenses to explore: 1) the impact of mobile apps' security features, integrity (trust & privacy), transparency and utilities (facilities & usefulness) on the behavioral intention to use mobile apps and 2) the mediating influence of social influence on the relationship between the aforementioned variables. The results of exploratory factor analysis and multiple linear regression highlight significant positive relationships between security, integrity and utilities, and the intention to use mobile payment apps for digital transactions. Social influence partially mediates the relationship between security and users' intention but completely mediates the relationship in the case of integrity and utilities. Thus, in the era of digital transformation, service providers should focus on improving security and integrity features along with making payment apps more user-friendly.

It is widely observed in industry that some firms intentionally “greenwash” their products to profit from the ever-rising green consumerism; however, there are also some firms that unintentionally greenwash as a result of misinformation, a form of supplier responsibility risk. To manage this risk, the most common approach is asking for samples before the products are delivered at scale. In this article, we consider a contract manufacturer (CM) that supplies products to an original equipment manufacturer (OEM). The CM has the option to implement a green product line. Before conveying a sustainability message to consumers, we assume that the OEM can choose whether or not to ask for samples and update its belief about the final product type. We start with a base case where the CM does not sell self-branded products. In this situation, the CM always sends an authentic signal and the OEM conducts deliberate greenwash only when the risk of detection is low. However, after extending the base case to a co-opetition case, where the CM not only makes profit from its contract manufacturing business, but also sells self-branded products, the strategic interactions of the OEM and CM become more intriguing. We find the OEM may deliberately greenwash even if it is highly risky, in order to lower the wholesale price, and the CM may send nongreen samples even if a green product line is setup. More interestingly, we find the misleading signal is able to mitigate the double marginalization effect (the double markup in price) by decreasing the wholesale price and the market price of products simultaneously, and this increases consumer surplus, but may lead to higher environmental impact. This work has implications for both operations managers and regulators. We suggest managers in OEMs ask for samples before a CM delivers products at scale if the market potential is high and the CM encroaches on end market. Regulators should note that penalties alone may not curb greenwash, as an OEM may use it for strategic purpose.

As a primarily synchronous social media form, social live streaming services offer real-time interaction between streamers and viewers, and among viewers. Users' value cocreation has become increasingly crucial for platform businesses to increase their competitive advantage. However, the previous studies using the microfoundations approach have only confirmed the employees' efforts to adopt technology as a way to achieve the firms' goals. In this article, we explore the microfoundations of external actors' (viewers and streamers) value cocreation on sports live streaming platforms (SLSPs). Taking China Sport as a case study, this article conducts netnography research with observations made of four live-streamed matches on the final matchday of the International Table Tennis Federation World Tour Grand Final 2019. In total, 16 204 real-time messages and 5540 gifting messages are reviewed. In-depth interviews are also conducted with 5 streamers and 15 viewers. As a result, a typology of viewers (managers, fans, and audiences) emerges, and five viewer–streamer–viewer value cocreation activities are revealed. Furthermore, the unique value-in-use among streamers and viewers in different activities is found. This study presents a model to show that the viewers' engagement and the value cocreation activities between viewers and streamers at a microlevel determines the value-in-use formation, which, in turn, contributes to the competitive advantages for SLSPs at a macrolevel. This study contributes to the existing literature on the engagement behavior and value cocreation by empirically examining the role of external actors' engagement as the microfoundations of value cocreation in the context of new social technologies—SLSPs.

Despite the touting value of blockchain technology (BT), many agri-food supply chains are still struggling to the adoption of it. In this article, incorporating the benefit and cost associated with BT, we seek to answer whether and under what conditions can two competing agri-food supply chains benefit from the adoption of BT, and how government choose optimal subsidy scheme to promote the adoption of BT. The findings suggest that the Nash equilibrium outcome toward BT adoption strategy will be greatly affected by key parameters, such as competitive intensity, the growth rate of the market size and the investment cost with the adoption of BT, and the planting cost of the agri-food. Specifically, early adopter can always snatch more benefit from the adoption of the BT than the follower, and the gap between them will be increased in the competition intensity. In addition, the decisions selected by agri-food supply chains does not always benefit the consumer surplus and the social welfare, which call for further government subsidy scheme to promote the adoption of BT. The findings provide important implications for both the industrial managers and policy makers on how to benefit from BT in the digital transformation era.

COVID-19 creates big challanges to supply chain management. This article empirically examines the impact of management control systems (MCS) on managing supply chain resilience (SCR) to enhance organizational competitiveness under environmental uncertainty. Drawing on the dynamic capabilities view (DCV) theory and levers of control (LoC) framework, an industrial survey was conducted. Analyses performed on the collected data from 405 manufacturing firms reveal that the effects of MCS on SCR and organizational competitiveness depend on the nature and use of mobilized controls. Different from conventional wisdom, the study suggests that belief, boundary, and interactive systems enable firms to achieve SCR and these systems have positive effects on organizational competitiveness through SCR. Moreover, interestingly, diagnostic systems seem to play no role in strengthening SCR and organizational competitiveness. The study thus argues that firms should employ the enabling characteristics of belief and interactive systems, along with the controlling features of boundary systems to manage SCR and ultimately be more organizational-competitive. The research also uncovers that environmental uncertainty positively moderates the indirect effects of MCS on organizational competitiveness through SCR. Indeed, the study indicates that firms evolving in highly uncertain and dynamic environments tend to increase the use of different MCS to generate detailed information that is essential to strengthen SCR. Overall, this theory-based empirical research provides novel insights regarding how MCS would contribute to improving SCR and organizational competitiveness, especially under disruptions such as COVID-19.

Motivated by the new practice of cross-licensing and price competition in smart products, as well as the lack of cross-licensing literature, this article develops a theoretical framework to investigate the incentive for bilateral cross-licensing between two competing firms with asymmetric bargaining power under price competition in smart products. In this article, one firm possesses quality-improving innovation, and another offers cost-reducing innovation for smart products. We find regardless of cost-reducing innovation scale, when the production cost of a holder of quality-improving technology is high enough, the competing firms have the motivation to cross-licensing; compared with a quantity competition, cross-licensing in price competition draws a higher price and producer surplus, but lower consumer surplus and poorer social welfare. This is an interesting finding for the discussion over whether a Bertrand price competition is more efficient than a Cournot quantity competition; and price competition, plus the stability of tacit collusion in cross-licensing, requires that participants have moderate bargaining power. Our article provides a potential explanation for the use of cross-licensing in the smart product industry with price competition, as well as management insights for decision makers by considering different effects elicited by cross-licensing of the smart products.