Pursuit Of Revenue Research Articles

Universities between revenue and status: A typology of organizational responses

AbstractPrior research on behavioral responses to performance has provided limited attention to how different types of performance outcomes interact to affect organizational reactions. Focusing on the pursuit of revenue and status goals by private universities, we offer a typology of organizational responses (i.e., reducing ambitions, compensatory strategies, and complementary use of slack to pursue new opportunities) which are shaped by the set of challenges and capabilities that poor and superior performance in these goal dimensions present. When poor performance in both revenue and status leads to different types of liabilities that together result in a low likelihood of recovery, universities respond by reducing ambitions and diversifying into a lower status market segment, which offers a more promising path to survival. In response to a mixed performance outcome in revenue and status, universities employ compensatory strategies where they make use of the achievement in one goal dimension to repair the damage in the other. Finally, universities expand the scope of activities when they achieve superior performance in both goals, and the resulting slack in revenue and status provides complementary capabilities to pursue new opportunities. These findings extend the early Carnegie proposal and indicate that the portfolio of organizational responses to performance gaps may be broader than previously considered.

Inovação em modelos de negócios de start-ups brasileiras no setor educacional

Objective of the study: The aim of this article is to analyze how education technology start-ups in Brazil innovate their business models.Methodology: We conducted a multiple case study with 6 start-ups in the field of education, varying in terms of age, size and level of diversification. Our field surveys comprised interviews, observations and documents as data sources from 6 education sector start-ups. We used the extended case method as a guide for data analysis.Originality/relevance: This research contributes to a better understanding of how start-ups innovate in their business models.Main results: Among our main results, we found that in value creation, capabilities are developed in an informal and unstructured way. In value proposition, start-ups demonstrate considerable creativity in their offerings, but pay little attention to their channels and customer relations. In terms of value capture, they focus too much on the pursuit of revenue, but do not pay sufficient attention to cost control and pricing structure.Theoretical/methodological contributions: We collaborated with the scientific discussion on innovation in business models by discussing how 6 different start-ups innovate in their models.

‘The age of shouting had arrived’

When George Orwell’s advertising copywriting anti-hero, Gordon Comstock, declared in the 1936 novel Keep the Aspidistra Flying, ‘advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill-bucket’ (Victor Gollancz, London, p. 55), he was expressing something deep in the British psyche, that of the dichotomy between the creation of art and the pursuit of revenue. Nowhere is this seen more keenly than in publishing during the period. It is also significant that the third of Orwell’s novels was, like the previous ones, published by Victor Gollancz, because, despite the widespread view that in publishing it was a time of inertia, of maintaining the status quo, it is, of course, not as simple as that. Despite a lack of innovation in the industry the 1930s, reading numbers increased, more books were sold than ever before, the industry commercialized to an extent unseen in previous decades, and three of publishing’s most innovative men came to prominence. This paper seeks to explain how this came about—how an inherently conservative industry, with its prices and profit margins stabilized and protected by the Net Book Agreement, became radicalized in a way not seen before. I will contest that it is that very conservatism that made innovation both necessary and inevitable; that the growth in readership and disposable income during the period made it necessary to commercialize the publishing industry if it was to grow and prosper; and that business in general was waking up to the possibilities offered by marketing, and so publishing needed to harness the power of marketing if it was not to fall behind the business curve. Marketing can sometimes be about art or politics, but it is always about business. Where does that leave a personally wealthy, philanthropically inclined, but commercially minded publisher such as Gollancz? His enthusiastic take-up of the new marketing tools and processes that had come to prominence in the 1920s started with his time at Ernest Benn, accelerated with the founding of his new publishing company in 1928, and went into overdrive in 1936 when the Left Book Club was founded. It is true to say that Gollancz’s success was founded on three pillars: an unshakeable faith in his own abilities, an uncanny knack of selecting the ‘right’ titles commercially, and a thorough embracing of all that marketing and publicity had to offer, with little thought as to how that might appear to others as long as it was working for him. He was fortunate to have supporting him another great iconoclast of the time—the typographer Stanley Morison. This paper is as much about the Gollancz–Morison double act as it is about Gollancz individually, even if there can be no doubt as to the true driving force behind the changes.

Universities: The Fallen Angels of Bayh-Dole?

The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 established a new default rule that allowed nonprofit organizations and small businesses to own, as a routine matter, patents on inventions resulting from research sponsored by the federal government. Although universities helped get the Bayh-Dole Act through Congress, the primary goal, as reflected in the recitals at the beginning of the new statute, was not to benefit universities but to promote the commercial development and utilization of federally funded inventions. In the years since the passage of the Bayh-Dole Act, universities seem to have lost sight of this distinction. Their behavior as patent seekers, patent enforcers, and patent policy stakeholders often seems to work against the commercialization goals of the Bayh-Dole Act and is difficult to explain or justify on any basis other than the pursuit of revenue.

University Advertising and Universality in Messaging

University and college institutional advertisements, which typically are broadcast as public service announcements during the halftime of football games, were the subject of a quantitative analysis focused on commonality in messaging and employment of the semiotic theory of brand advertising. Findings indicate advertisements focus on students’ social lives at the expense of depictions related to an academic focus and that, at statistically significant levels, smaller universities are more likely than large ones to depict their research as having an impact beyond their own campus. Findings suggest that institutions recruit out-of-state students in pursuit of revenue rather than using the advertisements in service of efforts to raise funds.

When blogs become organizations

This study first examines the degree to which public interest bloggers are adopting organizational forms and processes as they pursue heightened popularity, status, and advertising revenue. The study also examines the relationship between organizational form and formality of content; relationships between pursuit of revenue, organizational form and level of popularity are also assessed. Informed by classic organizational theory, the study involves an analysis of 151 public issue blogs. Most blogs demonstrated aspects of organizational form by adopting rules and policies, employing staff, and pursuing revenue. Pursuit of revenue corresponds with popularity in the blogosphere as well as with frequency of posting. Pursuit of revenue also correlates positively with organizational form, which in turn correlates positively with traditional journalistic practices such as primary source reporting, source balance, and fact-based rather than opinion-based reporting.

Balancing the mix of revenues from profits, donations, and government

AbstractNew evidence suggests that separate sources of revenue may be interdependent, and that nonprofit managers should carefully consider how the pursuit of revenues from one source may affect revenues from other sources.

The Internationalization of Australian Higher Education

Australia’s involvement in international education has undergone several significant policy shifts since World War II. From 1950 onwards, Australia provided significant number of foreign aid‐related scholarships to selected “sponsored” students from needy “developing countries” as part of the Colombo Plan. In 1974, the federal Labor government simultaneously “took over” the total funding bill for higher education (relieving the states of their roughly 50 percent share) and abolished tuition fees. This free tuition also extended to foreign overseas students. The number of foreign students grew rapidly, and the federal higher education budget expanded in the 1970s. A decision was taken in 1979 to introduce a tuition fee for private (i.e., non-governmentsponsored) overseas students—the Overseas Student Charge—constituting one-third of the actual costs. The roughly 10,000 foreign students in this category—mostly from Asia—were viewed as being “subsidized” by the foreign aid budget. Despite some outrage from Australian academics, foreign students and their governments at this “comodification of education,” most universities saw little option but to engage in the pursuit of revenue through competitive marketing and student recruitment programs in Asia. As Australia’s international trade balance seriously deteriorated in the early 1980s, the federal government’s attitude hardened and like the United Kingdom, it introduced a full fee-paying overseas student policy—Australia had effectively shifted from a traditional “aid” to a “trade” perspective in relation to foreign students. The federal minister for education encouraged “cash-strapped” universities to charge a “profit margin” on foreign student tuition to generate revenue. Despite some outrage from Australian academics, foreign students and their governments at this “comodification of education,” most universities saw little option but to engage in the pursuit of revenue through competitive marketing and student recruitment programs in Asia. The result has been spectacular growth in international student enrollments.