Medium-Sized Firms and the Limits to Growth: A Case Study in the Evolution of a Spin-Off Firm

This paper explores potential barriers to growth in key areas which can become increasingly problematic for some smaller to medium-sized firms (SMEs) as they grow and evolve from their early status as small scale spin-offs. These potential growth barriers can occur in: finance, competition from new firms or products and organizational integration of resources. Firms that fail to properly plan, manage and allocate resources will encounter difficulties in each area. Such firms are said to have poor 'governance systems'. While not proposing a universal theory about small firm behaviour, we argue that firms can encounter the same problems associated with poor communication, bureaucracy and loss of entrepreneurial spirit that plague large firms. We also show that the routines used to promote growth based on collaboration can sometimes create problems for firms as they ignore new challenges. We elaborate various theories on the limits to growth by examining the case of IV, a university spin-off.     

Visible Men and Elusive Women

Early gender archaeology formulated two statements: men are visible, women are invisible, and men work in hard materials, women work in soft materials. We discuss these dichotomies in connection with nineteenth-century folklore and an excavated eighteenth-century cottage at a summer-farm. We conclude that much of the gendered order-of-work tasks broke down in pragmatic day-to-day life, especially by women crossing the gender border. However, social chaos was held at bay by ritual acts and magic objects.     

Excavations at MR11 on Marawah Island (Abu Dhabi,UAE): new insight into the architecture and planning of Arabian Neolithic settlements and early evidence for pearling

In 1992, an archaeological survey of Marawah Island conducted by the Abu Dhabi Islands Archaeological Survey identified two significant Neolithic settlements known as MR1 and MR11. Both sites are constructed on prominent rocky platforms located towards the western end of the island. In 2000 and 2003, small-scale excavations took place at MR11, with the first full excavation taking place in 2004. Excavations continued at MR11 between 2014 up to 2019. Radiocarbon dating demonstrates that the site was occupied between the earliest part of the sixth millennium to the mid-fifth millennium BC. Three areas have been so far examined. Area A—a tripartite house (2004 and 2014–2017 excavation seasons); Area B—a partial structure (in 2003 and 2017–2018); and Area C—a series of at least five rooms (in 2017–2019). The results provide a valuable new insight into the architecture and planning of Arabian Neolithic settlements in the region, as well as the earliest known evidence for pearling.     

Comments on Nordic animal style ‐ background and origin

Jernvinna på M?sstrond i Telemark (Bloomery Ironmaking in M?sstrond, Telemark). I. Martens, En studie i teknikk, bosetning og ?konomi. A. M. Rosenqvist, Kjemiske og mineralogiske unders?kelser. Norske Oldfunn XIII. Universitetets Oldsaksamling. Oslo 1988. 189 pp., 55 figs.     

Government Support Programmes to Promote Academic Entrepreneurship: A Principal–Agent Perspective

The commercialization of research has become a key task of universities and public research institutions. This development is partly stimulated by an increasing number of government support programmes (GSPs) that are designed to stimulate academic entrepreneurship. Nevertheless, the role that is played by this new type of actor in the innovation system is not very well understood. We use a principal–agent theory to guide our analysis of a Norwegian GSP. The programme contributes to reducing the agency problems of adverse selections and moral hazards in the relationships between the government and the actors that are involved in the commercialization of research. Key tasks include collecting and sharing information, engaging in long-term relationships with principals and agents, developing strategies and specific contractual relationships, taking higher risks for risk-averse agents and using multiple indicators. The programme also plays an institutional role by reducing goal conflicts. This approach requires a long-term effort that is generally less visible for outside stakeholders, and it is under constant pressure from short-term expectations.     

Good men gone bad? Resistance to monastic reform in the tenth and eleventh centuries

Conservative opponents of monastic reform in the tenth and eleventh centuries have traditionally been portrayed as principally reluctant to change and unwilling to abandon privileges and preferential treatment. This article performs a close, comparative reading of the poem Carmen ad Rotbertum regem by Adalbero of Laon (c.950–1031) and the monastic chronicle Casus Sancti Galli by Ekkehard IV (c.980–1057), in order to identify the authors’ attitudes to reform and reformists, and the sources for their counter-reform argumentation. It argues that the studied texts mediate reasoned, grounded standpoints, based on a thorough knowledge of monastic regulations and their importance to Christian ethics, and on the placing of society into an all-encompassing philosophical-religious context. Particular attention is given to the multiple layers of meaning characteristic of medieval writing.