No abstract

Crowdfunding is regarded a financing mechanism that could improve the funding opportunities of businesses with a pro-social orientation. Indeed, it is assumed that on digital platforms, citizens are inclined to provide more support to projects with a social benefit than to those without such an orientation, with significant ethical implications for the common good. Yet, extant empirical evidence regarding such a claim is still inconclusive. To advance this discussion, the present paper analyzes the conditions that influence crowd support for projects displaying a pro-social orientation on a reward-based crowdfunding platform. To build our hypotheses, we adopt the lens of framing theory, and we relate it to the digital context. Beginning from the premise that, on crowdfunding platforms, information about projects has a hierarchical structure, we argue that a project's success crucially depends on how much its proponent emphasizes the pro-social cues within this structure. Moreover, we propose that because pro-social cues demarcate a project over others, the effectiveness of pro-social framing is enhanced when the number of projects on the platform, i.e., its crowdedness, increases. Logit estimates on 8631 Kickstarter projects indicate that pro-social framing is positively associated with success as we expected, yet only when it is moderately emphasized. Further, we find that crowdedness on the platform positively moderates the effect of pro-social orientation on success.

University-based entrepreneurial support organizations devote increasing efforts to create a context and opportunities for interaction among start-up firms. The basic assumption behind these efforts is that networks facilitate access to knowledge and resources and increase the chances of success for start-ups.However, the mechanisms that facilitate the creation of business ties with other members of the same community are yet to be identified and empirically tested. This paper leverages the social network and firm incubator literatures to hypothesize and test mechanisms that create the context and opportunity for business interaction among member firms within one university-based entrepreneurial support organization. The study uses the empirical setting of a large, university based support organization and the sample includes firms with different levels of membership-support. This empirical context allows us to compare different levels of membership-support and identify the dimensions that have greater impacts on a firm's opportunity to establish ties with other members. The results reveal that geographical proximity, ad-hoc service support including shared space, and a larger community of member and graduate firms to which network ties may be formed increases the chance of connecting with other past or current member firms. Acknowledgements:We would like to acknowledge....

Although academics are increasingly expected to share their research data and materials with other academics, many appear reluctant to do so. While extant research emphasises commercial involvement and peer influence as determinants of withholding behaviour, we hypothesise that the volume of competing commitments plays an important role in preventing academics from sharing. Using rich, multi-source data on 876 academics at a large research university, we explore how withholding behaviour is related to the breadth of professional and family roles.We find that academics engaged in more activities, including research, teaching and commercialisation, and with more young children, are more likely than their colleagues to withhold research data and materials from their previously published research. We explore the implications of these findings for scientific production and exchange, and for academics' workloads.