The role of informal networks in the development of regional clusters has recently received a lot of attention in the literature. Informal contact between employees in different firms is claimed to be one of the main carriers of knowledge between firms in a cluster. This paper examines empirically the role of informal contacts in a specific cluster. In a questionnaire survey, we asked a sample of engineers in a regional cluster of wireless communication firms in Northern Denmark a series of questions on informal networks. We analyze whether the engineers actually acquire valuable knowledge through these networks. We find that the engineers do share even quite valuable knowledge with informal contacts. This shows that informal contacts represent an important channel of knowledge diffusion.

Entrepreneurs, even more than employees, tend to locate in regions in which they have deep roots ('home' regions). Here, we examine the performance implications of these choices. Whereas one might expect entrepreneurs to perform better in these regions because of their richer endowments of regionally-embedded social capital, they might also perform worse if their location choices rather reflect a preference for spending time with family and friends. We examine this question using comprehensive data on Danish startups. Ventures perform better-survive longer and generate greater annual profits and cash flows-when located in regions in which their founders have lived longer. This effect appears substantial, similar in size to the value of prior experience in the industry (i.e. to being a spinoff).

Using comprehensive data on the Danish population, this paper examines the determinants of entrepreneurs' choices of where to locate their new ventures. Our findings suggest that entrepreneurs place much more emphasis on being close to family and friends than on regional characteristics that might influence the performance of their ventures when deciding where to locate those businesses. Two factors could explain our findings: On the one hand, entrepreneurs may simply value proximity to family and friends. On the other hand, these relationships may help them to assemble the assets and to recruit the personnel that they need to succeed in their ventures. Our results suggest that the former plays the greater role in entrepreneurs' location choices.

This article analyzes the relationship between organizational change and employee health. It illuminates the potentially negative outcomes of change at the level of the employee. In addition, it relates to the ongoing debate over how employees react to and respond to organizational change. I hypothesize that change increases the risk of negative stress, and I test this hypothesis using a comprehensive panel data set of all stress-related medicine prescriptions for 92,860 employees working in 1,517 of the largest Danish organizations. The findings suggest that the risk of receiving stress-related medication increases significantly for employees at organizations that change, especially those that undergo broad simultaneous changes along several dimensions. Thus, organizational changes are associated with significant risks of employee health problems. These effects are further explored with respect to employees at different hierarchical levels as well as at firms of different sizes and from different sectors. This paper was accepted by Jesper Sørensen, organizations.organizational studies, personnel, behavior, strategy

This paper investigates the relationship between the level of pre-entry experience of managers and founders, and the survival of their new firms. Using a comprehensive dataset covering the entire Danish labor market from 1980 to 2000, we are able to trace prior activities of all employees working in all Danish start-ups with at least one employee. We examine whether spin-offs from surviving parents, spin-offs from exiting parents or other start-ups are more likely to survive. Moreover, we investigate whether firms managed and founded by teams with higher levels of industry-specific experience have a higher chance of surviving. We find that spin-offs from a surviving parent and to a lesser degree industry-specific experience positively affects the likelihood of survival. We also find that spin-offs from a parent that exits are less likely to survive than either spin-offs from surviving parents or other start-ups.Organizational routines, pre-entry experience, survival of new firms, spin-offs,