Many people dream of starting their own business. But before they can make their dream a reality, one of the first and most important decisions they must make is whether to go it alone or partner with someone they may, or may not, already know. Which approach is better?
More than ever, businesses are tasked with pleasing both shareholders and stakeholders, including employees, customers and even communities. But can it be done? In this week's Kenan Insight, our experts explore the most successful strategies employed by a class of businesses that have been navigating this debate for generations: family firms.
We present institutional change as a creative and experimental response to emergent or competing logics.
At the institute’s annual Conference on Market-Based Solutions for Reducing Wealth Inequality, a diverse group of experts from business, government and academia discussed practical solutions for improving upward mobility.
What’s best for a local economy—recruiting big, established companies, or nurturing home-grown startups? It’s a question economic developers and researchers have grappled with for decades. In a new white paper and Economic Development Quarterly article, Kenan Institute Senior Faculty Fellow Maryann Feldman and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor Nichola Lowe offer a new tack: Try both.
We find that although team structure has a significant impact on the performance of nonfounder‐led firms (consistent with past literature), it has little to no effect on the operating performance of founder‐led firms, suggesting that founder chief executive officers (CEOs) may exert too much control. Thus, the irony is that founders are retained to propel progress but their very retention may prevent progress.
Kenan Institute Distinguished Fellow John Haltiwanger of the University of Maryland sees the growth in startups and remote work as especially benefiting the South and the areas around urban downtowns.
Many organizations employ interpersonal feedback processes as a structured means of informing and motivating employee improvement. Ample evidence suggests that these feedback processes are largely ineffective, and despite a wealth of prescriptive literature, these processes often fail to lead to employee motivation or improvement.
This paper analyzes factors that shape the technological capabilities of individual U.S. states and European countries, which are arguably comparable policy units. The analysis demonstrates convergence in technological capabilities from 2000 to 2007.
Profound demographic changes of all kinds are radically transforming America’s social, economic and political institutions. Perhaps one of the most troubling is something our affiliated Urban Investment Strategies Center Director Dr. Jim Johnson calls the End of Men.
One of the long-standing damages of institutional racism in the United States has been a bleak economic outlook for African Americans. In this Kenan Insight, we ask whether today’s activism might prove to be a defining moment in turning the tide for Black economic futures, and if so, who will play the key roles in creating lasting change.
Since January 2020, Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has infected more than 4.5 million Americans, resulting in over 150,000 deaths; reconfigured our domestic lives and the world economy; and overwhelmed the United States’ (U.S.) public health and health care delivery capabilities. As individuals, institutions, and municipalities struggled to quickly integrate public health best practices into economic activities and social priorities, the virus exposed fault lines in our nation’s health care system(s). The government’s initial response was disjointed, which led to critical delays, confusion, and, ultimately, hindered collaboration. As a result, medical institutions and providers were, and still are in some cases, unable to obtain adequate personal protective equipment (PPE), provide and administer sufficient and timely testing to identify and track the disease, and secure sufficient medical equipment to care for infected individuals.
Join our panel of industry and academic leaders, who will share their technological, legal, organizational and social expertise to answer the questions raised by emerging artificial intelligence capabilities.
The tremendous growth in cryptocurrency trading has included frequent pump-and-dump (P&D) schemes. The resulting volatility has raised both excitement and concern about exploitation and fraud. Unlike the stock market, where P&D schemes can last for months, in the cryptocurrency market the price and volume inflations last just minutes, making it is almost impossible for those not in the pump group to participate. P&Ds are organized through pump groups who communicate through heavily encrypted message platforms. Investors learn about the groups through ads on social media. Our research examines 500 cryptocurrency P&D schemes to better understand their timing, characteristics and impact. As cryptocurrency exchanges think about regulating P&Ds, our researchers seek to understand who is currently benefiting and what these “cryptobloggers” do to the health of the cryptocurrency market.
Join our panel of experts who will share their technological, legal and social expertise to answer the questions raised by the real-world performance of risk assessment instruments.
A large body of social science evidence indicates that objective, reliable and valid risk assessment instruments are more accurate in evaluating risk than professional human judgements alone. In the world of pretrial detention, where more than 10 million people are jailed each year in the United States after arrest, pretrial risk assessment tools may provide a more efficient, transparent and fairer basis for making assessments than having a judge quickly scan documents detailing the defendant’s prior record and current charges and make a decision in mere minutes. However, these assessments will retain any bias present in the data used by criminal justice agencies.
We contribute to the emerging literature on strategic corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its antecedents by undertaking a systematic analysis of the effect of rivalry on firm and industry CSR. We deal with the codetermination of competition and CSR by using instrumental variables in the firm-level analysis and by modeling it directly in the industry-level analysis.
The most important economic challenge of our time is the large, and growing, wealth gap. Increasing income disparities and declining opportunities have diminished America's middle class. On Nov. 6-7, the Closing the Wealth Gap conference was held at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School in Chapel Hill.
This paper explores the ups and downs of innovation and productivity growth in the US economy and potential connections to the ups and downs of business dynamism and entrepreneurship over the last few decades.
The Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise will host its Annual Open House Tuesday, August 28, showcasing its work and the work of its affiliated centers to the UNC-Chapel Hill community and beyond.