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  • Study finds men less inclined to share negative information than women.

    Study finds men less inclined to share negative information than women.

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    Newswise — A new study from Carnegie Mellon University, Bayes Business School (formerly Cass), and Bocconi University has found that men are less eager and likely to share negative information than women, while there was little difference when it comes to positive news.

    Published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, the authors suggest that this may be due to a greater concern among men over how other people will see them, resulting in a tendency to self-promote by sharing positive information about themselves and not revealing their negative experiences to others.

    Dr Erin Carbone, Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University and first author of the study, said: “The results from our studies revealed a consistent, and to the best of our knowledge not previously identified, nuanced pattern, wherein the tendency for women to disclose more than men depends crucially on the nature of the information shared. These findings can help make sense of the existing literature, as well as clarify some existing stereotypes, around gender differences in disclosure.”

    Sharing in the digital age

    Most of the existing research on gender differences and information sharing predates the internet. Given that we live in a world where people readily post information on a variety of platforms on a daily basis, this new study offers insights into the way we share, as well as the consequences of sharing, in the digital age.

    To explore gender differences in the sharing of different types of information, the researchers carried out three different experiments with over 1,000 people. In the first study, people self-reported times when they felt like they were “dying” to disclose information to others, then indicated whether they actually had shared the information. Although men and women generated similar numbers of instances of wanting to share positive information (e.g., about a promotion), men were far less likely to report wanting to share negative information (e.g., a failure to receive a promotion).  Two further studies enabled the team to quantify the desire to disclose and aggregate participants’ desire as well as their propensity to disclose positive or negative information about different topics and experiences.

    Disclosure patterns

    The study also found that women reported greater satisfaction than men with their own level of disclosure, whereas most male participants reported a greater propensity to withhold information about their thoughts and feelings even when it might have been better to share it with others.

    Professor Irene Scopelliti, Professor of Marketing and Behavioural Science at Bayes Business School (formerly Cass) and one of the authors of the study, said:

    “Disclosure is increasingly prevalent and permanent in the digital age. The advent of social media and digital communication channels has enabled unprecedented levels of information sharing, which is accompanied by an array of social and psychological consequences. Our results show that gender remains an important fault line when it comes to the desire and propensity to disclose negative information, and men may be differentially advantaged by, or vulnerable to, the consequences of information sharing compared to women.”

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  • A double-edged sword: How close a spinout should remain to the parent’s market

    A double-edged sword: How close a spinout should remain to the parent’s market

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    Newswise — A new study, led by Bayes Business School, found that there are sizeable costs and benefits for spinouts – stand-alone new firms founded by former employees of established firms – as they try to establish themselves in the market.

    The research, which looked at 117 spinouts, from 103 established firms, finds that the degree to which spinouts’ operating markets overlap with their parent companies has positive, but diminishing effects on their likelihood of survival.

    Findings reveal that staying close to the parent company is beneficial to spinouts because it allows them to benefit from know-how and resources gained by founders through their prior experience. However, a high level of overlap with the market domains of the parent companies may spark some hostile actions, thereby creating disruptive competition that, in turn, may lower the spinouts’ chances of survival.

    Additionally, the research explains that the survival of employee start-ups could be dependent on the previous rank of their founders when employed in established firms. Examples of successful spinouts include US tech giants Intel and AMD.

    On the upside, spinouts launched by high-ranked employees benefit from a more substantial level of knowledge and resources inherited from the parent companies. Moreover, high-ranked employees possess greater bargaining power, which allows them to negotiate more favorable exit conditions at the time of departure. On the downside, these spinouts may face a higher risk of falling into competency traps, which locks them into the old logic, thus hindering their ability to acquire new resources or develop new routines that are more suitable for their targeted markets.

    The report was led by Dr Aliasghar Bahoo-Torodi, Lecturer in Entrepreneurship at Bayes, who said employees thinking about starting their own companies need to be aware of the contrasting forces at work in searching for the right balance between the uncertainty entailed by entering new market domains and the risk of dealing with the parents’ hostile actions

    “From the parent companies’ perspective, employees’ transition to entrepreneurship can be cause for serious concern,” said Dr Bahoo-Torodi. “This is because, in addition to the loss of important human capital, spinouts may pose a serious competitive threat. To protect their competitive position in the market, parent companies are likely to retaliate and adopt a hostile attitude toward employee start-ups that attack their vital markets.

    “Our study suggests that by minimizing the degree of market commonality, spinouts can obscure their visibility and mitigate their competitive threat in the eyes of the parent firms. This could play a big role in reducing the parents’ motivation to undertake aggressive actions.”

     

    When do spinouts benefit from market overlap with parent firms? by Dr Aliasghar Bahoo-Torodi, Lecturer in Entrepreneurship at Bayes Business School, and Professor Salvatore Torrisi, Professor of Strategic Management at the University of Milano-Bicocca is published in the Journal of Business Venturing.

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