Browsing by Author "TOPALER, BAŞAK"

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The Effect of Signals on New Venture Funding in the Context of an Emerging Market
(Kadir Has Üniversitesi, 2022) Adar, Gülcan; TOPALER, BAŞAK
New ventures need to access external financial resources to exploit market opportunities. As they do not yet have track records such as proven technologies, finished products, and verified market demand, prospective investors need to rely on signals of quality such as founding team characteristics or third-party endorsements. Most of the existing knowledge on new venture funding builds on insights from research conducted in the context of developed economies. Emerging economies are characterized by institutional voids in product, labor, and capital markets, as well as a weak regulatory system and contract-enforcing mechanisms. New ventures may require some context-relevant capabilities to survive and prosper in this environment. Relatedly, investors’ choices of new ventures to fund will likely be shaped by signals of these context-relevant capabilities alongside universal signals that reflect the viability of a new venture and the likelihood that it will advance. In this thesis study, I investigate independent and interdependent effects of these signals on investors’ choices of startups to fund. I take a configurational approach to examine complex interdependencies between signals, applying the fuzzy-set QCA method. The Turkish startup ecosystem constitutes the empirical setting of my study. I examine early-stage funding in high-tech industries where signals are most relevant due to high levels of uncertainty. Findings have important theoretical implications for the literature on new venture funding and signaling processes, as well as some practical implications for new ventures in emerging market environments.
Organizational Responses To Status Loss: Symbolic and Substantive Action as Alternative Ways of Recovery
(Kadir Has Üniversitesi, 2022) KAYABAŞI, AKIN; TOPALER, BAŞAK
Given the dominant view of status as a stable asset, much research has considered organizations as passive recipients of a steady social hierarchy. Yet, status orders can be subject to predictable or unexpected changes, and actors have motivations to maintain and improve their social standing. This thesis adopts insights from performance feedback theory to explain how organizations respond when they fall behind status aspirations. I argue that organizations may try to recover the loss of social standing either by taking symbolic actions that aim to improve organizational prestige in the eyes of key stakeholders or substantive actions that directly target the improvement of organizational quality. Further, organizational orientation towards these action types will be shaped by the causal attribution of the status feedback and its reliability. I test study arguments with a longitudinal empirical investigation in the Turkish higher education field. The findings of the thesis have important implications for the literature on performance feedback and status in markets.