1,721,106 research outputs found
Mergers & Acquisitions and technological performance
No full textI analyze the effect of M&A on technological performance as measured by patenting output and patents quality. I propose a model of the innovation process in which the process output depends on the resources available and on the incentives to employ them. I then discuss how M&A can provide new resources and modify the incentives. I identify the consequential effects on technological performance and test the predictions on sample of deals that took place in the U.S. "Medical devices and photographic equipment" sector between 1988 and 1996. Preliminary results indicate that M&A have a non-significant or positive effect on patenting output, but decrease patents importance, originality and generality
The impact of M&A on rivals' innovation strategy
No full textWe investigate the effect of M&A on the innovation strategy of merging firms’ competitors. We argue that while merging firms may reduce their commitment to innovation in the period following the deal because of an increased focus on short-term M&A implementation and financial considerations, rival firms can on the contrary exploit this moment of inertia to broaden their research and outperform rivals, producing more impactful innovations. We suggest merging firms’ competitors increase the breadth of their technological search, even though this may be risky: If their attempts do not achieve the desired results, the consequences are relatively less harmful, as also their competitors are slowing down their innovation pace in the aftermath of M&A. Using data from European firms in the pharmaceutical industry, we find evidence consistent with these hypotheses
Measuring the effect of M&A on patenting quantity and quality
No full textI explore the effect of M&A on the patenting quantity and quality of the firms involved in a deal. Three measures of quality are considered: impact, generality, and originality. The impact of a patent denotes its influence on future inventions. Generality refers to a patent’s applicability across technological fields. Finally, the originality of a patent indicates the extent to which an invention synthesizes diverse technological inputs. Applying a matching estimator to data from the U.S. “Medical devices and photographic equipment” industry from 1988 to 1996, I find that M&A have a positive effect on patenting output, but decrease patent impact, originality and generality
Technology complexity and target selection: The case of US hospital mergers
No full textThis article examines the role of technology in the selection of targets in a merger. Held technology should have a notable impact, especially in contexts in which specific know-how resides with experts as well as within organizational routines that are difficult to reproduce. By acquiring a target, firms obtain novel technologies, along with the knowledge and capabilities necessary to implement them. Such acquisitions become more relevant as the complexity of the technologies increases. With a focus on the U.S. hospital market—in which technology is a relevant factor and complexity has been growing—the hypotheses tests use data from 222 mergers and acquisitions that took place between 1985 and 2000. The results confirm that technology is a fundamental driver of the U.S. hospital consolidation process: Hospitals prefer targets that hold a different set of technologies from their own, especially when those technologies are complex and involve some know-how that is difficult to replicate
Profit
No full textThe field of strategic management deals with fundamental
questions about how company profits emerge and persist.
After a short definition of the term, we will therefore
discuss how to empirically measure firms’ profit, discuss the
key determinants of the observed variance in firms’ profit,
and analyse whether these differences in profits are
persistent
STRATEGIC ORGANIZATION OF R&D: THE CHOICE OF BASICNESS AND OPENNESS
No full textThrough a stylized model of the R&D process, we show how the strategic organization of R&D should simultaneously consider the choice of the type of R&D to be performed (basicness) and the organization of R&D, which includes the choice about the exposure of the R&D project to knowledge from outside the firm (openness). We identify how each of these decisions affects the expected benefits and costs (production, transaction and coordination costs) of R&D projects, and formally derive how these decisions interact. The fact that these decisions are customarily allocated to different agents with misaligned objectives pushes top management to strategically adjust the R&D strategy (i.e., the type of R&D performed)in order to affect the organization of the R&D project, an oftentimes decentralized decision taken by a project manager. From the model we develop several implications for theory, explain some observed empirical regularities in the management of R&D, and derive novel testable implications
Strategic incentives to human capital
No full textMotivating human capital in knowledge–intensive activities is a serious managerial challenge because it is difficult to link rewards to actions or performance. Firms instead might motivate knowledge workers by offering them opportunities to increase personal benefits (e.g., learning, satisfaction) through autonomy in the decision–making process. Our model shows that firms can offer less autonomy in projects closer to their core business: Because firm specialization raises the value of the project's outcomes, it also increases the benefits for knowledge workers, who derive motivation even though they make fewer decisions to support their realization of personal goals. Projects farther from the core offer weaker firm contributions, so firms can motivate knowledge workers by allowing them to benefit from greater autonomy. We discuss several implications of our analysis
Acquisition and diversification behaviour in large family firms
No full textBased on a sample of 100 of the largest Italian firms, 38 of which are family firms, we find that being a family firm does not affect acquisition propensity, but that this behaviour is linked to other variables such as being public, more profitable, and larger. This finding differs from prior studies (e.g. Miller et al., 2010), most of which have found that family firms acquire less than non- family firms. Furthermore, we find that family firms are more likely to make acquisitions in non- correlated sectors. Prior research on diversification has reached contradictory results; therefore our study is in line with some prior work (e.g. Ducassy and Prevot, 2010; Miller et al., 2010) but not with other work (Gómez-
Mejía et al., 2010)
Geomechanical characteristics of barrier materials in a natural analogue of a waste repository in central Italy
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