A Dual View on IT Challenges in Corporate Divestments and Acquisitions

Acquisitions of new businesses and divestments of existing ones are frequently components of large organizations’ corporate strategies. In both acquisitions and divestments, corporate IT infrastructure plays a critical role for realizing business objectives. In this paper, we take a dual view of the IT-related challenges in divestment and acquisition strategies, studying them as a single integrated transaction between a buyer and a seller and investigating how the IT carve-out and IT integration strategies influence each other. The extant literature on the interaction between carve-outs and integration strategies is an empty set. Here, we begin to shed light to the limitations of the carve-out contract, the processes of carving out a business unit from one and integrating it into another multi-business organization, asymmetries in both parties’ preferences for an IT transaction process and its influence on arising challenges and organization performance

IT CHALLENGES IN M&A TRANSACTIONS – THE IT CARVE-OUT VIEW ON DIVESTMENTS

Carve-outs belong to the most disruptive events companies – especially IT departments – are subject to. Yet the impact of these events on the IT alignment of the involved business units is largely unknown. This paper utilizes an alignment model to analyze specific IT-related challenges of divesting a strategic business unit (SBU). Hereby it focuses on the functional alignment between business strategy and IT at SBU level as well as on the organizational alignment between corporate and SBU. Based on five in-depth case studies of carve-outs taken place between 2004 and 2008, IT related challenges could be identified due to interdependent SBU information systems, a lack of IT governance, changing strategic scopes and the inability to preserve competencies. Dynamic capabilities were discovered as possible determinants for carve-out success. Carve-out management teams can utilize the analytical framework to make a SBU carveout ready, to guide IT due diligence and to prioritize IT issues

Managing the IT Integration of Acquisitions by Multi-Business Organizations

Acquisitions are standard components of the growth strategies of many organizations. Frequently, acquisitions raise important questions concerning how and to what extent the acquisition’s information technology (IT) needs to be integrated into the IT of the acquirer. We investigate how the initial conditions of business and IT alignment in the acquirer and the acquisition affect the complexity of the post-acquisition IT integration process, in acquisitions of business units by multi-business organizations. Adopting an IT alignment model for multi-business organizations, we explain the complexity of IT integration paths in two acquisitions made by the industry group Trelleborg AB. We identify four initial business and IT strategic alignment conditions where the IT integration process is a simple one-step process exploiting existing business and IT capabilities. Low compliance with these conditions leads to increased complexity because additional business and/or IT capabilities have to be developed to leverage the full potential of the acquisition

MANAGING AN IT CARVE-OUT AT A MULTI-NATIONAL ENTERPRISE

Mergers, acquisitions and divestments, including the carve-outs of business units or parts of them, are standard strategies used by multi-divisional organizations to adjust their business portfolios. Carveout projects are critically dependent on their management of IT. Systems, which have been integrated in order to deliver seamless and efficient IT operations, must now be pulled apart under demanding time and compliance constraints. In 2007, Delta IT Consulting (DIC), one of France’s biggest ITservice provider, sold one of its three service provider divisions, IT Product Services (IPS). This division employed about 3,500 employees in 20 countries and previously generated 0.7 billion of DIC’s 3.8 billion euro revenues. DIC itself is a division of Delta Corporation - a French high-tech company and leading player in a wide array of businesses, industries and countries around the world. This teaching case challenges the reader to analyse and manage the IT carve-out as a critical component within the divestment project. The case includes insights into strategic and organizational challenges of planning and managing an IT carve-out projec

Managing the IT integration of acquisitions by multi-business organizations

Acquisitions are standard components of the growth strategies of many organizations. Frequently, acquisitions raise important questions concerning how and to what extent the acquisition’s information technology (IT) needs to be integrated into the IT of the acquirer. We investigate how the initial conditions of business and IT alignment in the acquirer and the acquisition affect the complexity of the post-acquisition IT integration process, in acquisitions of business units by multi-business organizations. Adopting an IT alignment model for multi-business organizations, we explain the complexity of IT integration paths in two acquisitions made by the industry group Trelleborg AB. We identify four initial business and IT strategic alignment conditions where the IT integration process is a simple one-step process exploiting existing business and IT capabilities. Low compliance with these conditions leads to increased complexity because additional business and/or IT capabilities have to be developed to leverage the full potential of the acquisition

Establishing a model of proactive spin-offs effectiveness on the basis of corporate entrepreneurship: (enterprise project)

Corporate organizations face multiple strategic challenges that imply a paradox in strategic decisions due to an equivalent need to both specialize on the core business and diversify activities. Such apparent contradiction in terms requires innovative answer which we believe lies in proactive spin-offs. In order to explore this path, this thesis is set to establish a model of proactive spin-offs effectiveness based on corporate entrepreneurship. The rational of the project is founded in the literature review on corporate entrepreneurship, innovation, business unit model organization and corporate spin-offs. The analysis reveals different ways organizations can undertake to growth. From a project perspective, we explored a specific non-strategic business line potential to emerge within an organization as a successful strategic spin-off promoted by corporate entrepreneurship. The analysis disclosed different ways organizations can undertake to succeed in this growth strategy, from which one can infer a set of context-dependent guidelines for future corporate spin-off policies.As Organizações enfrentam múltiplos desafios estratégicos que implicam decisões paradoxais por estarem ligadas a necessidades equivalentes para se especializarem no core business organizacional e simultaneamente diversificarem atividades. Esta aparente contradição requere uma resposta inovadora que acreditamos estar nos spin-offs proactivos. De modo a explorar este caminho, esta tese visa o estabelecimento de um modelo de spinoffs proactivos com base no empreendedorismo corporativo. O racional deste projeto baseia-se na revisão de literatura sobre empreendedorismo corporativo, inovação, modelos de organização empresarial e spin-offs corporativos. A análise revela que as organizações podem escolher diferentes formas de crescimento.Numa perspetiva de projeto, exploramos o potencial de uma linha de negócios específica não relacionada com o core-business da organização de modo a fazê-la emergir como um spin-off estratégico de sucesso promovido pelo empreendedorismo corporativo. A análise revela diferentes formas que as organizações podem optar para ter sucesso nesta estratégia de crescimento, sobre os quais se pode inferir um conjunto de orientações para futuras políticas de spin-offs corporativos

The Ticker, November 23, 2015

The Ticker is the student newspaper of Baruch College. It has been published continuously since 1932, when the Baruch College campus was the School of Business and Civic Administration of the City College of New York

UK Strategy in Afghanistan, 2001-2014: Narratives, Transnational Dilemmas, and 'Strategic Communication'

The difficulties faced by the United Kingdom in realising its stabilisation objectives in the War in Afghanistan (2001-2014) have precipitated a change in rhetorical approach by successive British Governments, from one based on liberal normative principles to one that emphasises traditional, rationalist precepts of ‘national security interests’. This transformation of ‘narrative’ is identified in this work as chronologically analogous with the institutionalisation of ‘strategic communication’ practices and doctrine emanating from the defence establishment of the British state. In this work, I argue that changes in narrative approach and the emergence of strategic communication can be understood as a consequence of an overburdened British state attempting to free itself from a ‘transnational dilemma’ (King 2010): that is, to find a means of appealing coherently and succinctly to the benefits of participation in collective security whilst avoiding threatening the viability of collective security membership by acknowledging its costs. This transnational dilemma has been exacerbated by intra-state competition over the material and ideational aspects of British strategy in Helmand, and is traceable by close empirical analysis of three competing ‘policy narratives’ for Afghanistan: stabilisation, counter-narcotics, and counter-terrorism, respectively. Intra-state competition can, in turn, be conceptualised as the result of embedded inter-state relationships of political obligation and military cooperation referred to by Edmunds (2010) as the ‘transnationalisation’ of defence policy. UK policy in Afghanistan has been guided by transnational issues, specifically the maintenance of NATO as a collective security apparatus and of the ‘special relationship’ with the United States, through which Britain secures and projects its national interest. I argue that the UK’s grand strategic commitment to transnationalisation underscores an ‘unstatable’ ultimate policy of meeting the expectations of the United States and NATO, and that the development of various policies and narratives for Afghanistan can be understood primarily in such terms. In Afghanistan, transnationalisation and the concordant pursuit of satisfying American and NATO expectations has come at the cost of a significant divestment of strategic autonomy, which has uprooted traditional, nationally-based concepts of strategy and policy to the transnational level and resulted in a strategic vacuum wherein intra-state competition has flourished. This, I argue, has compromised the ability for Britain to link policy to operations (to ‘do’ strategy)d in Afghanistan, a point which can be empirically measured by reference to the discordant and contradictory aspects of aforementioned policy narratives, which have been rooted in the institutional interests of various elements of the state. Strategic communication has arisen out of this situation as a means for the state to overcome the transnational dilemma by promoting a unified ‘strategic narrative’ for Afghanistan that has reconfigured the narrative for the conflict to one that emphasises the conflict not in terms of collective security but in ‘national’ terms. This work concludes by arguing that, in sidestepping rather than confronting the core dilemmas of British strategy, the emergence of strategic communication can be seen as posing as many problems as solutions for the UK state

The Singapore success story: public-private alliance for investment attraction, innovation and export development

Includes BibliographySingapore has been touted as a success story in the development literature.1 Various theories (Haggard and Kaufman, eds., 1992)2 have been offered to explain how and why the city-state has succeeded, but none of them has received unanimous approval. There is no debate on the success itself, what is at issue is how that success came about and how it has been sustained. For many it is a combination of the right policies and timing; for some, exploitation of a strategic position in the region; and for even others, a one-party dominant political system that allows for consistency in decision-making. The truth probably lies at the intersection of all these various perspectives, for which there is no single unifying theory. And that is the irony and enigma of the Singapore story. This report will look at one of the key elements of the Singapore experience: that of a public-business sector alliance and its wider impact on decision-making and policy implementation within the city-state. We begin with a quick review of Singapore's development over the last forty years and then look at some of the key first principles that animate this success. In particular, we focus on some of the major agencies responsible for charting Singapore's development trajectory and the role that the business sector has played, and continues to play, in the evolution of strategies for growth."