The choice of insider or outsider top executives in acquired companies

There is considerable debate amongst academics and practitioners over whether top executives of acquired or merged companies should stay or go, post-deal, as studies exploring the link with organisational performance show mixed results. This may in part be due to such studies failing to recognise that there are a number of distinct post-acquisition strategies which may require the deployment of different types of top executive. This paper addresses this limitation by bringing together the longstanding Insider/Outsider debate with a post-acquisition integration framework, in order to investigate whether there is a link between top management type and post-acquisition integration strategy. Using a dual methodology of survey and cases drawing on UK M&A data, clear associations are found between top executive type and particular post-acquisition styles. Underlying these patterns, the value-creating/value-capturing distinction of the Resource-Based View appears to have a greater influence over top executive deployment than do issues of Organisational Fit. This suggests strategic intentions have ascendancy over organisational constraints in the selection of top executives for managing post-acquisition integration

The 'childcare champion'? New Labour, social justice and the childcare market

Childcare as a policy issue has received unprecedented attention under New Labour, through various aspects of The National Childcare Strategy introduced in 1998. This policy focus looks set to continue, with childcare likely to be a major topic in the next manifesto. Early Years care and education is a productive area for New Labour as initiatives here can address several agendas: increasing social inclusion, revitalizing the labour market, and raising standards in education. The provision of childcare is seen as having the potential to bring women back into the workforce, modelling childrearing skills to parents understood as being in need of such support, and giving children the skills and experience they need to succeed in compulsory education. The existing market in childcare is a largely private sector one with the government recently introducing tax credits designed to make childcare more affordable and accessible to lower income parents. This paper draws on material gathered during a two year ESRC funded project looking at the choice and provision of childcare in London. It argues firstly that social justice in childcare is currently understood to be primarily a matter of access, and secondly demonstrates that even for privileged middle class consumers, the childcare market is a very ‘peculiar’ one, especially when compared to the markets of economic theory. We conclude by commenting on the lack of parental voice shaping the future direction and development of the childcare market

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

Evaluating the impact of innovation incentives: evidence from an unexpected shortage of funds

To evaluate the effect of an R&D subsidy one needs to know what the subsidized firms would have done without the incentive. This paper studies an Italian programme of subsidies for the applied development of innovations, exploiting a discontinuity in programme financing due to an unexpected shortage of public money. To identify the effect of the programme, the study implements a regression discontinuity design and compares firms that applied for funding before and after the shortage occurred. The results indicate that the programme was not effective in stimulating innovative investment.R&D, public policy, evaluation

The role of the bidding process in the corporate governance of bidding firms: the case of abandoned acquisitions

This thesis is structured around an empirical investigation of the experience of bidding firms in abandoned acquisitions. Existing research suggests that, in certain circumstances, abandoned acquisitions may play a governance role, disciplining bidder managers for proposing acquisitions which reduce shareholder wealth. However, there has been little work analysing how, and in what circumstances, abandoned acquisitions perform this governance role. This research addresses this gap, by investigating the causal mechanisms of abandoned acquisitions and their aftermath. The thesis develops an innovative, multi-dimensional conceptual framework, blending existing theories of acquisitions and corporate governance. This framework guides the empirical investigation, which uses the causal process tracing (CPT) method, not previously adopted in this field. The work builds cumulatively, to analyse the causal mechanisms, in cases of abandoned acquisitions, involving UK bidding firms. To enhance the identification of the nature of the impact of abandonment on bidding firms; disciplinary or otherwise, a different conceptualisation of the post-abandonment experience of bidding firms is adopted