A conceptual view of exergy destruction in mergers and acquisitions

Company mergers are complex where several firm-specific and contextual factors interact with each other impacting the outcome of the process. Although many firms merge with or acquire others to increase the value of their firms, have more market power and gain more ability to negotiate with suppliers or customers, most of mergers and acquisitions result in failures. Despite the poor performances, firms continue to merge and acquire. The existing literature on the other hand lacks in providing a robust theory to the issue of poor post-merger performance. This study thus responds to exploring the issue of high failure rates in mergers and acquisitions in an entirely different way. As the first output of a research programme on the conceptual, theoretical and empirical issues in merger and acquisitions research, we conceptualize the loss of performance or exergy in mergers and acquisitions using thermodynamic analysis of the mixing process in physical systems. Three propositions are developed that conceptualize the ideal conditions for mergers in terms of firm size, relatedness between the merging firms and the ambient states. The exergy loss due to merging increases with the increasing levels of strategic or cultural incompatibility between the two firms. When the sizes of two firms differ, it is preferable for the larger firm to have higher knowledge base than the smaller firm. Lastly, the knowledge intensity of the country that the merging takes place as well as the relative knowledge base of the merging firms do interact and change the post-merger performance significantly

Comparison of nanotechnology acceptance in Turkey and Switzerland

Karaca, Fatih (Arel Author)The aim of this paper is to replicate the study of Siegrist et al. [2007] and to present a comparison of nanotechnology acceptance in Turkey and Switzerland. The participants in our survey acknowledge the benefits of nanotechnology in achieving a preferred future (significance on the country's economy and on wealth creation, as well as quality of life) while reserving some sceptism on the institutions' responsibility in utilizing nanotechnology in the food domain. The most beneficial application in our study is viewed as nanotechnology-used bread compared to food packaging of Swiss study. The most risky application is seen as the application for tomatoes, the most affect is observed again for the tomatoes and willingness to buy (WTB) choice is more for juice application than any other applications analyzed in this study. Perceived benefits and perceived risks are found to have influence on the WTB nanotechnology applications in the food domain. Results did not support any evidence suggesting that the nanoinside applications are perceived as less acceptable than nanooutside application as stated in the Swiss study. Affect evoked by the information existing in environment about the nanotechnology products have significant relation with benefits and risks of this emerging technology. The relation between affect and risk in our model is positive whereas it is negative in Siegrist et al. [2007]. The effect of social trust on affect is found to be insignificant in our study which was an assumption of Siegrist et al. [2007] and found to be significant in their research. This paper attempts to help the managers to understand the youth and young adults' perception of nanotechnology in Turkey and to consider the importance of those perceptions for the realization of technological advances in improving their products and developing new ones. © 2013 World Scientific Publishing Company