Signaling strategic commitment for organizational transition: how to manage potential M&As through voluntary disclosures

To ‘transit or not’ often depends upon winning over investor opinion to large strategic initiatives. M&A is one such major realignment of an organization and yet once a bid for a company has been announced there is a period of uncertainty when the bid may not be completed. This depends on share price movements determined more by investor perceptions than fundamental values. This paper investigates whether these perceptions may be influenced by ‘voluntary’ corporate communications and so link managerial practices to strategic outcomes. Drawing upon two very large M&A data sets (USA and UK) (57,000 deals; 30,000 communications) we argue managerial practice (signaling strategic commitment) shapes market response and demonstrate communication characteristics, and the use of high-reputation intermediaries, play an important role in determining share price reaction

Voluntary disclosures as a form of impression management to reduce evaluative uncertainty during M&A

This study develops and tests a set of hypotheses on how to manage investors’ evaluative uncertainty during M&A through a specific form of impression management, namely, interim news events. We suggest that voluntary disclosures are key in influencing investors’ reactions during M&A. Empirical support for our theoretical arguments is shown in a sample of 36,376 deals and 163,023 associated interim news events carried out by NYSE and NSDQ listed organizations over 10 years. Our research contributes to literature on voluntary disclosures, impression management, and managing M&A

The Disparate Effects of Strategic Manipulation

When consequential decisions are informed by algorithmic input, individuals may feel compelled to alter their behavior in order to gain a system's approval. Models of agent responsiveness, termed "strategic manipulation," analyze the interaction between a learner and agents in a world where all agents are equally able to manipulate their features in an attempt to "trick" a published classifier. In cases of real world classification, however, an agent's ability to adapt to an algorithm is not simply a function of her personal interest in receiving a positive classification, but is bound up in a complex web of social factors that affect her ability to pursue certain action responses. In this paper, we adapt models of strategic manipulation to capture dynamics that may arise in a setting of social inequality wherein candidate groups face different costs to manipulation. We find that whenever one group's costs are higher than the other's, the learner's equilibrium strategy exhibits an inequality-reinforcing phenomenon wherein the learner erroneously admits some members of the advantaged group, while erroneously excluding some members of the disadvantaged group. We also consider the effects of interventions in which a learner subsidizes members of the disadvantaged group, lowering their costs in order to improve her own classification performance. Here we encounter a paradoxical result: there exist cases in which providing a subsidy improves only the learner's utility while actually making both candidate groups worse-off--even the group receiving the subsidy. Our results reveal the potentially adverse social ramifications of deploying tools that attempt to evaluate an individual's "quality" when agents' capacities to adaptively respond differ.Comment: 29 pages, 4 figure

Women, words, and work : a study of change and reconstruction in adult TESOL

My dissertation asserts that the discourses which at the present time construct the world of work for teachers in adult TESOL, are no longer adequate to represent the field in these new and rapidly changing times. For the last forty years the discourses that have constructed the field present a totalising, gender free, liberal humanist view of TESOL, rendering women\u27s experience invisible, no longer speaking to or for women teachers who make up more than ninety percent of the teachers in Victorian adult TESOL programs (Cope & Kalantzis 1993, Brodkey 1991, Fine 1992, Peirce 1995). I begin by exploring the work of women teachers in adult TESOL, focusing on women teaching in the fast growing de-institutionalised settings of adult TESOL programs, which remain marginalised from the central programs in terms of administrative policy and practice. I report the findings of a series of projects undertaken by the teachers and the researcher by which new insights and understandings of teachers beliefs about their work and the changes which are currently reconstructing the field of adult language and literacy education in Australia, have been gained. I questions the discourses of applied linguistics which have for the past forty years constructed the field of adult TESOL in Australia and suggests that these lack a social theory (Candlin 1989). From the research findings I questions the possibility of continuing to work in the ways of the past, in the current climate of reconstruction of the field, rapid policy change and continued erosion of resources. I suggest that the previously loose system which held this field of work together, the ways of working, the understandings of practice, have in the light of these new times, been stretched to the limit and are in real danger of collapse. For the women working in TESOL this continued incursion of the systems into their work and the changes that have taken place, the denial of their ways of working, their local knowledge and gendered experiences, can be read against Habermas\u27 concept of the colonisation of the lifeworld of language teaching (Habermas 1987)

ANALYSIS OF HUMORAL IMMUNE RESPONSES IN HORSES WITH EQUINE PROTOZOAL MYELOENCEPHALITIS

Equine protozoal myeloencephalitis (EPM), caused by the protozoan parasite Sarcocystis neurona, is one of the most important neurological diseases of horses in the Americas. While seroprevalence of S. neurona in horses is high, clinical manifestation of EPM occurs in less than 1% of infected horses. Factors governing the occurrence and severity of EPM are largely unknown, although horse immunity might play an important role in clinical outcome. We hypothesize that EPM occurs due to an aberrant immune response, which will be discernable in the equine IgG subisotypes a, b, and (T) that recognize S. neurona in infected diseased horses versus infected but clinically healthy horses. Based on previously-established serum antibody concentrations for IgG subisotypes in healthy horses, standard curves were generated and served to establish the concentration of antigen-specific IgG subisotypes in equine serum and CSF in infected diseased and infected normal horses. The subisotype concentrations and ratios between subisotypes were analyzed to assess whether neurological disease is associated with detectable differences in the antibody response elicited by infection. Results indicate a type I biased immune response in infected diseased horses, implicating the role of immunity in the development of EPM

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

Bearing the risk : learning to be drier mid-river

This paper investigates learning related to the phenomena of drying over the past decade in the southern Murray-Darling Basin in Australia, as perceived in a mid-river site within the western Riverina of New South Wales, Australia. The insights from audio-recorded interviews, with a wide range of adults across the water-dependent community, mostly relate to the catchment of the&nbsp; Murrumbidgee River in the Shire of Hay. Our overarching theme is about how&nbsp; people are learning about, understanding and bearing the risks, of what is widely regarded as a prolonged drought. For some, the learning is about how to cope with less water in the Basin, and particularly from the river, as predicted in the climate change literature. Our narrative-based, empirical research registers the felt experience of those located, in situ, as a severe &lsquo;irrigation drought&rsquo; extends into 2009. The paper dramatises the many obstacles to learning how to think and act differently, in difficult and rapidly changing ecosocial circumstances.<br /

Policy hysteria in action: teenage parents at secondary school in Australia

In this chapter we present an account of the policy paradox of establishing a Young Parents\u27 Access Project (YPAP) for students at a senior secondary college in the state of Victoria, Australia. l Within a policy climate of endless reform and new policy initiatives, 90 per cent of all secondary school students in Victoria are expected to complete 13 years of formal education or training, and to be supported to make successful transitions from school to work or further education. Yet young people who are pregnant or parenting and who wish to complete their secondary schooling are invisible within the policies that construct the work of schools. In response to enquiries from teenage parents interested in returning to school and confronting the challenge of juggling home life, childcare and school work, Corio Bay Senior College (CBSC) decided to establish a multi-dimensional project that was underpinned by the provision of fully licensed on-site childcare.<br /

Having a baby and being in school : researching pregnant and parenting young people and their educational transitions

This paper reports on the 2002 pilot phase (in a provincial city) of a continuing study of pregnant and parenting young people and their movements in and out of school (and other educational) settings. It presents an overview of methodological approaches employed and dilemmas encountered, data collected and readings of that data, and an indication of how issues identified from the pilot study have informed the directions and emphases of an expanded investigation for 2003 and beyond. The paper draws on specific cases to identify how young people negotiate their way in and out of school during this phase of their lives. It offers an insight into how young people see themselves \u27\u27becoming somebody\u27\u27 in and around other identity work they engage in while pregnant and parenting at school. The research provides knowledge about the intersection between the institutional and individual complexities of leaving and staying-on at school, including an account of the academic and social reasons for leaving or returning to school and school responses to student pregnancy and parenting.<br /