Do Acquirer Capabilities Affect Acquisition Performance? Examining Strategic and Effectiveness Capabilities in Acquirers

This paper examines acquisition performance from the perspective of acquirer capabilities. It argues that the strategic capabilities underpinning a firm’s competitive strategy can be utilized to create economic value in acquisitions. Acquirers with strong cost leadership capabilities are expected to leverage these capabilities to reduce post-acquisition costs as they integrate acquisition targets. Acquirers with strong differentiation capabilities are expected to utilize their strategic capabilities to increase post-acquisition revenues by improving branding, product design, sales, and services in their targets. We also explore the affect of an acquirer’s effectiveness capabilities on acquisition performance. Lastly, we examine how acquirer’s organize these capabilities, either at the business unit or corporate-level, in order to maximize their affect on acquisition performance. Based on a sample of 204 horizontal acquisitions occurring in the banking industry, we find support for the link between acquirer cost leadership capabilities and post-acquisition cost reduction. Acquirer effectiveness capabilities are associated with improvements in post-acquisition revenues and profitability. We conclude that a better understanding of the competitive capabilities of acquirers is important to understanding acquisition performance. This contributes directly to horizontal acquisition research, but can be extended to several areas of strategy research on M&As including: diversifying acquisitions, acquirer experience, and how acquirers can avoid “synergy traps”.Acquisitions ; Acquirer Capabilities ; Strategic Capabilities ; Effectiveness Capabilities ; Acquisition Performance

How scholars turned their attention to the populist radical right

In this extract from his new book, The Populist Radical Right: A Reader, Cas Mudde looks at the boom in academic studies of populist radical right parties. He identifies three waves of scholarship since 1945 – the most recent of which has come to trump the study of all other party families put together, despite their relative lack of electoral success

The Church Hymn and Its Way into Music

When the thunderstorm of the Reformation appeared on the heaven of the life of the church, it looked as if it would destroy the harvest of European music. With its protest against the Mass as an opus operatum, the Reformation also opposed the artificial music that accompanied the Mass. As formulated in the Motu Proprio of Pius X, the music shrouded the Mass in beautiful garments of sanctity and Roman Catholic universality. What substitute did the Reformation offer? Surely not something that one could actually call art, but rather sacred folksong. Tolerated only as an evil in the Roman Catholic Church, the folksong possessed a very simple musical form which could be sung by anyone

In the aftermath of the shutdown, widespread grassroots support means that the Tea Party is far from over

The Tea Party has taken much of the blame for the recent US government shutdown, with many commentators predicting that its influence is likely to be massively reduced. Cas Mudde argues that the Tea Party faction of the Republican Party is likely to continue; despite its likely diminishing funding from big business, it still enjoys a massive active base of support. The real challenge for the GOP in the lead up to the 2014 Congressional elections is to prove that it can be viable without the Tea Party

The European Parliament elections show the increasingly fragmented nature of European party systems

Most coverage of the European Parliament elections has noted the rise of several far-right and Eurosceptic parties across Europe. Cas Mudde argues, however, that a more important trend was toward increasingly fragmented party systems. Presenting a series of numbers from the elections, he illustrates that ‘big parties’ are experiencing declining vote shares, with a greater number of smaller parties now competing for power in many EU countries

The ideology of the extreme right

Though the extreme right was not particularly successful in the 1999 European elections, it continues to be a major factor in the politics of Western Europe. This book, newly available in paperback, provides a comprehensive and detailed analysis of the extreme right in the Netherlands (Centrumdemocraten, Centrumpartij'86), Belgium (Vlaams Blok) and Germany (Die Republikaner, Deutsche Volksunion). On the basis of original research - using party literature - the author concludes that though individual parties might stress different issues, the extreme right party family does share a core ideology of nationalism, xenophobia, welfare chauvinism, and law and order. The author's research and conclusions clearly have broader implications for the study of the extreme right phenomenon and party ideology in general, and the book should be of interest to anyone studying or researching in the areas of European politics, political ideologies, political parties, extremism, racism or nationalism

Accuracy of bubble velocity measurement with a four-point optical fibre probe

For the operation of high void fraction bubbly flows in bubble\ud columns, insight in primary parameters such as bubble size,\ud shape and velocity as well as gas volume fraction is essential.\ud At high gas volume fractions the flow system becomes\ud opaque, ruling out non-intrusive optical techniques. As an\ud alternative optical fibre probes can be used, which have the\ud advantage of low cost, simplicity of setup and easy\ud interpretation of the results.\ud By using four-point optical fibre probe, properties of bubbles\ud can be studied, such as bubble velocity, bubble size, etc.\ud However, the effect of bubble wobbling behaviour and\ud physical properties of liquids on the accuracy of the velocity\ud measurements has not been investigated in detail.\ud In the present study, the performance of a four-point optical\ud fibre probe was evaluated for five different liquids. The probe\ud performance and causes of inaccuracies are discuss

What happened to the Dutch left?

Opinion polls ahead of the Dutch general election have presented a bleak picture for the country’s three classic left parties. But were these parties ever that strong and, if so, when did they decline? Cas Mudde addresses some popular myths about the Dutch left’s past and the challenges now shaping its future. What is happening ... Continue

FAST X-RAY TOMOGRAPHY OF A BUBBLING FLUIDIZED

This paper presents results of a train of bubbles moving through a fluidized bed imaged with an X-ray Tomographic Scanner. The scanner consists of three X-ray sources equipped with 2*30 CdWO4 detectors each. The fluidized bed has a diameter of 23cm and is filled with polystyrene particles (mean diameter 560μm). The bed is set at minimal fluidization and additional gas is released from a single capillary, forming a train of bubbles moving upwards through the bed. The scanner measures the shape, size and velocity of the bubbles passing the measuring plane. We present data showing that the scanner can quantify for each bubble its size and velocity. The smallest bubbles detected have an equivalent diameter of less than 3cm