基于M型组织结构的企业内部激励机制与兼并效应

在寡头竞争环境下,引入企业内部激励机制激励参数变量,建立了一个替代性产品M型制下企业兼并二阶段Cournot竞争博弈模型:第一阶段,兼并企业采用M型制并选择基于利润和销售收入内部激励机制的激励参数;在第二阶段,兼并后各企业的决策者根据企业提供的内部激励机制进行产量竞争。在此基础上,分析了兼并对各企业利润、产量与价格带来的影响。证明对于替代性产品行业,存在一个兼并临界规模(1)只有当兼并规模小于临界规模时,兼并企业才适合采用M型组织结构;且企业普遍存在兼并动机,产品替代化程度越高,兼并动力越大;(2)当兼并企业采用M型组织结构且兼并规模小于临界规模时,兼并对外部企业产生负外部性,但对消费者带来有利影响。本文还进一步讨论了兼并企业采用M型组织结构时内部激励机制激励参数的选择问题,证明激励参数受行业利润率、兼并规模与产品替代性程度的影响。     

Interdependence and innovation

This article analyzes the relationships beyond the firm for their effects upon innovation. It is argued that as technology becomes increasingly complex close interfirm cooperation will be needed. In this study, twenty-two innovations were examined particularly focusing on the interaction between the firm and the environment. It was found that there was a significant correlation between innovation success and the firms' use of other firms. The role of government, universities, and outside inventors on innovation within the firm is also discussed.     

Service diversification and growth of professional service firms

This study investigates the impact of service diversification on the rate and mode of firm growth in professional service firms (PSFs). Drawing on the extant PSF literature, we identify differing views regarding the growth impact of service diversification. Specifically, some scholars suggest that the external client benefits associated with service diversification should allow PSFs to expand revenues at a rapid pace and pursue less merger and acquisition activity, whereas others imply that increased diversification can cause internal challenges with respect to learning costs, coordination and innovation that can limit the rate of revenue growth and encourage more mergers and acquisitions. We test these competing views using longitudinal data on 137 accounting firms and cross-sectional data on 125 law firms and find that service diversification is negatively associated with the rate of firm revenue growth and positively associated with the use of mergers and acquisitions.     

Perceived Environmental Uncertainty, Entry Mode Choice and Satisfaction with EC-MNC Performance

Previous theoretical and empirical research provides substantial support for a contingency approach toward international entry-mode selection. Similarly, additional empirical research supports the notion that different international ownership-based entry modes tend to be associated with varying performance levels. In this study we provide an initial attempt to use Werner, Brouthers and Brouthers' (1996) multiple measures of Perceived Environmental Uncertainty (PEU) to determine the entry mode choices of firms and link these risk-adjusted mode choices to managerial satisfaction with firm performance. We hypothesize and find that firms which make PEU risk-adjusted entry mode choices are significantly more satisfied with their firm's performance than firms whose entry mode choices cannot be predicted using multiple PEU risk measures.     

Guided product idea generation

This article describes a successful method for getting many good product ideas during a short period of time, which was developed by the patent broker New Products NordInvent (NP) to be used instead of the normal method of spontaneous idea generation. The article is based on a project ‘Swede Innovation '81’ in which 12 large Swedish companies formulated 64 search profiles and asked all Swedish inventors to invent new products with this guide. NP formulated the original model—which has advantages for the companies, the patent broker and the inventors—and carried through the project on commission from these companies. Out of 2710 product idea contributions sent for evaluation, about ten products will go into production. This figure could have been higher if the companies had been better prepared to receive new products and had had a better knowledge of managing innovations.     

WHY MERGERS REDUCE PROFITS AND RAISE SHARE PRICES–A THEORY OF PREEMPTIVE MERGERS

We provide a possible explanation for the empirical puzzle that mergers often reduce profits, but raise share prices. If being an “insider” is better than being an “outsider”, firms may merge to preempt their partner merging with a rival. The insiders' stock market value is increased, since the risk of becoming an outsider is eliminated. These results are derived in an endogenous‐merger model, predicting the conditions under which mergers occur, when they occur, and how the surplus is shared. (JEL: L13, L41, G34, C78)     

Multinational firms' pace of expansion within host countries: How high rates of pro-market reform hamper the local exploitation of foreign expansion knowledge

Although increases in corporate ownership positions in foreign markets occur frequently, the factors that determine how quickly such increases occur are underexplored. Combining international business research on experiential learning, knowledge recombination, and pro-market reform, we hypothesize that a firm's international experience with ownership increases has a positive effect on the pace at which the firm implements an ownership increase in a host country, but that this effect is weaker during periods of quicker pro-market reform in the country. We find support for our hypotheses in an analysis of Austrian firms expanding in Central and Eastern Europe, suggesting that, rather than merely being beneficial to foreign investors, pro-market reform also poses a challenge to them.     

The reconstitution of broken interfirm relations

Why do firms re-establish previously dissolved relations with other firms? In this paper we explore this phenomenon in a customer-supplier context. Organization and strategy theorists have focused primarily on the formation, evolution, and dissolution of interfirm ties, but few have examined their reconstitution, despite evidence that tie reconstitution can have benefits for firms. We address this gap through an examination of strategic customer-supplier relations among 26 Scandinavian firms. Based on 95 open-ended interviews with executives of these firms, we show that four factors promote the reconstitution of previously dissolved ties: the existence of relation-specific investments in the earlier tie, accompanied by a history of reliability and coordination; concerns regarding the uncertainty and risk associated with the initiation of a new relation from scratch; the maintenance of social ties between firm officers during the period of dormancy; and a major structural change such as a reorganization, merger, or acquisition in one or both firms. The results suggest that reconstituted interfirm relations represent a type distinctly different from newly-formed, currently active, or repeated ties. Successful reconstitution requires that the firms overcome whatever difficulties led to the cessation of their relation in the first place. How the ties were dissolved has an impact on their reconstitution at a later stage. A dormancy stage may provide new and unexpected knowledge, novel information, and other new resources that can lead to substantial benefits after the firms achieve a successful reconstitution.     

Potential gains from specialization and diversification further to the reorganization of activities

In economic activities, two main forces guide firm and market structures: specialization and diversification. This paper provides new insights on this topic. We propose measuring gains due to simulated division and/or merger processes of firms. Potential gains come from a reorganization of activities through specialization/diversification and/or size effects. From a database of French farms, our findings demonstrate that even if both processes are beneficial for farming systems, the division gains outweigh the gains obtained by a merger. Moreover, mix changes are more important following a division than following a merger, implying more specialization gains than diversification gains.     

Firms' (non)responses: The role of ambivalence in the case of population aging in Japan

The literature supports and recommends that firms be responsive to external environments for prosperity and survival. However, many firms do not seem to heed this advice when it comes to important but uncontrollable environmental forces such as population aging. We investigate firms' (non)responses to population aging, one of the grand challenges of our time. While theoretical explanations for firms' responses to external environments abound, surprisingly, we lack concrete empirical evidence about why some companies do not respond to population aging while others do. Building on the cognition–response framework and utilizing a sample of 545 Japanese corporations, we investigate the magnitude and extent of organizations' corporate-level responses to population aging in Japan, the world's most aged society. While controlling for the firms' resource dependence and slack resources, we find robust, positive effects of perceived state certainty on organizational responses. Specifically, we find that perceived state certainty takes both direct and indirect routes (Daft and Weick 1984) to increasing firm response to population aging. We also find that firms' self-perceived controllability has a direct effect on firm response. Most intriguingly, the organization's ambivalence toward the implications of population aging on their business does not directly reduce firm response. Instead, it is found to be a quasi-moderator that interacts with perceived state certainty and negatively affects the responses to population aging. Ambivalence is an important factor that has been largely overlooked and warrants more research attention to address not only this particular grand challenge but also others (e.g., climate change).     

The Bind that Ties: Socioemotional Wealth Preservation in Family Firms

A growing body of research shows that family firms are different from other organizations in significant ways. In this paper we review this literature by examining how family firms differ from nonfamily firms along five broad categories of managerial decisions. These categories encompass a set of key organizational choices concerning management processes, firm strategies, corporate governance, stakeholder relations and business venturing. We argue that socioemotional wealth or affective endowment of family owners explain many of these choices. We also examine some contingency factors (namely family stage, firm size, firm hazard, and the presence of nonfamily shareholders) that moderate the influence of socioemotional wealth preservation as a point of reference when making managerial decisions in family firms. Lastly, we explore the firm performance consequences of family ownership.     

委托一代理制度下的差异厂商的水平兼并研究

本文考虑到企业中的委托—代理关系和各产品间的差异性,通过求解一个产品产量竞争的两阶段博弈的子博弈精练Nash均衡,对外生企业兼并的获利性和企业兼并的外部效应进行了分析,同时对最优激励参数的特性进行了说明。本文力求在深化对企业兼并的理论认识的同时,也为企业兼并的实践提供一定的指导。     

To fit in or stand out? How optimal distinctiveness in technological diversification affects firm performance

Previous research has observed technological diversification from a strategic viewpoint and regarded it as a strategy used by firms to differentiate themselves from competitors. This perspective, however, overlooks the fact that firms' strategies can also be understood as conformity to institutional pressure to gain legitimacy. In order to study the technological diversification–firm performance relationship from a more comprehensive viewpoint, this paper starts from a strategic balance perspective and investigates how technological diversification conformity enhances firm performance. Using a unique dataset of Chinese listed firms' patenting activities from 2003 to 2014 and adopting ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, we produce empirical findings that reveal a curvilinear (inverted U-shaped) relationship between firms’ conformity in technological diversification and their performance. Our results further delineate the boundary conditions that influence this relationship. We find that firm age positively moderates the relationship, that is the conformity-performance relationship is steeper with the older firms. Moreover, the result suggests that state ownership negatively moderates the relationship, that is, the relationship is flatter when firms are controlled by the state.     

Planning for flexibility

This paper presents an approach to corporate development which relates the instability of the firm's environment and the ability of the firm to change. Using this framework, managers can examine their firm's posture vis-à-vis their environment and choose an appropriate strategy. The framework explains why firms can find themselves at odds with their environments, and suggest the lines of action that firms should pursue to survive and grow.     

Die steuerliche Berücksichtigung von Refinanzierungsaufwendungen beim internationalen Unternehmenskauf

The possibility to deduct interest expenses resulting from financing international mergers & acquisitions for tax purposes affects the attractiveness of international mergers & acquisitions. Multinationals can use tax planning in order to achieve a tax favored deduction of such interest expenses. On the one hand multinationals can achieve a tax effective deduction of such interest expenses in the country of residency of the target firm using an acquisition vehicle in combination with group taxation or a merger. On the other hand multinationals can try to deduct such interest expenses in the subsidiary within the multinational group being subject to the highest tax rate. The deduction of interest expenses resulting from international mergers & acquisitions should not violate the economic principle of neutral taxation. Following this principle, the deduction of such interest expenses should be granted at exactly the tax rate, at which the profits of the acquired firm are subject to taxation.     

Leveraging global sources of knowledge for business model innovation

This article explores the concept of leveraging global knowledge for business model innovation, whereby knowledge is transferred across space and firm boundaries for the reconfiguration of an incumbent firm's business model. Considering the implications of an ever-increasing fragmentation of global value chains and the associated dispersion of global knowledge sources, we propose that supply chain partners at foreign locations can provide valuable knowledge that incumbents can leverage to change their business model. Integrating insights from global supply chain, business model, and organizational learning literature, we theorize and empirically test how different organizational capabilities enable firms to acquire knowledge from foreign partners, integrate external with internal knowledge, transform knowledge through experimentation, and finally apply global knowledge in the form of business model innovation. We conclude with suggestions for future research.     

Equity Ownership in Cross‐border Mergers and Acquisitions by British Firms: An Analysis of Real Options and Transaction Cost Factors

The authors investigate the factors influencing the share of equity ownership sought in cross‐border mergers and acquisitions (CBM&As). Drawing on real options theory and transaction cost economics (TCE), they address and hypothesize key factors linked to commitment under exogenous uncertainty and the separation of desired and non‐desired assets’ influence on share of equity sought by acquiring firms in CBM&As. Empirical analysis based on 1872 CBM&As undertaken by British firms in both developed and emerging economies shows that British MNEs are more likely to pursue a partial acquisition in a target foreign firm when those foreign firms are from culturally distant countries. Further, findings support the view that the high cost of separating desired assets from non‐desired assets motivates firms to make a partial acquisition rather than acquire the target completely. This is one of the first studies to use real options theory to address the cost of commitment under exogenous uncertainty, as well as TCE logic to address the separation of desired and non‐desired assets in the target firm while analysing equity ownership sought in CBM&As. Empirically, this paper contributes by examining CBM&As by British firms in both developed and emerging markets.     

Task partitioning in new product development teams: A knowledge and learning perspective

R&D alliances and outsourcing elements of the new product development process are now commonplace practices among many firms. However, little previous work has examined how these organizational choices influence project knowledge and learning. Based on a comparison of three new product development projects in the software industry, this paper examines how task partitioning in the project influences learning and knowledge development within the firm. The paper suggests that internal development projects encourage synthetic learning and development of architectural and tacit knowledge; in contrast, outsourcing and joint ventures encourage analytic learning and development of component and explicit knowledge.     

Firm reputation and investment decisions: The contingency role of securities analysts' recommendations

Moving beyond resource-based consequences of a firm's reputation, we develop a behavioral perspective on the impact of corporate reputation. Although there has been extensive discussion in previous studies of the benefits of reputation in terms of gaining resource advantages, we apply theory on self-regulatory focus to suggest that highly reputable firms may tend to have a prevention focus rather than a promotion focus in their investment strategies. This tendency will lead the firm to opt for low-risk investments rather than high-risk investments. Furthermore, we develop a contingency model and argue that the main effect of reputation on the investment decisions of the firm is further strengthened by the negative recommendations of securities analysts. We find support for our hypotheses. In doing so, we address emerging theories about the potential negative consequences of a firm's reputation and provide important insights for our theoretical understanding of the behavior of highly reputable firms.     

Corporate raiders don't cut investment in R & D

A focal point of the public debate over the effects of corporate mergers and acquisitions is their impact on the level of spending on long term projects. This study examines the pre-and post-merger levels of spending on R & D and the more general category of capital expenditures. Analysis of expenditures for a sample of firms drawn from the largest corporate mergers in the US during the late 1970s indicate that long term spending rises significantly in the post-merger environment. This supports the view that acquiring firms. whether hostile or friendly, recognize the relationship between such spending and firm value.