The post-merger integration (PMI) phase of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) can determine M&A success. Little is known about how organizations refine their PMI routines with accumulated M&A experience. This study proposes a process model of PMI-routine development, where the outcomes of routines enacted in earlier acquisitions shape routines in subsequent acquisitions. We test the model using 312 instances of routine implementation, across five consecutive acquisitions by the same acquiring company, and make two key scholarly contributions. First, we advance prior research by identifying how a routine's level of complexity moderates the association between routine adherence and routine outcomes. Second, we elucidate the effect of learning from failure-uncovering a learning process with performance feedback as input. Specifically, negative routine outcomes at the focal acquisition strengthened the positive effect of the improvisation (low adherence) enacted in the focal acquisition on the subsequent modifications to the codified routine, which are likely to improve its performance in future acquisitions.

A contrast of comparable programs involving fighter aircraft and unmanned aircraft vehicle (UAV) programs within the United States and Israel highlights the need for strategic agility in defense procurement. We find that increased political oversight of defense procurement tends to increase cost and time required to field capability, creating a need to balance the benefits and cost of oversight. The comparison of acquisition programs offers additional policy recommendations in the design and implementation of defense procurement.

Facing constant pressures to grow, established firms increasingly harness external innovation by collaborating with and eventually acquiring startups. To succeed in their exit through acquisition, startup firms and incumbents have to master three steps (the "3 Cs") that enhance the co-specialization with the acquirer: establishing the Complementarity of offerings, generating Customer endorsement, and attracting an acquirer executive Champion. Drawing on a multiple-case, inductive study of seven Israeli startup acquisitions completed by two acquirers from the information and communications technology (ICT) industry, this article illustrates the different approaches pursued by the startup firms and their acquirers to succeed in managing pre- and post-acquisition processes.

A central and long-standing question for strategy as for innovation management is where to source technology (e.g., Pisano, 1990). Under which conditions should firms conduct R&D internally, and when should they rely on external sources? There is no simple answer to this question, but there has been a clear trend toward a greater emphasis on external technology sourcing, as seen in the growing resonance and popularity of the concepts of markets for technology (Arora et al., 2000) and open innovation (Chesbrough, 2003). For leading-edge technology, a particularly relevant approach for external technology sourcing is the acquisition of small, young firms. Such acquisitions grant the buyer unrestricted ownership of the technology at hand, while integrating the firm and innovative talent that created the technology into the buyer’s (typically larger, more mature) organization. Empirically, technology acquisitions are of increasing importance: for 2016, the Boston Consulting Group (2017: 12) reported a staggering $717 billion U.S. Dollar transaction volume of technology M&A, up from $165 billion in 2009. To cite two prominent examples, both Apple’s virtual assistant, Siri, and SAP’s in-memory database, HANA, are products based on technology acquisitions. In fact, a number of R&D-intensive industries ranging from medical technology to software rely on markets for technology (MFTs) for efficient transfer of technologies (broadly defined) from innovator firms e.g. those specializing in early-stage R&D to firms with complementary resources for later-stage commercialization, scaling, or marketing activities. The prevalence of such technology acquisitions demands that scholars and managers re-visit a number of classic questions from strategic management research. This session addresses four of them: When do early entrants into markets for technology enjoy an advantage, and how is early entry into a technology market different from that into a product market? How do information asymmetries between buyers and sellers play out in a technology market? Does a firm benefit from its alliances when it is subject to a technology acquisition? And which organizational configuration is likely to be most optimal and stable given that the unit under consideration was acquired for its technology? Each paper in this session explores one of these classic research questions. Pioneer (Dis-)advantages in Markets for Technology Presenter: Joachim Henkel; Technical U. of Munich Presenter: Moritz Fischer; Technical U. of Munich Presenter: Ariel Dora Stern; Harvard Business School Information Disclosure and Technology Acquisitions Presenter: George Chondrakis; ESADE Business School Presenter: Rosemarie Ziedonis; Boston U. Presenter: Carlos Javier Serrano; U. Pompeu Fabra and Barcelona GSE Penalized or Prized? Stock Market Reaction to Relational Complexity of Acquisitions Presenter: Panos Desyllas; U. of Bath Presenter: Martin C. Goossen; Tilburg U. Presenter: Corey Phelps; McGill U. Stability of PMI Configurations in MNE's Cross-Border Technology Acquisitions Presenter: Nir N. Brueller; U. of Haifa Presenter: Gil Brosh; U. of Haifa Presenter: Shay Tzafrir; U. of Haifa

We seek to delineate the processes by which work relationships between employees from buyer and supplier organisations can enhance the supplier's resilience. A micro-foundations perspective is taken to study the effect of individual-level relationships on these higher-level processes in the context of a declining organisation-a supplier that has been experiencing a period of size decline, following the transition of some of its stronger competitors to a more advanced generation of products. The findings of a qualitative study indicate that the work relationships built between employees from the supplier and the customers around current product and services offerings can help a declining organisation to cope with setbacks and difficulties. Expanding on the three C's of hardiness (challenge, control, and commitment), we discuss the implications of our research for the study of resilience through the lens of interorganisational work relationships and highlight the different pathways that build these coping and adaptation qualities for the organisation. Specifically, the challenge of transitioning to new products can negatively influence these work relationships unless the supplier organisation provides supportive context by allowing employees to retain the necessary control over what it takes to serve their customers. Furthermore, the supplier should display strong commitment to integrate the new offerings while customers need to mirror this commitment by developing a willingness to adopt these new offerings by the supplier. The findings further suggest that these new offerings can be translated into higher levels of adaptation.

The extant literature tends to frame mergers and acquisitions (M&As) and postmerger integration (PMI) as strategies and outcomes, but this framing often leaves their underlying processes underexplored. We address this gap by redirecting attention to the view that M&As are largely embedded in social and human practices. Our conceptual study identifies three generic M&A strategies—annex & assimilate, harvest & protect, and link & promote—and matches them with three well-known PMI outcomes (i.e., absorption, preservation, and symbiosis, respectively). Using a configurational perspective and drawing upon the ability-motivation-opportunity (AMO) model, we develop a conceptual framework that reveals why and how AMO-enhancing human resource management (HRM) practices can link M&A strategies and PMI outcomes. Finally, we elaborate on the theoretical and practical contributions and chart a course for future inquiry and research applications for the M&A-HRM-PMI triad and its processes.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop a taxonomy of M & A that can be used to understand which type of M & A is likely to succeed. The taxonomy also allows managers to identify the integration imperatives that is so critical to success in M & A. Design/methodology/approach – Grounded research and thick description of business situations. Findings – This paper identifies the importance of analyzing the nature of the resource interactions that deliver value. If deal makers keep our advice in mind they should truly be able to improve the batting average above the historical norms. Research limitations/implications – Even though we have studied a large number of M & A, this is not a typical lot sample quantitative study. It is possible to test the taxonomy on a large sample study if the M & A can be coded in to distinct groups. Practical implications – When considering a merger or an acquisition, managers should be able to identify the type of M & A that corresponds to one of the categories in our taxonomy. This would allow managers to consider the general imperatives suggested in our paper for success. These general imperatives can then be modified for the unique situation faced by the manager. Social implications – No direct implication except that societal resources will be used efficiently. Originality/value – There are other typology/taxonomy in the literature. However, none to our knowledge uses the resource interaction lens.

This study seeks to advance previous research by linking top management team ( TMT ) processes to organizational ambidexterity, and highlights the importance of environmental dynamism as a boundary condition on the effectiveness of TMTs in promoting balance between exploratory and exploitative learning. The findings from multiple respondents (245 TMT members, including the CEO of the SBUs , and 883 employees) in 101 small‐sized strategic business units ( SBUs ) with a defined product line indicate that TMT behavioral integration helps build ambidexterity, but that the influence of TMT behavioral integration on ambidexterity is stronger when the task environment is characterized by a high level of dynamism. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the conditions under which behaviorally integrated TMTs are able to pursue an ambidextrous orientation in relatively small‐sized units. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

This study examines the effects of timing in high-tech acquisitions by analyzing how deviation from routines affects the value captured by the acquirer as well as the price paid. It examines the context of information and communication technology (ICT) acquisitions in which multinational technology incumbents are known to habitually acquire product-related capabilities to facilitate their entry into new product domains. The paper highlights the role of routines in managing technology acquisitions of multinationals, and tests the hypothesis that smaller deviations in terms of target-maturity and acquisition-timing lead to superior outcomes for acquirers. The findings indicate positive relationships between stricter iterations of routines and superior outcomes. The discussion centers on the theoretical implications of acquisition routines, timing and performance of multinational technology companies.

This paper studies how firms combine, rather than merely balance, exploration and exploitation. It analyses what limits apply to firm growth, by contrasting two distinct, yet interdependent, growth mechanisms. The first mechanism, emerging from the diversification literature, focuses on sharing or leveraging (without transferring) of unique resources commanding high Ricardian rents, which we term as the firm’s Penrosian core. The second mechanism, emerging from evolutionary theory, involves replication of organizational systems, based on how the firm interprets its ideal replication template, or Arrow core, in the language used in prior research. Understanding the limits posed by these mechanisms throughout the different phases of growth assists in identifying development trajectories in which firms manage to combine exploration and exploitation to exhibit rapid growth despite the known limits.

Firms struggle to create an agile organizational system since it requires the development of three enabling capacities: to make sense quickly, make decisions nimbly, and redeploy resources rapidly. While the study of strategic agility is of growing interest as a prime means of organizational growth, the ways by which key mechanisms of growth such as mergers and acquisitions (M&As) help in building this capability remain elusive. This article highlights the differences between platform acquisitions and bolt-on acquisitions (most bolt-on acquisitions in high-technology industries can further be separated into product acquisitions on the one hand, and educational, technological and/or talent acquisitions on the other hand). These different forms of acquisitions can enhance strategic agility in distinct ways along different time horizons. When properly managed, acquisitions can enhance the gradual accumulation of the capabilities underlying strategic agility. This article presents a more complex picture of a non-linear reinforcing dual path between M&As and strategic agility.

This paper attempts to identify the micro-foundations of firm growth, by offering a hybrid model, combining two distinct yet interdependent growth mechanisms. The first mechanism, emerging from the diversification literature, focuses on sharing or leveraging (without transferring) of unique resources commanding high Ricardian rents, which we term as the firm’s Penrosian core. The second mechanism, emerging from evolutionary theory, enables the efficient replication of organizational systems, based on how the firm interprets its Arrow core, using the terminology of prior research. The distinction between both mechanisms makes it possible to explain how their interaction governs firm-development trajectories from early growth through eventual decline, and shows why both mechanisms often grow and decline in tandem.

This paper endeavors to bring together two largely disparate areas of research. On one hand, text mining methods treat each document as an independent instance despite the fact that in many text domains, documents are linked and their topics are correlated. For example, web pages of related topics are often connected by hyperlinks and scientific papers from related fields are typically linked by citations. On the other hand, Social Network Analysis (SNA) typically treats edges between nodes according to "flat" attributes in binary form alone. This paper proposes a simple approach that addresses both these issues in data mining scenarios involving corpora of linked documents. According to this approach, after assigning weights to the edges between documents, based on the content of the documents associated with each edge, we apply standard SNA and network theory tools to the network. The method is tested on the Enron email corpus and successfully discovers the central people in the organization and the relevant communications between them. Furthermore, Our findings suggest that due to the non-conservative nature of information, conservative centrality measures (such as PageRank) are less adequate here than nonconservative centrality measures (such as eigenvector centrality).

A new approach to the representation and reconstruction of non-bandlimited signals using non- uniform sampling schemes is introduced. The proposed method is based on estimation of a time-distortion transformation, under which the original signal becomes bandlimited and can thus be reconstructed. This method is optimal in the sense that it requires the minimal sampling rate for exact reconstruction of the signal. The estimation is iterative, and can be used with most available techniques of localized bandwidth approximation. An application suitable for Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is given as an example. The resultant mapping can also be considered as a new means for the definition of local bandwidth.

In a variety of applications, it is desirable to represent a signal by a set of nonuniformly distributed samples. In particular, this is of interest in the case of nonbandlimited signals where an alternative method to uniform sampling is required. In this work, a new approach to nonuniform sampling is introduced and discussed. The proposed method is based on estimation of a time distortion transformation, under which the original signal becomes practically bandlimited and can thus be reconstructed. The time distortion transformation is estimated using an iterative algorithm. According to this approach, the distortion function is accumulated where each iteration is aimed at compensating for differences in the instantaneous bandwidth after the previous iteration. This process converges and reaches a stage where the signal has practically a constant instantaneous bandwidth over the distorted time axis. Due to the iterative nature of the estimation process, most available techniques of localized bandwidth approximation may be used. The resultant mapping can be considered also as a new means for the definition of local bandwidth.

A new approach to the representation and reconstruction of non-bandlimited signals using non-uniform sampling schemes is introduced. The proposed method is based on estimation of a time distortion transformation, under which the original signal becomes bandlimited, and can thus be reconstructed. This method is optimal in the sense that it requires the minimal sampling rate for exact reconstruction of the signal. The estimation is iterative, and can be used with most available techniques of localized bandwidth approximation. The resultant time transformation can be considered also as a new means for the definition of local bandwidth.

Course objectives The course presents the opportunity to study in detail the process of high-technology mergers & acquisitions (M&A), by focusing on acquisitions of small, technology-based entrepreneurial firms, by established, large technology firms. We will study the sources of value creation in this type of acquisitions, and compare them against those of alternative strategies. Participants will gain insight into the various stages of the acquisition management process, building on the relevant strategic, financial and organizational aspects. Our analysis will cover the different perspectives of both the acquiring and the acquired parties, as well those of their various stakeholders (founders, employees, venture capital investors, and others). Additionally, attention will be focused on the difference between value creation and its capture by the various parties in M&A transactions. The course will also deepen the participants' understanding of high technology industries, their characteristics, and strategies for gaining and sustaining competitive advantage in such industries.