More than three decades have passed since Haspeslagh and Jemison’s seminal book “Managing Acquisitions” was published. Yet, its impact is as alive and vibrant in scholarly work as it is in executive practice. In this essay, we look back to reflect on the book’s contributions and look forward to identify open research directions. We recognize five topic areas in which the book made substantial contributions, i.e. sources of value, decision-making, integration, learning to make acquisitions and strategic assembly. We then reveal how subsequent work has built upon the book, developing additional insights into each of these topic domains. Finally, we point out specific research themes that we believe offer a promising and exciting route forward for scholars, practitioners and policymakers in the wider domain of corporate strategy and development.

This paper uses transaction cost economics and property rights theory to explain how different kinds of labor market frictions may affect firms’ choices among different governance modes of resource acquisition. This paper considers two important dimensions of labor market frictions: the breadth of control rights over employees and the legal enforceability of those control rights. These two different dimensions give rise to four different scenarios where firms may prefer to use alliances or acquisitions (or both). Firm choices depend on whether labor market frictions secure firms’ rights over employees, whether human capital has greater strategic value and whether labor market frictions promote successful acquisitions or alliance formation. This research provides additional considerations surrounding labor market conditions to enrich the original build-borrow-buy framework.

This study examines how start-ups utilize venture capital (VC) law firms as intermediaries to facilitate interactions with venture capitalists, focusing on the start-up's perspective and decision-making process. We argue that start-ups engage intermediaries as a strategic method to manage the intricate matchmaking challenges that emerge in investment relationships. We test our arguments using data on financing deals in which some start-up companies use VC law firms as intermediaries-a context that exhibits substantial relationship formation but has yet to be systematically examined through the start-up's perspective. Our findings show that start-ups are more likely to work with VC law firms in environments with scarce capital, where there is a heightened need for finding and evaluating suitable partners. Furthermore, start-ups are drawn to intermediaries in situations where the internal dynamics of collaboration necessitate a careful evaluation of terms to ensure relationship stability. This research contributes to entrepreneurship studies by elucidating the strategic motivations behind start-ups' choice to be brokered and identifying key factors influencing these decisions. Moreover, it provides deeper insights into the roles of intermediaries in market creation and the dynamics of relationship formation in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Our paper argues that the ongoing discussion on coopetition can be enrichened by a value chain configuration (VCC) perspective on firm strategy. To this end, we first explain what value chain configuration is and why it is important to understand its configuration (Asgari, Singh, & Mitchell, 2017; Mitchell, 2014). We then highlight under-explored issues in the coopetition literature (Hoffmann, Lavie, Reuer, & Shipilov, 2018) that an understanding of value chain configuration can shed light on. We conclude by outlining inductive approaches of configuration (Harrigan, 1985; Ketchen & Shook, 1996) and recent interest in correlational analysis (Athey & Imbens, 2019)that can help advance studies of coopetition. Our essay is shaped by the fact that SMR seeks to “promote integration of strategic management research by encouraging research closely connected with the field’s canonical problems as defined by management practice.”In light of the conceptual and theoretical advancements in Coopetition (Brandenburger & Nalebuff, 2011; Dagnino, 2009) and value chain literature (Alcácer, 2006; Jacobides & Tae, 2015; Porter, 1985), we avoid lengthy ex-post reviews in favor of suggesting how viewing firms from a value chain perspective can generate valuable insights for the coopetition literature. While the essay will be theoretical in tenor, it will mainly refer to the context of the biopharmaceutical industry as an example—biopharmaceutical value chains are characterized by an extensive mix of cooperative and competitive interactions. VALUE CHAIN CONFIGURATION The concept of the value chain has a long history in strategy and economics scholarship, arising at both the industry and firm level. The idea of the industry value chain traces back at least to input-output analysis in the 1950s by Wassily Leontief. This concept and empirical approach became the cornerstone of national accounting systems to plan what commodities and services need to be offered to adjust the output of other commodities and services (see Leontief, 1966). In parallel, the notion of the firm-level value chain activity dates to at least George Stigler’s (1951) discussion of vertical integration and division of labor, highlighting tensions between internalization and outsourcing of economic transactions, including the evolution of these choices over time. www.strategicmanagementreview.net

Online media and other media innovations are providing increasingly powerful ways to promote our work and to develop and extend our ideas. This chapter addresses ways of stimulating discussion around our scholarly work, including building a base, leveraging institutions and engaging social media. Our core premise is that research will have the strongest conceptual and applied impact if, rather than ending a project after being accepted by a journal or other outlet, we instead engage with a wide range of audiences before and after publication.

Research Summary Many advances in strategic management have resulted from the application of formal deductive methods, based on tests of specific hypotheses derived from theory. Nonetheless, numerous important research topics involve phenomena that are novel and/or causally complex and so resist basic hypothetico-deductive logic. As a result, many of the most important findings in strategy research have come from open-ended studies of relevant phenomena. The special issue of the SMJ on "Question-Driven and Phenomenon-Based Empirical Strategy Research" presents innovative ideas for question-driven research and expands the toolkit of research approaches. In this introduction we describe the twelve articles in the special issue, focusing on how they contribute to continued development of the question-driven approach to research in strategic management. Managerial Summary One of the frustrations managers have with academic research is that it tends to be driven by questions that are theoretically interesting or lend themselves to clever econometrics. Accordingly, the results can lack managerial relevance. We highlight research that takes the opposite approach-identifying important business phenomena and devising empirical approaches to characterize them and derive managerial implications. In this introductory article, we briefly summarize the studies in the special issue, showing how they answer a diverse set of questions using a range of methods.

Institutional theory research on institutional intermediation typically focuses on how institutional intermediaries address voids in market-based institutions that inhibit entrepreneurship. In doing so, the research rarely studies what types of institutional intermediaries entrepreneurs prefer to use. We address this gap with a microinstitutional inquiry of how entrepreneurs in a rudimentary market-based economy differ in the relevance they place on different types of institutional intermediaries. Using a sample from the Indrachok market in Kathmandu, Nepal, and using a three-stage qualitative and quantitative abductive investigation of a cascading set of increasingly refined research questions, we identify two key preferences for institutional intermediaries. First, we find a key institutional intermediation tripod consisting of three locally focused institutional intermediaries: family, suppliers, and peer entrepreneurs. The tripod is supplemented by institutional intermediaries with more moderate preference in this context: four other locally focused institutional intermediaries (local politicians, police, religious figures, and political gangs) and three broad-based institutional intermediaries (government, microlenders, and nongovernmental organizations). Second, the importance of suppliers and peers as institutional intermediaries reflects entrepreneurs' registration status (registered versus unregistered) and microgeographic location (dispersed versus clustered businesses). The research reconceptualizes institutional intermediation in rudimentary market-based economies from the entrepreneurs' perspective, identifying mechanisms that shape entrepreneurs' preferences and providing proposition for future testing.

Research Summary Organizational learning studies demonstrate that specialization conditions multiple aspects of firm performance, including productivity and financial returns, through its effect on skill development and coordination. We know little, however, about how specialization may influence a firm's R&D performance, including both R&D productivity and innovation impact. We propose that specialization is a double-edged sword for R&D performance that can be influenced via changing scientists' collaborators: specialization increases scientist and firm R&D productivity but decreases the impact of innovations, while changing collaborators in a team reverses how specialization relates to productivity and impact. We validate this argument using a long panel (1970-2017) from the biotechnology industry. Specialization and collaborator change may thus serve as mechanisms to manage the trade-off between productivity and impact in R&D activities. Managerial Summary This article studies how managers in firms may leverage their R&D workers' specialization to optimize their R&D performance. Our study shows that specialization is a double-edged sword for R&D performance: it facilitates R&D productivity at the detriment of R&D impact, while the trade-off shifts when collaborators within a scientist's team change. Thus, specialization and collaborator change condition R&D performance, with two implications for strategy. First, a firm's managers can recruit specialists or generalists depending on whether they want to prioritize productivity or impact in R&D activities. Second, job rotation practices that create periodic collaborator change may disrupt R&D productivity, yet invigorate explorative activity and increase the likelihood of impactful innovation.

Research Summary: We consider how different problem sources — proximate versus remote — relate to heterogeneity in search breadth. While studies of search have established the importance of search breadth and argued that problems trigger search, this research has focused on a single problem source driving search. We consider, instead, how search breadth differs in the presence of proximate and remote problem sources. Because of differences in how familiar firms are with each type of problem, and in expectations of their ability to influence the problem source, problems triggered by remote sources associate with greater breadth. Firms’ technological capabilities, meanwhile, temper these findings; capable firms exhibit broader search when facing problems raised by proximate sources. Using data describing the U.S. renewable electricity sector, we generate theoretical, empirical, and public policy implications.Managerial Summary: When facing new problems, firms tend to seek knowledge from various sources to better understand the problem and identify solutions. We consider whether and how the breadth of their search differs in conjunction with the problem source by comparing proximate and remote problem sources. Specifically, we compare how U.S. utilities firms facing regulations emphasizing increased renewable generation, from the federal government as compared to the state government, seek knowledge about renewable technologies. We find that firms tend to search more broadly following federal regulatory changes. However, firms that have previously generated renewable electricity, search more broadly following state regulatory changes. By exploring firms’ actions in the U.S. renewable electricity sector from 2000 to 2010, our research generates important managerial and public policy implications.

Focusing on the incubation stage of a potential new industry, this paper addresses a gap at the intersection of the external sourcing and market entry literatures by examining pre-entry external sourcing of new resources. Besides drawing on their legacy resources, pre-entrants during industry incubation commonly use alliances and acquisitions to obtain technical capabilities and complementary assets, thereby creating a portfolio of sourcing modes that collectively shapes the firms’ paths to potential market entry. We identify a key pattern at the intersection of type of sourcing mode and type of resource: pre-entrants to the incubation stage are more likely to use alliances to source technical capabilities and acquisitions to source specialized complementary assets. Our empirical context is the agricultural biotechnology industry.

The Debate About Healthcare Reform in the U.S. Is Dysfunctional The current debate about health reform in the U.S. highlights conflicting structural initiatives—Medicare for all, Medicare for all who want it, adding to the Affordable Care Act, cutting back on the Affordable Care Act, ad infinitum. The likelihood that our current debate will reach broad agreement and, in turn, encourage stakeholders to collaborate across the country to implement any initiative, is close to zero. How do we get out of this impasse?

Research SummaryManagers at multiple levels of a firm influence resource allocation but most research focuses on senior rather than middle managers. We study involvement of middle managers in decision making, focusing on how rewards and controls shape resource allocation. We argue that higher income growth uncertainty (rewards) and lower monitoring (controls) increase resource allocation most strongly when middle managers are more involved in decisions. We test the arguments for ATM and bank branch allocations in Indian banks from 2011 to 2014. We assess causal mechanisms by comparing more and less favorable conditions for allocation, as well as considering a poststudy exogenous shock. The results suggest that the rewards and controls have different associations with resource allocation depending on the involvement of senior and middle managers.Managerial SummaryThe study examines how rewards and controls shape resource allocation decisions by middle managers, focusing on rewards arising from uncertainty about employee income and controls based on monitoring. The work suggests that rewards and controls that influence resource allocation by one level of managers may have less effect for another level. Hence, a firm's plans for resource deployment need to include rewards and controls that are relevant for both senior and middle managers.

Unlike problems requiring new-to-the-world solutions that combine knowledge from multiple sources, operational problems can often be solved by repurposing existing knowledge from other contexts into new-to-the-firm solutions. Firms that seek new-to-the-firm solutions to operational problems face a cost-benefit tradeoff when deciding how many knowledge sources to use. With less need for knowledge recombination than for new-to-the-world solutions, greater knowledge breadth incurs greater screening and implementation costs without concomitant benefits. We study how U.S. manufacturing facilities from 1991 to 2005 improve operational performance by reducing their rate of annual output of toxic chemical waste (i.e., improvements to operational effectiveness). Results show that search involving fewer knowledge sources in a given year is associated with greater improvements in operational performance (greater waste reduction). At the same time, however, using multiple knowledge sources over time helps improve operational performance, suggesting that avoiding satiation from a single source and learning across sources play temporal roles in toxic chemical waste reduction. Overall, the results suggest that the greatest improvements in operational performance arise with a focused search for new-to-the-firm solutions within periods while also exploring- multiple sources over time.

This chapter attempts to describe the technological revolution in the trucking industry, addressing important technologies that trucking firms now use or will be available in the near future. It discusses six technologies identified by the American Trucking Associations as the most promising technologies for the industry and analyzes the adoption of the technologies. The six technologies are Mobile Communication Systems (MCS), Decision Support Systems (DSS), Automatic Vehicle/Equipment Identification Systems (AVEIS), Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), Bar Coding (BAR), and Imaging Systems (IMG). The chapter discusses how the Internet has affected the industry and presents the current state of technology applications as they relate to security and safety and also discusses advances in truck technology. Several technologies have increased on-board security. Some trucks are now equipped with password access that make hijacking or theft much more difficult. Technologies that enhance truck performance and reduce pollution are on the horizon.

Research Summary: Firms with resources that make them attractive allies are also desirable partners for competitors so that competition among partners is embedded in alliance portfolios. We develop a framework in which competition within a portfolio creates benefits for a focal firm but threatens partners, increasing the hazard of alliance termination. We then propose four mechanisms for managing the threat of competition to partners reflecting aspects of portfolio configuration: alliance governance, social cohesion, social structure of competition, and partner similarity. We test our framework using a sample of 204 biopharmaceutical firms with alliance portfolios comprising 1,621 alliances between 1990 and 2000. The study addresses the interplay of competition and cooperation in alliance portfolios, and more generally, key aspects of value chain integration strategy.Managerial Summary: Alliance portfolios comprise a focal firm's set of direct partners, some of which compete with each other because of overlapping resources, capabilities, and strategies. The threat of actual or perceived competition from other partners may cause some firms to terminate their alliance with the focal firm. We develop a framework comprising four mechanisms related to alliance portfolios—alliance governance, social cohesion, social structure of competition, and partner similarity—that allows focal firms to attenuate the hazard of termination of their alliances. We find support for our framework in a study of 204 biopharmaceutical firms with alliance portfolios comprising 1,621 alliances between 1990 and 2000. We improve understanding of how firms can manage competition and cooperation within their alliance portfolios.

Research Summary: Research exploring investor reactions to sustainability has substantial empirical limitations, which we address with a large‐scale longitudinal financial event study of the first global sustainability index, DJSI World. We examine investor reactions to firms from 27 countries over 17 years that are added, deleted, or continue on the index. We find that once relevant controls and comparisons to observationally equivalent firms beyond the index are included, DJSI events have only limited significance and/or materiality. Nonetheless, investors' valuation of sustainability around the world has evolved over time, involving diminishing reactions to U.S. firms and increasing benefits, particularly of continuation on the index, over time. The study highlights the importance of careful analysis and longitudinal global samples in making inferences about the financial effects of social performance.Managerial Summary: The debate about how investors perceive corporate social responsibility (CSR) predates Milton Friedman's famous statement that the only social responsibility of business is to increase profits. Although extensive research has studied whether sustainability contributes to financial performance, we have yet to understand whether investors believe it pays off. This financial event study of reactions to the addition, continuation, and deletion from DJSI World, the first global sustainability index, shows that investors care little about DJSI announcements. Nonetheless, there is some evidence that global assessments of sustainability are converging and that investors may increasingly be valuing continuation on the DJSI, suggesting that firms may gain at least limited benefits from reliable sustainability activities.