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The Impact Of Director Interlocks On Interorganizational Imitation In Germany, Elke Reuning-Elliot

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

In the 1980s, Germany saw a significant increase in the number of corporate acquisitions. This study deals with the role that director interlocks play in gathering and disseminating information about corporate acquisitions. Specifically, it explores the possibility that acquisitions may result from interorganizational imitation. Hypotheses that relate a German firm's acquisition activity with its own acquisitions and the acquisition history of interlocking firms are tested on 1982-1989 acquisition data for a sample of 193 German firms. The results from the negative binomial and logistic regression analyses indicate that there is no significant evidence for interorganizational imitation. Instead, the number of …