Business Commons^™

Shifting Perspectives: How Scrutiny Shapes The Relationship Between Ceo Gender And Acquisition Activity, Daniel L. Gamache, Cynthia E. Devers, Felice B. Klein, Timothy Hannigan

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Research Summary: Several upper echelons studies have found that firms led by female executives are less likely to engage in risky endeavors than those led by male top executives. We argue that conceptualizing female CEOs as universally conservative decision-makers may paint too simplistic a picture and that the impact of CEO gender on strategic decision-making may vary significantly depending on the given situation CEOs are experiencing. We integrate executive job demands and gender research to propose that scrutiny will exhibit differential effects on female and male CEOs' acquisition activity. We show that in high-scrutiny contexts, the difference between male and …

Leadership Behaviors, Practices, And Sytles In Mergers And Acquisitions In The U.S. Technology-Based Organizations: A Qualitative Study, Susan E. Glover

Human Resource Development Theses and Dissertations

Leaders guide and shape the success of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) to meet an organization’s goals and objectives. In this study, I explored the role of leadership during M&A and the effect of different leadership behaviors, practices, and styles (BPS) on different organizational cultures during M&A. This study explored the contribution of leadership BPS on M&A outcomes within an organization with a robust and innovative culture. I focused on the human capital investment strategies of M&A integration concerning different leadership BPS utilized to improve the success rate of M&A goals and objectives. I concentrated on technology-based organizations because they are …

Public Target Selection And Family Firms, Ezgi H. Ottolenghi

The Journal of Entrepreneurial Finance

We examine the relation between ownership structure and M&A target selection when family firms pursue public firm acquisitions. We find that family firm acquirers select targets that have lower Tobin’s Q relative to non-family acquirers. Our results suggest that family firms choose to acquire less glamorous targets against which they can better negotiate. The market reacts more positively to these family firm acquisitions at announcement and out to one year. It is family firm target selection skill along with negotiation skill that leads to the favorable market reception.

Investors' Reactions To Alliance-Engendered Acquisition Ambiguity: Evidence From Us Technology Deals, Panos Desyllas, Martin C. Goossen, Corey C. Phelps

Management Faculty Publications

We study how, when target firms are engaged in strategic alliances, the ambiguity surrounding an acquisition's anticipated synergies influences investors' reactions to announcements of acquisitions. Drawing on behavioural finance research and the resource redeployment literature, we predict that investors' limited access to the information encoded in the target firms' alliances and the uncertainty around the re-deployability of their embedded resources generate a negative relationship between the number of target alliances and investors' reactions. We also hypothesize that this negative effect is exacerbated when the alliances involve foreign alliance partners but is attenuated when acquirers are experienced in acquiring targets with …

The Market For Corporate Criminals, Andrew K. Jennings

Faculty Articles

This Article identifies problems and opportunities at the intersection of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and corporate crime and compliance. In M&A, criminal successor liability is of particular importance, because it is quantitatively less predictable and qualitatively more threatening to buyers than successor liability in tort or contract. Private successor liability requires a buyer to bear bounded economic costs, which can in turn be reallocated to sellers via the contracting process. Criminal successor liability, however, threatens a buyer with non-indemnifiable and potentially ruinous punishment for another firm’s wrongful acts.

This threat may inhibit the marketability of businesses that have criminal exposure, …

Effects Of Corporate Cultural Distance On Private Company M&A Outcomes, Court Carruthers

Theses and Dissertations

Despite nearly $5 trillion of annual global merger and acquisition (M&A) activity, the degree of shareholder value created by M&A remains a topic of debate. The historical view is that M&A does not increase value for acquiring firms, however recent public company financial research suggests that returns are highly variable, rather than uniformly negative. Cultural differences between acquiring and acquired companies, or corporate cultural distance (CCD), are noted as a potential cause of this variability, however, public company findings remain inconclusive. Although private equity (PE) is responsible for approximately 20% of annual M&A transaction value, nearly all prior research is …