Long Range Planning最新文献

In emerging markets, where strategic information is hard to obtain and often unreliable, how local firms acquire information to execute cross-border acquisitions is unclear. In this paper, we posit that when the market for information is weak, and firms lack experiential knowledge, board interlocks with other cross-border acquirers affect the frequency and pace of cross-border acquisitions. Furthermore, we anticipate board interlock efficacy to decline with the focal firm's firsthand experience (substitution effect) and foreign institutional investors (FIIs) equity holding in the local firm (self-disciplining effect). We find support for our hypotheses in a large sample of Indian firms for the period 2003–2014. Our paper contributes to mergers and acquisitions and emerging markets literature.

Integration process performance, capturing the extent to which integration teams realize their integration milestones, is significant in absorption acquisitions, because it constitutes an important intermediate step towards eventual M&A performance. Still, we know little about the conditions that motivate and enable integration teams to attain the goals of the post-acquisition integration process. Based on goal-setting theory, we suggest that integration process performance in absorption acquisitions depends on the fit among the ambitiousness of the cost and growth goals with which an integration team is tasked, the ampleness of integration team staffing, and the extent to which target firm employees are involved in integration planning. Fuzzy-set Comparative Analyses of 199 integration teams in 23 absorption acquisitions reveal three distinct configurations of these conditions that can engender high integration process performance. The results of this study extend research on post-acquisition integration by offering theory and fine-grained empirical evidence at the task-level of the integration process and provide helpful guidelines for managerial practice in acquisition integration in absorption acquisitions. We further outline the potential of configurational reasoning for the analysis of mergers and acquisitions, as a way to methodologically rejuvenate the field.

Acquisition research is intensely concerned with how acquisitions affect economic value, primarily looking at shareholder value, while overlooking or ascribing other values a subordinate role. We argue that this is unnecessarily restrictive and leaves out important values in acquisitions. To remedy this state of affairs, we critically engage with the notion of value in acquisitions with the aim of enriching acquisition research by recognizing a multitude of values present in acquisitions but largely unrecognized as such in research. Arguing value is an umbrella construct, we adopt a stakeholder approach and conduct a problematizing review focusing on key studies of economic and non-economic values in acquisitions, also enriched with other acquisition and business literature. Apart from challenging the underpinning assumptions of the dominating view of value denoting acquiring shareholders’ financial wealth, we identify non-economic marginalized values that are only rarely studied, including justice or gender equality, and pertinent neglected values, including the natural environment. We propose a research agenda around a broader range of dynamic, multifaceted values.

Emotion significantly affects strategic decision-making by entrepreneurs in family business organisations. This paper proposes a cognitive framework of strategic decision-making that emphasises the importance of emotion, based on a micro-foundational perspective: that is, an integrated hierarchy of cognitive processes underlying entrepreneurs' strategic decision-making and the interactions with external affective events. Previous studies that used traditional behavioural methodologies are reviewed with reference to the proposed cognitive framework to highlight importance of understanding effect of emotion-cognition interactions on entrepreneurs’ strategic decision-making process. New techniques using biological, physiological, and neuroscientific tools are then introduced as complementary methods for this line of research. Finally, future research directions are discussed with a focus on implicit cognitive processing, complex emotions, and cognitive interventions.

Research suggests that firms with family CEOs differ from other types of businesses, yet surprisingly little is known about how employees in these firms feel and behave compared to those working in other firms. We draw from family science and management research to suggest that family CEOs, because of their emotion-evoking double role as family members and business leaders, are, on average, more likely to infuse employees with positive emotions, such as enthusiasm and excitement, than hired professional CEOs. We suggest that these emotions spread through firms by way of emotional contagion during interactions with employees, thereby setting the organizational affective tone. In turn, we hypothesize that in firms with family CEOs the voluntary turnover rate is lower. In considering structural features as boundary conditions, we propose that family CEOs have stronger effects in smaller and centralized firms, and weaker effects in formalized firms. Multilevel data from 41,200 employees and 2,246 direct reports of CEOs from 497 firms with and without family CEOs provide support for our model. This research suggests that firms managed by family CEOs, despite often being criticized as nepotistic relics of the past, tend to offer pleasant work environments.

By integrating literature on behavioral agency theory and fear as an emotional lens, we develop a theoretical framework explaining how family owners' fear of losing specific dimensions of socio-emotional endowments influence family firm innovativeness. Our analysis of data from a two-phased, multi-respondent, matched survey (n = 407) at two different time points from family SMEs (n = 207) in manufacturing industries in Chongqing, China, shows that socio-emotional preferences, and the fear attached to losing specific endowments, activate or constrain innovativeness. Family owners' fear of losing family control and influence increases firm innovativeness, as do family owners' fear of losing guanxi (social bonds). However, family owners' fear of losing identification with the business among family members decreases firm innovativeness, as do family owners' fear of being unable to renew family bonds. By deepening current understanding of fear and the perceived danger of losing socio-emotional wealth as determinants of firm innovativeness, our findings offer important implications for theory and practice, correcting for the inattention to sentiments and emotional preferences family owners may or may not have towards specific socio-emotional dimensions in their strategic choices.

Many family firms deploy strategies and practices to satisfy the needs of family employees. When non-family employees perceive a relational disadvantage compared to family employees, they may lower their evaluation of organizational identity (OI) and, in turn, identify less strongly with the family firm. Because family firms can ill afford to have non-family employees who lack a strong emotional connection with and commitment to the family firm, we explore approaches to foster non-family employees' evaluations of OI. Drawing on organizational identity theory, we find support for three approaches: (1) shifting non-family employees' evaluation of OI by enacting a proactive Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) strategy, (2) compensating non-family employees for a perceived relational disadvantage by involving them in CSR decision-making, and (3) leveraging non-family employees' context, by drawing on those who share the values of the controlling family. Our theory and results suggest that family firms can deploy different approaches to manage the emotional connection with their non-family employees, which can help explain the observed variation in non-family employees’ organizational identification across family firms.

In this study, we take an interest in how family business members create their emotion rules and emotion boundaries in and between the two spheres of business and family and how they manage these. We show that this management of emotion boundaries affects the quality of strategic decisions. We conclude that family members create emotion rules and emotion boundaries based on the meanings and understandings of time, space, and/or the relationships that are embedded within the family business emotion-framing rules. Depending on their concern for their own interests and goals, family goals and/or family business goals, they engage in emotional displays that lead to emotional balance, dissonance, or stamina. We reveal how emotional displays affect the decision outcome quality. We therefore contribute to the literature on the role of emotion boundary management in strategic management by evaluating a specific context where the spheres of family and business overlap with more complexity than in a typical case.

The last decades have seen increasing interest in the determinants of heterogeneity in family firm innovation. In this study, we respond to recent calls to address the micro-level mechanisms behind innovation in family firms. Specifically, we analyze the effect of family CEO affect, namely positive and negative affective traits, on the R&D investment decisions of family firms. We also analyze the moderating effect of family ownership structure on the influence of CEO affect on these strategic decisions. Consistent with affect maintenance arguments, our findings of a sample of 142 Spanish family firms show that positive family CEO affect negatively influences the R&D investments of family firms, while negative affect positively influences these investments. The results also show that family CEO ownership and family CEO branch ownership strengthen the effects of family CEO affect on R&D investments, whereas ownership concentration in other family branches weakens these effects.

Utilizing a qualitative research design based on 53 interviews with 19 Swiss family businesses, supplemented by 14 expert interviews, this study demonstrates that different family firm-specific elements of the process of selecting top management team (TMT) members alter affect infusion in family firms. These are the informal selection context, the involvement of informal advisors, and relationship-related evaluation criteria. The study moreover shows that the context-specific attitude (openness, defensiveness, readiness to delegate) of the family business decision-maker regulates affect infusion. Lastly, the study demonstrates that sabotage in the selection process can occur in high-affect infusion scenarios. Contributions and implications for future research are discussed.