Harbir Singh

• University of Pennsylvania

Although post-acquisition management marks the last stage of the 10.1057/978-1-137-00772-8_383 process, it represents the first substantive opportunity to create value from the transaction. An effective post-acquisition process requires preparation in the very early stages of transaction, when the strategies to identify and complete the transaction...

Research Summary This paper extends the relational view to offer a dynamic perspective on the factors that drive value creation and value capture over the alliance life cycle. We argue that access to complementary resources provides an initial rationale for forming alliances, but benefits from complementarity can attenuate over time. Indeed, viewed...

Research Summary: We examine the role of nonventure private equity firms in the market for divested businesses, comparing targets bought by such firms to those bought by corporate acquirers. We argue that a combination of vigilant monitoring, high‐powered incentives, patient capital, and business independence makes private equity firms uniquely sui...

Although post-acquisition management marks the last stage of the acquisition process, it represents the first substantive opportunity to create value from the transaction. An effective post-acquisition process requires preparation in the very early stages of transaction, when the strategies to identify and complete the transaction are under develop...

Developing-country multinationals (DMNCs) make overseas acquisitions to leverage extant capabilities of acquired companies in order to enter foreign markets and acquire their know-how to enhance their own competitiveness against global competition at home and abroad. We go "inside the black box" to examine how DMNCs manage those acquisitions and th...

While general models of business leadership have drawn extensively on American companies, we find that two distinctive leadership principles have emerged among Indian companies. We conducted interviews in 2007–09 with top executives, primarily the chief executive, of 102 of the 150 largest companies listed on the Mumbai stock exchange. Though aware...

We examine the implications for firm performance of managers having only a partial understanding of the true nature of their inter-firm interdependence. While operating with such ex-ante uncertainty regarding inter-firm interdependency is common when selecting an approach to governing an alliance relationship, the literature offers limited guidance...

Companies from emerging economies such as China, India, and Latin America are rapidly expanding through mergers and acquisitions (M&A) onto the global business scene. This chapter examines how emerging multinationals actually manage the over`seas companies they acquire. The chapter terms their approach the collaborative or partnering approach to ac...

How do alliance portfolios evolve? We develop grounded theory based on Unisys’ case, which reveals how exogenous technological changes at the industry level and shifts in a firm's strategy shape the composition of partners and the nature of alliance relationships. We identify four evolutionary processes: responding to external stimuli, breaking off...

The resource-based view argues that acquisitions can build competitive advantage partially through retention of valuable human capital of the target firm. However, making commitments to retain and motivate successful top managers is a challenge when contracts are not enforceable. Investigating the conditions under which target chief executive offic...

This study uses network data of worker behavior to analyze changes in worker communication patterns during the first three years post-acquisition. The findings suggest that new communication routines develop slowly and are not entirely enduring even when a transformative event, such as an acquisition, occurs. Communication across firms initially in...

We examine the performance implications of selecting alternate modes of governance in interorganizational alliance relationships. While managers can choose from a range of modes to govern alliances, prior empirical evidence offers limited guidance on the performance impact of this choice. We use an agent-based simulation of interfirm decision makin...

We consider firms in the context of their business ecosystems and explore how governance choices with respect to complementors and distributors shape their competitive behavior—i.e., investments in new technologies. We argue that, in addition to creating differences in incentives, governance choices play an important role in the firm's ability to c...

We describe a distinctive approach to business associated with the major corporations in India and contrast it with practices in the United States. Specifically, the Indian approach eschews the explicit pursuit of shareholder value in favor of goals associated with a social mission. These companies make extraordinary investments in their employees...

We examine the conditions under which the prior partnering experience of firms contributes to value creation in their new alliances. We propose that prior experience with the same partners, that is, ‘partner-specific experience,’ provides greater benefits than ‘general partnering experience’ that encompasses all prior alliances with any partner. We...

Alliances present a paradox for firms. On the one hand, firms engage in a large number of alliances to secure and extend their competitive advantage and growth; on the other hand, their alliances exhibit surprisingly low success rates. In this paper, we discuss how firms can address these failures by identifying some of the primary drivers of allia...

Alliances present a paradox for firms. On the one hand, firms engage in a large number of alliances to secure and extend their competitive advantage and growth; on the other hand, their alliances exhibit surprisingly low success rates. In this paper, we discuss how firms can address these failures by identifying some of the primary drivers of allia...

Acquirers who buy small technology based firms for their technological capabilities often discover that post merger integration can destroy the very innovative capabilities that made the acquired organization attractive in the first place. Viewing structural integration as a mechanism to achieve coordination between acquirer and target organization...

This paper addresses the issue of how relational rents, generated through alliances, are distributed to the participating firms. We argue that rent distribution is influenced by factors affecting both jointly generated common benefits and private benefits gained from the alliance relationship. We draw on four perspectives to explain these various e...

In recent years, academics and managers have been very interested in understanding how firms develop alliance capability and have greater alliance success. In this paper, we show that an alliance learning process that involves articulation, codification, sharing, and internalization of alliance management know-how is positively related to a firm's...

We examined the distribution of benefits to partners in multipartner alliances by concentrating on dynamics of partner entry and involvement. Testing hypotheses in the Wi-Fi Alliance, we observed heterogeneity of benefits. In particular, the extent of organizational involvement in this alliance enhanced partners' reputation and market success with...

This article reviews research on corporate restructuring by examining representative studies of acquisitions, divestitures and management buyouts. Theoretical arguments used in prior research on these aspects of restructuring are presented and the empirical evidence is reviewed. Three challenges in researching corporate restructuring are identified...

Corporate restructuring is an area of great interest to researchers in corporate strategy, finance and organizational studies. In this chapter, we briefly review prior research on corporate restructuring, and then introduce the articles in the special issue. In the papers in the issue there are indications that restructuring can be performance-enha...

In conducting due diligence during corporate acquisitions, acquirers obtain new and usually negative information regarding targets' values. Because such information is noisy, acquirers must balance the risk of withdrawing from a value-enhancing acquisition against the risk of persisting with a value-destroying acquisition. Drawing on signal detecti...

The management of technology acquisitions - acquisitions of small technology based firms by large established firms - poses a dilemma in terms of how to organize for innovation. Acquirers must integrate acquired firms in order to exploit their capabilities and technologies in a coordinated manner; at the same time, they must preserve organizational...

Las alianzas y las adquisiciones son estrategias alternativas, es decir, la decisión de realizar una implica por lo general no realizar la otra. Si las empresas tuvieran esto en cuenta a la hora de adoptar decisiones, lograrían acuerdos mejores. Recursos y sinergias -- Los factores del mercado -- Habilidades para colaborar -- Qué hace Cisco

This paper introduces a knowledge-based view of corporate acquisitions and tests the post-acquisition consequences on performance of integration decisions and capability-building mechanisms. In our model, the acquiring firm decides both how much to integrate the acquired firm and the extent to which it replaces this firm's top management team. It c...

Although acquisitions and alliances are used increasingly to drive the growth in multinational activities, the success rates of both acquisitions and alliances continue to be considered low, both at home and abroad. How do companies make the choice between acquisitions and alliances as a mode of entry? How do they then approach the post-entry manag...

Acquisitions and alliances are two pillars of growth strategy. But most businesses don't treat the two as alternative mechanisms for attaining goals. Consequently, companies take over firms they should have collaborated with, and vice versa, and make a mess of both acquisitions and alliances. It's easy to see why companies don't weigh the relative...

Scholars in the strategy field are concerned fundamentally with explaining differential firm performance (Rumelt, Schendel, and Teece, 1991). As strategy scholars have searched for sources of competitive advantage, two prominent views have emerged regarding the sources of supernormal returns. The first— the industry structure view—associated with P...

Technology-grafting acquisitions are the acquisitions of technology-based entrepreneurial firms by established firms. They are often motivated by the need to bring products speedily to market, as well as develop future product pipelines. We argue that these are conflicting objectives; a trade-off between short and long-term performance arises becau...

This paper applies evolutionary economics reasoning to the strategic alliance context and examines whether and how routinization processes at the partnering-firm level influence the performance of the cooperative agreement. In doing so, it introduces the concept of interorganizational routines, defined as stable patterns of interaction among two fi...

This paper addresses two key questions: (1) what factors influence firms' ability to build alliance capability and enjoy greater alliance success, where firm-level alliance success is measured in two ways: (a) abnormal stock market gains following alliance announcements and (b) managerial assessments of long term alliance performance; and (2) are t...

This paper investigates the occurrence and determinants of post-formation governance changes in strategic alliances, including alterations in alliances' contracts, boards or oversight committees, and monitoring mechanisms. We examine alliances in the biotechnology industry and find that firms' unique alliance experience trajectories affect the like...

Although it is established that firms sometimes expand abroad to augment their capabilities, previous studies have generally focused on technological determinants of foreign expansion. We analyze capability-seeking aspects of foreign direct investment by examining the relationship between upstream (technological) and downstream (marketing) capabili...

The authors use evidence from more than 200 organizations to demonstrate how companies which invest in alliance structures to co-ordinate alliance activity and systems to capture, codify, communicate and coach alliance-related know-how, definitely reap benefit in a number of ways. They also provide guidance on alternative ways to organize alliance...

The authors use evidence from more than 200 organizations to demonstrate how companies which invest in alliance structures to co-ordinate alliance activity and systems to capture, codify, communicate and coach alliance-related know-how, definitely reap benefit in a number of ways. They also provide guidance on alternative ways to organize alliance...

Developing a dedicated alliance function is key to building the expertise needed for competitive advantage.

We partition the variances of market shares, which we use as surrogates for competitive position, of the business units of all public manufacturing companies available in the Trinet data base into industry factors, corporate parent-specific factors, and business unit-specific factors. Our results differ somewhat from Rumelt's (1991), which decompos...

One of the main reasons that firms participate in alliances is to learn know-how and capabilities from their alliance partners. At the same time firms want to protect themselves from the opportunistic behavior of their partner to retain their own core proprietary assets. Most research has generally viewed the achievement of these objectives as mutu...

One of the main reasons that firms participate in alliances is to learn know‐how and capabilities from their alliance partners. At the same time firms want to protect themselves from the opportunistic behavior of their partner to retain their own core proprietary assets. Most research has generally viewed the achievement of these objectives as mutu...

Using data on U.S. investment banking firms’ syndication in underwriting corporate stock offerings during the 1980s, this study explores the factors that drive alliance formation between two specific firms. We compare resource complementarity, status similarity, and social capital as a basis of alliance formation. The findings indicate that the lik...

Corporate restruauring has been the focus of much debate in the past few years. This article addresses the debate about the effectiveness of corporate restructuring by examining 52 studies presented within 25 research articles on restructuring and its impact on economic performance. The authors distinguish three forms of restructuring: financial, p...

This study examines the choices of modes of entry and exit in the process of new business exploration. We find that exit mode choices are determined by a different set of factors from those that are important for the entry mode decision and the exit decision per se. Our study indicates that when the resource profiles of a parent firm and the busine...

How do firms build alliance capability? What explains heterogeneity across firms with respect to their overall alliance success? Building upon insights from organizational learning, evolutionary economics and the knowledge based view of the firm, this study provides a theoretical framework to highlight the antecedent organizational processes that u...

The article presents several commentaries concerning an article on relational view. The first article states that the while the article does an excellent job attempting to cover interorganizational relations and competitive factors of firms, that there is a need for discussion concerning the theory's position concerning existing theoretical approac...

This exploratory study examines the acquisition and formation of physician group practices by for-profit and not-for-profit organizations from a strategic management perspective. Data sources include the 1991 and 1995 AMA Census of Medical Groups, the 1991 and 1995 InterStudy Census of HMOs, and the 1991 and 1995 AHA Annual Surveys. Longitudinal an...

The resource-based perspective suggests that firms are bundles of assets, some of which are fungible in nature. To the extent that some resources are fungible, firms should be able to redeploy them to enter new markets when their existing businesses decline. On the other hand, perspectives that emphasize the business-specific nature of routines or...

This study examines why firms choose different governance structures across their alliances. We focus on the coordination costs in alliances that arise from interdependence of tasks across organizational boundaries and the related complexity of ongoing activities to be completed jointly or individually. We use a typology of alliance governance stru...

In this article we offer a view that suggests that a firm's critical resources may span firm boundaries and may be embedded in interfirm resources and routines. We argue that an increasingly important unit of analysis for understanding competitive advan- tage is the relationship between firms and identify four potential sources of interor- ganizati...

: This study addresses the following questions: (1) can organizations learn how to manage infrequent and heterogeneous tasks ? (2) If they can, then what are the mechanisms that might explain learning under these circumstances ?, and (3) what are the limitations under which these mechanisms operate ? A model based on explicit knowledge codification...

Previous theoretical research has argued that national cultural distance hinders cross-border acquisition performance by increasing the costs of integration. This article tests the alternative hypothesis that national cultural distance enhances cross-border acquisition performance by providing access to the target's and/or the acquirer's diverse se...

After the Citigroup, the BankAmerica/Nationsbank and the Wells Fargo/ Norwest announcements earlier this year, there is very little that can surprise an observer of the US bank merger arena. Already this year, $813 billion of deals have been announced in the US only, compared with $920 billion during all 1997 (source: Financial Times, June 29). Ban...

If one was to examine the academic literature for an explanation of the restructuring that we have witnessed in the last decade, the most prominent explanation to emerge would be the agency explanation. According to this explanation, firms with poor internal governance devices fail to monitor their managers appropriately who, as a result, engage in...

From a survey of 400 companies engaged in cross-border acquisitions in Italy, Piero Morosini and Harbir Singh test several hypotheses which demonstrate that a 'national culture-compatible' post-acquisition strategy implemented by the acquiring company to interact and be coherent with the target company's national culture, can significantly improve...

Previous work on acquisitions, and especially on post-acquisition integration, has put more emphasis on strategic fit than on organisational and cultural fit of acquiring and target firms. Academic writings on corporate acquisitions approach the need to reassure employees in this stressful situation and to enlist their commitment to the new organis...

Finally! A comprehensive volume on the management of corporate acquisitions that summarizes contemporary research, and that moves what we know about acquisition management a step further. The book encompasses innovative works from several countries, related to a variety of issues; managerial motives, the role of acquisitions in competitive strategy...

Concern over the continuing rise in executive compensation and lacklustre company performance has led to an increase in investor and board activity in corporate governance. Institutional investors are leading the new activity and changing the nature of the governance system in the United States. A model of the evolving governance system is presente...

This study investigates top management tenure, corporate ownership structure and board composition as predictors of different aspects of golden parachute magnitude: size and the number of executives covered. We found that golden parachute contracts involve higher levels of payment (in years' compensation) when top management is longer-tenured, both...

This study compared the characteristics of the top management and boards of directors in large firms that have adopted golden parachutes for CEOs with those of an industry- and size-matched control group. The results indicated that firms that have experienced takeover threats are more likely to adopt golden parachutes than firms that have not. The...

Characteristics of national cultures have frequently been claimed to influence the selection of entry modes. This article investigates this claim by developing a theoretical argument for why culture should influence the choice of entry. Two hypotheses are derived which relate culture to entry mode choice, one focusing on the cultural distance betwe...

This research investigates the conceptual argument that acquisitions which are related in product/market or technological terms create higher value than unrelated acquisitions. Related acquisitions are found to have greater total dollar gains than unrelated acquisitions. Acquired firms in related acquisitions have substantially higher gains than ac...

This paper addresses the relationship between diversification strategy and systematic risk (beta). Beta values are examined for six diversification categories, and it is found that betas for unrelated diversifiers are significantly higher than those of other firms. Possible contributions to this difference, including market power, capital structure...

This research investigates economic performance implications of different types of corporate acquisitions. We adopt the perspective that a firm consists of a set of resources whose rent-generating potential is a function of its level of specialization. A corporate acquisition may then be viewed as the purchase of an additional set of resources, whi...

for their comments and suggestions on an earlier version of the paper. The usual disclaimer applies. Abstract This paper suggests that due to the changing nature of the firm, viewing shareholders as the sole residual claimants is an increasingly tenuous description of the actual relationships among a corporation's various stakeholders. Thus, a shar...

All remaining errors are our responsibility. ABSTRACT This paper introduces a knowledge-based view of corporate acquisitions, and tests the post-acquisition performance consequences of two capability-building mechanisms: experience accumulation and knowledge codification. In the model, the acquiring firm makes decisions about the level of integrati...

Firms in many high technology industries utilize and build on the innovations of others, often in the face of short product life cycles. Not surprisingly, the legal "rules of the game" governing intellectual property rights (such as patents) play a pivotal role in shaping this process of cumulative innovation by, among other things, affecting how t...

byPrashantKaleandHarbirSingh ExecutiveOverview Alliances present a paradox for firms. On the one hand, firms engage in a large number of alliances to secure and extend their competitive advantage and growth; on the other hand, their alliances exhibit surprisingly low success rates. In this paper, we discuss how firms can address these failures by i...

The resource-based view argues that acquisitions build competitive advantage partially through retention of top managers with valuable, firm-specific skills. In contrast, the traditional characterization of the market for corporate control posits that takeovers primarily discipline inefficient managers. Investigating the conditions under which targ...

A working paper in the INSEAD Working Paper Series is intended as a means whereby a faculty researcher's thoughts and findings may be communicated to interested readers. The paper should be considered preliminary in nature and may require revision.

We wish to thank the Mack Center for Emerging Technologies for generously supporting this research. We thank Winter for their careful reading of a prior draft and valuable comments, as well as seminar audiences at the Tuck School, Dartmouth College, the Atlanta Competitive Advantage Conference, the Academy of Management, and the Harvard Strategy Co...

Las alianzas estratégicas, una forma rápida y flexible de poder acceder a recursos y capacidades complementarias de otras empresas, se han convertido en una importante herramienta para la obtención de una ventaja competitiva. El artículo expone la utilidad de desarrollar un departamento especializado en alianzas, de esta forma se evitan parte de lo...