No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
University Mergers: New Strategies for Higher Education Institutions
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to examine university mergers, their motives, problems and challenges that emerge during process implementation, as well as their effects. Research results have shown that rarely there is one motive for merging insititutions of higher education, but there are, most often, multiple motives. Furthermore, research results have shown that the efficiency of university mergers is different and that more successful mergers among institutions of different sizes, as well as among complementary institutions. Additionaly, research results have shown that the most important challenge related to the implementation of university mergers refers to the conservatism of traditional academic cultures and the existence of strong employee resistance toward change. Finally, research results have shown that the key factors of the success of university mergers are successful management of human resources, leadership quality, communication on important aspects of changes, achieving cultural compliance of integrated institutions.
... To remain relevant and viable (Arvanitakis & Hornsby 2016), scholars suggest that business schools and universities must develop strategies and show that their curricula include the latest technology, create a unique student/ customer experience, and equip and shape tomorrow's entrepreneurs and leaders (Sharp 2019). In addition, it is essential to impart knowledge and theory which fulfills academic rigor but is relevant to executives and their particular industry (Savović 2020). Nevertheless, drastic changes in both off-campus and online learning environments due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic challenge enrollment rates, the justification of fees, and pressures on funding (Newman et al. 2010;Rana et al. 2020). ...
... Therefore, business schools and universities must review and adjust their strategies and policies and become more entrepreneurial to remain attractive to students and ensure profitability (Duderstadt 2001;Savović 2020). For example, top-tier universities targeting high-achieving students should consider that online learning experiences cannot entirely replace face-to-face (F2F) relationship-building. ...
... Consequently, this chapter contributes to the discussion about how business schools/universities can align their priorities with stakeholders' interests to boost (inter)national economic growth (Peters 2007), enhance the collaboration with their academic peers (Savović 2020), and participate in anticipating and tackling global problems (Sebhatu et al. 2021). In particular, by developing a future-oriented education, business schools are expected to be the catalyst to generate innovative solutions and achieve sustainable goals in such areas as climate change and geopolitical dilemmas following the pandemic (Clawson & Page 2010;Collins 2021 (Gilson & Goldberg 2015, p. 128). ...
Hardback
The Future of Business Schools
Purpose, Action, and Impact
Edited by Rico J. Baldegger, Dean and Professor, School of Management-Fribourg (HEG-FR), University of Applied Sciences & Arts Western Switzerland, Ayman El Tarabishy, President & CEO, International Council for Small Business (ICSB), Deputy Chair, Department of Management, School of Business, The George Washington University, US, David B. Audretsch, Indiana University, US and the Department of Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship, University of Klagenfurt, Austria, Dafna Kariv, Professor of Entrepreneurship; Head of the dual degree Entrepreneurship-Business Administration, Adelson School of Entrepreneurship, Reichman University (RUNI), Herzliya, Israel, Katia Passerini, Provost and Executive Vice President, Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey, US and Wee-Liang Tan, Associate Professor of Strategic Management, Lee Kong Chian School of Management, Singapore Management University
Publication Date: November 2022
... Regarding the second approach, although it has enhanced academic power and reduced the management burden of university-level institutions in practice, it has weakened the overall coordination of disciplines in schools. This has led to an increase in the management hierarchy at the department level and the phenomenon of institutional expansion (Romanenko and Froumin, 2020;Savović, 2020). As a result, the efficiency of university management has not been improved. ...
Institutions are pivotal in university governance, symbolizing stable organizational power reflective of governance capacity. The strategic organization of a university’s internal structures aims to align with its developmental goals. The effectiveness of these arrangements is evaluated by their congruence with the university’s characteristics and norms, aiming to enhance governance for growth and sustainability. Thus, the primary aim of this study is to determine whether this layout can strengthen the university’s governance ability, enhancing its prospects for survival and development. This study introduces a novel theoretical framework across the dimensions of time, space, and quantity, utilizing governance elements to assess the impact of institutional layouts on governance capabilities. Data were gathered through a self-developed survey questionnaire, with a total of 742 valid responses collected, and by employing a high-dimensional fixed-effects model, we found that the three-dimensional institutional layouts significantly impact governance capabilities, with effects varying by the institution’s affiliation. Furthermore, the mechanism analysis shows that university governance capabilities are also manifested through different configurations of governance elements under institutional layout, and are influenced by the responsiveness, collaboration, and expansion of the entire institutional system. Moreover, our analysis indicates a threshold effect in the tenure of institutional members, where both excessive and insufficient enthusiasm impact governance capabilities differently. This suggests the importance of a strategic institutional layout that aligns with the governance elements’ dynamics of timeliness, flexibility, distribution, and scarcity across time, space, and quantity. Achieving an optimal arrangement enhances the university’s governance efficiency significantly. In light of these findings, policy implications were proposed.
The aim of the article is to explore and understand contemporary structural developments in Slovak higher education (HE). This work examines the pre-conditions, policy rationales and organisational forms of a new phenomenon: the formation of university umbrella structures. The paper conceptually uses the theoretical backdrop of sociological institutionalism and examines how the powerful concept of university mergers is translated and adapted into the context of Slovak HE. The analysis also attempts to answer the question on whether emerging university umbrella structures are only an organisational semblance of plausible policy imitation or if they are actual steps in a long way towards full organisational mergers.
Objective: The aim of the article is to present the issue of mergers and acquisitions of universities with reference to academic entrepreneurship. Research Design & Methods: The research methodology in the article was based on comparative analysis of case studies of universities mergers. The article is of an illustrative nature and constitutes a starting point for further in-depth research in the field of university mergers and academic entrepreneurship. Findings: One of the consolidation motivations in France was to build strong links between universities and enterprises, which is supposed to fuel economic, scientific and technological development. Key mechanisms to drive a wave of strategic mergers in the public university sector that is sweeping through the world are global rankings. Implications & Recommendations: Consolidations of HEIs should also based on effective human capital management and entrepreneurial organisational culture. Nowadays, in the process of university merger research, we are at the induction stage, where hundreds of case studies and few comparative studies have been gathered that draw a complex picture of mergers and can serve as a source of practical guidance. Contribution & Value Added: International comparison of mergers of Polish and French public universities that lead to recommendations on macro level of public policy and on mezzo and micro level of university management.
Little research examines the sociocultural aspects of consolidating two post-secondary educational institutions. In a previous study we collected baseline data and reported on the initial impact of consolidation of a research-oriented, health sciences university with a teaching-oriented, comprehensive university. In the study we report here we compared our baseline data with data collected two years after consolidation in order to explore the organization’s evolving culture and the effect of that evolution on faculty members, with a focus on faculty retention. We draw lessons about the impact of consolidation for policy makers considering this avenue for reorganization within public higher education.
In the boundaries of the European Union, education has a social dimension especially in an environment where skills and competences are acquired and refined through higher education. The paper aims to review the major challenges facing the sector of higher education at European Union level and to examine and summarize the key national responses/measures foreseen to address common national bottlenecks with respect to tertiary education: access, retention, and employability of students. The findings attempt to fill the knowing gap by systematically analyze the country statistical data and the key initiatives in developing human capital that help to transform the current higher education capacity towards more knowledge-based and innovative structure.
The foundation of a university often reflects the preoccupations of its age, reaching back to theological roots in medieval times, and later meeting the needs of nineteenth century empires for administrators with a rounded education or those of the emerging professional and industrial classes for a highly trained workforce and for research, particularly in science and engineering. Humanistic ideals and academic freedom were embodied as core elements in most cases. Such institutions, with more than a century behind them, have become part of a much larger population of universities as the expectations of and demands for a graduate education drove a global era of expansion and massification. While the core concept of a university remains recognisable almost anywhere that the term is used, substantial differentiation nonetheless exists. This differentiation may lie in the nature of the student population, the focus of the curriculum, the degree of research intensity, the form of governance, financial viability, scale of activity, the degree of autonomy and the extent to which it is embedded in one or more locations. More recently, as rankings and other forms of assessment have entered the picture, the level of ambition of an institution has also become a distinguishing factor.
The importance of knowledge as a driver of social and economic growth and prosperity, and the increasingly competitive "global race for knowledge and talent" (Hazelkorn, Higher Educ Manage Policy 21(1):55-76, 2009) have combined to transform the higher education landscape, forcing national governments and higher education institutions (HEIs) to pursue new ways of addressing the challenges of a multi-polar world order. Rising demand for higher education (HE), as part of the broader shift from elite to mass to universal participation, has led to the emergence of new models of provision. At the same time, many governments face restrictions on public resources due to high levels of public and private debt; accordingly, system-level and institutional restructuring has been contemplated as a way to enhance quality, performance and efficiency.
Mergers have been a frequent phenomenon in higher education in the last quarter century. The conventional wisdom is that mergers are undertaken mainly for economic reasons, either to expand markets or to reduce costs. About four out of five college or university mergers survive. In the for-profit sector the comparable rate is closer to two out of five. From this one might conclude that the future for mergers among colleges and universities is robust. If, however, the principal purpose of mergers is economic efficiency, there logically ought to be a point beyond which the efficacy of merger will begin to decline. There is, however, another motive for merger, which is unrelated to economic efficiency. Mergers can produce greater diversity of programs and services, both among individual colleges and universities and within systems of postsecondary education. If diversification is the primary purpose of merger, the future might look different and might depend on new ways of identifying peers and partners for merger. This essay examines the expectations that are held for mergers, the realism of those expectations, and the means by which partners in mergers are identified and selected. It concludes with the suggestions that diversification may replace efficiency as the main stimulus of merger, and that, as the choice is made between efficiency and merger, institutions and systems of post- secondary education may try other, less permanent, forms of inter-institutional cooperation before committing to merge.
The growing influence of the idea of world-class universities and the associated phenomenon of international academic rankings are intriguing issues for contemporary comparative analyses of higher education. Although the Academic Ranking of
World Universities (ARWU or the Shanghai ranking) was originally devised to assess
the gap between Chinese universities and world-class universities, it has since been
credited with roles in stimulating higher education change on many scales, from increasing the labor value of individual high-performing scholars to wholesale renovation
of national university systems including mergers. This paper exhibits the response of
the ARWU indicators and rankings to institutional mergers in general, and specifically
analyses the universities of France that are engaged in a major amalgamation process
motivated in part by a desire for higher international rankings.
This study examines the impact of transformational and transactional leader behaviors on the sales performance and organizational
citizenship behaviors of salespeople, as well as the mediating role played by trust and role ambiguity in that process. Measures
of six forms of transformational leader behavior, two forms of transactional leader behavior, trust, and role ambiguity were
obtained from 477 sales agents working for a large national insurance company. Objective sales performance data were obtained
for the agents, and their supervisors provided evaluations of their citizenship behaviors. The findings validate not only
the basic notion that transformational leadership influences salespeople to perform “above and beyond the call of duty” but
also that transformational leader behaviors actually have stronger direct and indirect relationships with sales performance
and organizational citizenship behavior than transactional leader behaviors. Moreover, this is true even when common method
biases are controlled. The implications of these findings for future research are discussed.
The disappointing outcomes of many mergers and acquisitions (M&As) have been increasingly attributed to the neglect and mismanagement of human aspects of the activity and the stressful and dysfunctional impact that such change events have on the employees involved (Cartwright & Cooper, 199610.
Cartwright , S. and Cooper , C. L. 1996 . Managing mergers, acquisitions and strategic alliances: Integrating people and cultures , Oxford, , UK : Butterworth Heinemann . View all references). M&As in the Higher Education sector are less common than corporate M&As and have received rather less attention. This study considers the experiences of employees involved in the merger of two UK universities. It highlights the stressful potential of the premerger period and the positive role of consultation and involvement.
Institutional mergers have become frequent occurrences in higher education world wide as a response to the changing external and internal contexts in the past several decades. However, merger as a form of organizational change has largely been neglected by higher education researchers. Very little work has been done to examine how merger is actually implemented at the organizational level. This dissertation focused empirically on one merger in Chinese higher education which involved four institutions. Specifically it examined how organizational integration and human integration were accomplished and the approaches and strategies merger managers employed to manage integration.
This study employed the case study method involving interviews, document analysis, and direct observations. What emerged from the study was a richer understanding of the merger process in higher education mergers. This study first identified the key factors that affected the pre-merger planning and decision making process, including a variety of external and internal factors, decisions made concerning the vision for the new organization, the strategic objectives of the merger, and the integration strategy. It then examined post-merger integration along two dimensions, namely organizational integration and human integration. It analyzed the major tasks, central issues and problems, and strategies employed by the merger managers to promote integration. The findings of the study also indicated the critical role that leadership played in both pre-merger planning and post-merger integration.
The insights and findings of this study shed new light on the ways that higher education institutions manage merger and suggest how the management might facilitate integration more effectively. Building on these findings and previous research, this study took the first step to build a systematic conceptual model that can be used to analyze higher education mergers. This framework provides a basis upon which further studies on higher education mergers can be developed. It can also be used by higher education merger managers to think about the merger process, identify integration needs in their own organizations, and to develop coherent strategies to fulfill those needs.
Integracioni procesi predstavljaju dominantne procese koje preduzeća koriste kako bi, u globalnom i sve konkurentnijem okruženju osigurale svoju poziciju. Preduzeća nastoje da poboljšaju konkurentsku prednost ne samo putem internog rasta, već putem kreiranja novih eksternih odnosa sa drugim preduzećima. Spajanja i preuzimanja preduzeća karakteristična su za razvijene ekonomije, ali se intenziviraju i u zemljama u razvoju, gde predstavljaju značajan mehanizam restrukturiranja i unapređenja poslovanja domaćih preduzeća.
Monografija je rezultat višegodišnjeg naučno-istraživačkog rada autora. Cilj monografije je proučavanje integracionih procesa preduzeća, problema koji se tom prilikom javljaju, kao i faktora uspešne implementacije ovih procesa, kako bi se definisale odgovarajuće preporuke za uspešno upravljanje datim procesima. Istraživanje u monografiji bazirano je na integrisanom i multidisciplinarnom pristupu, pružajući širi holistički pogled na integracione procese preduzeća. Monografija je namenjena studentima koji izučavaju problematiku integracionih procesa preduzeća, ali može biti od koristi i svima onima koji će biti uključeni u navedene procese, pružajući im praktične smernice kako prevazići izazove koji su inherentni integracionim procesima preduzeća.
Purpose
The researchers in this study aim to understand the impact of a recent merger between two high performing institutions, on employee trust and well-being. The purpose of this paper is to quantitatively test the relationships between communication initiatives, human resource management initiatives, and cultural congruence and their impact on employee trust during organisational change.
Design/methodology/approach
To empirically validate these hypothesised relationships, 139 employees of the organisation were surveyed; the data were analysed using structural equation modelling.
Findings
The results indicate that HR planning and successful communication by the organisation are vital if a merger is to achieve the gains envisioned at its inception.
Research limitations/implications
Future research may explore longitudinal study to establish time of how employee trust are affected from the early merger announcement stage, during the merger-related activities and most importantly the post-merger period. The researchers are of the opinion, that understanding the impacts of change and how employee trust is affected during change is vital. The scope of this study permitted only three independent variables, consideration should be given for further research to explore the influence other activities may have on trust such as policy, government restraint, governance and internationalisation.
Practical implications
These results further establish the need for educational and commercial organisations to focus on internal and external relationship management and on communication strategies that can affect employees before, during and after a merger.
Social implications
Understanding factors that will influence employee vulnerability is important for any organisation as it is possibly the first step to understanding what planning needs to take place to foster change and consider contingencies pre, during and post-merger related change. Considerable thought and planning should be given to the re building of culture and regaining of lost trust post-merger.
Originality/value
This is the first empirical research that quantitatively test the relationships between communication initiatives, human resource initiatives, cultural congruence and their impact on employee trust during organisational change in higher academic institution. This particular study has further add value to change management research, particularly from New Zealand perspective where there is little literature on the current Institute of Technology and Polytechnic sector merger.
The complexity of knowledge-based society is constantly adding new challenges for higher education institutions. Entrepreneurial university model is developed in such a way that it incorporates the additional role of the commercialization of knowledge and active contribution to the development of private enterprises in the local and regional economy. The main objective of the paper is to explore the characteristics of university which support entrepreneurial activities and facilitate the generation and exploitation of knowledge and technology. The main research question is how the university can become an incentive factor for the development and success of academic spin-off ventures? The results of the research have shown that the characteristics of the social and institutional environment influence the development and success of academic spin-off ventures by developing various mechanisms that encourage innovation and entrepreneurship. In addition, the research has shown that the university, by strengthening the culture of academic entrepreneurship as well as, by establishing cooperation with industry and public institutions on all levels, encourages the development of academic spin-off ventures. In the concluding observations, we emphasized the importance of further research in the field of higher education institutions, in order to provide additional contribution to the literature focused on academic entrepreneurship, as well as to provide practical recommendations for improving the success of academic spin-offs.
Since the late 1990s, mergers have been pursued by a large number of national university systems. The mergers have been justified as a way of increasing research performance. This paper examines the impact of mergers on one vital measure of university research performance, the production of publications, for 29 Chinese university mergers and 8 Nordic university mergers. Using Web of Science counts of research articles before and after a merger while controlling for the university inputs of R&D funding and research personnel, it was found that Chinese universities exhibited a small but significant increase in the rate of growth of articles following a merger. The Nordic performance was less clear cut. Our findings support the belief that mergers of similarly sized institutions usually have little impact on research performance. In contrast, mergers between a large comprehensive university and much smaller universities have a positive impact on overall publications. We also show that cases in which the merger was between a comprehensive university and a medical school resulted in significantly improved performance in terms of scholarly publications. We attribute the improvement to synergies between the basic biological research in the comprehensive university and the more practical research undertaken in medical schools. We conclude with suggestions for policy-makers aiming to create synergies through mergers.
Historically, acquisition scholars and practitioners have adopted a choice perspective which portrays the corporate executive analyzing acquisition opportunities as a rational decision maker. This paper suggests that the choice perspective be supplemented with a process perspective which recognizes the acquisition process itself as a potentially important determinant of activities and outcomes. A series of research propositions is offered suggesting how four impediments present in the process itself might affect acquisition outcomes.
Restructuring Welsh higher education came under active consideration from the start of the millennium, when a broad policy consensus emerged that the country had too many universities, often of a scale that limited their potential. From 13 higher education institutions then, the total is now 8 (plus the Open University in Wales). This chapter reviews the major policy positions and phases of these developments, from one in which the funding body for higher education sought institutions’ own proposals to one in which, at the Minister’s request, it offered a structural "blueprint". It illustrates developments with reference to specific cases, and highlights the key role of institutional and political leadership in these processes, and the challenges involved in securing change in a context of high institutional autonomy. Finally, it identifies the tension, perhaps particularly evident in small countries, between responsibility for governance of individual institutions, and for securing the best possible overall higher education system.
We use laboratory experiments to explore merger failure due to conflicting organizational cultures. We introduce a laboratory paradigm for studying organizational culture that captures several key elements of the phenomenon. In our experiments, we allow subjects in "firms" to develop a culture, and then merge two firms. As expected, performance decreases following the merging of two laboratory firms. In addition, subjects overestimate the performance of the merged firm and attribute the decrease in performance to members of the other firm rather than to situational difficulties created by conflicting culture.
The purpose of this study is to analyze how China has strived to develop its world-class research universities and what are distinguishing characteristics of China’s efforts to form these universities for the last decades. This study begins with a review of literature and research questions. It then touches on the background and rationale of creating China’s world-class university. In the third section, it examines national policies and strategies of building China’s world-class research university since the mid-1990s. In the fourth section, based on national documentation and institutional strategies as well as major findings from the international survey of the Changing Academic Profession which was exercised in China in 2007, the study presents what has been achieved in the effort launched to create Chinese world-class research university and challenges facing China in this regard. The study concludes by arguing the following aspects: firstly, China has made an impressive progress of forming its world-class research university and national policies and strategies are effective; secondly, differing from the world-class research universities in the USA and the UK, the Chinese path to building a world-class research university is characterized with a top-down policy, accompanied by the growth in intensive funding from both national government and especially local authorities on few selected elite universities; and finally, the Chinese way is still receptive to Western influence and external international ranking systems or organizations; therefore, there is still a long way for China to become an internationally influential part of the higher education landscape.
This article considers how higher education institutions change over time, using the United Kingdom system as an exemplar, and focusing on the 15-year period between 1994/95 and 2009/10. While there are many aspects of institutional change worthy of study, the focus here is on how institutions appear to others. Thus, the article examines the institutional mergers that took place, institutional name changes, changes in institutional size (as measured by student enrolment) and a range of other forms of institutional change (migration, change of sector, change in funding status, closure, establishment, de-federalisation). While, alongside widespread change, a degree of continuity, at least in some institutions, also needs to be recognised, the picture presented is one of a continual ‘institutional churn’, through which institutions regularly re-invent themselves in an attempt to better face their changing circumstances.
Much research has been undertaken to investigate the cultural, structural and, to some extent, the economic effects of mergers in higher education. However, surprisingly little research has been done on why higher education institutions decide to merge. This article identifies and discusses a number of structural factors that may play a role when reaching a merger agreement. By drawing on a series of merger initiatives in Norwegian higher education, the article shows that merger processes involving more than two institutions dramatically reduces the chances of reaching a merger decision, and that a number of other factors may also play a negative role. The article concludes by reflecting upon the complex conditions surrounding strategic merger processes, and by identifying some practical implications for institutions involved in merger processes.
The demands for greater efficiency, higher quality and reductions in public budgets have meant that continually more countries are looking closely at the structure of their higher education systems, and this has often resulted in extensive reforms. The objective of creating larger units has resulted in mergers or closures of institutions of higher education. This article tries to elaborate the experiences of mergers in higher education in Australia, USA and several Western European countries (Norway, Sweden, Finland, The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Great Britain). What were the intentions with the different mergers? What kind of processes did this involve and what were the end results? We have focused on some of the problems and what went well. In the conclusion, lessons to be learned from mergers in higher education are highlighted.
This paper explores the issue of efficiency in English higher education using data envelopment analysis and stochastic frontier analysis to estimate an output distance function (which incorporates measures of both quantity and quality of teaching and research inputs and outputs) over a 13-year period. The study compares the efficiency estimates derived from various estimation methods, and uses the results to provide guidance to researchers, managers and policymakers on undertaking efficiency studies. The length of the study under consideration allows a preliminary statistical investigation of the effects on efficiency of merger activity in higher education.
The start-up of business ventures (university spin-offs—USOs) is an important channel that universities can use to transfer the results of public research to the economic system.
Several empirical investigations however show that the majority of public-research spin-offs perform rather poorly (see for example Mustar et al., 2008. Science and Public Policy 35(2), 67–80). Therefore, identifying and analysing the obstacles that limit the success of this type of high-tech start-ups appears extremely important to better understand and, where possible, leverage their potential contributions in terms of innovation and growth.
The existing literature on the performance of USOs studies these companies as any other high-tech start up, overlooking the peculiarities related to the presence of academic personnel in the entrepreneurial/management team. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap by analysing the relationship between founding teams and USO performance through a multi-level approach to the team demography. In particular, we try to account for some of the peculiar features which may shape the functioning of USO founding teams and arise mostly from the need to properly balance the scientific and commercial orientation with one another. The empirical analysis, carried out on a sample of 103 Italian USOs, shows that founding teams with a composition that promotes simultaneously differentiation and integration of academic and non-academic profiles, exhibit superior levels of performance in terms of growth.
Do mergers destroy value? The existing literature has reported extensively the negative impact of mergers on the stock price of acquirers, especially in stock transactions. The negative impact is observed in both the short-run and the long-run. In this paper, I argue that these observations do not imply that stock acquisitions destroy shareholder value. Because mergers and acquisitions are endogenous actions, controlling for market risk, size, and BE/ME may not provide a proper benchmark. I use unconsummated stock bidders to demonstrate this idea. Empirical results indicate that consummated stock bidders outperform unconsummated stock bidders, suggesting that stock acquirers may in fact benefit from undertaking mergers and acquisitions. Furthermore, the data suggest that the short-run and long-run negative abnormal returns are mostly associated with low BE/ME stocks.
The acculturation process involved when one organization is acquired by another, and the two organizational cultures merge, has not been adequately conceptualized in the strategic management literature. It is argued here that the acculturation process can be more fully understood by utilizing Lewin's (1951) force-field approach. In addition, major forces of cultural differentiation and organizational integration are identified. It is also argued that the dynamic acculturative change process will both influence and be influenced by postacquisition organizational performance. Predictions as to how post-acquisition performance influences subsequent acculturation modes are offered.
Previous research on mergers and acquisitions (M&A) has neglected marketing issues by and large. In this article, the authors examine the effects of postmerger integration in marketing (extent and speed of marketing integration) on M&A performance, as mediated by integration outcomes (magnitude of cost savings and market-related performance). Results from a survey of 232 horizontal M&A show that market-related performance after the merger or acquisition has a much stronger impact on financial performance than does cost savings. In addition, the authors find that the extent of integration is beneficial in terms of cost savings but detrimental in terms of market-related performance. Finally, they identify variables that moderate the relationships being considered.
Purpose
The paper aims to identify the requisite attributes and organisation to be displayed by a research university in order to engage successfully in collaborative research with industry partners.
Design/methodology/approach
The conceptual framework contrasts the traditional public funding model against the requirements of the “triple helix” model of government‐university‐industry research funding. The framework supports the exploration of a case study of a long‐standing and successful joint research partnership, the Dundee‐Kinases Consortium, which links a world‐class life sciences research centre and a group of global pharmaceutical companies.
Research limitations/implications
The case study provides a starting point, and additional case examinations will confirm the role of resource competences and organisational capabilities in facilitating performance by way of knowledge generation and transfer between partners.
Findings
The design and leadership of the consortium achieves vital performance outcomes, namely: accelerating the production of new knowledge about cell signalling processes relating to serious diseases; and faster transfer of new knowledge into drug development processes of pharmaceutical companies. The development of key enabling capabilities by the university, allied with routines for academic‐industry researcher interface, are essential elements of the partnering design.
Originality/value
The paper demonstrates that university‐industry partnerships build on government‐university funding, that university‐industry relationships foster new university capabilities, and moreover, that academic publication is not displaced by the requirements of industry partners.
While cultural fit has been acknowledged to be a potentially important factor in mergers and acquisitions, the concept has been ill-defined. Hence, its relationships to other human aspects in mergers have not been rigorously examined. Further, the relationships between cultural differences and other human factors to the effectiveness of the integration process and financial performance have not been subject to rigorous research that use relatively large samples of mergers and acquisitions. The present study assesses the role of corporate cultural fit, autonomy removal, and commitment of managers to the merger in predicting effective integration between merger partners in different industry sectors. The relationships between, and role of, these variables are found to be complex; they vary across industries and have different relationships with different measures of performance.
A great deal has been written about mergers in industry, but those in the public sector have received much less attention. This article sets out to redress the balance, analysing 30 recent merger examples in the higher education (HE) sector. It draws parallels with the wider literature, and includes recommendations for practitioners.
Mergers are common phenomena in higher education institutions. Improving educational quality is typically one of the stated goals of university mergers. Yet, little information exists about how merging institutions approach this goal. This paper presents results from a study of planning documents created prior to four mergers in the Finnish higher education system. These documents show that there was little concrete attention given to the educational issues related to the mergers. Most attention was placed on administrative issues and issues related to research. When educational issues were mentioned, it was almost always in the form of vague goals with few details provided about how the goals were to be reached. We conclude that this lack of attention to the educational aspect of mergers is a significant weakness of the planning process in these mergers.
Merger literature suggests that the relationship between shareholder gains and the relatedness of merging firms is contingent upon the compatibility of the two firms' top management cultures. This hypothesis is tested by surveying the perceptions of cultural differences of top management teams of recently acquired firms, and then relating these perceptions to related stock market gains to the buying firms. The findings suggest a strong inverse relationship between perceptions of cultural differences and shareholder gains, after controlling for perceptions of the buying firm's tolerance for multiculturalism and the relative size of the merging firms.
The performance of corporate acquisitions is a popular research topic. Researchers have employed various criteria in their attempt to evaluate acquisition performance. This paper replicates and extends a previous study by investigating the comparability of the three most widely used measures of acquisition performance, namely accounting-based measures, cumulative abnormal returns and managers' subjective assessments, in a non-Anglo Saxon setting. Empirical testing is based on a sample of 50 domestic acquisitions carried out by Greek firms. Overall, results from the three measures indicate failure rates from 50% to 60%. However, the most impressive finding stems from the comparison (correlation analysis) of the alternative measures. Accounting-based measures are positively correlated to managers' subjective assessments. Contrarily, cumulative abnormal returns are not correlated to either accounting-based measures or managers' subjective assessments. This lack of statistically significant relationships between the performance criteria may provide a plausible basis for explaining some of the contradictory results often reported in the mergers and acquisitions literature. In light of these findings, we discuss their implications for both theory and practice and suggest ideas for future research.
This paper presents a review of empirical research on the impact of acquisitions on firm performance. The evidence suggests that, in the short run, acquisitions have at best an insignificant impact on shareholder wealth. Long-run performance analysis reveals overwhelmingly negative returns, while the evidence using accounting performance measures is mixed. The review also examines the impact of bid characteristics on performance. The acquisition of hostile targets, transactions that are paid for with cash and acquisitions of larger targets are associated with superior (or at least less negative) performance, while there is mixed evidence on the benefits of related acquisitions. A number of recent studies find that acquirers with superior pre-bid performance tend to experience significant underperformance in the post-bid period.
Includes bibliographical references.
We study the effect of different acquirer types, defined by financial status and their payment methods, on their short and long-term performance, in terms of abnormal returns using a variety of benchmark models. For a sample of 519 UK acquirers during 1983-95, we examine the abnormal return performance of acquirers based on their pre-bid financial status as either glamour or value acquirers using both the price to earnings (PE) ratio and market to book value ratio (MTBV). Value acquirers outperform glamour acquirers in the three-year post-acquisition period. One interpretation is that glamour firms have overvalued equity and tend to exploit their status and use it more often than cash to finance their acquisitions. As we move from glamour to value acquirers, there is a greater use of cash. Our results are broadly consistent with those for the US reported by Rau and Vermaelen (1998). However, in contrast to their study, we find stronger support for the method of payment hypothesis than for extrapolation hypothesis. Cash acquirers generate higher returns than equity acquirers, irrespective of their glamour/ value status. Our conclusions, based on four benchmark models for abnormal returns, suggest that stock markets in both the US and the UK may share a similar proclivity for over-extrapolation of past performance, at least in the bid period. They also tend to reassess acquirer performance in the post-acquisition period and correct this overextrapolation. These results have implications for the behavioural aspects of capital markets in both countries. Copyright Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 2002.
Strategic Due Diligence: A Foundation for M&A Success
- G Adolph
- S Gillies
- J Krings
Adolph, G., Gillies, S., & Krings, J. (2006). Strategic Due Diligence: A Foundation for M&A Success,
Retrieved from https://www.strategy-business.com/article/enews092806?gko=21dd3
Mergers in Higher Education: A proactive strategy to a better future
- R Azziz
- G Hentschke
- B Jacobs
- L Jacobs
- H Ladd
Azziz, R., & Hentschke, G. Jacobs, b., Jacobs, L. & ladd, H. (2017). Mergers in Higher Education: A
proactive strategy to a better future? New York, NY: TIAA Institute.
Challenges facing legislatures and postsecondary education, A Legislator's Toolkit for the New World of Higher Education
- B Boggs
Boggs, B. (2018, May). Challenges facing legislatures and postsecondary education, A Legislator's
Toolkit for the New World of Higher Education. Paper presented at the National Conference of State
Legislatures (pp. 1-5). Academic Press.
Preparing a 21st Century Workforce, A Legislator's Toolkit for the New World of Higher Education
- B Boggs
Boggs, B. (2018). Preparing a 21st Century Workforce, A Legislator's Toolkit for the New World of Higher
Education. Paper presented at the National Conference of State Legislatures (pp. 1-6). Academic Press.
An approach to strategic collaboration
Future-proofing the University. (2019). An approach to strategic collaboration. KPMG.
A Knowledge-based Categorization of Researchbased Spin-off Creation
- J Gabrelsson
- H Landström
- T Brunsnes
Gabrelsson, J., Landström, H., & Brunsnes, T. (2006). A Knowledge-based Categorization of Researchbased Spin-off Creation, Paper no. 2006/06, Centre for Innovation, Research and Competence in the
Learning Economy (CIRCLE). Lund University.
Mergers in Higher education: The international experience and the case of Greece
- T Gkrimpizi
Gkrimpizi, T. (2019). Mergers in Higher education: The international experience and the case of
Greece. Unpublished master thesis, School of Economics, Business Administration & Legal Studies,
Thessaloniki, Greece.
Higher education institutions as drivers of regional development in the Nordic countries
- S Hedin
Hedin, S. (2009). Higher education institutions as drivers of regional development in the Nordic countries. Nordregio.
University mergers in England: Effects on efficiency
- J Johnes
- M Tsionas
Johnes, J., & Tsionas, M. (2015), University mergers in England: Effects on efficiency. In Conference
presented at the European Workshop on Efficiency and Productivity Analysis. Academic Press. Retrieved
from http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/27825/
Future proofing the University, An approach to strategic collaboration
- Kpmg
KPMG. (2019). Future proofing the University, An approach to strategic collaboration. KPMG.
ITP ROADMAP 2020, Mergers of tertiary education organisations -approaches and implications
- B Mischewski
- L Kitone
Mischewski, B., & Kitone, L. (2018), ITP ROADMAP 2020, Mergers of tertiary education organisations -approaches and implications.