Business acquisition, resource redeployment, and asset divestiture are elements of a dynamic process in which firms change their businesses by recombining internal and external resources. Analyzing 253 horizontal acquisitions, we show that post-acquisition resource redeployment leads to asset divestiture from the business that receives the redeployed resources, but not from the business that contributes the new resources. Consistent with scale economies rationales, we find that strategic similarity also leads to greater asset divestiture from the target firms. Many theoretical perspectives are skeptical about the positive rationale for acquisitions and many of these believe that asset divestiture is evidence of acquisition failure. Our arguments and analysis help refine the accepted wisdom. In particular, the pattern of resource redeployment and asset divestiture in our analysis suggests that acquisitions provide a means of reconfiguring the structure of resources within firms and that asset divestiture is a logical consequence of this reconfiguration process. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. This study examines the causes of asset divestiture following horizontal acquisitions. Asset divestiture is the partial or complete sale or disposal

The dynamic capabilities literature suggests that firms need to use both internal development and external sourcing to thrive over time, but we have a limited understanding of the conditions that best suit different sourcing choices. This study examines how constraints that arise from firms ’ existing stocks of capabilities and from their internal social contexts shape their choices of capability-sourcing modes and, in turn, their ability to obtain new capabilities. Thus, the research focuses on an underemphasized form of dynamic capability: the ability to select appropriate modes of capability sourcing. We test the arguments with a survey and longitudinal survival study of the international telecommunications industry. We find intriguing variations in the way that firms ’ selection capability influences their ability to renew their capabilities and, ultimately, to survive. Key words: modes of capability acquisition; selection capability; resource gap; institutional gap; internal development; external sourcing History: Published online in Articles in Advance April 7, 2008. Recent arguments in the dynamic capabilities literature suggest that firms need to develop skills in both internal development and external sourcing to be able to renew their capabilities and thrive over time (Helfat

Abstract. Collecting digital materials is time-consuming and can gain from automation. Since each source – and even each acquisition – may involve a separate negotiation of terms, a collector may prefer to use a broker to represent his interests with owners. This paper describes the Data Broker Framework (DBF), which is designed to automate the process of digital object acquisition. For each acquisition, a negotiation agent is assigned to negotiate on the collector’s behalf, choosing from strategies in a strategy pool to automatically handle most bargaining cases and decide what to accept and what counteroffers to propose. We introduce NOODLE (Negotiation OntOlogy Description LanguagE) to formally specify terms in the negotiation domain. 1

When integrated with key organizational characteristics, institutional theory can yield new insights to understand differences between firms ’ strategies. We propose that a company’s functional organization and internal power structure influence its facility managers ’ sensitivity to and interpretation of institutional pressures. Combining over 500 responses from an original survey with existing data sources, we show how two corporate departments affect how facility managers perceive and respond to various institutional pressures to adopt environmental management practices.

This paper integrates a stakeholder perspective into the resource-based view of the firm, to analyze the mechanisms that ]ink the adoption of the international Environmental Management Standard ISO 14001 to firms' competitive advantage. This paper shows that the perceived competitiveness impact of the standard depends mostly on the involvement of firms' external stakeholders (distributors, customers, community members, and regulatory agencies) in its design. ISO 14001 is a process standard, and it is difficult for stakeholders to get credible information on the effectiveness of the standard if they are not involved in its design. Stakeholders' involvement in a firm's ISO 14001 standard becomes a valuable organizational capability, which is difficult to imitate by competitors

Research in the strategy and international business literatures shows that firms often undertake acquisitions in order to exchange resources. The core arguments arise from theories of market failures, where market failures can stem from potential opportunism or from coordination difficulties. However, empirical research on cross-border and domestic acquisitions has not been able to reach a consensus regarding post-acquisition strategy and performance in the two types of cases. We show that the post-acquisition performance of acquisitions in both domestic and crossborder contexts varies with the extent of post-acquisition redeployment, which in turn depends on two factors, including the degree of asymmetry in the resource profiles of the firms and the extent of context-specificity of these resources. We undertake the analysis at a particularly fine-grained detail of analysis, examining four dimensions of resource asymmetry, as well as five dimensions of business performance. 1 This paper studies post-acquisition resource redeployment between target and acquiring businesses, comparing cross-border and domestic horizontal acquisitions. Acquisitions offer the potential to create value at the target and acquiring firms in both domestic and cross-border contexts. The value creation often stems from two conditions, concerning resource asymmetry and contextual similarity. First, post-acquisition resource redeployment allows firms to take advantage of asymmetries of the target and acquiring firms (Singh and Montgomery, 1987; Lubatkin and O'Neill, 1988; Hitt, Hoskisson, & Ireland, 1994; Nakamura, Shaver and Yeung, 1995). Second, contextual similarity will ease resource redeployment to and from target and acquiring firms (Kogut and Zander, 1993; Brannen, Liker, and Fruin, 1998)....

to change and survive Conventional wisdom is correct in recognising that poorly implemented M&A’s are risky, but it underestimates the strategic value of successful acquisitions.

This study examines the causes of acquisitions of nursing homes by corporate chains and the consequences for the operating strategies of the acquired facilities and the health outcomes of their residents. Our data include all reports of inspections of Medicare/Medicaid certified U.S. nursing homes from January 1991 through September 1997. During this period, 3,000 corporate owners acquired nearly 5,000 of 19,000 total nursing homes. Nursing home chains typically acquire poorly performing facilities that offer opportunities for the new owners to improve health quality (pressure ulcer prevalence and health deficiency citations). Post-acquisition health quality of target nursing homes tends to decline initially and then improve. Target quality improves more when the acquiring chain is high quality and/or the target low quality. Nursing home acquisitions also lead to substantial changes in operating strategy, with acquired facilities experiencing declines in staffing ratios and increases in the percentage of specialty beds.

This paper studies acquisitions of nursing home facilities by chains. We first test alternative ‘cream-skimming ’ and ‘turn-around ’ arguments concerning nursing home acquisitions. We then consider post-acquisition changes in nursing home health performance, differentiating effects of the acquisition process from those of prior strategy and performance of the acquired home and acquiring chain. Our dynamic empirical analysis of more than 5000 acquisitions by US nursing home chains from 1991 through 1997 shows that nursing home chain acquisitions are driven by a turn around logic, and that performance depends on the prior quality of the target and acquirer. Our analysis is relevant to policy on the nursing home sector, helping clarify why certain homes are acquired and how being acquired affects their residents ’ welfare. At a more general level, we offer insights concerning strategic factors that promote acquisition and drive expansion of service sector chains. Copyright # 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This paper explores whether firms make better governance choices as they gain experience in different modes of governing external resource sourcing, modes that include acquisitions, alliances, and purchase contracts. We refer to the ability to choose appropriate governance modes as a firm’s mode selection capability. Using a sample of 162 firms in the telecommunications industry, we argue (and find) that, under appropriate governance conditions, a firm’s experience across different external sourcing modes enhances its ability to select acquisitions when compared to less integrative modes, and this in turn contributes both to acquisition success and long-term firm success. These results suggest that a firm’s acquisition mode selection capability mediates the relationship between experience and performance of external governance modes. This research has implications for the learning literature in that it stresses the benefits of accumulating heterogeneous experience for a firm’s ability to select an appropriate mode of external sourcing choices. The work constitutes a step toward cross-fertilizing the agendas of organizational learning studies with research on alliances, acquisitions, and contracts. This research also has managerial implications because it demonstrates that a firm’s selection capability complements its ability to implement external modes of resource sourcing.