The strategy behind serial acquisitions

Recently, Killian McCarthy, Jonas Röttger, Menno Huisman and I joined forces to explore the strategies backing serial acquisitions. These efforts resulted no into: “Moving motives: How past and present strategy influence the market” In the article that feautres in PLOSONE we discuss how research often only considers the performance of a single acquisition, or the effects …

Digitally Enabled Collaborative Innovation: A Case Study of the German Automotive Industry

Need cars do not come about by themselves. They are invented, engineered. This creative process is more and more becoming a true collaborative endeavor within the automotive industry. but what makes for succesfull collaborative Innovation? In this Case Study of the German Automotive Industry, Eoin Whelan (NUI Galway) and I- with massive help by Miriam …

If you want to travel fast go alone, if you want to travel far, go together

Based on ideas form network theory, we looked into the social interactions as they took place over more than a decade, as we tracked a major English-speaking online health community. Interaction data for the study were collected in July 2017 and consisted of all contributions made this timespan, totalling to 147,561 user profiles and 197,980 …

Downsizing after digital M&A

Date of news: 18 November 2021 Recently, and together with my great phd student Jasper van Boven and Prof. Wilfred Dolfsma at Wageningen University, I have started to dive into the relationship between restructuring and digitalization. Initiating a new line of research, the approach is to explore – based on prior M&A activities in the …

Hosting of the FINDER 2021 inclusive digital innovation in FS&I week –

Recently, I had the great honor of overseeing the organization of the FINDER inclusive digital innovation week in FS&I together with our project partner Atos. It was an exciting opportunity to exchange ideas between practice and academia and receive food for further thinking. We want to thank the organizers of the event, Remco Neuteboom, Rick Aalbers, Ivo Lujiendijk, Jonas …

Market reactions to acquisition announcements: The importance of signaling ‘why’ and ‘where’

Acquisitions are common in industries, but not all acquisitions succeed and those that fail often have a negative effect on the acquirer. A recent publication in the Long Range Planning further explores multiple levels of risks involved in acquisitions and the importance of signaling the ‘why’ and ‘where’ of said acquisitions. Dr Rick Aalbers (Associate Professor …

COVID-19 recovery in Cities and Regions: lessons from the 4th OECD Roundtable on Cities and Regions for the SDGs

After partaking in the prior OECD Roundtables on Cities and Regions it was a pleasure to be part of the community that comprised the 4th OECD Roundtable on Cities and Regions for the SDGs on the theme of a Framework for COVID-19 recovery in Cities and Regions. Recovery is high on the agenda after the …

Dynamics of interpersonal trust: a social network perspective

It is not uncommon for organizations that endure restructuring to experience trust decay amongst the work force. How does responsible restructuring come about? What are the antecedents that drive an organization forward in a responsible manner, also when trust is hampered and uncertainty arises within the boundaries of the firm? This month, FINDER friend and …

Pre-Packed Bankruptcies: value distroying or value preserving? NL evidence

A recent review of Pre-Packed Bankruptcies I worked on recently featured on the Oxford Business Law blog (see here) . The work revolves around the value capture, or distruction of value instead, that surrounds various instances of bankruptcy arrangements. With my colleagues at Leiden University we came to the following insigts: Firms that find themselves …

Rewiring the Intrafirm Network under Downsizing: The Role of Tie Loss on Discretionary Tie Formation

A recent publication in Long Range Planning brings to the fore the interesting phenomenon of network regeneration. Often we believe that networks of all sorts, formal, informal, and especially those that are voluntarily maintained, fall apart as an organization gets temporarily hammered by restructuring. Interestingly however, some employees actually become more active instead. Reaching out …